Confessions of a researchaholic

Recently several people asked me about choosing graduate programs. I answered about this before, but some specific cases might still help.

Q: Choose a program that offers financial support over one that does not.

This is certainly a sensible decision, especially if you are cash strapped, even though that is not what I did (see below).

Q: Choose a MS program that is more likely to lead to the PhD program of the same school/department.

In general yes, if you can find a good adviser whom you can convince to take you as a PhD student by doing good research with him or her.

Q: Choose between a school/adviser good at a direction or a methodology

These are different. For example, you might be interested in computer graphics (direction) and want to apply machine learning (methodology) in some way. Should you choose a professor in computer graphics who knows a bit (but not much) about machine learning, or a machine learning expert who is not really doing computer graphics?

Always pick the one who is better at identifying the problems (directions) than the one who is better at suggesting solutions (methods). Solving a wrong problem (unimportant, too easy, too difficult, too crowded, etc.) can completely derail your research career. In contrast, you can find domain experts to collaborate after identifying a good direction.

[I will add more when I receive more questions.]

When I made my decision more than 20 years ago, it was pretty easy: I wanted to go to a top school in the Bay Area, so I basically had only two choices. And I heard from one around Christmas but not another one until the next April or May. What was more difficult is that I only got scholarships from schools in the east coast, and my family preferred me to go there.