Hi,
I got offers for PhD in these three universities. I got into Arizona State University for Nutritional science and exercise, Texas A and M college for entomology and Louisiana State University for PhD in biomedical sciences.
I prefer the course of LSU and I’ve been given a good lab too that works in neuroscience. However, I’m confused if the prestige of the universities is more important than the course?
I would really appreciate any insight.
Are all 3 offers funded ?
P.S. If unfunded, then what are the length & cost for each program and what are your career plans ?
How do you plan to pay for each of these PhD programs if unfunded ?
University prestige is not important in a doctoral program. The reputation of your advisor is. Far more important though is how well you get along with your advisor. And far, FAR more important is that you pick a field and a research problem based on something you REALLY like. You are setting up your whole career. I find it frankly odd that your concern is school prestige, but you’re talking about three VERY different thesis areas, neuroscience, entomology and nutrition. Pick the one of those that you want to center the rest of your life around.
I’m not familiar with PhD applications but it seems odd to apply to a variety of majors. I’d think for PhD one would drill into the major of desire.
Is your goal academic or a job in a practice ?
If not fully funded, student should not accept/attend. Period.
What’s the plan here? The career path for these disciplines are so different…
Most PhD programs only fund for students starting in the fall, and also would have required that you accept a while ago already.
I’m guessing that you are not being funded. Obtaining a PhD is expensive, and unless you have a clear plan of what you are desiring to do, then I wouldn’t suggest moving forward at this time. And I second what someone else said about that it is more important that the person you are studying under is well recognized.
I am also confused about the fact that your three acceptances are in very different fields.
What do you want to study? What do you want to do with your career over the next few decades?
Assuming that your PhD is fully funded, …
To me this is what matters. You are deciding what career you are going to take on. You are deciding which lab and what advisor or small group of advisors you are going to be working with for the next five or six years. This is what matters.
I do not think that the overall reputation of the three universities matters when you are deciding which PhD to take on. You are not going to attend the university as a whole. You are going to be working with a very specific and very specialized small part of the university.
Down the road, hiring managers (or faculty if going into academia) will know about the reputation of your advisor and your specific lab in your specific field.
I do not know if you can be 100% certain before you start your program. However, this specific issue was a big part of how my daughter chose the PhD program that she is about to start later this year.
If your PhD program is not fully funded, then this brings up an entirely different set of issues.
Hi.
All these are fully funded. I did my masters in Zoology and I had a course of entomology in my last year. I then was a trainee at a lab that worked on drug discovery and gained experience on mice models and cell culture. I mailed a few professors and one of them from ASU replied back saying he can take me in a nutritional science course however his lab works on fruit fly, which as insect I worked on in my dissertation.
I applied in TAMU for their entomology course for the same reason that I had expertise on it. I then got a reply from an email that I sent to a professor in LSU who works in biomed, and he also works on fruitfly.
I wanted to jump from Zoology to biomed and even though the professor at ASU also worked on similar topic in his lab, the course is different.
So which opportunity will give you the best chance for doing what you want to do in the future once you are done with the PhD?
For your RA, what are you specifically studying in each lab? Does the idea of studying that topic excite you?
At any of the schools, would you also be required to be a TA for any courses? If so, are they courses you are interested in?
Are you contemplating a career in academia after obtaining your PhD? If so, consider how well respected the mentor you would be working with is. Are they renowned in their field or just starting out? How many PhDs have they mentored, and what are they doing now?
If you want to leave Zoology and Entomology, then it seems like continued work focused on the fruit fly-- just because you’ve done it before- isn’t going to propel you forward.
Have you discussed your long term goals with any of these advisors to hear what they have to say about career prospects, advantages/disadvantages?
It all feels a little random to me. For most people by the time they apply for a doctorate program, they know they want to study with X professor (X can be 3 or 4 people in different institutions) researching Y topic with an end goal of Z. Are you there yet in your thinking?
If you want to work in biomed, as long as the drosophila work is focused on neuro, genetics, molecular biology, or other biomedical applications, it should be fine.
The name of the degree doesn’t matter as much as the type of projects you’re doing, and most importantly, your advisor’s work and reputation.
If the drosophila work is focused on a non-biomed topic, I would steer away from that.
If you want a career in biomed, the ASU nutrition science degree doesn’t seem like a good fit because it has a prescribed curriculum with a clinical bent (I went and looked at the requirements).
The A&M entomology program is more flexible, but I think most people taking that are interested in more traditional entomology careers. Which doesn’t seem to be you, but I think you could tailor it to a biomed focus if you really want to.
So it sounds like the LSU program is the best fit for what it seems like you want to do in the future.
Drosophila is a model. Let’s say you work in a lab studying photoreceptor chemicals (opsins). You won’t then be able to jump to a lab studying acoustic communication just because drosophila is the organism they’re working with. Working with fruit flies is literally like working with lab mice or rhesus monkeys. It’s just a cheaper, easier tool to use because its genome is so small and they replicate so quickly.
You need to do as @blossom has suggested, figure out the problem(s) that you want to spend your career tackling and pick the lab most aligned to that goal.
Edit: I cross posted with @ColdWombat. Follow their advice. The great news is that it’s the lab you prefer anyway.
Thank you @ColdWombat, @blossom, @eyemgh and @PurpleSunset24. It really means a lot.
I don’t want to stay in academia after my PhD and the lab at LSU is much more reputed and they are working on a topic that I’m more interested in.
Thank you so much.
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