At least in astrophysics Berkeley had a reputation for grad students taking a very long time to finish. At most schools grad students would get a PhD within 5-

At least in astrophysics Berkeley had a reputation for grad students taking a very long time to finish. At most schools grad students would get a PhD within 5--6 years. At Berkeley it was regularly taking students 10+ years to finish, which is pretty unheard of at most other institutions. My knowledge is about a decade out of date now, though, so things could have improved. I'm also not sure if that was also happening in other fields of physics or if it was just limited to astro. But it would be worth looking at the average time to graduation for the departments and schools you're interested in.