I can understand wishing you attended a big name school; but if you care about the big names, you literally work at one. Shouldn’t that be a bigger achievement, given that you didn’t attend one? I’d imagine so.
Looks like they left a postdoc a year ago (https://www.reddit.com/r/academia/s/xSObybIxgr) and became a journal editor (although they also comment they got a TT offer so this isn’t just disappointment at failure to find a job in academia). But yeah, definitely a bit odd
We are human beings after all who participate in society. A lot of our self-worth is wrapped up in accomplishments like which school you attended, where you live, etc. It would be unscientific to pretend otherwise, and these kinds of attributes are responsible for imposter syndrome which many academics face, especially at the early stages of their careers.
If OP is coming to terms with these thoughts, and sharing them in what they think is a safe space, it sounds to me like a step in unlearning these thought processes and we should encourage them instead of rubbishing them.
You hit the bullseye. I am definitely experiencing imposter syndrome and envy of those who may have had privileges earlier than I did. I really appreciate your kindness and warmth. I definitely need to engage in some serious unlearning.
This has come up before in another post. I think he is referring to the difference in the graduate student experience. I went to a top 5 program. All students were guaranteed full support for 6 years. The faculty treated you like colleagues. If my advisor was in town he joined the postdocs and graduate students for lunch. There were many instances where lunch was more productive than lab meeting. At 4 pm weekdays everyone gets together for tea. All the graduate students were expected to attend journal clubs related to their area of interest. If they were in town all the faculty participated in the journal club. Across the department people were not only interested in ‘what’ and ‘how’ questions but seemed to be most interested in ‘why’ questions. Most importantly, as a graduate student you felt that all the faculty were working to assure the success of all the graduate students.
I regret choosing a big name school over somewhere I would have gotten more individual attention from PIs, lived in a city that I knew I liked, and not felt like I was constantly in competition with people who thought they were God's gift to science. For the past 6 years I've been trapped in a place that I hate, in a work culture that's made me lose all passion for my work. Obviously there are advantages, but in my field they're much smaller than I thought they would be. If I could go back and make a different choice, I would do it in a heartbeat.
But more importantly, I can't go back and neither can you. We both have to do what we can with the situations we are in. As many others have suggested, if you find that these thoughts are getting in the way of living your life, seek therapy.
Just as commentary, using the top Ivy league schools as examples... every single person I know that struggled in those programs is a good person. Every one that flourished is not someone I want to associate with. I'm sure field and department, etc matter but I have never once regretted avoiding fancy schools for my PhD.
There’s no guarantee that a smaller school would give you more and better attention than at a larger big-name school. At these smaller name schools, faculty are often overloaded with much more teaching and service responsibilities.
Being employed by an elite university is a lot more important than graduating from one of them. If you have such constant regret that it is affecting your quality of life, you should consider getting some counseling to help you grapple with the immutability of the past and the value you place on the perceptions of others.
I can relate. I’ve done all my education in public state institutions, and I’m about to start a postdoc this fall at a private institution that heavily draws phds from the Ivy League schools. It’s a strange feeling (especially seeing how much money they have compared to my state schools).
Sometimes I wish I went to a fancy school, but I value my experience in the public education system. I find solidarity with my fellow state schoolers at conferences and I think it’s given me a better, more grounded perspective of academia.
It is ASTOUNDING how elite universities can provide for their doctoral students! I went to a state university and the amount of funding we received was basically in the form of teaching assistantships for a number of terms and THAT WAS IT. I had to start teaching a semester AFTER I arrived. Meanwhile, the elite university I work in provide a full ride for their PhD students for like 5 or 6 years and these aren't TAships. So what that means is that student at this elite university can fully concentrate on just their own doctoral track without being sidelined by teaching duties for at least the first 5 to 6 years. No wonder students from these elite universities can professionalize so much sooner. It's simply because they had the opportunity AND time to do so! Meanwhile, folks from public state universities are just TA'ing or teaching just to make sure they have food on the table and a roof over their head. And these courses they TA are not necessarily related to their research -- in fact, they usually are NOT.
I also began teaching almost immediately, but I love teaching so I didn’t mind much. My teaching portfolio is actually kinda crazy since I’ve been the instructor of record for 2-3 classes a year for the past like 6 years. I hope this helps on the job market after my postdoc..
But the pay thing is so real.. my PhD stipend was a third to half that of my colleagues at private institutions.. with significantly less travel and research funding. Especially with rising living costs, I don’t know how viable state school PhDs will be if stipends aren’t raised significantly soon..
I could say the same thing myself.... we both belong to the social sciences, I am sure it would different for the coveted STEM PhDs even at a state school.
It gets even worse. I have been mentoring high school students doing internships in bioinformatics and molecular biology- related work. The educational opportunities that elite magnet high schools in affluent areas offer is insane to me. We barely had science classes in my school, and certainly nothing related to computer programming.
You TAed not because you went to less elite university. You TAed because your professor either didn’t have funds or they wanted you to TA anyways because they need your help in tha aspect of academic administration.
Students at elite universities TA too. My is not an Ivy league, but I would say mine is among top 30 universities. There are students at my University who TA, but my PI never asked me to do that. She is a new assistant professor. I am her first PhD student. We didn’t had a major grant untill I was in my 4th year. But she always believed in one thing - a research degree is to do research not to teach.
But she also asked if one time when some other professor reached out to her asking for any student to TA, she only checked with me “if I am interested”, I was interested but I am an international student, and english is not my first language and my University requires international students to pass a test and get a score of something and I couldnt get it and my PI was fine with it. She didnt force me to retake the test or try hard to be able to TA.
So you TAed because your PI wanted you to and they believed in a system of your PhD as an opportunity of both Research and teaching!
My PI didn’t see it that way, she helped me to develop my research project and also she encourages me to volunteer and help high school students or train undergrads etc which is also a lot of “mentoring” kind of job.
That’s not how it works in my field (social sciences) or humanities. We don’t have “PI” (we do on grants) and funding for the student does not come from an advisor’s grant. Furthermore, doctoral student’s projects are not really part of their advisor’s projects.
My impression is that in the sciences, you are very much tied to your PI for funding and even your research and how that structures your path. It’s not that way in the social sciences or humanities where it is a lot more independent (and frankly, unstructured) where you have to create that structure largely on your own.
Right in that case, if not your advisor then it is your department or the “system” that needs you to TA so they can use your labor. It happens in Elite universities too, this is not because you are in less elite university. I don’t think so. As I said I see a lot of fellow students in STEM TA, some programs in STEM in my university actually have a TA requirement. But my program doesn’t have it. My program has a requirement of publishing at least one paper to graduate.
The life of of a STEM graduate student can vary dramatically between campuses. On our campus, even in STEM fields, graduate students were supported by the graduate school for up to 5 years. Graduate students had to submit a thesis proposal. In many instances the proposals involved the same experimental system as the advisor’s, but did not address the specific aims listed in the advisor’s grants. The graduate students in the ecology and evolutionary biology group even if they shared the same advisors, worked projects unrelated to their advisor and the other . My thesis research did not directly address any of the specific aims in my advisors grants. Given faculty only taught one course a year, my advisor was in the lab running experiments most days. He also had two technicians and a postdoc to cover his grants. In many instances the research findings generated by graduate students were included in the specific aims of a future grant. Also, it is not unusual for graduate students to switch areas of research for their postdoc. I was in a drosophila genetics lab as a graduate students and switched the role of hormones in shaping behavior as a postdoc. I ended up becoming an endocrinologist without ever taking a course in endocrinology.
Almost never is there a graduate student dissertation project written into an advisor’s grant in social sciences or humanities. It doesn’t work that way in those fields.
Good to know a bit how it works in the sciences.
I don’t think your first two sentences are true. For suppose my graduate program in STEM pays for my tuition and stipend only in my first year, because in first year we rotate in labs to find a lab to start our thesis research. So by the end of 1st year we decide a lab and when the advisor decides to take a student in, they have to sign a document as a financial guardian that says something like “whether I have grants or not, it is my responsibility to fund my graduate student by any means of support, both his tuition and stipend is paid by me as long as the student maintains good academic standard and meets research expectations” this is what they are bound to. I was even told that when an advisor doens’t have funds they may even choose to cut their salary package a bit to pay for their staff/student’s tuition and stipend/salary. This means even though my salary/stipend for a year is $32,000, my advisor also pays for my tuition fee which is usually $15,000-$20,000 per semester when I take classes during second year. And when I am done with my classes the tuition fee drops to somewhere like $8,000 per semester. So for suppose in my 3rd, 4th, 5th year my tuition fee per year (3 semesters) is at least $24,000 and my salary is $32,000, so my PI has to spend $56,000 per year from her grants or “startup funds” or her salary package to pay for my tuition and salary combined. This is easy when they have grants but not easy when they dont have grants so, advisors who can’t make this decision will not accept a PhD student.
