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[geonerd]

Go visit the schools in which you are interested. If they really want you, they'll pay for you to come visit. Go to the school where you find the best match in terms of program, advisor, and academic community. You'll know it when you see it. Don't worry about names and branding. 2 major epiphanies await all PhD students:
1. Noone cares about your GPA except you
2. Noone cares about the name of your university except you

I'm confused why you are so worried about a random sampling of students who currently list no publications. Maybe they just started a few months ago. Maybe they have papers in prep or in review. Maybe there are some down to earth, modest souls at Stanford or wherever and they don't post every detail of their lives online.

Go visit. Talk to your potential advisor. Talk to that person's students. Find out if recent graduates are getting good jobs. Good luck.

[mfaer]

*Sigh*.  Is this necessary?

OP, I don't mean to pick a fight with you, but here's some honest advice: You seem to be giving both personally identifying information and some serious attitude here.  The combination of the two is ill advised given that the the forum archives are available online publically for an indefinite time frame. 

Tell me about it...geeze.

Screen-name likely gives away first name...check.

Provides undergrad and graduate institutions...check.

Provides graduate institutions that have accepted him...check.

Then, on top of the above...

Insults two students at one of the accepting institutions....check.

Throws a temper tantrum...

Not a wise move on a public forum for academics/academia discussion...academia is a small world.

Just sayin'









[/quote]

[newbie]

Competition there is fierce. Professors have their own agenda -- they need to perish or they won't have a job at Stanford or wherever.

But if they are in a hurry to publish, isn't that to your advantage, as they might be getting you involved with more work to help increase their publication rate?

So in this sense, it may be better off at the top 20 school. You have professors who care about your work. And if you do well, and have a strong publication record, you'll have a good job and an extremely good chance of working at a top-20 school.

Just something to keep in mind: there are no guarantees that the top 20 school would have professors who care about your work. And there are no guarantees that the top schools would have professors who don't. The best way to find out is to meet with faculty and graduate students at different institutions and find out more about the atmosphere.

As for name recognition, it might help with jobs outside of academia. However, within academia, I think there are other factors that matter more, including who you did your work with and the quality of your own work.

PhD students are very competitive, and you either do extremely well, or you don't.

It's not that black and white, at least from my experience. Some people do extremely well, some do somewhat well, some do okay, some do poorly. And there are different levels of competition, too.

At my top R1 where I went to graduate school, my cohort was remarkably well-mannered to each other. We were smart and worked hard, and we did not stab each other in the back. And we published a lot, too.

[margarete]

We are the Fightin' Ellipses

You can play my undergrad SLAC's team, the Fightin' Other.

My university is about 20 miles from another university with a larger program in my discipline.  Sometimes we take seminars there, sometimes their students take seminars here.  Neither department can have faculty in every field, and even though one of the programs is more prestigious than the other, we work together.  It's to everyone's benefit to cooperate, and I suspect OP won't get very far if hu doesn't figure that out.

[polly_mer]

Howie999,

If you're still reading, you may want to consider some other factors in your decision. 

What is the rate of graduation for the various programs and what happens to people who leave for whatever reason?  Yes, you have a good academic background, but so do most of the students that they accept.  If more than fifty percent of the students leave before graduation, that's a scary sign.

What do you want to do with your degree and which of these programs has the best people in your specialty?  It may be the case that School X is the highest rated in marketing, but Profs Y and Z at School Q are the top people in your specialty.  In that case, you want to go to School Q.

What about quality of life and other personal considerations?  You mention places being ranked #1 to live, but that depends on whether one wants urban, suburban, rural, various climates, and other more nebulous qualities.  I don't suggest making this the most important factor, but avid surfers should live near the ocean and avid skiers should live near the mountains.

Rank is a factor for choosing a school, but it shouldn't be the only factor.

Signed a person with all three degrees from an unranked school, yet still gainfully employed, published frequently, and invited to present at international conferences.

[rusieeping]

I never said I considered rankings official. I just posed a question, a dilemma for you all.

[infopri]

I never said I considered rankings official. I just posed a question, a dilemma for you all.

I don't see that it's much of a dilemma.  Or weren't you paying attention?


BTW, any reason you chose that particular moniker to replace your last one?

[angel]

And any reason you chose to misrepresent yourself as completing the PhD on the online journals thread?

[rusieeping]

And any reason you chose to misrepresent yourself as completing the PhD on the online journals thread?

Who said I mis-represented myself in that thread? Maybe I mis-represented myself in THIS thread.

Okok, I lied, in both threads. I have a PhD and JD, and I'm doing this as an experiment in sociology? Blahaha. You'll never know, unless you come to Berkeley to hunt me down.

[scheherazade]

You have to be really narcissistic to assume that people have no problem with wasting their time on chronic liars.  But hey, if you think it's great fun to prey on the good-natured advice that the vast majority of forumites provide, bully for you.

[dubitocogito]

These Howie comments are getting dumber and dumber.  Any way we can get this thread locked or a ban on this fool?   

[pamplemoose]

rusieeping, you sound slightly insane, or at least a little high-strung.

take a deep breath...

i understand being intimidated by a highly-competitive, top program, but you have to assume that the admissions committees at these schools are pretty good at assessing ability and potential, and you may well be one of those students with a thick publication record when you hit the job market.

i think your fit with your adviser is of utmost importance, but so his his/her placement record.  you also have to think about the overall resources of the program.  if my experiences in this year's grad school app cycle have taught me anything, it's that connections help, and going to a highly-ranked school with hot-shot faculty will help open doors.  it won't get you the job, necessarily, but it will open doors.

also, what makes you think the gsb students without publications would have had *good* publications if they had gone to minnesota?

people are prestige whores.  provided it's a good fit, i'd go to stanford.

also (in response to another poster) i thought all Ph.D programs at Stanford were fully funded.

[msmommy]

I want to know how any of you have time for this sort of childish shinanegans?  Especially if you are who you say you are.  I see this sort of thing on mommy forums all the time, woman can be brutal in an anonymous situation.

I have time most days, I'm a SAHM doing research to find the "right" program for me to re-enter into teaching better than when I left to be at home w my kids and that is a completely honest statement.

BTW - I'd choose Kellogg.  Of course, I'm an east coast BBA holder and anything west coast is just not "poplularly" discussed as much.  I know more about Kellogg as an institution for quality business education than I do about Stanford.  My perception is limited to business employment and not academia employment.

If you are at Berkely as you say, the cultural change of moving to the mid-west might be beneficial in more ways than one to your career. 

If you are intending to be a professor, first hand knowledge of cultures across the US can only be a good thing.  Students are coming into any class with perceptions of the course topic from the environment they lived in, their papers will reflect this.

[pamplemoose]

Who said I mis-represented myself in that thread? Maybe I mis-represented myself in THIS thread.

Okok, I lied, in both threads. I have a PhD and JD, and I'm doing this as an experiment in sociology? Blahaha. You'll never know, unless you come to Berkeley to hunt me down.

I really wish I would have read this thread more carefully.  *Sigh*  Troll.  I will never get why some people find this fun.  What a waste of time and life.