Are PhDs From Top Universities Better? The top considerations
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- čas přidán 2. 06. 2024
- In this video I share with you whether or not PhD is from top universities are better and if getting a PhD outside of a top university is worth it. I share with you my top considerations for choosing a university some may surprise you.
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▼ ▽ TIMESTAMPS
0:00 - introduction
1:58 - the cost of prestige
5:06 - our other universities bad
6:54 - my top considerations - experts
7:53 - equipment and resources
8:44 - the city and country
10:00 - support from the University and scholarships
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Yes, active sabotage happens. Faculty also actively sabotage students whom they don't like. My desk used to be near my former supervisors' offices. They used to trash talk one student in particular in their offices after her seminar presentations. They would continue to gaslight and passively aggressively question her at every seminar for years and talk about it in their offices afterwards. On the flipside, I would also be weary of a department that puts some students on pedestals...because it signals a willingness to also kick students down.
A friend of mine did her PhD at Berkeley. She was there for 7 years and pretty much never spoke to her advisor. I don't think he even knew her name. She still hasn't published a single first author paper from that time because she handed the papers off to him and they have just sat on his desk forever. Big name schools pretty much require you to be entirely self sufficient because professors are more focused on their own careers, and everything is very cutthroat. That same Berkeley PhD now works among postdocs from all different levels of university prestige and they all get paid the same for the same work.
There are lots of ways to get a good education - choose an advisor and their research, not the school's prestige. Unless you know you want to work in academia or need a superficial selling point for investors for your startup, it doesn't matter. Your work will speak for itself no matter where you're coming from.
Something doesn't add up with your friend's story. For starters, hasn't she gotten a digital copy of the work she submitted? No receipts? I completed most of my education in the US, plus I'm a Ph.D. candidate to top. I know the system. Professors in Ph.D. programs at American universities are legally bound to the classes they teach, Berkeley or not. Equally, the university must also meet its legal obligations, especially if your friend is paying a small fortune for her degree. The story is incomplete, but strange things do happen on occasion. I suggest she talks to her advisor. (P.S. A student advisor in the US does not have the same role as an advisor in the UK.).
@@OnlineSchoolofEnglish It's pretty clear you aren't in STEM and do not know the system. It's nice that whatever your field is has higher standards for what it takes to be a graduate advisor/professor, but in STEM there are none other than publish prestigious papers and bring in grant money. Students are usually fully funded by the money their advisor has (or in this case that the student brought with her). Nobody's paying money to be there and the only legal obligations involved are those between the PI and the funding source. She also had 2 Bachelor's and an MS from MIT coming in, so this is not someone who failed upwards and left something out of the story.
@@ritac9769 I hate to burst your bubble, but my Ph.D. major *is* a STEM subject. I'm not diminishing your friend's experience; I just find it hard to believe. Anything is possible these days. I completed 2 masters, which, again, is not unusual in our region given how competitive it is to gain entry into a doctoral program in the northeast. Granted, I am completing my Ph.D. at a private university, one of the largest in the country. Berkeley, a top institution worldwide, is part of the California state university system. They do their own thing, I suppose. We are from the northeast, and my friends and I attended schools in our region. I've heard horror stories but none like your friend's. I completed 1 term at the doctoral level at a state university in KY--my only stint outside the east coast--and I transferred to my current university after seeing how disorganized the first institution was. I have no experience with California and know no graduates from there either. But I can see where the confusion lies. You said that "students are usually fully funded by the money their advisor has." That's *not* the advisor I meant. That "advisor" is departmental and has nothing to do with the **student** advisor on the academic/admin side of the program. They are admin people. The student advisor is the best person to go to for help. They know the rules and enforce them. They are the central link among the various departments involved (records, registrar, complaints, department chairs, professors, etc) and ensure that the student remains on track. They are quite handy at resolving issues like your friend's because they know all the ropes and the red tape. Lastly, I don't think that standards are higher or lower on the east coast than they are on the west coast. We are all regionally accredited and recognized by CHEA. Universities in the United States, regardless of how the tuition is funded, have a legal obligation to meet to their students. Period. The mayhem appears to be at the departmental level, with one person in particular or a small cohort at best, and if this is negatively impacting your friend, the student advisor should be able to step in to help. That's all I'm saying. Cheers!