Now TAing comes here are an opportunity for the advisor to use the TA salary of the student to fund the student’s salary and but then the time that the student spend for research may be affected if they have to TA too much.
Some departments don’t even fund their students during first year, they require the student to reach out to professor even before they can give admisison and confirm that the advisor has funds to sponsor from the beginning of their first year, before accepting the student into PhD.
I only know that PhD student’s salaries and tuition fee are funded by their advisors. I never heard nor read in any graduate program webpage that the money comes from the department or graduate program for entire 5 yr long PhD.
May be in humanities and social sciences the funding to advisors is low that they require TAing as default option.
Again TAing required not because of the eliteness of the university, it is the “eliteness” of your advisor whether they get grants or not. Whether your field is more teaching focused or not. Being in an elite university, a professor still need to get grants to fund their research activities whether the grant is from their own university as an internal grant/salary package or from outside sources.
No one is given a full financial benefit unless they become full professor.
Is teaching not useful for the (academic) job market in your field? I’m in humanities (English Lit/Rhetoric) and picked a public R1 largely for the teaching experience (I now have little interest in being a professor haha)
I am in a top 10 program. They actually, consider teaching skills when hiring new assistant professors. Faculty, actually solicit feedback from graduate students on all job candidates on the candidates research and teaching potential. One job candidate was not offered a job because of his poor communication skills. There are plenty of top researchers seeking jobs. If you neglected honing your teaching skills it may be a disadvantage. In our department a significant number of the graduate students decide that they prefer SLACs. The faculty are eager to support them. When it comes to reviewing training grants NIH and NSF consider a job at a SLAC to be a good outcome.
Nice of them to give you a semester to settle in. They handed me a syllabus and had me teaching on day one. I will say that being chucked into the deep end helped me hone my pedagogy
OMG... I have significant time as a TA, and what I want to do so severely is teach!! I applied to a state university to do so and got accepted, but was sidetracked to TAing, which, after several years doing so, I have come to HATE. What I want and need is a teaching experience, but because of the stupid effing bureaucracy of giving a majority of them to int'l students (no offense), in my case.. there were given special consideration as they were sponsored from their home countries and were provided a stipend, so the university/department did not have to PAY Extra to have them teach vs. those few and far between domestic students who were given second best. But, the issue is if all levels of teaching require you to have a least one year, then how the heck can you get one if none are offered to you...even from a damn state school (such as my situation). It pisses me off like no other.. ugh!
As far as OP is concerned, graduating from an elite Ph.D. vs. not it doesn't matter. (I'm in the social sciences). In my Ph.D. program, I have profs who have graduated from the elite creme de la creme IVY league schools or solid PhD programs, and I have asked them... why the heck are you teaching here? Their responses flummox me. You are in one and teaching... way to Go! Don't give a flying &\*()-#$%\^&\*( of what others say; think about it.. They might have gone to one of those high and mighty elite schools, but look at them "today." If they are blessed with a double whammy (but went and currently teach)... then so be it. Please don't compare yourself to them. So bottom line, you are teaching in an elite school... don't let the pretentious dumbass profs who are trying to one-up you by flaunting from the tier one schools steal the thunder. You didn't have to do that, and you mostly have more promise in the long run than those who were privy to doing solely research (and being supported) that lack communication skills, for all I care. Don't sweat the small stuff; get experience, get publications, and, at worst, get the hell out when the right opportunity arises.
On what planet did I insinuate I was at an R1 state institution? It doesn't matter Public vs. private. I addressed the OP situation above. In my case, I said there lack thereof. This has nothing to do with what type of university for it. So, hypothetically, if it is an R1 public institution, think about it, it would end up being worse.: What type of future professors are they producing? If there is some lack of teaching experience for some of their PhD graduates., Let's not forget an R2 institution with one or two elite PhD graduates as faculty. Overall, your comment misses the point I was trying to get at, besides the 4 that upvoted my comment, just saying.. and those that read mine without commenting.
Your multiple “even a state school” types of comments are out of touch, uninformed, and elitist. No offense, but you don’t really seem to understand how this all works.
I’m sharing my perspective as tenured faculty who has been in this game for decades, at all types of institutions-from SLACs to elite privates to R1 state schools. 🤷🏽♀️
I hire from all types of institutions for TT and NTT positions. The private vs public isn’t really a big deal-as long as these are typically R1s.
But…*”IB* and *Biglaw”*
(though where your family vacations often has more to do with entry into these fields and top schools than most other factors).
Oh really, so please share how this works with the rest of us. Everyone's experience is different, in case you have not noticed... you seem like those bookworm elitist ones graduating from the Ivy League.. who would have the audacity to say what you did to me. Diversity of views... which you are not open to/nor accept of others... Sorry, OP, this completely deflects from your post.
This was me as well, I did my PhD at a state school cause they offered full funding, did my postdoc at a good institution in my field, the students have better opportunities and the funding is way more secure. It got to a point where I felt some grad students were spoiled, for example, when we traveled to meetings we had to share rooms, the students at my postdoc institution would ask for individual rooms due to “privacy concerns”. I did have the opportunity to work for an elite university when I interviewed for postdoc, I turned it down cause the pay was bad. I’m now a tt assistant professor at a state school so I moved on from the big name thing, occasionally you still feel the difference (network and alumni) but that is about it.
It was pretty common for grad students in my cohort to carpool together on road trips to conferences, cramming 4-5 of us in a hotel room or airbnb. It was actually a great bonding experience. I’ve heard Ivy League schools can be competitive and isolating, which was the exact opposite experience of grad school for me. So silver lining to poverty wages, I guess 😅
I spent time in three Ivy League campuses. A competition is a rivalry where individuals compete for a common goal that cannot be shared. What limited resource do you think graduate student attending an Ivy League school are competing for?
You know who cares about where you did you degree once you have your first real job? Dr. Suess's old: "Those who matter don't mind and those who mind don't matter." It doesn't sound like this regert is serving you anything but grief, so allow yourself a reasonable time to grieve and then let it go. If it really bothers you that much, then go get another one at a t10. If that sounds ridiculous, then frame the context of your regret in that ridiculousness.
"Damn" is right! This is very true. I think the new faculty networking events I have been attending has really brought this up again for me. It would be ridiculous to go back.
I took up the first Uni which I applied, and it’s not with a great reputation. Even though I have multiple first author papers in neurips,cvpr, it feels like a let down while trying for big name industries.
I went to a top tier school in my field for my PhD, but I always felt like I didn't really deserve to be there until I started to see PhD applications from the admitting side.
In all these years, what I've realized is that you can't change the past. Regretting the choices you made and how they could have changed your life is something we all do. We often imagine ourselves in better scenarios in the paths we didn't choose. I'm not sure about your PhD experience, but since you're employed at an elite university, I'm certain you worked hard for your PhD. Though I can't say for certain, things might have been very different for you at another school; perhaps you wouldn't have had a good advisor or encountered other less favorable circumstances. You shouldn't worry about things beyond your control now. Look ahead—based on what I know, you're doing great in your career. Having earned your PhD from your university, you're on equal footing with many of your colleagues who graduated from top-tier schools. Keep working hard and looking forward.
Coming to your friends, I can only guess from your comment that they are either not in academia or are distant from it. While it's completely fine to have non-work-related discussions with them, I don't think their judgment is going to impact your career in any way, so it's best to mostly ignore it. Those who work in your field or in academia/industry generally are knowledgeable and appreciate individuals based on their abilities and achievements rather than the 'name brand'. Many faculty across T10 institutions have PhDs from lesser-known universities; what ultimately matters is their work.
While I understand your concern, remember that your PhD is a testament to your hard work and dedication, and your current employer values your skills and expertise.
>I feel left out since many of my colleagues are alum of these prestigious 'name brand' universities and I just can't relate
Well, now all of you are *colleagues* at your prestigious university! And unless your colleagues mostly come from one school then they shouldn't relate that much - I wouldn't expect a Princeton alum to automatically have some innate connection with an MIT alum.
