Ask HN: Physics PhD at Stanford or Berkeley

Perhaps the first things to consider are the expected time to complete the PhD., and the success rate.

Everyone says it's about five years. That's BS. It varies widely. At a university with which I was familiar, physics was one of the worst, with average time around 10 years. My department wasn't so high, but the success rate was in the single digits. The longer it takes, the greater the chance of life events derailing you.

As far as I know, there's no place to get this information.

And an incomplete ABD from Stanford or Berkeley is likely to have some value.

Whichever program you like more? Especially, whichever one has your best choices for an advisor? Picking your advisor is the only actual consequential choice you make in grad school. The school itself does not really matter.

Physics PhD from Berkeley. If things are more or less equal, choose the private institution. Berkeley is still the most corrupt organization I’ve ever been associated with.

Just do MIT

Stanford! My best friend did his PhD from there and is now a tenured prof. Everyone i know from Berkeley is at best an adjunct.

I received my PhD in applied physics and had colleagues, collaborators, and some published work in this (very broad) field. Although I'm familiar with the programs, my advice is not specific.

The question you have to answer first is: why do you want a PhD? Is it to do science for as long as possible? Is it to contribute to the frontier of human knowledge? Is it to participate in an global research community? Is it to land a tenure track job? Or do you not know the questions and their answers (which is fine!)?

I'll offer myself as a case study. I knew I wanted to make something tangible (hence device physics / photonics), I knew I wanted to explore the possibility of continuing in academia, and I knew that I would enjoy working in industry. I structured my PhD to go for a high risk/high reward research topic (with the thinking that if it pans out, academia would be viable without having to go through an extended PhD and multiple postdocs, which was off the table for me). I also set up to consult on industry projects, and started poking around the local startup incubators and B-school entrepreneurial offerings. My school (and PI) choice was motivated really by these factors: how I judged the impact of potential research being done by the team, how plugged-in and amenable was the environment to extracurricular work, and how supported I would be to a transition to start-ups/industry.

Figure out what you want, and treat your PhD itself as an experiment w/ testable hypotheses. If you're not sure about something, how can you build into the experience a way to find out? Is it a class, a side-project, the local community that can help? There are many factors to take into account when choosing a school because we all weigh those factors differently - once you decide what's really important to you you'll get better-tuned advice.

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I got my PhD at Stanford. There were a few things that made me choose it over others. First, there are effectively 3 physics departments, between physics, SLAC, and applied physics (which is a different program, but still the resources are there. This gives you more choices in what to do. And the rotation system is good for trying labs and fields out before you make a decision.

I don't know much about your field of focus, so I can't speak about potential advisors too much.

After being accepted to both for my PhD, I started at Berkeley but then finished at Stanford after my professor moved.

Both were excellent. Stanford is more isolated, meaning it has more community, but it’s also harder to get to the city. Stanford also has more budget. I’d give the slight edge to Stanford. I don’t know the quality of their quantum optics faculty and research, though.

Both programs are very good, the specific PI is going to be much much more important than any generic advice you glean from this thread. Separately, the environs are very different. Stanford is pristine, quiet, safe, boring, isolated, VC-oriented. Berkeley is urban, gritty, dense, exciting, outgoing, academic. For most people it doesn’t really matter but if it does for you this could be important.

Both schools have excellent reputations, so the PI is going to be the most important thing (and, perhaps, variety of PI's if you're not sure you want to stick with a specific one). After that you would consider things like course requirements, likelihood of having to TA, etc. And if you want to live in a city, Berkeley is much easier (yes, it's possible to commute to Stanford from SF, but it's a slog).

I went to Princeton for my PhD, but I was at Stanford for my undergrad, and knowing a few experimentalist grad students, it seems for whatever reason the completion time was usually 7 years (or more), longer than usual. Might be something to consider.

Anyway, if you don’t have a specific advisor in mind (well you wouldn’t be asking if you do), my advice is go to the open house in both departments and talk to the actual profs and grad students.

Edit: Oh and another thing, I recall getting admitted into Berkeley too but the offer didn’t even guarantee funding beyond the first year? Which was a big turnoff. Definitely check how you’ll get funding and for how long. That said I’m a theorist, I suppose if an experimentalist can’t find funding they’re in much bigger trouble than not having money.

I have a PhD [DPhil] in physics from the university of Oxford in the UK. I signed up for a course in interdisciplinary science, and ended up working on something I never new existed –– a technique (called dynamic nuclear polarisation [1]) that uses low-temperature nuclear physics, quantum mechanics and condensed matter physics of the variety you learn at university, but ultimately ends up being applied for medical imaging. People are alive because of the work I did, and I find this deeply meaningful. I loved learning about lots of new things that were genuinely very different, and applying them through the lens of physics, for very real applications – and liked being in a supportive environment that gave you the ability to choose what you were interested in and follow it through.

The thing I would say though is that 1) the supervisor or supervisors you end up working with are incredibly important and are really the make or break decision for the whole programme of study; 2) you are in a surprisingly powerful position if you are a good undergrad student (the world is your oyster! You can go anywhere and do almost anything!); and 3) think beyond the PhD: it is little more than an apprenticeship. Where are you going later – do you want to work broadly in the area of $PHD_SUBJECT for the next few years? Will you learn the skills you want to let that happen?

If you don't enjoy your subject of study, you may well come to resent being cheap labour for a rich institution, at a point in your life when you can do almost anything and go almost anywhere – and see your friends earn real money and get on with life (marriage, children, houses, etc).