@@OnlineSchoolofEnglish I think you still are vastly underestimating the level of disorganization and lack of regard for student welfare at many institutions. This is a true story, and I have no problem believing it based on what I heard from many postdoc friends at their schools. This was over 10 years ago and this friend has gone on to have a very successful postdoc and career and now consults for Harvard. My own PhD experience was also bad - I mastered out of because my advisor was both incompetent and abusive, and there was no accountability within the department because she has tenure. Departmental student advisors might have your back in the short term with navigating school requirements, but in my case they also prioritized not rocking the boat within the culture of the department. My advisor has had one student finish their PhD in the last 6-7 years and is well known to be a lab you don't want to join. But she has good collaborations, puts out relatively high impact work, and secures grant funding so is untouchable. If it's bad at a barely R1 public school like mine, it's probably much worse at schools where PIs are high profile and spend all of their time focused on their own careers. In large labs it's not uncommon for an advisor to not meet with their student for months or years at a time. A student advisor, who is a glorified administrator, is not going to have the ability to convince a tenured professor with lots of money to pay more attention to their students, as ultimately they are the ones who have to work together after all the students have come and gone. Yes, they help the student stay on track and graduate, but only have as much power as the school can enforce. If a graduate advisor decides a student is ready to pass their defense then that's usually the final say, and any departmental regulations regarding publication requirements are ultimately suggestions that can have exceptions made. If a PI is burned out and doesn't give a shit, then nobody can stop them from doing what they want to do and graduating a student who hasn't fulfilled all the requirements. That's how tenure works in the US and you're lucky you haven't experienced this first hand.
In most institutions there is nobody that has your back and it's why a lot of people leave before finishing a PhD.
@@ritac9769 Yes, I agree with you, Rita. I've also experienced some ugliness. It's a common occurrence. What you say is 100% accurate. Lab work is especially brutal. I've heard that from a friend of mine whose Ph.D. is in neuroscience. I'm into technology design--I look at software applications--with a focus on education. We're luckier in comparison, no doubt, even though the stealing of ideas is rife. It's the same across all disciplines because the stakes are high. I'm careful not to give out "my pearls." I had a short stint as an adjunct at two colleges in NYC and at one college online. The environment was--and still is--so toxic in academia that I walked out after 3 years of their nonsense. In a nutshell, it's toxic at the graduate level, and it's toxic as a faculty member. It is what it is. I look forward to completing my degree and using it to make a positive difference. Take care!
This is what genuinely scares me. I've heard the same sabotage stories from friends at Berkeley and I've heard about dismissive professors at UCLA.... I want to reach for the stars but I also want to have fun and enjoy my life during the degree
I'd love to hear a comparison between a stem vs liberal arts PhD.
Liberal farts
Having got my undergrad and DPhil from Oxford I can confirm it does open doors but its not a golden ticket. It’s a really hard environment to work in. Massive pressure, everyone is top flight. On the flip side, it doesn’t guarantee you an academic career if you won’t play the toxic games
I did my PhD at Cambridge almost 25 years ago now and I have to say I don’t regret a single minute of my time there. However, what you say is spot on. It was fantastically resourced with some great minds but it is a high pressure environment. You could go into the lab at anytime day or night and there would be people in the lab. They had to turn the power off over the Christmas break to prevent people going in. Also there were some absolute arsehole supervisors who did pretty well no supervision at all, and interestingly in my time since at other places the biggest arsehole supervisors I have seen all tended to come from Oxbridge. It has without doubt given me advantages in my career. One thing to say I really got benefit from was the college system as all my friends (and wife) were from many different disciplines and it was great not to be totally dependent on the dept’. I would say on balance it is without doubt worth it.
I heard a story like that in Stanford. I was talking to some upper class PhD students and the same story goes around about some students that have sabotaged their peers' work.
Could you please share a bit details about the stories that you heard of phd students in Stanford?
@@mrinmoyroy269 What I've heard is that before continuing further legal investigation they just gave that person the PhD without defending.