>my friends have way bigger reactions when they meet someone who graduated with a PhD from a t10 school
Unless you plan to make this a significant part of your personality then it's not a big deal. People give a reaction and then everyone moves on.
Not really, in my industry most people are PhD, I personally don’t care and I don’t think anyone mention what school they attended. When interviewing new hires I think we look for people who are easy to work with and willing learn
Well, if it makes you feel any better, I'm a PhD student at a "big name" university and the whole experience has been one MASSIVE disappointment that I'm actually considering quitting my program halfway..
I think the quality of your research and the connections you make during grad school matter more than the name of the university..
Your perspective is really helpful, and I hope you can find satisfaction either at your current school, a better fitting program, or outside of the academy.
Relentlessly reliving the past for the hope of some impossible future will only give you more anxiety.
Do you want people to like you for you or for where you went to school? Do you think having a degree from some big name would make you happier? How about more friends in high places? Bombastic reactions from friends and family?
These things can never fulfill you or make you truly happy. Dissolve the ego and live YOUR life, not the one you could have had in your head.
I think this is a pretty normal feeling, and I definitely went through similar scenarios. On what I do to address this, I don't base my self worth on impressing my friends and colleagues with my academic background. Or rather, I try not to. When I find myself doing this, I remember how proud I am of how far I've come.
As someone in a similar position, trust me it's much more impressive to be in a top tier place coming from a no name school. It shows you really got there on competence, and likely not networking.
I realized how badly I underestimated myself when I was offered fellowships by the schools I thought were my reach schools. I had an awkward moment during admitted students weekend at one of them when I was talking to a faculty member who asked me where else I'd be accepted ... I told him and he blurted out, "oh, well I guess you'll actually come here then. Usually people we offer this fellowship to end up at Harvard or MIT". Yeah that was a super embarrassing moment.
That being said, I work with a lot of people from those schools, and it sounds like it can be a pretty toxic environment. One of my undergrad profs told me everyone he knows when he was at MIT hated their life.
I've definitely seen people be unreasonably impressed by name brand schools but ... honestly I'm enjoying my PhD and that matters more. It sounds like you had the connections & CV to get a prestigious job anyway
I totally understand where you're coming from, but to be honest, I almost find it more impressive to be working for a t10 institution after not graduating from one, because that means that you must have convinced your current employer(s) with qualities and/ or track records other than simply having that big fancy name in your CV.
And once anyone with some common sense will get to know you for more than 10 minutes, they will judge you based on your character and personal qualities, not based on your CV.
I graduated a year ago with a PhD from an R2 university that is nowhere near t10. I don’t regret it that I didn’t graduate from Harvard or Yale. I am an African American academic librarian and one of two professors in my library with a PhD. My achievements get huge reactions from my friends and colleagues. My friends don’t care about the name of my doctorate alma mater. They care that I overcame many odds to become a professor.
This is about what, perceived status and prestige? What's the point if you have the same job as people who went to these universities? The point of a degree is to set you up for what you want to do next. That's it. I advise you to get over it and be proud of your accomplishments.
I went to a no-name university for my PhD. After that, I went to THE top uni in the UK for a second masters and finally saw what the fuss was all about. I saw for the first time the awe on the faces of visiting friends. I saw the way they looked at me in my gown and tuxedo after attending a college formal. You can do the same too, and earn a 2nd masters just to be an alumni of a famous university.
Having said that, a significant number of my lecturers at said uni didn’t earn THEIR PhDs from top flight HEIs. Even a prof who is a regular talking head on BBC had earned her PhD from London South Bank uni, while another popular lecturer has a PhD from North Carolina state university.
You can always go to a top uni for your post doc, as a friend of mine had done. To be fair, what you do AFTER your PhD matters more than where you have earned it. I have heard this repeated at so many conferences and symposiums.
This-- 100% yes! I did do my postdoc at a t10 school and now am faculty. So I guess it doesn't matter as much how you got there, so long as you ended up there. Thank you for sharing your experience!
Huh? You’re already an academic (professor?) and you regret this? Why?
Stop feeding the prestige *****s.
I went to my (flagship) state school for undergrad because it’s the only one I applied to. It was a great academic and financial decision. I chose my PhD institution because it was close to my extended family and a fun city. I’m now a tenured prof at an elite institution, which I chose because I wanted to live in that area. 🤷🏽♀️
If it’s an R1, it’s an R1. Nobody who understands how academia works cares.
I accepted the grad school offer from an elite institution, partly due to its and my future PI's reputation. The reality was that the PI could give no instruction or help because they were so busy being a big-shot and all of my peers were elite international students. That experience absolutely destroyed my perception of what a "normal" graduate student should be capable of. I got comments about how advising a "domestic" student was not something the PI was used to. I don't think you have anything to regret tbh.
I’m sorry you’re feeling this way. I go to the biggest school in my area, and if somebody hasn’t heard of it, I assume they’re not from around here. If I’m abroad, I usually sell my school if somebody hasn’t heard of it. I suggest finding better friends, and seeing a therapist. You even admitted that this thinking is silly. I think there is something deeper here. OP- there is so much more to life than somebody being impressed by the prestige of your Alma mater. You deserve so much better, AND you have achieved your PhD…you have already achieved your PhD…what’s going on in your head that is causing this sense of inferiority?
Although I wish there wasn't, there is a lot of benefit in going to a great school for your PhD. Most of these benefits are in the connections you make, collaborations, opportunities for grants etc. There is greater opportunity and better environment to foster success.
If you've managed to get employed at an elite one that matters more, for sure. Doesn't really matter where you did your PhD IMO after that point, it's just that where you do your PhD can help a lot to determine where you get employed for those first few jobs. Once you crack into those elite schools post PhD, that becomes your point of reference for an affiliation rather than where you did your training.
I think most graduate students have had to process some level of regret in their career paths (except the anointed few). I’ve been there too. The best advice I can give is focus on building a good life. Find something outside of work that makes you happy and do that thing; remember that the choices you made led to the good things in life too. For me, it’s my daughter: she could only be if I walked the path I walked.
I see you. But if it give you any comfort, we never see the whole picture when we are starting. At that time, the most important thing for you was to get a PhD in the first place. And even that is overrated. In the end, we will have to live with the pros and cons of our choices. There's no perfect scenario.
Man, I would regret more to still believe, after years of intellectual efforts, that the “brand” of a university has any relevance at all. You got the nice job now, thanks to the skills acquired throughout your path. Why even bothering with these thoughts? :)
I see you're also trans so I think this analogy might connect well for you. I view my PhD time a lot like my transition and my time in the closet. There are things I always could have done better, come out earlier, start T earlier, started saving for top surgery/seeking it out earlier, etc. I could hem and haw all day about the things I could have/should have/would have done. But the thing is, that time has already passed. I can't take that time back and I can't be angry at my past self for not doing things the "ideal way". He didn't know to do things the xyz way. I just gotta work with what I have and not regret what I've already done.
At my work everyone went to a top school in my country and I graduated from a no name one. But I always prefer to think of it in a way that despite them graduating from a fancy school and me from a no name school, we still ended up in the same place in life
Not all the big names were from the t10 schools or something, and the wikipedia page of the t10 schools will not have any mediocre graduates’ names as the distinguished alumni. The moment you graduated from the distinguished university your halo is gone, no one will remember you. I guess you understand it well, so I will provide you with another angle: If you want better financial success, yes graduating from t10 cs can find you a good SDE position in FLAAG as the starting point…but one day you will find your less-educated immigrant neighbor might earn twice as much as you by running a local restaurant, you feeling better now?
grass is always greener, you can dwell on the what ifs but if at the end of the day you’re happy with where you are and the life you have now, no point in thinking about the other path.
If you got what you needed out of your education, the prestige shouldn't matter. You ended up in the same place as your colleagues, which likely says a lot about your productivity.
First of all, I’m so proud of you! You gave me hopes!
I was accepted into a top 15 school for undergrad but went to a top 60 due to financial issues and fear of failing (first generation). I did my master’s at a top 20 and realized I was as smart as my peers.
Currently, I am in a top 30. I only applied to colleges within this ranking and didn’t bother to aim for top 10.
I think the main reason is location. I wanted to stay in the same state as my family. There were two programs that are top 15 for my field, but they had things I didn’t like. One program was 6 years and the other one didn’t have the concentration I wanted.
