I can’t anticipate the range of choice scenarios you may face as an applicant, and in many cases your optimal choice is pretty clear (especially if you only have one offer).
Let’s assume you have more than one offer.
The Best School
People may tell you to pick the best school you can. For many students, this feels like a logical, but nebulous suggestion. “Best” is kind of subjective.
It might be helpful to understand the implications of school ranking when it comes to job placement. (And when I refer to ranking, I speak in terms of the UT Dallas Rankings for publishing output in major marketing journals). If you charted all of the rankings for PhD students (where they did their PhD and where they got their first job), some interesting patterns emerge:
- Nobody lands at a school ranked higher than the one they attended. Alright, there are a handful of outliers who do. These represent the top 1% though–those who have won awards, published multiple times prior to hitting the job market, have specialized, in-demand research, etc. Most everybody else can expect a 30 position drop or more in school ranking.
- Many, many PhD students start at ranked schools and end up at unranked schools. This is a product of availability. There just aren’t enough positions at research schools for everybody to have one.
- There are evidences of both meritocracy and “tradition” in marketing PhD placement. For example, Ivy League schools tend to recruit from other Ivy League schools (even though, in marketing, Ivy Leagues don’t necessarily have the highest rankings). This is more of an eyeballed generalization though and likely won’t make much difference for the majority of students.
So with that in mind, it’s helpful to have some self-awareness about what your ultimate goals are. If your goal is to be a researcher in a respected research program with maximum opportunities to work with other top researchers who may make initial judgments about you by your pedigree, then school rank is really important. This may sound unfair, and it is. Judgment heuristics are deeply rooted.
Other Considerations
Are there reasons that a highly ranked program may not be your best option? Sure.
- A school’s high ranking may be due to researchers you won’t be working with. If your focus is strategy, and the only people publishing are consumer behavior professors, ranking won’t make much of a difference (unless you decide to switch to CB).
- A highly ranked school may be on the decline. It’s easier to ride momentum than to attempt success during a nosedive. When good professors leave or retire from small departments, it can have a major impact on the future of the program that may not be visible now.
- Mentorship. Some advisors like to get students working on real projects as soon as they start. Others may have zero for you to do and are there more to answer questions and think they’re doing you a service by freeing up your time. PLEASE figure out what you’re walking into beforehand. Answering questions does not make for good mentorship. You need to dig to get information on how your potential advisors are going to work (or not) with you. It will save you a lot of grief.
- The risk may be greater. You may want to pick a school that has 2-3 professors you’d be fine working with compared with a better program with 1 star professor.
- A higher ranked program can mean that professors feel more pressure to perform, which can translate to everything from unnecessary competitiveness to grad students getting ignored or abused. Remember that you’ll be spending 4-5 years with these people. Try to get a sense for the community and culture that exists at each program.
Ultimately, you should pick the school you feel best about, rankings aside. A weighted average decision matrix won’t help you sleep well at night.