<p>What is the single most important factor in choosing a graduate school if I want to be a professor in the future?</p>
<p>a. School’s prestige
b. Number of quality publications
c. PI’s popularity
d. Postdoc at a top university (if this is the case, then what are the factors that can help me secure a postdoc position)
e. Other</p>
<p>You can rank, combine them, or simply put your thoughts to help me (and other CCers who want to work in an academic setting) decide whether I should wait for another year in case I don’t make it to a top grad program this year or just work with what I have.</p>
<p>Hm, I wouldn’t say any of them is the single most important factor in a graduate school choice. You want to pick a school on a combination of them. Say, for example, you are choosing between the #2 school who has a famous PI but you don’t get along with him very well, whereas the #4 has a less-well known PI that you really click with. The PI at the lesser known school, other things being equal, will be more useful in your job search than the first PI even though the first school is better ranked, you see? Rankings/prestige are only really important in clusters, not by numbers. I really doubt that a degree from Johns Hopkins (#1 in public health) will net you so many more opportunities than Emory (#6) or Minnesota (#10) – they’re all top 10, they’re all good.</p>
<p>I’d say post-doc at a top university doesn’t help as much because in order to get that, you need to go to a great program for grad school anyway. That’s how people get into those post-docs.</p>
<p>It’s also field-specific.</p>
<p>In general it’s tough to decide whether you need to wait for another year – it’s a highly personal decision. It also depends on what kind of academic setting you want to work in. If you want to be a professor at an R1 school carrying a 2/2 with lots of time for research, obviously you’ll have to aim for a top school. If you’d be perfectly happy becoming a professor at a small liberal arts college or a community college, the school doesn’t have to be so prestigious.</p>
<p>The best way is to investigate and ask where in the past have graduates tended to go? I’m in a joint program; graduates from one department tend to go into government and industry research more often (which I like!) and graduates from the other really tend to become professors and research associates within academia more often, with a liberal sprinkling of industry persons. Your prospective departments’ websites should have a listing of where alumni go afterwards; if they don’t, you should be able to obtain this information from them by asking. (My department’s is useful in that it lists both their first position right out of grad school and their current position, if they can find them.)</p>
<p>If your school is graduating a lot of professors at the kinds of places you want to be, then great. If most of them are going into other kinds of work, then the professors may have those kinds of connections elsewhere and it may not be where you want to be (unless like you’re in an engineering or management/business doctoral program where most graduates don’t become professors anyway).</p>
<p>Prestige of your graduate (and postdoc) institution is a big deal but then, if you can’t produce any good publications, I dont think it can help you much. </p>
<p>So if you want to be a professor, I guess what will matter the most is your own publications (esp. during your postdoctoral work).I know a lot of well-known professors graduating from not-so-prestigious universities –> but they did their postdoctoral research at prestigious institutions and produced good publications during their postdoc period.</p>
<p>Getting postdoc position at a top university, is at least not as hard as getting into top grad school. Actually I think it’s much easier.</p>
<p>Btw, I heard that doing postdoc research in ‘exotic’ research institutions (in case of bio-related filed:like Whitehead, SLoan kettering, cold spring harbor, scripps or rockefeller) will make you somewhat more attractive.</p>
<p>In a fundamental sense, the institution doesn’t matter for either graduate school or postdocs – it’s the PI under whom you’re working who matters. There tend to be more top-quality PIs at top-quality programs, but there are still mediocre PIs in all top programs, and superstar PIs in mediocre programs.</p>
<p>But if you go to a superstar PI’s lab in a great program, you still have to produce an outstanding publication record – no PI will hire you for a postdoc based merely on the fact that you were in Superstar X’s lab for your PhD. You have to produce the goods. Given the resources available in a top lab, this is somewhat easier to do than in other places, but doing good science is never actually easy.</p>
<p>I agree with everything that molliebatmit said, at least that’s what I have been hearing from all the graduate students, postdocs, and PIs that I have been talking to.</p>
<p>I agree that the prestige of the school is not very important. The prestige of the program (especially in your particular subfield) might be, however. Top programs tend to have top students, top postdocs, and also are more likely to have other top labs to collaborate with, either formally or informally. You will learn most from your own PI and your own lab, but you will also learn from your surrounding community. I think a good general rule is to pick a program where there are at least three labs you would be interested in working in. This is important in case your top choice lab becomes not an option for whatever reason, but also because having the other labs around will enhance your experience and your education, and also potentially provide important thesis committee members, LORs, etc.</p>
<p>So to summarize everyone’s advice so far, the most important factor is the quality of work that a student produces itself, which depends on (beside her/his own effort) available sources in the lab/program. And these sources probably have a strong correlation with school’s prestige… haha</p>
<p>But I guess this is not absolute at all; like what all you guys say that there are professors at top or at least good universities that have Ph.D. from mediocre school. In this case, what are the “mediocre” school we’re talking about? Would it be school within the top 50% (#20 out of 40) according to US News ranking?</p>
<p>Of course, a recommendation from a well known PI would be important for finding a professor job. But more importantly is the quality and quantity of your work. How many first author papers you have, and are they published in top journals? School is good for creating an initial impression, nothing more. I would say only find a professor job when you have good publication records, and if not, do as many postdocs as you like to build up your experiences.</p>
<p>Match w/ POI is most important, hands down.