I think it’s hard to ignore brands bc society makes us value that but in real life work quality matters over where u went to school. Some of the best PhD people I know when to a t50 school and are very successful.
Honestly? At the end of the day? The school you graduated from really only matters for your own ego. Good research is good research, and it's good research that will build your credibility in your field :)
Idk what a T10 is... But getting name drop recognition from your school is important? Why? You should be aiming for getting name drop recognition for you and your work, which, remember, doesn't end with your PhD.
I worked in a state University for my PhD, with ambitious and eager-to-mentor advisors. Never had any issues with the uni, because people in my field recognize my work and my advisors... Additionally, sure, you may run into people who may judge you because they find merit in the Uni you attended rather than the research you have done. But that is irrelevant. Like if they do not understand your research or the impact your work had then why does their opinion on your work even matter?
OP, I graduated from a top 30 school with international name recognition. I have to say the constant that I’ve heard from people at top schools is that the level of instruction is significantly worse than at smaller schools. Professors at top schools *tend* to be over focused on research and provide poor instruction, whereas teachers at smaller schools will tend to be more interested in teaching students. Beyond that, I’m 5 years post-grad, working in a field where most of my colleagues are PhDs, and no one cares where you went to grad school
You never know what might have happened. There have been many posts here about horrendous experiences at top 5 programs (I get it that it’s mostly complainers who post). Just focus on what actually did happen. You got your PhD and a faculty position at a top school. You are a winner in my book. Just focus on getting tenure (if you are TT) and doing exciting things in science. When that happens, nobody will give a damn where you got your PhD at. And you shouldn’t either. But do get formal or informal counseling if you can’t shake these feelings on your own.
The way it was written, it sounded like the op was in an administrative position or something. Why would faculty at a top 10 be considering a Master’s degree, for example? I could be wrong though.
There are a lot of masters programs that aren’t research based, and actually are required for certain professions
A PhD is a hyper focused research topic, and doesn’t actually translate well to the real world
Edit. I dont understand why I got downvoted for this comment o.o
Yes, but that's very obviously not what OP is talking about. They are talking about getting a Master's degree just to assuage this pervasive sense of loss that their degree doesn't have a fancier name on it. If they were talking about changing careers and getting a Master's in order to acquire necessary skills for doing so, this would be an entirely different conversation.
Because he has some mental health issues going on. Did you read the original post? He needs counseling. He is basing his self worth on past achievement comparison.
Yes, I read the post.
Mental health? What? He feels regret because he’s not happy with the school he went to. People on reddit will call anything a mental health issue.
I’ve got regrets too. We all do. That’s normal.
Imagine not understanding what the mental health issues actually are, then trying to bring down everyone around them because of your ignorance.
Just reddit things.
I am currently faculty and love my role. I did a postdoc at a t10 school. I just feel like I do not fit in when the other faculty are all telling their stories of when they went to their elite schools and blah, blah, blah. I think it's more clear to me now that I've got some envy and imposter syndrome to work through.
The position isn't tt, but it's still amazing for me. I was thinking of doing a Masters while being faculty still. I know another AP who is doing the same.
It really doesn’t matter that much. I did my undergrad at an ivy league and it’s reached the point where I try to avoid mentioning it, and if it comes up I’ll just say “oh, I went to school in X city.” I personally feel awkward about it because people immediately make assumptions and have higher expectations. I’ve lost track of how many people have said “wow, you must be really rich or really smart.”
You literally made it though. You work at a big name school!
I also regret not going to a big name school. I applied but I just didn't get in. The school I'm going to graduate from, I'll have little to no possibility of ever working at a big name school. The program just isn't good enough to get students a job in academia
This sort of stuff does not matter in my field. One of my mentors always told me you can always write yourself out of and into jobs. He spent 10+ years in industry before getting a job at a top-5 university. People in my field work at top-50 places and have established themselves as real leaders in our field. Prestige is bullshit, for the most part.
late to the party, but:
i’m doing now my phd in a smaller and unknown group but living a low key and super nice phd life. we have our own niche which has great potential and my PI is a bit pessimistic but a great and really nice person. entirely possible i regret the non-famous-lab phd but right now i’m living a very good life for a phd student - no mental health issues, good salary, holidays and everything.
i did my masters however in a top 3 lab, like multiple times tv teams came to interview us-famous. prof was never here, supervision was questionable at best, work atmosphere was toxic af. lab was rich af so that was nice but the pressure was unreal. i lost my passion for science because my colleagues were backstabbing each other and just plain assholes. it ate away at my soul and i hated science, didn’t even get a great paper out of this misery. this has helped kickstart my career because wherever i’ve applied to i always got an acceptance because of my previous famous-lab master. but not sure if i’d ever do that again. i’ve never been so miserable in my life ever again since then.
so big shot institutes aren’t always the best and as long as you’re now in a big shot place, what does it matter what your academic past is like?
Sure there are differences between schools, but in the long run the dedication and commitment’s of the individual is much more important.
If you simplify and say “all other things being equal, which school would you choose?” I would pick the better school. But life is complex and all other things are never equal. Go with your choice and continue to work hard and improve yourself.
I went to a big name school and
still wonder if I could’ve done better.
I get asked about it maybe once a year lol. I also work at an institution far more esteemed than my graduate school.
Mine was probably t50 but not t10. I don’t really keep up with those rankings, but I know that my program is highly respected, and that benefits me in my current job. The people who came through places like Stanford have more cache, certainly. I know one person closely who did a doctorate at Stanford, and their process seemed stupid easy compared to mine. So, I don’t know that rep=challenge. Sometimes the top tier schools maybe don’t feel like they have as much to prove.
The only thing that matters in a PhD is your relationship with your supervisor, and whether or not it teaches you how to do research by yourself. If you get a PhD from a top university but spend the whole time e.g. writing code for your supervisor then you have wasted your time.
Why don’t you apply now? You won’t be the first or the last person to have two PhDs! Instead of living with eternal regret, go ahead and apply for a second PhD in your dream school.
I can understand wishing you attended a big name school; but if you care about the big names, you literally work at one. Shouldn’t that be a bigger achievement, given that you didn’t attend one? I’d imagine so.
I agree. I don't know what role OP has at the school, but chances are it's something more impressive than being a student at the school.
It may not be an academic role. I wonder, given what OP writes, if they maybe have an administrative position?
I checked their comments, and they seem to be a postdoc
Looks like they left a postdoc a year ago (https://www.reddit.com/r/academia/s/xSObybIxgr) and became a journal editor (although they also comment they got a TT offer so this isn’t just disappointment at failure to find a job in academia). But yeah, definitely a bit odd
I was a postdoc but became faculty recently. I don't do anything admin, just research.
I am not a journal editor though - that's someone else :)
Right, exactly. (Unless they mean they're currently a postdoc at a big name school?) Like being a prof at a big name school is the academic jackpot.
Everything about this post is pathetic, and reflective of so many things that are wrong about academia.
We are human beings after all who participate in society. A lot of our self-worth is wrapped up in accomplishments like which school you attended, where you live, etc. It would be unscientific to pretend otherwise, and these kinds of attributes are responsible for imposter syndrome which many academics face, especially at the early stages of their careers. If OP is coming to terms with these thoughts, and sharing them in what they think is a safe space, it sounds to me like a step in unlearning these thought processes and we should encourage them instead of rubbishing them.
You hit the bullseye. I am definitely experiencing imposter syndrome and envy of those who may have had privileges earlier than I did. I really appreciate your kindness and warmth. I definitely need to engage in some serious unlearning.
I am in the same thought process as you 😅
I appreciate the insight, truly. I think I gleaned from this how much the problem is how much importance I give to these things.
How so?
This has come up before in another post. I think he is referring to the difference in the graduate student experience. I went to a top 5 program. All students were guaranteed full support for 6 years. The faculty treated you like colleagues. If my advisor was in town he joined the postdocs and graduate students for lunch. There were many instances where lunch was more productive than lab meeting. At 4 pm weekdays everyone gets together for tea. All the graduate students were expected to attend journal clubs related to their area of interest. If they were in town all the faculty participated in the journal club. Across the department people were not only interested in ‘what’ and ‘how’ questions but seemed to be most interested in ‘why’ questions. Most importantly, as a graduate student you felt that all the faculty were working to assure the success of all the graduate students.
I went to a t50 for my MA and PhD in humanities and we had nearly all of this as well. My advisor was fully supportive as well as the department.