My buddy works in an office he would have gotten anyway and lost like 9 years of salary. I mean this work isn't that difficult and I studied academic papers.
I agree with the top considerations, especially targeting a supervisor who is a well-known expert in your field. You do have to make sure that they are present/supportive. Some good researchers aren't amazing supervisors. The city, country and funding matter a lot as well.
Great video. I especially love that you mention the importance of the financial aspects. I would add that if you're a prospective phd student, you should be aware that even when the program is funded, the funding is 95% of the time a *minimal* existence. Even at some top universities (such as the one where I formerly worked) the grad students often didn't have spare money to do anything that would be considered a normal/enjoyable life, unless they were already independently wealthy.
Also, this video reminded me of an article I'd read in the past and so I went and tracked it down (turns out it was a Chronicle article). The authors cite a couple of studies that suggest a large majority of the "top" (i.e. prestigious) faculty jobs go to people that come from a very small segment of likewise prestigious institutions, as well as present claims made on the basis of their own study of publication data, which similarly suggest that a large amount of what's published in journals comes from faculty from only a small number of prestigious institutions. This is something I wish could be advised to every prospective PhD student before they make their decision to commit to a program or not. Here's the article if anyone is interested:
www.chronicle.com/article/how-the-academic-elite-reproduces-itself/
You are like a big brother of mine as you were guiding me since mid of 2020 till now 👍
Now you have an idea of how lucky I am.
@@uMONTYu Are u his real brother ? :)
Yes :)
Hahah @monty thanx to you
@@uMONTYu Great !
I think you kind of mentioned it, but a good recent publication history is seriously important. I know a lot of professors with amazing old papers, but the research they do now is trash because they made professor and research random stuff now they can. I think the other one is try to find out the PhD and post docs in the lab. Check all the previous phds published and the post docs too. Agreed on funding, this is probably the most important tbh.
Your videos are so informative! Thank you for taking the time to share these important points with us!❤
Go to the best ranked university as possible as it is. No guarantee that the same shit will not happen at a lower ranked school.
Hi Andy, thank you for the great video! Could you do a video about exchange/visiting scholar opportunities during a PhD (pros and cons, what to consider)?
You are the most candid honest and resourceful scholar. I would recommend everyone thinking about PhD to follow your channel. In fact I have a friend who has just started his PhD at Iowa State University, USA and I have shared a link of your channel with him.
Utmost appreciation from Uganda - East Africa
Thank you very much for this video. It's very informative!
Thanks for the video as always! What do you think of joint PhDs? Is it something to aim for? What are the things to consider? Is it worth it? Perhaps its an idea for your next video!
As someone w/ a Phud from a Top 3 university in my STEM major, it matters a helluva lot if you stay in academics; in industry, not so much.
Wow, everything you've said is totally true...
I’m at St Andrews doing my PhD and I’m honestly amazed sometimes at the support and all round student satisfaction from staff all over the university. They do deserve their rating in the guardian university ranking. The students really are front and centre in my experience and I didn’t choose it specifically for any reason, I just ended up there by chance and got a scholarship for it. So I went in with zero expectations.
Thanks so much for such an insightful video! 👏🏻
Fancy meeting you here Dr Nazri
Surround yourself with the right people for you. Every university has toxic people. Make sure to ask the right questions and get a good feel of the environment you are considering. Lab rotations for science degrees are really important to gauge the feel.
Wish we had channels like this when we started our PhDs.
I started watching your channel a few days ago and wanted to thank you for all of the knowledge you're sharing. I'm considering pursuing a Ph.D. in electrical or mechanical engineering in the field of alternative energy. I'd want to connect with you in order to learn from your experience.
I love your videos, Andy. At the end of the day, it's about what direction we want to take in life. Like you, I've noticed that, by and large, jobs in academia go to Ph.D. holders from prestigious unis. However, if the graduates aren't busy publishing research papers, their academic careers also die out. A personal friend of mine is a Ph.D. holder from Yale. Aside from being an adjunct at two local unis of little weight in NJ, she hasn't really prospered. Tenure track positions are practically a thing of the past. So, why spend all that time and money and suffer the mental toll it takes to graduate from a top 10 institution if the rewards aren't there? Someone who really wants to become known in his/her field will eventually get there, provided they are not just brilliant in their subject matter but also consistent and perseverant in their endeavors. And yes, I have seen instructors sabotage students. It's awful.
would you consider Princeton one of those top schools? I recently got a PhD offer from both Princeton and Yale and I've been agonizing over whether these schools are the right fit for me.