Secondary to that (but still important) would be how well published, etc. your POI is, the dept’s philosophy and match, departmental activity, prestige of dept, etc…</p>
<p>but ultimately w/o a research match none of the rest of that even matters in most fields.</p>
<p>Another question: Why do you wish to be a professor?
Do you wish to be primarily
a) a teacher
b) a researcher.
C) don’t care-just want tenure!
The answer directly affects what type of graduate program you probably wish to join.</p>
<p>For professors at smaller schools with small or no graduate students (LACs), teaching is the largest portion of being a professor with research being necessary but a secondary activity
For professors at large universities with strong graduate programs, research is the primary activity of a professor: specifically pushing the boundaries of knowledge in the specific research field. Teaching is secondary, but does occur- graduate students apprentice with the professor and the professor also likely teaches undergraduates and/or professional field students.</p>
<p>Criteria ranking tends to be strongly discipline-specific. For example, it is extremely common within the social sciences, i.e. economics, sociology, or business for even the very top PhD graduates to have no publications whatsoever. Heck, there are even junior faculty at the top schools such as Harvard who still don’t have a single academic publication. As a case in point, Sharon Katz has been an assistant professor at Harvard Business School for more than 2.5 years now yet still doesn’t have even a single publication (although he has an important one forthcoming). That’s not a knock on Katz but rather just an illustration that publishing within the business academic literature is a long and exacting process.</p>
<p>The way to get placed in those fields is to have the strong endorsement from a famous advisor, as well as have an idea that has interesting potential, regardless of whether you have any papers. (Interestingly, even those rare graduates who do have publications, but that investigate ‘uninteresting’ research questions, probably won’t get placed at top schools, and the definition of ‘uninteresting’ is a subjective criteria that depends on the hiring committees). School prestige also helps immensely, at least in terms of getting initial job talks; getting your PhD in economics from a place like Harvard or MIT will mean that you will almost certainly get some job talks, even if only at lower-tier schools. </p>
<p>On the other hand, I certainly agree that in other fields such as the natural sciences, what really matters first and foremost are the the number and quality of your publications.</p>
<p>Ideally, I want to be a professor at a university because I want to do both research and teaching.
I dont think I will be picky about size as long as I have the source I need for my research and have the chance to teach under/graduate students. </p>
<p>Sakky:</p>
<p>I would believe if you said that ranking at the particular field and interesting research are the most important factors to obtain a professorship at a large university. But at the end, you stated that this does not apply to natural science. </p>
<p>So can we say: choose a graduate school where you feel will give you the opportunity to produce the highest quality and number of publications if you want to be a professor in natural science.</p>
<p>In the natural sciences,
the individual’s productivity and impact are clearly the most important!
But in the sciences, getting a doctorate is very much doing an apprenticeship. so you need to learn from someone effective, if you wish to be effective.</p>
<p>At prestige institutes, there is generally a higher level of scientific “buzz” and vitality.
But some of the major leaders in science fields are not at these hubs.<br>
Thus as some previous posters have suggested, consider schools where there are several labs (professors) who you are interested in and who are successful in the area of your interest. They will provide direct and indirect mentorship critical to train you to become an independent and effective researcher.</p>