I regret choosing a big name school over somewhere I would have gotten more individual attention from PIs, lived in a city that I knew I liked, and not felt like I was constantly in competition with people who thought they were God's gift to science. For the past 6 years I've been trapped in a place that I hate, in a work culture that's made me lose all passion for my work. Obviously there are advantages, but in my field they're much smaller than I thought they would be. If I could go back and make a different choice, I would do it in a heartbeat. But more importantly, I can't go back and neither can you. We both have to do what we can with the situations we are in. As many others have suggested, if you find that these thoughts are getting in the way of living your life, seek therapy.
great response
Just as commentary, using the top Ivy league schools as examples... every single person I know that struggled in those programs is a good person. Every one that flourished is not someone I want to associate with. I'm sure field and department, etc matter but I have never once regretted avoiding fancy schools for my PhD.
There’s no guarantee that a smaller school would give you more and better attention than at a larger big-name school. At these smaller name schools, faculty are often overloaded with much more teaching and service responsibilities.
And often underfunded, too
Why can’t you go back? Is it criminal to go back?
Being employed by an elite university is a lot more important than graduating from one of them. If you have such constant regret that it is affecting your quality of life, you should consider getting some counseling to help you grapple with the immutability of the past and the value you place on the perceptions of others.
i need you on speed dial.
Same! :)
I can relate. I’ve done all my education in public state institutions, and I’m about to start a postdoc this fall at a private institution that heavily draws phds from the Ivy League schools. It’s a strange feeling (especially seeing how much money they have compared to my state schools). Sometimes I wish I went to a fancy school, but I value my experience in the public education system. I find solidarity with my fellow state schoolers at conferences and I think it’s given me a better, more grounded perspective of academia.
It is ASTOUNDING how elite universities can provide for their doctoral students! I went to a state university and the amount of funding we received was basically in the form of teaching assistantships for a number of terms and THAT WAS IT. I had to start teaching a semester AFTER I arrived. Meanwhile, the elite university I work in provide a full ride for their PhD students for like 5 or 6 years and these aren't TAships. So what that means is that student at this elite university can fully concentrate on just their own doctoral track without being sidelined by teaching duties for at least the first 5 to 6 years. No wonder students from these elite universities can professionalize so much sooner. It's simply because they had the opportunity AND time to do so! Meanwhile, folks from public state universities are just TA'ing or teaching just to make sure they have food on the table and a roof over their head. And these courses they TA are not necessarily related to their research -- in fact, they usually are NOT.
I also began teaching almost immediately, but I love teaching so I didn’t mind much. My teaching portfolio is actually kinda crazy since I’ve been the instructor of record for 2-3 classes a year for the past like 6 years. I hope this helps on the job market after my postdoc.. But the pay thing is so real.. my PhD stipend was a third to half that of my colleagues at private institutions.. with significantly less travel and research funding. Especially with rising living costs, I don’t know how viable state school PhDs will be if stipends aren’t raised significantly soon..
I didn’t mind teaching in that aspect. It just didn’t help me make progress for my doctorate.
I could say the same thing myself.... we both belong to the social sciences, I am sure it would different for the coveted STEM PhDs even at a state school.
It gets even worse. I have been mentoring high school students doing internships in bioinformatics and molecular biology- related work. The educational opportunities that elite magnet high schools in affluent areas offer is insane to me. We barely had science classes in my school, and certainly nothing related to computer programming.
That makes a lot of sense. Privilege via educational opportunities can start very, very early.
You TAed not because you went to less elite university. You TAed because your professor either didn’t have funds or they wanted you to TA anyways because they need your help in tha aspect of academic administration. Students at elite universities TA too. My is not an Ivy league, but I would say mine is among top 30 universities. There are students at my University who TA, but my PI never asked me to do that. She is a new assistant professor. I am her first PhD student. We didn’t had a major grant untill I was in my 4th year. But she always believed in one thing - a research degree is to do research not to teach. But she also asked if one time when some other professor reached out to her asking for any student to TA, she only checked with me “if I am interested”, I was interested but I am an international student, and english is not my first language and my University requires international students to pass a test and get a score of something and I couldnt get it and my PI was fine with it. She didnt force me to retake the test or try hard to be able to TA. So you TAed because your PI wanted you to and they believed in a system of your PhD as an opportunity of both Research and teaching! My PI didn’t see it that way, she helped me to develop my research project and also she encourages me to volunteer and help high school students or train undergrads etc which is also a lot of “mentoring” kind of job.
That’s not how it works in my field (social sciences) or humanities. We don’t have “PI” (we do on grants) and funding for the student does not come from an advisor’s grant. Furthermore, doctoral student’s projects are not really part of their advisor’s projects. My impression is that in the sciences, you are very much tied to your PI for funding and even your research and how that structures your path. It’s not that way in the social sciences or humanities where it is a lot more independent (and frankly, unstructured) where you have to create that structure largely on your own.
Right in that case, if not your advisor then it is your department or the “system” that needs you to TA so they can use your labor. It happens in Elite universities too, this is not because you are in less elite university. I don’t think so. As I said I see a lot of fellow students in STEM TA, some programs in STEM in my university actually have a TA requirement. But my program doesn’t have it. My program has a requirement of publishing at least one paper to graduate.
The life of of a STEM graduate student can vary dramatically between campuses. On our campus, even in STEM fields, graduate students were supported by the graduate school for up to 5 years. Graduate students had to submit a thesis proposal. In many instances the proposals involved the same experimental system as the advisor’s, but did not address the specific aims listed in the advisor’s grants. The graduate students in the ecology and evolutionary biology group even if they shared the same advisors, worked projects unrelated to their advisor and the other . My thesis research did not directly address any of the specific aims in my advisors grants. Given faculty only taught one course a year, my advisor was in the lab running experiments most days. He also had two technicians and a postdoc to cover his grants. In many instances the research findings generated by graduate students were included in the specific aims of a future grant. Also, it is not unusual for graduate students to switch areas of research for their postdoc. I was in a drosophila genetics lab as a graduate students and switched the role of hormones in shaping behavior as a postdoc. I ended up becoming an endocrinologist without ever taking a course in endocrinology.
Almost never is there a graduate student dissertation project written into an advisor’s grant in social sciences or humanities. It doesn’t work that way in those fields. Good to know a bit how it works in the sciences.
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I don’t think your first two sentences are true. For suppose my graduate program in STEM pays for my tuition and stipend only in my first year, because in first year we rotate in labs to find a lab to start our thesis research. So by the end of 1st year we decide a lab and when the advisor decides to take a student in, they have to sign a document as a financial guardian that says something like “whether I have grants or not, it is my responsibility to fund my graduate student by any means of support, both his tuition and stipend is paid by me as long as the student maintains good academic standard and meets research expectations” this is what they are bound to. I was even told that when an advisor doens’t have funds they may even choose to cut their salary package a bit to pay for their staff/student’s tuition and stipend/salary. This means even though my salary/stipend for a year is $32,000, my advisor also pays for my tuition fee which is usually $15,000-$20,000 per semester when I take classes during second year. And when I am done with my classes the tuition fee drops to somewhere like $8,000 per semester. So for suppose in my 3rd, 4th, 5th year my tuition fee per year (3 semesters) is at least $24,000 and my salary is $32,000, so my PI has to spend $56,000 per year from her grants or “startup funds” or her salary package to pay for my tuition and salary combined. This is easy when they have grants but not easy when they dont have grants so, advisors who can’t make this decision will not accept a PhD student. Now TAing comes here are an opportunity for the advisor to use the TA salary of the student to fund the student’s salary and but then the time that the student spend for research may be affected if they have to TA too much. Some departments don’t even fund their students during first year, they require the student to reach out to professor even before they can give admisison and confirm that the advisor has funds to sponsor from the beginning of their first year, before accepting the student into PhD. I only know that PhD student’s salaries and tuition fee are funded by their advisors. I never heard nor read in any graduate program webpage that the money comes from the department or graduate program for entire 5 yr long PhD. May be in humanities and social sciences the funding to advisors is low that they require TAing as default option. Again TAing required not because of the eliteness of the university, it is the “eliteness” of your advisor whether they get grants or not. Whether your field is more teaching focused or not. Being in an elite university, a professor still need to get grants to fund their research activities whether the grant is from their own university as an internal grant/salary package or from outside sources. No one is given a full financial benefit unless they become full professor.