@@jacob7270 Princeton is an Ivy League School. Ivy League Schools in the US are roughly equivalent to the Russell Group in the UK.
Thank you for doing it
Special: You need to be real, and you need to be caring when networking with people at college. The world of academia is very frugal, and envious so you need to make a good number of friends at the institution. It's not about being a hypocrite because if academia is for you then you will be seeing these people on a daily basis. The world that you live in right now in your 20s will come back once you are older. Network, be nice, be caring, and always work in synergy. July 2023.
Great advice, Andy, as an British retired civil servant, I never met anyone who rose to the top who wasn't Oxbridge! I'm London (UCL, King's, Birkbeck) myself... and part-time with it...always good for a laugh!!!
My twopenneth is purely pragmatic. 3 years out of your life as a means to an end, is the cost. In a great many careers with substantial opportunities for progression, it's not what you know, it's who you know. So network in those 3 years wisely. And choosing your university is choosing your network! Doing a PhD, achieving a PhD is the baseline. Using the other tools you have picked up on the way is your best way of putting that achievement to good use.
Self-funding? Done it all my life! Motivates you, keeps you focused like nothing else. You are investing in yourself. The university becomes a service provider, not a charity graciously handing you its largesse. Changes your attitude no end! But, obviously, it's a serious decision and, as you wisely say, only for people with very strong motivation and a realistic budget.
True, in the UK, it's difficult breaking through the oxbridge bias.
I agree that the university you go to does matter, but in my opinion the person you work with matters at least as much. when I was looking for a place to do my Ph.D. I looked first at the top people in the my particular sub-field and then second I considered where they were (the university). I then wrote to those people to see if they were accepting Ph.D. students and also pitched what I wanted to do to them. Note this was before the internet. At that time the main impact that the university had in my choice of where to apply was what did it cost to apply to that university because I was not exactly flush with cash at that time of my life. There were several places that simply cost too much to apply to that I dropped from consideration. I did write back to those profs and say that I would not be applying and explained why I had made that decision. By that process I narrowed it down to five places to apply to. I received acceptance and support offers from all five. I then called each potential advisor and spent a while on the phone with each one before making a decision. The final decision was based on my interaction with the potential advisor and the level of support that was offered. I rejected one foreign institution when it became clear that they would give me a grant of national tuition and fees, but not the rather substantial foreign student fees. That would have had to come from my living stipend, which basically made it impossible financially.
Other factors to consider when applying to do a Ph.D. in addition to the university include the size of the research group you will be joining and how supportive your potential advisor is or will be. The research group is important because those are the people you will be interacting with on a daily basis. If the group is too small you can end up more or less on your own and if the group is too big you will have minimal interaction with your advisor and there will be competition for resources (equipment, money to fund analytical work and travel to conferences. How supportive your advisor is matters both during your Ph.D. (will your advisor fund going to conferences and potentially expensive analytical work?) and will your advisor actively help you find a job when you finish. For example, where I did my Ph.D. there was one prof who had a research group of about 25 people (students and post docs). He hardly knew quite a few of his students and simply didn't have time or the resources to adequately support them both financially and when it came to writing references. The group I joined consisted of around five students at any given time and typically 2 post docs with an occasional visiting prof. In fact I ended up working very closely with one visiting professor who was there for two years.
Finally, a really big factor in your success is going to conferences and presenting papers. That is essential to establishing yourself in the field. Attending conferences is expensive and you need to have adequate support to attend at least one major conference each year. That is particularly true toward the end of your Ph.D. program because conferences is where you will interact with potential Post Doc supervisors. Your success will depend on how well known you are as a researcher independent of who you worked with.
