School's prestige / Publication / PI - to be a professor?

targetwalmart
Thu, 22 Jan 2009 15:06:16 +0000

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

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?