BF2S Forums College discussion thread

yeah, it sounds like you already understand the principle of 'going where the talent is', or in the case of sciences, also going somewhere that has the resources/specialism in what you want to study. a supervisor is just the personal and ultimate extension of that principle - it can really make or break your PhD experience. getting in touch with them will also not only serve a networking/informational benefit... it'll let you know how they are, socially, as people and as contacts. i have a friend, for instance, now doing a PhD at st. andrews, and his supervisor is a total old grouch. that's a 4 year bummer - feeling intimidated or bothersome to even get in touch with your supervisor, for genuine help. same as any career. a bad boss can ruin the job.

the other side of the coin being that a good supervisor pairing/relationship can completely change your life and make a whole career. you hear plenty of this - even in the case of 'high-profile' academics and their wikipedia pages/bios. they go to a university as a young, naive graduate student... come under the tutelage of some éminence grise... and their entire life-interest and career is made. it can be a hugely enriching experience. some of my academic tutors, even at undergrad/masters level, have pretty much changed my life.

Last edited by Uzique The Lesser (2013-05-10 09:10:20)

Spark wrote:

Yeah that's why the UK model is my preferred choice if I can, as it's much more tailored towards what I'd want to be doing, which is three-four years of intensive, proper research. Not three-four years of proper research piggybacked to learning shit I already know.

Even so, it's still less than simple getting into the top American unis from what I've heard. My best mate, for example, tells me that at some the top institutions there's literally no point looking at the academic records of the most prospective applicants, as they all have near-perfect GPAs anyway.

Look at Cal State, Carnegie-Mellon, MIT, University of Texas, and SUNY Stony Brook (has access to Brookhaven National Laboratory). Range of price points and all have very good science programs.

Last edited by Jay (2013-05-10 17:43:30)

he already acknowledged those 3 in his very first post. oxford isn't that great for physics, either. sussex and soton would probably be better. manchester/bristol, too.

also 99% of people working at CERN are PhD students (active/current) or post-doc researchers. we've been over this many times before. good luck trying to get a job at CERN without a PhD. CERN is academic research work. it's a huge collaboration... between universities... for academics.

name and snobbery count for very little in PhD world/funding/making a career. i went over this as well. "impresses pre- and undergraduates, but newspaper rankings have little to no bearing on academic careers". you'd have a terrible time taking a PhD at a place just because of its name-value: you need solid academic contacts, a genuinely interested/expert supervisor, and the specific resources/labs/research library for your project. going to oxford just-because it's oxford is a sure-fire way to ruin your thesis before it's even begun. not that you'd ever get accepted, being one of those people applying just because 'omg oksferd'.

the difference really is that by the time you get to PhD (i.e. professional research), people know that the best universities for xyz don't necessarily exactly equate to the generic 'world rankings' (based on prestige and so many other qualitative/spurious things). you'd probably stand a better chance of getting employed as a post-doc at a terribly competitive 'research institution' if you had a PhD in physics from, say, manchester... than if you had one from oxford. that's because the academic world, and academic employers, being in contact with research/the frontiers of knowledge... know that the name doesn't matter a shit.

Last edited by Uzique The Lesser (2013-05-10 19:24:15)

actually, you're almost right. it is paradoxical like that. the research excellence of an institution - excellence established across a wide-range of faculties, mind you, and not always evenly, you may need to bear in mind, coming from Imp - floats its undergraduate prestige (i.e. world rankings are largely based on research, the true work-horse of the academic game). but someone actually looking for a career in academia would be much wiser to actually find a department/supervisor who is 'ideal' to them, rather than applying for name-branding/recognition. that reason curries okay for undergraduates, who may not need to do quite so much research into the actual course-content... but for (intending) professional researchers, ending up at oxbridge just-because could be a career ender. yes, their reputation is established firmly as world-leaders. but if he has a specific area on the frontiers of some specific fringe of astrophysics, or whatever... he could just as well go to holloway, or manchester, or anywhere else with a highly-renowned astrophysics lab. if you catch my point. it is a little paradoxical. universities are ranked generally (hence clumsily sometimes) by research prestige; researchers who are wise will often go to a lower-ranked university, because their specific department/intending supervisor is more advantageous.

going to those places is far from a "no-no". i never said that. they are still the best universities in the world. but to get the most of your PhD, you ideally have needs a little more specific: you need the best department and, most importantly, the best thesis supervisor for you. just because oxbridge are 'world's best ever omg', doesn't mean their specific physics department will have the specific staff-member who has the specific academic qualifications/research interests to BEST supervise your topic. that's what i'm saying. and, by all extents and purposes, within the world of post-graduate professional research, name matters a lot less. the difference between sussex, ranked barely in the worldtop100, and cambridge, when it comes to PhD's in science... is marginal. both are considered total world-class.

