Oxbridge vs LSE/Imperial/UCL vs Harvard/Yale for MPhil+PhD

mooliepuff

Is Oxbridge actually the best in UK for postgrad, I have heard otherwise?

It depends on what you want to do and who you want to be supervised by.

If so, would one ever go to a UK uni for PhD with offers from HYP and if so, then why?

A more suitable supervisor / better source of funding / availability of some special collection in the library / some sort of ultra-modern lab / a more interesting research project to work on / not wanting to leave the country / shorter duration of study required to get a PhD, etc. There are plenty of possible reasons why someone would want to do that, but it all depends. The question as you've phrased it is far too general.

Reply 2

ChemistBoy

16

There is no best place to do research.

Reply 3

Please tell me this isn't yet another duplicate account.

Reply 4

the_alba

Please tell me this isn't yet another duplicate account.

The OP didn't mention King's, so probably not. :wink:

Reply 5

Between Harvard/Stanford/MIT/Berkeley vs Oxford/Cambridge, the US schools would win.

Between Princeton/Yale vs Oxbridge, I would prefer Oxbridge.

Reply 6

ILIGAN

Between Harvard/Stanford/MIT/Berkeley vs Oxford/Cambridge, the US schools would win.

Between Princeton/Yale vs Oxbridge, I would prefer Oxbridge.

You do realize that we're talking about PhDs here, and so these prestige-obsessed-inter-university-bitch-fights are even less relevant than usual?

OP, I left Oxford after my Master's to go to York for my PhD, because it had a lot more brilliant / famous / respected academics in my field, whereas Oxford had only one and she was part time and not particularly knowledgeable about my area of research. Also because I thought York would do a bit more for me, as a research student working in 19th and 20th century literature, than Oxford, as many of my friends doing DPhils at Oxford were experiencing something like neglect. And because I knew that who you have as your supervisor is very much more important than where you fo your PhD - for the purpose of getting an academic job, a reference from my current supervisor is like gold dust for people in my field, and would be worth a lot more than some Oxford professor who just happened to supervise despite having contributed little in the way of scholarship on the subject himself.

Reply 7

the_alba

You do realize that we're talking about PhDs here, and so these prestige-obsessed-inter-university-bitch-fights are even less relevant than usual?

OP, I left Oxford after my Master's to go to York for my PhD, because it had a lot more brilliant / famous / respected academics in my field, whereas Oxford had only one and she was part time and not particularly knowledgeable about my area of research. Also because I thought York would do a bit more for me, as a research student working in 19th and 20th century literature, than Oxford, as many of my friends doing DPhils at Oxford were experiencing something like neglect. And because I knew that who you have as your supervisor is very much more important than where you fo your PhD - for the purpose of getting an academic job, a reference from my current supervisor is like gold dust for people in my field, and would be worth a lot more than some Oxford professor who just happened to supervise despite having contributed little in the way of scholarship on the subject himself.

Yes, that's exactly what I meant. When it comes to picking the right supervisor, Oxbridge isn't always "best", and neither are Harvard, Stanford or any of the others.

Reply 8

^ I was talking about branding, not quality per se. What would your Imperial PhD do to you when you are in a country that it's not well-known and you are competing with fellows from the big names such as Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Oxford, Princeton, Cambridge, Berkeley or MIT?

Again, I wasn't talking about the QUALITY of the program, but the general prestige of the school.

Reply 9

ILIGAN

^ I was talking about branding, not quality per se. What would your Imperial PhD do to you when you are in a country that it's not well-known and you are competing with fellows from the big names such as Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Oxford, Princeton, Cambridge, Berkeley or MIT?

Again, I wasn't talking about the QUALITY of the program, but the general prestige of the school.

Yes, but the OP wasn't actually asking about branding and prestige but about what possible reasons there might be for someone to (shock, horror) choose to go to a less "prestigious" place for graduate study. And there are plenty of reasons why someone might end up deciding against following the sort of hierarchy of prestigiousness you mentioned.

Reply 10

ILIGAN

^ I was talking about branding, not quality per se. What would your Imperial PhD do to you when you are in a country that it's not well-known and you are competing with fellows from the big names such as Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Oxford, Princeton, Cambridge, Berkeley or MIT?

Again, I wasn't talking about the QUALITY of the program, but the general prestige of the school.

