I want to reiterate what @AustenNut said above in terms of comparing a CSU professor to a UC professor. It doesn’t matter that CSUs don’t have the national cachet that UCs do, because the quality of work you’d do with the CSU professor is going to be more enriching and eye-opening than the quality of work you’d do with the UC professor. The most important thing is that you’re working with a professor on original research and benefiting from mentorship – and potentially getting co-author credit on a resulting publication. I’m a professor at a regionally (not nationally) known university, and I can tell you that everyone in higher ed (including AOs) knows how the academic job market works – Ph.D.s are lucky to get tenure-track jobs at all, the specific jobs available in any given year are just a matter of random chance, and as a result, professors doing important work can be found in any institution. The fact is that CSUs are really good institutions, and the CSU professor is offering you an amazing opportunity. It sounds like you would get more out of it than you would out of a UC professor supervising your research (and I guarantee you, she wouldn’t have a whole lot of time to supervise you very closely, because you’d be a lower priority than her grad students and undergrads). So seize the opportunity, and take advantage of it. What a great experience for you.
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