The Warburg Institute

Hello all.

I'd like to ask for opinions / advice on a decision I've got to make soon about unis to go to for graduate work. At the moment I've got places at Royal Holloway, Oxford, and the Warburg Institute. My dilemma is that I reckon the Warburg Institute is probably the best place to do my subject, but its practically unknown outside of a small group of people interested in the subject. And I reckon that could potentially make it harder to get work as an academic later on, particularly as I want to work abroad, and expect that a lot of people reading my CV would just wonder what the Institute is. The other think which is giving me some trouble is that the Holloway offer is fully funded, whereas I don't fancy my luck getting governmental funding at the WI or at Oxford. I reckon I could go ahead with funding, but it would involve living off savings and asking my family for support (which they're happy to do, though ).

Anyway, I just want to ask - if you were me, what would you go for? A place which is the best in reality, but probably won't be recognised as such? And would you settle for a worse place just because it was funded?

Phew, long post.

you just said it yourself - it's known within your subject field. surely if you want to go to do post grad work in this field it would be the best place to go because the academics you are working with would have definitely heard of it? if they haven't, i'm sure asking around and a bit of googling would show them it's a good institute. they will do that if they get your CV and don't knwo it!

Well if you put:

The Warburg Institute, School of Advanced Study, University of London

on your CV even those that do not know about it will probably be reasonably impressed.