Prestige simply isn't a factor in postgraduate research. To answer your question: if I were to look for an academic job in America (which I'm actually thinking about doing), my PhD from York with a world-famous, world-class professor in the field, with a second supervisor who is also world-famous and world-class, will look a thousand times better than if I'd stayed in Oxford to do a PhD with somebody who is not known in the field, and thus who American scholars would never have heard of. You need to grasp this point. A reference from a world-renowned scholar is worth a lot more than any generic brand name could be at postgrad level and beyond. My supervisor is known and respected in English departments all over the globe, and this is what counts.

Reply 11

^ Well, there could be a lot of possible ways to answer the OP's questions and I chose to go along the line of the general prestige factor as I think it is more important for any promising PhD candidate to be enrolled in an elite (best of the best) academic institution rather than a school with excellent quality but not well-known.

Reply 12

alba,

Goodluck on your job application in the US with your York diploma especially when you're gonna go up against someone with an Oxford degree.

To be frank with you, it's really, really hard to beat an Oxford brand. You might win in the job competition, but you'll go through hell to beat an Oxford guy in the US or anywhere in the world outside of the UK as York is mismatched to Oxford. I'm not trying to insult anyone here. I'm just saying that an Oxford brand is very, very hard to beat. It wouldn't be Oxford for nothing, would it?

Reply 13

GraveMentor

ILIGAN

I chose to go along the line of the general prestige factor as I think it is more important for any promising PhD candidate to be enrolled in an elite (best of the best) academic institution rather than a school with excellent quality but not well-known.

For someone who is looking to work in industry after their PhD then perhaps. For someone who is looking for a position in a field closely related to their doctoral research then this statement is, quite frankly, nonsense.

Reply 14

^ And how many PhD grads do you think have chosen the latter over those PhD grads that have sought employment in the industry or academe? lol

Reply 15

Look, I'm not saying it's useless to go to a less prestigious school for PhD. All I'm saying is that the generally elite schools (Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Oxford, Cambridge, MIT and Berkeley) have an inert advantage which is very hard to beat whether or not it's excellent in a particular department would not hardly affect the general prestige of the degree qualification.

If you’re not smart enough to get into any of the elite schools or you don’t have the financial resources and whatnot, it’s not the end of the world. There are other schools out there that can serve your needs albeit not as prestigious, but just as academically challanging as the super elite ones. So, let’s not kid ourselves and say that York > HYPSM+Berkeley,Oxbridge. That’s funny at is best.

Reply 16

ILIGAN

alba,

Goodluck on your job application in the US with your York diploma especially when you're gonna go up against someone with an Oxford degree.

To be frank with you, it's really, really hard to beat an Oxford brand. You might win in the job competition, but you'll go through hell to beat an Oxford guy in the US or anywhere in the world outside of the UK as York is mismatched to Oxford. I'm not trying to insult anyone here. I'm just saying that an Oxford brand is very, very hard to beat. It wouldn't be Oxford for nothing, would it?

Luckily for me, you have no idea what you're talking about. Firstly, I do have a degree from Oxford - I did my Master's there. Second, as I spelled out in a previous post, I left Oxford for York because York is where the brilliant professors are in my field. Oxford has almost nobody. It would have been idiotic to stay there just for 'prestige', and it wouldn't have done me any favours because I'd be missing out on working with some of the top professors in the world in my field (who are at York).

I know the Oxford brand holds a lot of weight for the general poppulation of starry-eyed Americans, but this is not so in the universities. If I applied to somewhere like Harvard for a job, I know (and I've been told by other academics, including one who already teaches there) that a good reference from my current supervisor would be very hard to top. Certainly Oxford doesn't have anyone on its staff as world-renowned as him.

I shan't continue this argument anymore, because I know very well what I'm talking about and you clearly don't. Why on earth would I have left Oxford if what you are saying is true? Fortunately, one prestige-worshiping boy on TSR is not able to contradict the large amount of supervisory advice I've had from academics both here and in the states.

Reply 17

On a slightly unrelated note, I quite like the phrase "inert advantage", actually. :smile:

Reply 18

ILIGAN

But let’s not kid ourselves and believe that York > HYPSM+Berkeley,Oxbridge. That’s funny at is best.

For what I'm researching (James Joyce, the modernist aesthetic, Victorian folly) York is one of the best departments in the world, Oxford would be distinctly average, and Cambridge would be nowhere. Academic employers tend to be quite suspicious about people who do PhDs at Oxbridge just for the prestige, instead of putting their research first. Oxford would be brilliant, better than most other places, for medieval literature for example. But for 20th century stuff it is inadequate. Prestige does not enter into the equation at all at postgraduate level.

Reply 19