Most people who finally got a job, academic job, in particular, will tell you this brute fact - if you were to get a PhD with future career in mind, please go to one of the Tops in the world (yes, not within the country). A PhD of a medium to- low ranking institute would require a good connection, a much more impressive academic portfolio, and a god amount of luck to overcome the deep skepticism and bias deeply ingrained in most employers. A senior prof. once told me it's better to get an Master's at a top university than a PhD in a low-ranking university for the same amount of time and cost. You would get a favorable employability and people outside would look more highly at you if you were the former. This is another case however if you you were able to work on those leading teams in the field sometimes not based in top university, and you are able to finally squeeze out some good, quality articles in top-notch journals upon graduation. To accomplish that it is 100x much harder than getting to a top university in the first place.
I keep thinking of Travis s Taylor, I think people with PhDs from low ranked universities should just get a research job at places like NASA instead of a R1 university. They may actually focus more on merit though I admit I have heard some are just as discriminatory people at private research institutions as well
In the lab I work at, it seems when they bring in a new post doc, much of the time, they note the advisor that they did their work under. It's like that was the important criteria for their hire.
Make a video on types of academic dishonesties people do during PhD?
Cost and distance from your residence (which is actually a factor in determining cost, really) should not be underestimated when considering which university you will attend. I am of course, speaking from the perspective of a regular person who doesn't have infinite money.
I've seen theses from a top uk uni that really range from dire to very good so I suspect intra-institution variation is as big as inter-institution variation with little bearing on the uni. At that level it comes down more to students themselves. Arguably top unis may recruit more driven students but again, I've seen some dross.
I got into Imperial College London for my Masters degree. I’m thinking of doing a PhD as well. My subject is science communication. I’m really not sure how I should go about it and whether I can do it or not🙃
Definitely hits home. I did my undergraduate at McGill and Master's at the University of Toronto. For my PhD I got an offer for the university of Lausanne (not EPFL). The institute is great and PI is a very prolific publisher despite being at the beginning of her career. Her colleagues are equally prolific too. Yet, the fact that the university of Lausanne is less well ranked makes me hesitate.
I did my exchange in UNIL and it is awesome! 100% recommend it. The campus is amazing, the location is perfect, people are friendly. I dream of going back there for my PhD
This is probably too late to help you decide, but a big factor in going to a different country for a Ph.D. is where do you want to end up for your career. If you want to return to Canada, I think that getting your Ph.D. in Canada or the US will matter a lot. I say that because while you are studying outside Canada, you are essentially invisible to Canadian academia. You have a great start with McGill and TO degrees. I would look at the most highly rated people at the top Canadian universities (McGill, Montreal, Toronto, UBC and Alberta). I say that as a retired prof at a Canadian university.
@@todddunn945 I did up going to Lausanne in the end! Best decision I ever made. My lab is super well equipped and my prof is hungry for papers and has time to mentor me couldn't ask for more. It comes to show that the priority should be
PI>Institute>University
and not
University>Institute>PI
In my case, I wanted to go abroad for my PhD to broaden my horizons and experience different cultures. I also think it's good for your academic CV to move around as Andy said in one of his earlier videos. Since I am french-canadian, I already speak the local language it's a plus. As for going back to Canada, I didn't really fit that into the equation. In my field (immunoncology), there are more jobs in Europe than Canada. The Lausanne area has tons of pharma companies and startups and I really like it here so I don't mind staying here for work a few years after graduation.
@@nicolasgrinberg1996 Sounds like you made a good decision. My comment was specifically if you were thinking of going into academia in Canada. When I chose where to go for my Ph.D. I picked a supervisor and the university came with that. I am American, but I did my Ph.D. at the U of Alberta. That decision pretty much shut me out of US academia, but was not a problem as far as getting a job in Canada, where I spent my academic career. Enjoy your time in Switzerland.
There's a CZcams channel where a PhD student documented her interesting path to the viva voce at the University of Oxford and even beyond. I went through her dissertation and came to the conclusion that she just paid a lot of money for something she could have done at several other universities for a small fraction of her costs. The topic was interesting but in the end the experiments performed were rather generic. My point is that university rankings can be very misleading. There're many lower-ranked universities which are just as capable as elite institutions in particular fields despite their worse overall financial situation. My advice would be to look for research groups that have reasonably good publication records and where there is a healthy environment - which may be more the case at less prestigious institutions. Besides, my experience is that these aspects are not mutually exclusive in successful research groups. In the first place, a PhD isn't (or shouldn't be) about reputation or future prospects, it's just another step on the way filled with new experiences.
