<p>There are good reasons and bad reasons to stay where you are. This is also field dependent.</p>
<p>In my field, staying in the same place for the BA and PhD can be okay if 1) the department is a strong one - no one will question why you decided to stay in a top 20-30 program; 2) if there are clear research interest connections - you and your adviser do basically the same research, or there are 3-4 professors in a cluster that do work very similar to yours; 3) you are very productive: you publish a lot, you present at conferences, you’re involved in the field, and 4) you seek out other ways to develop a diverse set of experiences and approaches, such as taking coursework at other universities or doing special summer training elsewhere, or a postdoc. No one would question a Michigan or Stanford undergrad for staying in their own department, for example. It’d actually be silly to go elsewhere just because.</p>
<p>However, BAD reasons to stay put are 1) you’re comfortable - you know everyone and they know you; 2) it’s easier - you don’t really have to learn to navigate a new department or new approaches; 3) you’re stuck in a rut - you just want to keep doing the same old research and not learn anything new or expand your horizons; and/or 4) you’re unable to get in anywhere else (or didn’t even try). Also, if you don’t do the things listed above, you also diminish your chances of getting a job. For example, let’s say you were an undergrad at Stanford (currently ranked #1-2 in my field) and you stay there for a PhD - but there’s NO ONE in your interest area and your publication record is spotty and schizophrenic, and you can’t talk cohensively about your research agenda in job talks. THAT looks bad, and it doesn’t matter that Stanford is #1 in the field.</p>
<p>SO - examine your reasons. The fact that you have gotten to know professors in your department, including the club adviser and the graduate program coordinator is irrelevant. That’s normal when you are somewhere for 4 years - in some ways, some would argue that it could be a disadvantage, as the department may have trouble seeing you as a grad student instead of an undergrad. But more importantly, you will get to know and love the professors in your grad department, too. There are also people with interesting and relevant research at a lot of places, and you can have conversations with lots of people about publications and research. Those things are NOT unique to your undergrad. What’s MORE important are:</p>
<p>1) Is your department well-reputed in your field? Do they have a good placement rate in academia? Do people get jobs as professors from that department, and do they get jobs at the kinds of institutions at which you see yourself working?
2) Are your professors’ research interests WELL-aligned with your own, to the extent that you can’t really get as good a fit anywhere else in the field?
3) Are they good mentors? Have they expressed an interest to take you on as a graduate student and develop you? Are they trying to push you out to go somewhere else, or do they really want to keep you?</p>
<p>I also agree that in many cases, a department that is filled with people who have gone to undergrad there, gotten their PhD there, and been there for very very long times is a bad sign. It’s sometimes a sign that the department is not open to new ideas and does not want to grow and change with the times. Not only should programs be sending their scholars out into the world, the best departments will seek out good faculty from a variety of departments and backgrounds because diversity of voices is a good thing in science. If 50%+ are all from the same place, you can get some staleness in there.</p>