For my PhD program, I specifically looked for advisors doing the type of simulations I was interested in. There weren't many (1989-1990 time frame). I found o

For my PhD program, I specifically looked for advisors doing the type of simulations I was interested in. There weren't many (1989-1990 time frame). I found one who on paper looked great: lots of good recent publications, assistant prof (she was working on getting tenure, so she was hungry), she had reasonable grants for a theorist, and she needed an apprentice. Having that helped my application. I started working for her before starting school. I still had to take courses. I passed the PhD qual test on entry, and had 2 years worth of courses to take. Transferring in some of the masters courses helped some. I offered to test out of the courses, but it was explained to me that the physics department liked their revenue, even though most of the money coming in was research grant based. The BS I had to go through to take a chemistry course which would have been helpful was a side effect of their love of inbound revenue, and dislike of outbound payments. Basically, I think the economic model at my alma mater was quite broken. This model generally governs behavior of schools, departments, etc. Having a group to start working with helped me clear some of this BS, but I still had to deal with other crap.