The problem is, when it comes to Engineering, some top engineering universities in some countries (i.e. continental European) which are very highly regarded locally, do not appear in the aggregate ranking of top 100 universities. I think this general ranking thing is messy when it comes to Engineering. eg. Ecole Polytechnique, SUP-AERO, KTH, Tokyo Tech
I mean research engineering is dominated by universities like Cambridge, MIT, Princeton, Caltech, Stanford, and large US state universities like UIUC, UF, etc.
It’s really not that messy. If you want to go to industry it doesn’t matter. Some people might make it want to seem “messy” to feel good about whatever-but the screwed up academic system exists just as much in engineering as it does anywhere.
Source; engineering PhD student.
By the way, about self funding. In many European countries you don't need to rely on a scholarship. You can have a job and work on your career and at the same time do a PhD. It depends on where you want to end up, academia or industry, or somewhere in between. But you can do a PhD while you work or while taking a break from work later in your career. In my parents generation it was the norm for people to work for some time before going back to school for grad school. I think unless you are hard core 100 percent want to spend your life in Academia this is a good option. I sometimes regret I didn't explore other options earlier in my life.
Is it worth doing a Ph.D. from a university ranked 850-900 in the QS world, with an accomplished and relatively famous supervisor or co-supervisor? I have been in touch with a prof, who is highly accomplished in his field (h-index - 60+, yeah I am aware of how superficial these metrics can be, but it is what it is, he is well connected and known in his community), I found my interactions with him pleasant so far, the project description itself is not my first choice of work, but I found it motivating as it is an important and relevant work and I can see myself doing it, my concern is the low rank and less or perhaps no academic prestige of the university, given that my long term goal is to join academia, would it actually be very detrimental? (Yes it is not practical, but at least I don't want to box myself into non-academic jobs due to ranking issues).
I follow your videos regularly and I am looking for a career advice for myself. I completed my bachelor's this year in Metallurgical and Material Engineering. I have been offered a job from Tata Steel Ltd. The salary here is more than enough for a 23 year old guy to lead a lavish life. Also the company offers decent career growth prospectives. But I have been admitted to Texas A&M University for Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering. After going through your videos where you say that job opportunities after Ph.D. get limited, I am now confused whether it will be wise of me to quit a high paying job and step into Ph.D. What do you suggest?
Sounds like you should keep the job! But find other opinions too :)
Do a PhD in the Netherlands or Scandinavia because they just give you a monthly salary
Switzerland also gives a generous salary. The competition to get admitted is high because of that, though.
How about doing a PhD in engineering in university of Warwick ?
What do you think about doing a midlife PhD?
How much better PhDs 2000+ ranking university?
I have experience as an engineer, and graduated from a good college in the US, I work here in the US as well. Back in my country, the dominican republic, INTEC is the best institute of technology of my country, yet its global ranking by QS is in the 800s. This probably comes down to resources, NOT from quality. You see, I have worked with graduates of INTEC just as I have worked with graduates of Harvard and Princeton; they are equally bright.
So these rankings started to mean less and less to me as they normally go by funding. You could literally infer the ranking of a university in a world ranking by the amount of funds it has! Now, do I think that is bad? Hell no! That is good for the university students! They get to play with more expensive toys. That being said, in real life, when it comes to the grind, my best predictor of excellence has always been the reach of the university. Not a reach of being in the newspaper, no. Moreso WHERE are the students right now?
For example, the City University of New York, considered to be a super good university, is 545 in the world ranking. One would say that a graduate from CUNY is better than a graduate of INTEC. But, it only takes 5 minutes of talking to any INTEC graduate to figure out that they are MIT/Harvard level DESPITE their ranking. What average of INTEC students work at NASA vs CUNY DESPITE it being a university from another country? When you talk to a CUNY graduate, do they talk about other students that they know that are successful? Because you talk to a graduate of INTEC and that topic comes up and they know at least 5 doctors doing neurosurgery here in the US, and 10 engineering classmates @ spacex, NASA, and freaking JP Morgan.
