This is a "personal dairy" kind of post. I really intended to write it for....me. And you'll see why.
Recently, I have been fighting to keep my head from drowning in the madness of business school PhD admissions. With insanely low odds of getting admissions into any school, there is understandably a lot of angst and hair-pulling from almost every applicant.
But I am 30. I should know better (you would think!).
In some sense, I seem to be going back a decade ago, when I was obsessing about competitive exams and college admissions. Back then, my main reason for trying hard to get into an IIT/NIT/IIM (or whatever letter jumble you can think of), was that I wanted "to prove" something. To whom ? I have no clue. In hindsight, I think it was to myself.
So, that's the thing - I don't seem to have fully exited out of this "proving" business and get on with doing what I really want to do. For example, I still seem to worry whether I will get into the highest "ranked" college that I applied to. For what joy ?
Lets see :
1) "Prestige" : I rest my case with what Paul Graham has to say about prestige
2) "Exposure" : What is "exposure" really ? It can't be about access to the best "resources" because that's the same at every school. And, if you are in a particular geography, say the US, you already are 'in the loop' in terms of conferences, whether they be at Harvard or Acme University. If it is about working with the "smartest brains", yes - I understand there is a point here. But, honestly, the 'gap' that already exists between a PhD rookie and any Professor is so great that you would NEVER run into a situation where the student "knows so much" that there is nothing he can learn from the older people around him! And lets not discount the fact that research is largely a process of independent reflection and thought. So, the "exposure" argument is marginal, at best.
3) "Monetary benefits" : eeeek. I didn't quit my high-paying job to worry about how much I would have earned in Harvard versus Acme! When the base salaries themselves are not too high (even if, Harvard salaries are 50% higher than Acme's), it seems kind of sad to play this low-stakes game!
So, if you think about it a little, the whole "ranking" fuss in academia is kind of funny. To quote Paul again,
"...Most good mathematicians would work on math even if there were no jobs as math professors, whereas in the departments at the other end of the spectrum, the availability of..jobs is the driver.."
So, that's the thing. I really want to get on with my work without joining the Race of the Fastest Rodents. Been there, done that. I'll take a rain cheque on that one.
But I would be too naive to suppose that I can be in academia and not play the publishing game. Some things are true of every profession, and academics is a job (that I love), after all.
So, let me rephrase my statement to :
"I will join the Race, only as a Minimally Interfering Rodent", (where I will define my own minimum levels) !
