@bernie12 Thanks for your thoughtful contributions (past and present). This is exactly me—in my post I made QTM sound like a backup plan, but it’s actually a primary reason I applied. and something I put in essays and such; it’s reassuring to know that QTM will still be doable if I play it right. The networking aspect is something I haven’t considered before, and I’ll definitely look more into that.
P.S. just b/c it peaked my curiosity: Both schools did list Emory as a peer (https://www.chronicle.com/interactives/peers-network) but Emory did not return the favor. Honestly though, these happened to be the first two schools that came to mind; There are definitely major differences.