I just used that example, but I am in no way saying CUNY is bad, I know great CUNY grads. I am just trying to convey the fact that rankings really don't matter! If you find a school ANYWHERE that you think is economic or where you think you'll be treated well, just go on linkedin and see where its graduates are. This is a much better indication of the quality of the program. Moreover, also check out their department and its professors. In small schools you probably can send an email inviting a professor for coffee and they'll probably respond.
Yes we are! 😜😉😉
Hello Andy, in terms of funding, how about those who would like to do a PhD part time through distance learning by self-funding through working full time in the academic at the same time? Do you think this would solve financial problems but cause other problems? Do supervisors prefer full time students?
I prefer The Apprentice over Survivor. The Apprentice had the environment of teamwork. Survivor from the start of the season have backstabbings
First of all, it's critical to have a PhD and also a postdoc from a top university if one wants to have a career in academia. You can't dazzle them with your down-to-earth brilliance earned at a lower ranking university if you can't even get to the interview stage, and they're looking seriously at pedigree.
Secondly, this is incredibly unfair. Odds are, regardless of whether your graduate work is in a top 5, a top 25, or even perhaps a top 50 university, your PI will still likely be from a Top 5 university, or maybe a Top 10. Meaning, the training at these places tend to branch from the same root.
Third, for a career outside of academia, the record is more mixed but there are still vast advantages to being in a top university. At top-5 universities, major companies will set up booths and actively recruit students. It will also be much easier to find national lab jobs.
Fourth, I don't think that being in a top university automatically means that the culture is bad. It's certainly going to be true at some of them. I'd just recommend asking around before deciding to attend. That said, there are jerks in many departments, both high and low ranking, and the choice of PI can really affect this kind of work culture.
Fifth, funding is a substantial factor and top universities tend to have way more of it. There are trade-offs though. A highly funded superstar is likely to constantly be out at speaking engagements, for example. A group with 40 people will likely never see their PI, because (s)he will be obliged to run around the country looking for funding at pretty much every waking moment.
Sixth, if you're looking for an industrial job and are willing to move, you're very likely to find something. The unemployment rate among physical sciences PhDs is extremely low, which implies that it's not that hard to find something even if it's not what you dreamed for.
That saboteur nonsense should be criminal.
I think it would be a difficult thing to prove in a court. To be honest, I've never heard of a fellow student's work being sabotaged.
this guy needs a lot of help. terrible advice. all you have to do is look at the professors in your own undergrad institution. Where did they do their PhD's and postdocs and who did they do it with. You will quickly see a pattern emerge. furthermore, look at the faculty at the top 10 schools in each country and you will see the same pattern of where they studied and with whom. Basically, everyone in the USA and Canada who is a faculty member or who are recent hires are all from essentially 5-8 schools. harvard, mit, berekely, caltech, stanford, scripps, northwestern, uchicago. almost every faculty has a PhD or postdoc (usually both) at one of these institutions and there is no point going anywhere else if you want a tenure track faculty position.
PhD = poor, helpless, desperate. Defined by Robert Kyosaki. Cheers from a MSc in engineering.
I’ve MEng in shithole country, Phd might opens the opportunity for me to migrate. But, as u say, even if I migrate, gonna be poor, helpless and desperate in at least a better country
It’s far easier to get funding from a top university and they have well funded research resources. However at Cambridge you HAVE to complete your D.Phil in 3 years. No exceptions. The other difference is that a PhD in the USA is 5 years, not 3 and you can be kicked out after 2 because you need to pass an examination. No one in their right mind would self- fund doing a PhD. If you applied for Financial Mathematics D.Phil or PhD without funding, you should be fired on the spot for being financially stupid and illiterate.
Oxbridge no lee way. 3 years means 3 years. But personally I’d prefer the US. More thorough. Testing after 2 years and can be kicked out .
A suggestion: may you make your video a bit less longer
I have never heard of any one destroying their mate/peers lab notebook. I have worked in many different scientific settings. Sounds like bunk!