Phony Prestige vs the Real Deal

[sophie]

As far as getting a job/tenure/money, Harvard is still a very great place to go, mainly for making connections.

Yeah. I like to imagine there would be no (or very very very few) circumstances in which I would actually consider going to Harvard for graduate school (not that going there is even necessarily a possibility for me). Really the purpose of graduate school when you're shooting for academia though is to put yourself in the absolute best position possible to get your dissertation published, and, as awful as the history department they've cultivated in Cambridge is, it still represents a far better possibility of accomplishing that than, say, going to a UC Riverside or the like.

The problem of course is that Yale, Princeton, Berkeley, and UNC also represent the best possibility of getting your dissertation published while (unlike Harvard) also having some of the best European History professors in the world. So if you're already in a position where getting into an Ivy is likely for postgraduate studies the choice isn't phony prestige vs real deal but rather phony prestige vs well-deserved prestige

 

[Mise]

For undergrad, definitely A. No two ways about it.

For PhD, I don't know enough about PhD programmes or what you would do with one to make a qualified judgement.

 

[dutchfire]

for my life? Mostly. For school? Not particularly. Find out if there's a strong Post-Keynesian (and not neo-Keynesian, Keynesian-synthesis, or new-Keynesian lol sigh) faculty where you are and I'd consider it.

On which side of the ocean is your post doc position going to be?

Lets say A has top reputation in both.

I'd rate reputation within the field as pretty important for my choice of institute. This is probably also where I'm going to pretend quality and reputation are totally correlated in physics.
(Well, honestly, it's pretty well correlated in physics, I don't think there are (m)any groups at respected institutes doing research that's totally bull excrement.

What if all physics was only on paper. Then what if mainstream physics was all derived from one version of string theory and declared anything else as fringe heterodox and the mainstream backed them up because they already had the faculties at most universities?

That'd be a huge opportunity to instantly becoming a leading scientist, by doing stuff that is not wrong.

Allow me to extend the dubiety to social science as well. I wouldn't have been able to be that discerning of economics if I had only studied orthodox econ in one three year binge.

Oh no, in all of my experience (and from what professors have told me) in STEM fields, you learn a massive amount by junior year. Honestly, you don't know what you're in for when you start your degree course as a STEM major and it isn't until Junior year or so that you really have any clue what you're truly doing. Until that point, you're mostly plugging away at fundamental science/engineering/math courses that are not specifically aligned with your degree. Before Junior year, you're a bit of an imbecile, but there is a big jump such that by the end of junior year you are somewhat competent in your chosen field.

I also thought third year students knew a lot when I was a third year student.

 

[Bootstoots]

I would choose school B as long as you'd have an awesome advisor with some useful academic connections. I assume this is largely about economics, where the best-recognized schools teach mostly neoclassical garbage, and that your school B has a lot of interesting heterodox economists.