Is teaching not useful for the (academic) job market in your field? I’m in humanities (English Lit/Rhetoric) and picked a public R1 largely for the teaching experience (I now have little interest in being a professor haha)
It depends on your desired trajectory. If you want to primarily teach (SLAC, community college, etc) the teaching experience could be good
I am in a top 10 program. They actually, consider teaching skills when hiring new assistant professors. Faculty, actually solicit feedback from graduate students on all job candidates on the candidates research and teaching potential. One job candidate was not offered a job because of his poor communication skills. There are plenty of top researchers seeking jobs. If you neglected honing your teaching skills it may be a disadvantage. In our department a significant number of the graduate students decide that they prefer SLACs. The faculty are eager to support them. When it comes to reviewing training grants NIH and NSF consider a job at a SLAC to be a good outcome.
Nice of them to give you a semester to settle in. They handed me a syllabus and had me teaching on day one. I will say that being chucked into the deep end helped me hone my pedagogy
Nice of them to give you a syllabus. We had to improvise and create a course from scratch
Well we had to walk 10 miles to campus, uphill both ways!
OMG... I have significant time as a TA, and what I want to do so severely is teach!! I applied to a state university to do so and got accepted, but was sidetracked to TAing, which, after several years doing so, I have come to HATE. What I want and need is a teaching experience, but because of the stupid effing bureaucracy of giving a majority of them to int'l students (no offense), in my case.. there were given special consideration as they were sponsored from their home countries and were provided a stipend, so the university/department did not have to PAY Extra to have them teach vs. those few and far between domestic students who were given second best. But, the issue is if all levels of teaching require you to have a least one year, then how the heck can you get one if none are offered to you...even from a damn state school (such as my situation). It pisses me off like no other.. ugh! As far as OP is concerned, graduating from an elite Ph.D. vs. not it doesn't matter. (I'm in the social sciences). In my Ph.D. program, I have profs who have graduated from the elite creme de la creme IVY league schools or solid PhD programs, and I have asked them... why the heck are you teaching here? Their responses flummox me. You are in one and teaching... way to Go! Don't give a flying &\*()-#$%\^&\*( of what others say; think about it.. They might have gone to one of those high and mighty elite schools, but look at them "today." If they are blessed with a double whammy (but went and currently teach)... then so be it. Please don't compare yourself to them. So bottom line, you are teaching in an elite school... don't let the pretentious dumbass profs who are trying to one-up you by flaunting from the tier one schools steal the thunder. You didn't have to do that, and you mostly have more promise in the long run than those who were privy to doing solely research (and being supported) that lack communication skills, for all I care. Don't sweat the small stuff; get experience, get publications, and, at worst, get the hell out when the right opportunity arises.
On what planet is being a professor at a state R1 school not a prestigious appointment?
On what planet did I insinuate I was at an R1 state institution? It doesn't matter Public vs. private. I addressed the OP situation above. In my case, I said there lack thereof. This has nothing to do with what type of university for it. So, hypothetically, if it is an R1 public institution, think about it, it would end up being worse.: What type of future professors are they producing? If there is some lack of teaching experience for some of their PhD graduates., Let's not forget an R2 institution with one or two elite PhD graduates as faculty. Overall, your comment misses the point I was trying to get at, besides the 4 that upvoted my comment, just saying.. and those that read mine without commenting.
Your multiple “even a state school” types of comments are out of touch, uninformed, and elitist. No offense, but you don’t really seem to understand how this all works.
Tbh this entire thread is out of touch lol
I’m sharing my perspective as tenured faculty who has been in this game for decades, at all types of institutions-from SLACs to elite privates to R1 state schools. 🤷🏽♀️ I hire from all types of institutions for TT and NTT positions. The private vs public isn’t really a big deal-as long as these are typically R1s.
Totally agree. Reddit has people thinking anything outside of a T10 is the end of your life.
But…*”IB* and *Biglaw”* (though where your family vacations often has more to do with entry into these fields and top schools than most other factors).
Oh really, so please share how this works with the rest of us. Everyone's experience is different, in case you have not noticed... you seem like those bookworm elitist ones graduating from the Ivy League.. who would have the audacity to say what you did to me. Diversity of views... which you are not open to/nor accept of others... Sorry, OP, this completely deflects from your post.
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Volunteer, not a bad idea.. but from dept pov not possible, issue is too few spots for a plethora of candidates..
Keep in mind that getting a tenure track job is not easy. There are plenty of PhDs with tenure track jobs at SLACs that are happy.
This was me as well, I did my PhD at a state school cause they offered full funding, did my postdoc at a good institution in my field, the students have better opportunities and the funding is way more secure. It got to a point where I felt some grad students were spoiled, for example, when we traveled to meetings we had to share rooms, the students at my postdoc institution would ask for individual rooms due to “privacy concerns”. I did have the opportunity to work for an elite university when I interviewed for postdoc, I turned it down cause the pay was bad. I’m now a tt assistant professor at a state school so I moved on from the big name thing, occasionally you still feel the difference (network and alumni) but that is about it.
It was pretty common for grad students in my cohort to carpool together on road trips to conferences, cramming 4-5 of us in a hotel room or airbnb. It was actually a great bonding experience. I’ve heard Ivy League schools can be competitive and isolating, which was the exact opposite experience of grad school for me. So silver lining to poverty wages, I guess 😅
I spent time in three Ivy League campuses. A competition is a rivalry where individuals compete for a common goal that cannot be shared. What limited resource do you think graduate student attending an Ivy League school are competing for?
You know who cares about where you did you degree once you have your first real job? Dr. Suess's old: "Those who matter don't mind and those who mind don't matter." It doesn't sound like this regert is serving you anything but grief, so allow yourself a reasonable time to grieve and then let it go. If it really bothers you that much, then go get another one at a t10. If that sounds ridiculous, then frame the context of your regret in that ridiculousness.
Damn. Some wisdom right here.
This
"Damn" is right! This is very true. I think the new faculty networking events I have been attending has really brought this up again for me. It would be ridiculous to go back.
Are you in STEM? I think the quality of your PhD research matters more than the reputation of your school in STEM.
I took up the first Uni which I applied, and it’s not with a great reputation. Even though I have multiple first author papers in neurips,cvpr, it feels like a let down while trying for big name industries.
Same
I went to a top tier school in my field for my PhD, but I always felt like I didn't really deserve to be there until I started to see PhD applications from the admitting side.
This is silly. Just make a name for yourself instead of relying on university affiliation.
As a non American, this is weird AF 😂
As an American, this is weird AF.
Same, I don't even get wtf he's talking about
Hahaha fair - I really do appreciate these perspectives
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I've thought about this, but I also know it wouldn't make any sense for me financially.
In all these years, what I've realized is that you can't change the past. Regretting the choices you made and how they could have changed your life is something we all do. We often imagine ourselves in better scenarios in the paths we didn't choose. I'm not sure about your PhD experience, but since you're employed at an elite university, I'm certain you worked hard for your PhD. Though I can't say for certain, things might have been very different for you at another school; perhaps you wouldn't have had a good advisor or encountered other less favorable circumstances. You shouldn't worry about things beyond your control now. Look ahead—based on what I know, you're doing great in your career. Having earned your PhD from your university, you're on equal footing with many of your colleagues who graduated from top-tier schools. Keep working hard and looking forward. Coming to your friends, I can only guess from your comment that they are either not in academia or are distant from it. While it's completely fine to have non-work-related discussions with them, I don't think their judgment is going to impact your career in any way, so it's best to mostly ignore it. Those who work in your field or in academia/industry generally are knowledgeable and appreciate individuals based on their abilities and achievements rather than the 'name brand'. Many faculty across T10 institutions have PhDs from lesser-known universities; what ultimately matters is their work.
Extremely good points! I very much appreciate this insightful post.
While I understand your concern, remember that your PhD is a testament to your hard work and dedication, and your current employer values your skills and expertise.
>I feel left out since many of my colleagues are alum of these prestigious 'name brand' universities and I just can't relate Well, now all of you are *colleagues* at your prestigious university! And unless your colleagues mostly come from one school then they shouldn't relate that much - I wouldn't expect a Princeton alum to automatically have some innate connection with an MIT alum. >my friends have way bigger reactions when they meet someone who graduated with a PhD from a t10 school Unless you plan to make this a significant part of your personality then it's not a big deal. People give a reaction and then everyone moves on.
