whatever123

Important tips for those of you going into strategy. I'm a recent graduate now, but wished I knew some of these things beforehand. Choose a school based on your connection with the faculty--NOT rank. Note below may sound harsh, but I think this is the best way to let future students know what to look out for. PhD is not as glamerous as it sounds. Also, many of you may be going into it because of big ego purposes, and not because you love research. And you should go in knowing that you cannot know whether you love research until you have been through the entire publication process. It sounds fun as an idea, but when you get in the trenches, you will see what I mean. Also, some students get big because they are glorified RAs, and not because of their own work. So figure out which route you want to take. Here is an example based on word of mouth of a bad school: University of Georgia is a terrible school. I've met some students there, and there is a lot of faculty conflict/personality issues at UGA. Take a look at their placement record, and you will see that they place well below their peer ranked schools. Their methods training is also pretty weak. Sundar Bharadwaj is known to be an ineffective teacher/adviser; he will only see you as a data collection pig, and not help you with any intellectually related work. I've heard from two occasions that he stole a coauthor's data, and worked on another project without letting the original coauthor know about this data sharing. Unethical person. Son Lam is a socially awkward person to meet at conferences, and has screwed over many previous coauthors. For example, he consistently has a habit of kicking people off of papers, and then suddenly changing his mind about doing that. John Hulland is someone who will be nice to you up front but not behind the scenes. Really ask yourself if you want to live out 5 years of your PhD in a hostile environment. Here is an example of a good school, base on word of mouth: Missouri is a good school in terms of training and being taken care of by the faculty. Those people have good intentions, based on my interactions with them at conferences. Their students sometimes place well above their rank. I've heard nice things about Lisa Scheer as a person, and that she steers you in the right direction with honest feedback.