Full disclaimer: just today I have advertised a PhD place for a bright mathematical scientist, at Aarhus University in Denmark [1]. I am biased, but I would encourage you to go elsewhere. There are many great institutions in europe (switzerland and the UK included) and the other thing is that you do a PhD in 3-4 years on a real salary in most places – e.g. the starting point for total compensation for a student in Aarhus is ~428500 dkk per year (~$60k/year, ~€57k/year, ~£47k/year, from which tax & compulsory pension contributions are deducted, but no health insurance) and it is expected that this is enough to live on. This is a very reasonable salary, comparable to many graduate jobs. If anyone would like to talk to me about it, I'd love to chat (see profile).

[1] https://physicsworld.com/a/dynamic-nuclear-polarization-how-... [2] https://phd.health.au.dk/application/opencalls/multimodal-me...

SLAC by name and slack by nature

Both are very good schools. You should look into the quals process as well since it would be unfortunate to go to a school and then get kicked out. Stanford EE PhD quals were notoriously hard but they have gotten easier from what I have heard. If you are going to be doing nanofabrication as part of your research, check to see how the shared facilities are and how flexible they are for facilitating the kind of research you are planning on doing.

Both great schools. As others have mentioned, your PI is going to matter a ton, there are really bad PI's who will deliberately keep you a few extra years, and there are good ones who will let help you and progress your career. It's sort of a gamble as to which is which unless you know them personally.

One other consideration though is that Berkeley is the safety school for people who don't get into Stanford. If all else is similar, I would go to Stanford, as it will provide a lot more opportunities down the line than Berkeley.

One more thing to check would be to see the ease of getting an advisor from adjacent fields like EE/EECS or Materials Science.

- Number 1 thing is having ~2-3 plausible advisors that you can see yourself working with (by all means fall in love with just one, but keep some optionality)

- Most physics departments allow for 'rotations' during your 1st or 2nd year (while you are taking classes and studying for the qual). Check if the 2-3 plausible advisors will take you as a rotation student

- Check if the grad students are (relatively) happy, especially the 4th-5th years during your open house. Ask them how much help the are getting in career search (good departments take care of their senior grad students)

- I personally didn't care to optimize for locale very much. Don't regret it. PhD is a grind, you won't have too much time to yourself... and with what you have, I think you can have a vibrant social life at almost any university

- There is some funding anxiety right now (NIH, but surely NSF is not far behind). I would make sure that the labs you are in are well funded. Stanford is better in this regard.

- I would max out your applications to GRFP, NDSEG or whatever the in-vogue PhD fellowships are. It increases your chances of getting into a competitive lab

- You didn't say theory or experiment? If experiment, find out if you are going to spend time in the fab, and make sure you check out the fab. Berkeley nanolab was a shockingly functional shithole (at least when i visited, and i know it caused misery to many friends)

TL;DR - Stanford if research fit is there.

How reliable will funding be going forward? If the program is supported by government grants I wouldn't feel very confident that they will continue to be paid.

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.

Put your career into the right hands.

They're both excellent programs. The schools have different vibes: Berkeley is much more urban and closer to SF in culture while Stanford is more of a bubble.

If you are interested in Academia after graduation, then your primary advisor is going to have a lot of influence on where you end up and the trajectory of your career. Their reputation and their network will have a lot of influence since you will be seen as a protégée of Prof X. The school tends to be a bit less important. If you're interested in industry and startups then Stanford is probably closer to that culture.

I don't know much about what it's like to do a PhD in physics at Berkeley, but many years ago I did a PhD in physics at Stanford starting out working in experimental quantum optics. I wound up doing something completely different, and felt supported in changing what I worked on. Stanford felt small in a good way, the grad student admin staff was wonderful. Stanford definitely has a different more suburban isolated vibe. Summers felt like you worked at a country club or something.

Who you work with really matters (obviously) and different PIs and labs can have very different cultures which you may or may not feel comfortable with. That alone can make your decision if you are very sure about what you want to do and who you want to work with.

Outside of that, I would say Stanford is a really great place to do graduate work, especially if you're not entirely sure what you want to do.

All of this is with the obvious caveat that my experience is from quite some time ago.

PhD in experimental quantum optics here, but out of the field for 7 years. Message me if you want to discuss specifics about research areas / groups.

Another Ph.D. physicist here (Ivy, not Stanford/Berkeley)

As others have pointed out, your prospective advisor(s) are the most important thing to consider. You can't go wrong with either school.

That said, when choosing an advisor:

* Pay attention to where the advisor's former students ended up. The former students are a natural "network" for you when you graduate. If you can, ask relatively recent grads about their experience.

* Meet the prospective advisor's current students and post-docs - are they happy? Will you fit in with them? Do they graduate in a reasonable amount of time? Ask other grad students about the professor as well. Trust me, each professor is going to have a reputation.

* If you want to stay in academia, mid-career advisors are the "safest" - an assistant prof may be working on something exciting, but the research will probably be more risky, and the professor might even have to leave mid-way through your thesis work if they don't get tenure. A late-career advisor may presently sit on a lot of committees and be more well-known, but by the time you need their recommendation for jobs/tenure they may have considerably less influence (that happened to me, although it was fine in the end.)

Read Feibelman's "A PhD is not enough" - still lots of good advice even though written 30+ years ago.