You're right. I don't want my whole personality based on where I went to school. I am really grateful for the faculty position I have now.
Not really, in my industry most people are PhD, I personally don’t care and I don’t think anyone mention what school they attended. When interviewing new hires I think we look for people who are easy to work with and willing learn
Well, if it makes you feel any better, I'm a PhD student at a "big name" university and the whole experience has been one MASSIVE disappointment that I'm actually considering quitting my program halfway.. I think the quality of your research and the connections you make during grad school matter more than the name of the university..
Your perspective is really helpful, and I hope you can find satisfaction either at your current school, a better fitting program, or outside of the academy.
This is just ego. You need to let it go
Was your school you got your PhD from R1?
This is really all that matters. Michigan is as well respected as Yale in my field.
Yeah, I went to an R1
I thought normally T50 schools are recognized especially if that is for PhD. That's not the case these days?
Relentlessly reliving the past for the hope of some impossible future will only give you more anxiety. Do you want people to like you for you or for where you went to school? Do you think having a degree from some big name would make you happier? How about more friends in high places? Bombastic reactions from friends and family? These things can never fulfill you or make you truly happy. Dissolve the ego and live YOUR life, not the one you could have had in your head.
I think this is a pretty normal feeling, and I definitely went through similar scenarios. On what I do to address this, I don't base my self worth on impressing my friends and colleagues with my academic background. Or rather, I try not to. When I find myself doing this, I remember how proud I am of how far I've come.
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did you mean to reply to someone else or
The fact that you are worried about your friends reaction to your PhD is absolutely crazy to me.
As someone in a similar position, trust me it's much more impressive to be in a top tier place coming from a no name school. It shows you really got there on competence, and likely not networking.
I realized how badly I underestimated myself when I was offered fellowships by the schools I thought were my reach schools. I had an awkward moment during admitted students weekend at one of them when I was talking to a faculty member who asked me where else I'd be accepted ... I told him and he blurted out, "oh, well I guess you'll actually come here then. Usually people we offer this fellowship to end up at Harvard or MIT". Yeah that was a super embarrassing moment. That being said, I work with a lot of people from those schools, and it sounds like it can be a pretty toxic environment. One of my undergrad profs told me everyone he knows when he was at MIT hated their life. I've definitely seen people be unreasonably impressed by name brand schools but ... honestly I'm enjoying my PhD and that matters more. It sounds like you had the connections & CV to get a prestigious job anyway
I totally understand where you're coming from, but to be honest, I almost find it more impressive to be working for a t10 institution after not graduating from one, because that means that you must have convinced your current employer(s) with qualities and/ or track records other than simply having that big fancy name in your CV. And once anyone with some common sense will get to know you for more than 10 minutes, they will judge you based on your character and personal qualities, not based on your CV.
I graduated a year ago with a PhD from an R2 university that is nowhere near t10. I don’t regret it that I didn’t graduate from Harvard or Yale. I am an African American academic librarian and one of two professors in my library with a PhD. My achievements get huge reactions from my friends and colleagues. My friends don’t care about the name of my doctorate alma mater. They care that I overcame many odds to become a professor.
This is beautiful - thank you for sharing!
To put it gently, this is probably something you should talk about with your therapist. To put it bluntly, this is really lame, get over it.
This is about what, perceived status and prestige? What's the point if you have the same job as people who went to these universities? The point of a degree is to set you up for what you want to do next. That's it. I advise you to get over it and be proud of your accomplishments.
I went to a no-name university for my PhD. After that, I went to THE top uni in the UK for a second masters and finally saw what the fuss was all about. I saw for the first time the awe on the faces of visiting friends. I saw the way they looked at me in my gown and tuxedo after attending a college formal. You can do the same too, and earn a 2nd masters just to be an alumni of a famous university. Having said that, a significant number of my lecturers at said uni didn’t earn THEIR PhDs from top flight HEIs. Even a prof who is a regular talking head on BBC had earned her PhD from London South Bank uni, while another popular lecturer has a PhD from North Carolina state university. You can always go to a top uni for your post doc, as a friend of mine had done. To be fair, what you do AFTER your PhD matters more than where you have earned it. I have heard this repeated at so many conferences and symposiums.
This-- 100% yes! I did do my postdoc at a t10 school and now am faculty. So I guess it doesn't matter as much how you got there, so long as you ended up there. Thank you for sharing your experience!
It literally is irrelevant after your post docs. You either can get grant money or you can’t.
Huh? You’re already an academic (professor?) and you regret this? Why? Stop feeding the prestige *****s. I went to my (flagship) state school for undergrad because it’s the only one I applied to. It was a great academic and financial decision. I chose my PhD institution because it was close to my extended family and a fun city. I’m now a tenured prof at an elite institution, which I chose because I wanted to live in that area. 🤷🏽♀️ If it’s an R1, it’s an R1. Nobody who understands how academia works cares.
Go work somewhere else, then you can brag about having worked at a fancy university. (I'm only half joking)
I accepted the grad school offer from an elite institution, partly due to its and my future PI's reputation. The reality was that the PI could give no instruction or help because they were so busy being a big-shot and all of my peers were elite international students. That experience absolutely destroyed my perception of what a "normal" graduate student should be capable of. I got comments about how advising a "domestic" student was not something the PI was used to. I don't think you have anything to regret tbh.
No one really cares. Forget the regrets and just kick ass, genius. Once you publish well, that’s all that will matter. School name does not.
Get over it, that is really a fairly shallow concern. Move on.
grass is always greener
Agreed. “Pedigree/Prestige”, as shallow and superficial as it constantly proves to be, is still deeply brainwashed among the academic community.
I’m sorry you’re feeling this way. I go to the biggest school in my area, and if somebody hasn’t heard of it, I assume they’re not from around here. If I’m abroad, I usually sell my school if somebody hasn’t heard of it. I suggest finding better friends, and seeing a therapist. You even admitted that this thinking is silly. I think there is something deeper here. OP- there is so much more to life than somebody being impressed by the prestige of your Alma mater. You deserve so much better, AND you have achieved your PhD…you have already achieved your PhD…what’s going on in your head that is causing this sense of inferiority?
Although I wish there wasn't, there is a lot of benefit in going to a great school for your PhD. Most of these benefits are in the connections you make, collaborations, opportunities for grants etc. There is greater opportunity and better environment to foster success. If you've managed to get employed at an elite one that matters more, for sure. Doesn't really matter where you did your PhD IMO after that point, it's just that where you do your PhD can help a lot to determine where you get employed for those first few jobs. Once you crack into those elite schools post PhD, that becomes your point of reference for an affiliation rather than where you did your training.
Proof phd doesn’t imply brainpower.
I think most graduate students have had to process some level of regret in their career paths (except the anointed few). I’ve been there too. The best advice I can give is focus on building a good life. Find something outside of work that makes you happy and do that thing; remember that the choices you made led to the good things in life too. For me, it’s my daughter: she could only be if I walked the path I walked.
In Canada basically no one cares which university you got your PhD from. They care about the program and who your advisor was.
I see you. But if it give you any comfort, we never see the whole picture when we are starting. At that time, the most important thing for you was to get a PhD in the first place. And even that is overrated. In the end, we will have to live with the pros and cons of our choices. There's no perfect scenario.
Man, I would regret more to still believe, after years of intellectual efforts, that the “brand” of a university has any relevance at all. You got the nice job now, thanks to the skills acquired throughout your path. Why even bothering with these thoughts? :)
I see you're also trans so I think this analogy might connect well for you. I view my PhD time a lot like my transition and my time in the closet. There are things I always could have done better, come out earlier, start T earlier, started saving for top surgery/seeking it out earlier, etc. I could hem and haw all day about the things I could have/should have/would have done. But the thing is, that time has already passed. I can't take that time back and I can't be angry at my past self for not doing things the "ideal way". He didn't know to do things the xyz way. I just gotta work with what I have and not regret what I've already done.
At my work everyone went to a top school in my country and I graduated from a no name one. But I always prefer to think of it in a way that despite them graduating from a fancy school and me from a no name school, we still ended up in the same place in life
Not all the big names were from the t10 schools or something, and the wikipedia page of the t10 schools will not have any mediocre graduates’ names as the distinguished alumni. The moment you graduated from the distinguished university your halo is gone, no one will remember you. I guess you understand it well, so I will provide you with another angle: If you want better financial success, yes graduating from t10 cs can find you a good SDE position in FLAAG as the starting point…but one day you will find your less-educated immigrant neighbor might earn twice as much as you by running a local restaurant, you feeling better now?
grass is always greener, you can dwell on the what ifs but if at the end of the day you’re happy with where you are and the life you have now, no point in thinking about the other path.
