Sunday, 18 August 2019

graduate admissions - I've been admitted to multiple PhD programs, how should I choose between them?


I've been admitted to more than one PhD program, and I'm having a very hard time making a decision.


The programs I'm accepted to have advantages and disadvantages with respect to one another. How do I weigh the relative importance of difference aspects of the program in order to make an optimal decision?


Ultimately, this is not a decision that anybody else can make for me, because everyone has different values and priorities, and the right decision for me may not be the right decision for somebody else. However, you can help by giving me more information about how different features of a program will affect my experience in graduate school and my future career.


The offers under consideration differ in a variety of ways:



I need to know more about what kinds of things are important and how these will affect me, so that I can make an informed decision about balancing competing criteria.




Note to readers: These answers quote extensively from other answers on this site (and link to them). If you read something quoted here that you find helpful, please follow the link to the original source and vote it up!





This is a special community wiki 'canonical' question that aggregates advice on a very broad topic - see more information in this meta post.


Each answer here relates to a different metric that one might take under consideration. If you have a new "critical" metric not in the list above that you believe should be an important part of the decision, post a new answer. If you want to add something related a metric that's already represented in its own answer, edit that answer.




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