4 ms·

A lot of academia comes down to signalling sadly

• oh_sigh 5y ago
  I'm sure it does, but doesn't it also make sense that the best and the brightest doctoral students would get accepted to elite universities, and the best and the brightest doctoral students have the highest odds of going on to teach at elite universities?
  • exdsq 5y ago
    This is anecdotal but most of my closest friends got their DPhils at Oxford and all of those who wanted to pursue academia got postdoc positions at 'top schools' based entirely on quick chats and someone in the lab who knew the group they'd been with at Oxford vouching for them. I've heard people say they've been told the main differential between them and other candidates was the school they went to, not the academic output they had during their PhD. So this isn't too say you're wrong - there is definitely something about better students go to better schools and there should be some correlation there, but this is way bigger than that.
  • pauldenton 5y ago
    No. Because the juice isn't worth the squeeze. A degree from a top school is not going to be 200% of the quality of a local state school. It is likely to be 200%+ of the tuition of a local state school.