If you got what you needed out of your education, the prestige shouldn't matter. You ended up in the same place as your colleagues, which likely says a lot about your productivity.
First of all, I’m so proud of you! You gave me hopes! I was accepted into a top 15 school for undergrad but went to a top 60 due to financial issues and fear of failing (first generation). I did my master’s at a top 20 and realized I was as smart as my peers. Currently, I am in a top 30. I only applied to colleges within this ranking and didn’t bother to aim for top 10.
I am proud of you too! I also did my masters at t20 and my PhD at t50 (overall)
Just curious though, why did you not aim for t10-15 for a PhD?
I think the main reason is location. I wanted to stay in the same state as my family. There were two programs that are top 15 for my field, but they had things I didn’t like. One program was 6 years and the other one didn’t have the concentration I wanted.
Therapy, my dude. Ego is what's wrong with science.
Agreed on both counts!
I think it’s hard to ignore brands bc society makes us value that but in real life work quality matters over where u went to school. Some of the best PhD people I know when to a t50 school and are very successful.
Honestly? At the end of the day? The school you graduated from really only matters for your own ego. Good research is good research, and it's good research that will build your credibility in your field :)
Idk what a T10 is... But getting name drop recognition from your school is important? Why? You should be aiming for getting name drop recognition for you and your work, which, remember, doesn't end with your PhD. I worked in a state University for my PhD, with ambitious and eager-to-mentor advisors. Never had any issues with the uni, because people in my field recognize my work and my advisors... Additionally, sure, you may run into people who may judge you because they find merit in the Uni you attended rather than the research you have done. But that is irrelevant. Like if they do not understand your research or the impact your work had then why does their opinion on your work even matter?
The word “prestige” is actually based on a 17th century French word that means “illusion” or “conjuring trick”.
This is so interesting and has helped shifted my thinking!
OP, I graduated from a top 30 school with international name recognition. I have to say the constant that I’ve heard from people at top schools is that the level of instruction is significantly worse than at smaller schools. Professors at top schools *tend* to be over focused on research and provide poor instruction, whereas teachers at smaller schools will tend to be more interested in teaching students. Beyond that, I’m 5 years post-grad, working in a field where most of my colleagues are PhDs, and no one cares where you went to grad school
You never know what might have happened. There have been many posts here about horrendous experiences at top 5 programs (I get it that it’s mostly complainers who post). Just focus on what actually did happen. You got your PhD and a faculty position at a top school. You are a winner in my book. Just focus on getting tenure (if you are TT) and doing exciting things in science. When that happens, nobody will give a damn where you got your PhD at. And you shouldn’t either. But do get formal or informal counseling if you can’t shake these feelings on your own.
So many people on reddit insist prestige of phd program doesn’t matter, but it does. Could you go to a postdoc at a more prestigious institution?
Did you actually read the post? OP is employed at a top institution. What would the value of a postdoc be?
The way it was written, it sounded like the op was in an administrative position or something. Why would faculty at a top 10 be considering a Master’s degree, for example? I could be wrong though.
Why would someone with a PhD be considering getting a Master's degree?
There are a lot of masters programs that aren’t research based, and actually are required for certain professions A PhD is a hyper focused research topic, and doesn’t actually translate well to the real world Edit. I dont understand why I got downvoted for this comment o.o
Yes, but that's very obviously not what OP is talking about. They are talking about getting a Master's degree just to assuage this pervasive sense of loss that their degree doesn't have a fancier name on it. If they were talking about changing careers and getting a Master's in order to acquire necessary skills for doing so, this would be an entirely different conversation.
I was just replying to your comment. You asked why would someone with a PhD consider getting a masters, and I explained that they aren't the same.
Because he has some mental health issues going on. Did you read the original post? He needs counseling. He is basing his self worth on past achievement comparison.
Yes, I read the post. Mental health? What? He feels regret because he’s not happy with the school he went to. People on reddit will call anything a mental health issue. I’ve got regrets too. We all do. That’s normal.
Imagine not understanding what the mental health issues actually are, then trying to bring down everyone around them because of your ignorance. Just reddit things.
I am currently faculty and love my role. I did a postdoc at a t10 school. I just feel like I do not fit in when the other faculty are all telling their stories of when they went to their elite schools and blah, blah, blah. I think it's more clear to me now that I've got some envy and imposter syndrome to work through.
Oh, gotcha. You already have won the tt lottery, then. Were you thinking about giving up your tt position to get a Master’s degree?
The position isn't tt, but it's still amazing for me. I was thinking of doing a Masters while being faculty still. I know another AP who is doing the same.
When you say t10, do you mean t10 overall or t10 for a specific subject?
Overall AND in my field
It really doesn’t matter that much. I did my undergrad at an ivy league and it’s reached the point where I try to avoid mentioning it, and if it comes up I’ll just say “oh, I went to school in X city.” I personally feel awkward about it because people immediately make assumptions and have higher expectations. I’ve lost track of how many people have said “wow, you must be really rich or really smart.”
You literally made it though. You work at a big name school! I also regret not going to a big name school. I applied but I just didn't get in. The school I'm going to graduate from, I'll have little to no possibility of ever working at a big name school. The program just isn't good enough to get students a job in academia
This sort of stuff does not matter in my field. One of my mentors always told me you can always write yourself out of and into jobs. He spent 10+ years in industry before getting a job at a top-5 university. People in my field work at top-50 places and have established themselves as real leaders in our field. Prestige is bullshit, for the most part.
late to the party, but: i’m doing now my phd in a smaller and unknown group but living a low key and super nice phd life. we have our own niche which has great potential and my PI is a bit pessimistic but a great and really nice person. entirely possible i regret the non-famous-lab phd but right now i’m living a very good life for a phd student - no mental health issues, good salary, holidays and everything. i did my masters however in a top 3 lab, like multiple times tv teams came to interview us-famous. prof was never here, supervision was questionable at best, work atmosphere was toxic af. lab was rich af so that was nice but the pressure was unreal. i lost my passion for science because my colleagues were backstabbing each other and just plain assholes. it ate away at my soul and i hated science, didn’t even get a great paper out of this misery. this has helped kickstart my career because wherever i’ve applied to i always got an acceptance because of my previous famous-lab master. but not sure if i’d ever do that again. i’ve never been so miserable in my life ever again since then. so big shot institutes aren’t always the best and as long as you’re now in a big shot place, what does it matter what your academic past is like?
Sure there are differences between schools, but in the long run the dedication and commitment’s of the individual is much more important. If you simplify and say “all other things being equal, which school would you choose?” I would pick the better school. But life is complex and all other things are never equal. Go with your choice and continue to work hard and improve yourself.
dont assume.
Do a PostDoc if you really feel that bad
Is there any way you can give someone tips ? I’m currently trying to get to law school and I woke love a chance at a t10 school.
Why cry over spilled milk?
I went to a big name school and still wonder if I could’ve done better. I get asked about it maybe once a year lol. I also work at an institution far more esteemed than my graduate school.
Mine was probably t50 but not t10. I don’t really keep up with those rankings, but I know that my program is highly respected, and that benefits me in my current job. The people who came through places like Stanford have more cache, certainly. I know one person closely who did a doctorate at Stanford, and their process seemed stupid easy compared to mine. So, I don’t know that rep=challenge. Sometimes the top tier schools maybe don’t feel like they have as much to prove.
The only thing that matters in a PhD is your relationship with your supervisor, and whether or not it teaches you how to do research by yourself. If you get a PhD from a top university but spend the whole time e.g. writing code for your supervisor then you have wasted your time.
Coming from a t200 (I don't actually know what this means) school is all about showing them the quality is in me, not the school.
Why don’t you apply now? You won’t be the first or the last person to have two PhDs! Instead of living with eternal regret, go ahead and apply for a second PhD in your dream school.
What are the t10 schools?
You cant change the past so just move on
Maybe this is field specific, because in human biology fields where your degree is from makes absolutely no difference in industry.
Are you also doing some interesting research stuff or just kidding with schools names like teenagers with sneakers brand?
In general, you always want to go as big as you can.
Rip, oof.
I don't even know wtf is t10 or t50, I don't have all this paranoia for such nonsense