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Ask HN: Physics PhD at Stanford or Berkeley
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Re: Ask HN: Physics PhD at Stanford or Berkeley
#12Ask HN: New car? Lamborghini or Ferrari?
Just in case you wanted to check https://github.com/fhk/lamborghini
Re: Ask HN: Physics PhD at Stanford or Berkeley
#13After being accepted to both for my PhD, I started at Berkeley but then finished at Stanford after my professor moved.
Both were excellent. Stanford is more isolated, meaning it has more community, but it’s also harder to get to the city. Stanford also has more budget. I’d give the slight edge to Stanford. I don’t know the quality of their quantum optics faculty and research, though.
Re: Ask HN: Physics PhD at Stanford or Berkeley
#14Both programs are very good, the specific PI is going to be much much more important than any generic advice you glean from this thread. Separately, the environs are very different. Stanford is pristine, quiet, safe, boring, isolated, VC-oriented. Berkeley is urban, gritty, dense, exciting, outgoing, academic. For most people it doesn’t really matter but if it does for you this could be important.
Re: Ask HN: Physics PhD at Stanford or Berkeley
#15Physics PhD from Berkeley. If things are more or less equal, choose the private institution. Berkeley is still the most corrupt organization I’ve ever been associated with.
I'm interested in hearing more.
Re: Ask HN: Physics PhD at Stanford or Berkeley
#16Both schools have excellent reputations, so the PI is going to be the most important thing (and, perhaps, variety of PI's if you're not sure you want to stick with a specific one). After that you would consider things like course requirements, likelihood of having to TA, etc. And if you want to live in a city, Berkeley is much easier (yes, it's possible to commute to Stanford from SF, but it's a slog).
Re: Ask HN: Physics PhD at Stanford or Berkeley
#17Whichever program you like more? Especially, whichever one has your best choices for an advisor? Picking your advisor is the only actual consequential choice you make in grad school. The school itself does not really matter.
The school does matter in a lot of ways, but Stanford and Berkeley are going to be roughly equivalent in those ways.
Re: Ask HN: Physics PhD at Stanford or Berkeley
#18I went to Princeton for my PhD, but I was at Stanford for my undergrad, and knowing a few experimentalist grad students, it seems for whatever reason the completion time was usually 7 years (or more), longer than usual. Might be something to consider.
Anyway, if you don’t have a specific advisor in mind (well you wouldn’t be asking if you do), my advice is go to the open house in both departments and talk to the actual profs and grad students.
Edit: Oh and another thing, I recall getting admitted into Berkeley too but the offer didn’t even guarantee funding beyond the first year? Which was a big turnoff. Definitely check how you’ll get funding and for how long. That said I’m a theorist, I suppose if an experimentalist can’t find funding they’re in much bigger trouble than not having money.
Re: Ask HN: Physics PhD at Stanford or Berkeley
#19I have a PhD [DPhil] in physics from the university of Oxford in the UK. I signed up for a course in interdisciplinary science, and ended up working on something I never new existed –– a technique (called dynamic nuclear polarisation [1]) that uses low-temperature nuclear physics, quantum mechanics and condensed matter physics of the variety you learn at university, but ultimately ends up being applied for medical imaging. People are alive because of the work I did, and I find this deeply meaningful. I loved learning about lots of new things that were genuinely very different, and applying them through the lens of physics, for very real applications – and liked being in a supportive environment that gave you the ability to choose what you were interested in and follow it through.
The thing I would say though is that 1) the supervisor or supervisors you end up working with are incredibly important and are really the make or break decision for the whole programme of study; 2) you are in a surprisingly powerful position if you are a good undergrad student (the world is your oyster! You can go anywhere and do almost anything!); and 3) think beyond the PhD: it is little more than an apprenticeship. Where are you going later – do you want to work broadly in the area of $PHD_SUBJECT for the next few years? Will you learn the skills you want to let that happen?
If you don't enjoy your subject of study, you may well come to resent being cheap labour for a rich institution, at a point in your life when you can do almost anything and go almost anywhere – and see your friends earn real money and get on with life (marriage, children, houses, etc).
Full disclaimer: just today I have advertised a PhD place for a bright mathematical scientist, at Aarhus University in Denmark [1]. I am biased, but I would encourage you to go elsewhere. There are many great institutions in europe (switzerland and the UK included) and the other thing is that you do a PhD in 3-4 years on a real salary in most places – e.g. the starting point for total compensation for a student in Aarhus is ~428500 dkk per year (~$60k/year, ~€57k/year, ~£47k/year, from which tax & compulsory pension contributions are deducted, but no health insurance) and it is expected that this is enough to live on. This is a very reasonable salary, comparable to many graduate jobs. If anyone would like to talk to me about it, I'd love to chat (see profile).
[1] https://physicsworld.com/a/dynamic-nuclear-polarization-how-... [2] https://phd.health.au.dk/application/opencalls/multimodal-me...
Re: Ask HN: Physics PhD at Stanford or Berkeley
#20SLAC by name and slack by nature