you're still at NU right? You will find out when you are on the job market if NU is better respected than UW
also getting all of your degrees at one school is not a good idea... Haven't your advisors talked to you about this? What is the funding situation in your program? (I know) Check into UW and UM and you will see that there are not many who aren't fully funded....
Trust me, I did my research when deciding whether to stick around at the same place for further degrees. When you are applying for 8-year graduate programs, you tend not to do so casually.
I strongly considered going elsewhere. But because I have residency, fellowship, and post-doctoral training left before I take a faculty position, I have plenty of opportunities for exposure to other institutions, and the funding package at Northwestern, the location in Chicago, and the strong program of research in neurodegeneration and protein misfolding were huge benefits. Plus, knock on the wood, I'm going to be doing part of PhD in collaboration with a lab @ Cambridge, so I'm going to be doing part of my education there.
My funding situation is just fine, thanks
, and my adviser's lab is extremely secure in its countless NIH grants.
And with respect to medicine, I think that UW and UM are great schools, but I'd say Northwestern is right on par. My opinion is that it has the advantage in medical training because of the major urban setting. It's also got more new construction going on (to the tune of billions of dollars) than any other medical center of which I know.
As for the job market for folks straight out of undergrad, my friends seem to be doing terribly well. And an interesting anecdote...When my roommate was applying to consulting firms, the online application included an online box where you could select your school. I think there were only about five options, Northwestern, University of Chicago, Harvard, Stanford, and something else. Seriously, I know very few people who had trouble finding jobs out of undergrad, and usually they found rather good ones (another friend is pulling 150 including bonus in New York, and countless friends came out of undergrad making 60-80 their first year).
I really have no idea why you would think that NU is not respected or that Northwestern graduates somehow have a difficult time finding jobs. It sort of boggles my mind. That said, in all seriousness, I respect Michigan and Wisconsin as excellent academic institutions, and there are definitely areas in which they are stronger than Northwestern (as there are a number of areas in which Northwestern is stronger than them: Law, Chemistry, Communication, Journalism, Theater, Medicine [or at least, they're even], Materials Science, etc.), but to claim that somehow they are far and away better is pure silliness.
Anyway, we ought to stop hijacking this thread with this side discussion.