it's hard to explain. to a private-sector employer, having an oxbridge degree will impress them more, on name recognition. within actual academia, they're wise enough to know that name isn't everything, and you could be one of the world's brightest scientific researchers with a PhD from pretty much ANY world top250 - obviously depending on the specific details. i guess that's what im trying to say: yes, oxbridge carries more in the general workplace; in academia though, they're familiar with the specifics. they know the (pretty arbitrary) worldtop100 isn't the 'definitive' ranking of research quality. it's just a consumer-guide for undergrads.

again, i'm not saying cambridge is a bad university. i'm just saying it's not inconceivable that he could find a supervisor at somewhere like sussex or bristol that would actually be far better for him. and the marginal difference in research-profile/reputation between cambridge and bristol, would not negatively affect his career-- the 'responsible' and 'better informed' choice he made would actually pay off. you don't get shimmied up the academic career ladder because you have (cantab) or (oxon) after your name, believe it or not. it's not the 1930's.

as for the nobel game... and france... i could write you a thousand words on that, but it's mostly irrelevant. certain institutions accrue those prizes for a number of reasons. hell, certain institutions manage to attract the nobel prize winning academics in the first place for a host of reasons. france's postgraduate education has been in a sorry state since the end of its 1970's hey-day. but it's still world-class... just not at the nobel prize winning game. it's hard to summarize. most of the best french intellectuals are actually at places like UCLA and stanford now. which doesn't mean those universities are auto-better than, say, the sorbonne. just they are better at the 'awards' game. they recruit specifically with that as an institutional aim/promotion. they reserve huge amounts of cash for salaries to entice those promising researchers who are going to net them the publicity win/bragging rights of the next fields/nobel; it's an active 'recruitment strategy' that a lot of ancient french (and german) universities don't care for. but that's all by the by... don't become too allured with the prizes. it doesn't matter to someone who is intending to start a PhD career themselves. what matters most is finding a supervisor who is a great match, who will nurture them on (arguably) the most important 3-4 years of their intellectual life.

That and IC/Oxf/Ca are rated according to the quality of their graduates besides the quality of their depts research.

sorry, but no world ranking or academic research profile rates 'according to graduate quality'. that statistic doesn't exist. there is no 'graduate standard assessment' or metric or objective measure like there is for actual peer-reviewed, citation-index academic research. 'graduate prospects', maybe, but that's a different thing. 'average grade' or 'good honours', maybe. but again, not the same thing. i think you may be flattering yourself a little here. "reputation of graduate" falls into the same nebulous, capricious, qualitative area as "prestige" or "name recognition", i.e. the parts of the world ranking methodology that make it a little unreliable, year on year. the PhD and post-doc world are more about individual achievement/proof/networking/your actual research proposal itself than they are about a name-badge giving you clearance to the don's room.

Last edited by Uzique The Lesser (2013-05-10 19:57:32)

Uzique The Lesser wrote:

he already acknowledged those 3 in his very first post. oxford isn't that great for physics, either. sussex and soton would probably be better. manchester/bristol, too.

also 99% of people working at CERN are PhD students (active/current) or post-doc researchers. we've been over this many times before. good luck trying to get a job at CERN without a PhD. CERN is academic research work. it's a huge collaboration... between universities... for academics.

Yeah I'm not even going to dream about CERN until I know where I'm doing a PhD

Winston_Churchill wrote:

Whats your interest within physics Spark? I assume something quantum since that's where most go these days.  For Canadian universities, I'd look into UBC, U of T, McGill and Waterloo.  Waterloo especially is known for its theoretical physics, they're working hard on making it the go-to hub for it with Wloos advanced programs and the Perimeter Institute there.  Definitely worth a look.  And if you give me a specific field I can see if any of the professors I know here would be a good fit for you to reach out to.

The Perimeter Institute is an option I'm considering as well (their Scholars' program is the reason I know most of the field theory I do), yeah, but that would be for Masters' only. And I don't know about the costs.

Fields I'm looking at? Probably leaning towards quantum field theory and its successors.

Last edited by Spark (2013-05-10 21:04:24)

Yeah, PI does good work. They have a whole heap of courses in advanced theoretical physics that they've filmed and put online too, been really helpful.

BlackBoard in general is a piece of shit.

bugz wrote:

BlackBoard in general is a piece of shit.

It can be used quite well, but its really complicated.  The admin menu has about 15 dropdown boxes with maybe 60-70 tabs combined.  It's an absolute nightmare to figure out how it works to get it to look nice and be organized.  Though making a basic page with links should be easy... but it doesn't even have a preview function to test if your post works or not - its just publish or cancel, you cant save drafts or anything either   even bf2s has those!!

the desktop ui is horridly confusing but if you've used their app you can see how good it has the potential to be.  their app even has dropbox integration to save files!

Last edited by Winston_Churchill (2013-05-14 17:39:42)

ive never heard of anyone taking a test on it.

Winston_Churchill wrote:

ive never heard of anyone taking a test on it.

I had lots of multiple choice/short answer quizzes on BlackBoard.