[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Physics PhD at Stanford or Berkeley
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Ask HN: Physics PhD at Stanford or Berkeley
What should one consider while signing up for a Physics PhD
program, with an focus on experimental Quantum/Molecular optics,
program at either university if both of them offer? I understand
there are many factors to take into account when choosing a school
for research (advisor, research fit and funding to name a few), but
these are on the individual. Any Physicists on HN?
Author : Bang2Bay
Score : 57 points
Date : 2025-02-10 14:38 UTC (8 hours ago)
| mac3n wrote:
| 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.
| mac3n wrote:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/03/education/03education.htm...
| exmadscientist wrote:
| 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.
| cozzyd wrote:
| The school does matter in a lot of ways, but Stanford and
| Berkeley are going to be roughly equivalent in those ways.
| aj7 wrote:
| 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.
| novia wrote:
| I'm interested in hearing more.
| aipatselarom wrote:
| Hey @aj7 and @novia.
|
| I am very interested on this as well, feel free to reach out,
| email in profile.
|
| I am actually advocating against abuse and corruption in
| academia, that's a swamp that really needs to be drained.
| rishab1 wrote:
| Just do MIT
| thunder-blue-3 wrote:
| 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.
| etik wrote:
| 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.
| djkivi wrote:
| Ask HN: New car? Lamborghini or Ferrari?
| anothereng wrote:
| after his startup is acquired in 14 years perhaps
| Bang2Bay wrote:
| lol. true.
|
| Definitely elated at the offers, but the offers are for
| climbing the tallest peaks there exists.
| fhk wrote:
| Just in case you wanted to check
| https://github.com/fhk/lamborghini
| fujinghg wrote:
| This I appreciate :)
| H8crilA wrote:
| Just tell everyone you're rich. Tremendously rich. It's much
| cheaper, and smart wealth building has to start somewhere.
| SaberTail wrote:
| 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.
| tedsanders wrote:
| 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.
| xadhominemx wrote:
| 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.
| danjl wrote:
| Berkeley and Stanford have more or less equal number of VC
| startups. Some years Cal has more, other years Stanford has
| more. https://newsroom.haas.berkeley.edu/berkeley-named-top-
| univer...
| xadhominemx wrote:
| Ya but the vibe is different because Stanford is much smaller
| jobs_throwaway wrote:
| > Stanford is pristine, quiet, safe, boring, isolated, VC-
| oriented. Berkeley is urban, gritty, dense, exciting, outgoing,
| academic.
|
| This is a huge difference IMO. If you want insulation from the
| world, go to Stanford. If you want to be immersed in it, good
| bad and ugly, go to Berkeley.
| throwawayhnxxx1 wrote:
| >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.
|
| I completely agree with this- your advisor will be the most
| influential factor of your phd years, for better or worse.
|
| Also, some programs have a reputation of enrolling a lot more
| students than there is actually room for, with purposeful high
| attrition during the first couple of years. I am not sure if
| Stanford or Cal have this reputation or not, but might be
| something to look into.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| This is a brilliant post. One of the best that I have read in
| months.
|
| Real question: How do you know? Example: Did you partner get a
| PhD in Physics at Stanford and you at UCB? Or, did you get
| masters at Stanford, but PhD at UCB?
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| Anybody who has spent any time in either place could tell you
| that the atmosphere is miles opposite. Wrt "choose advisor,
| not department", that's standard PhD advice when you have
| good options
| tfehring wrote:
| I live in Palo Alto and previously went to grad school in
| Berkeley, and I can corroborate. Frankly you wouldn't need to
| spend more than a couple hours in either location to pick up
| on those vibes.
| cozzyd wrote:
| 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).
| SJC_Hacker wrote:
| The only people crazy enough to try to commute from SF to
| Stanford area (Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Sunnyvale, etc.) are
| hipsters who work in tech, or people who have spouses who work
| downtown. The rent is substantially higher.
| cozzyd wrote:
| That may be true now... when I was an undergrad *checks
| notes* nearly 20 years ago, plenty of Stanford grad students
| lived in the city.
| guywithahat wrote:
| Both schools have a great reputation, however Stanford is
| clearly superior. Berkeley is, at the end of the day, a public
| school, and so it's lumped together with other top public
| schools like UT Austin or U Mich. Stanford, on the other hand,
| is a globally recognized private university and more often
| compared to MIT
| gaze wrote:
| this is nonsense
| guywithahat wrote:
| People in the bay hold Berkeley in a much higher regard
| than anywhere else in the country. If you go to Austin
| people will compare Berkeley to UT Austin, but if you go to
| Stanford they will regard your school to a higher degree.
|
| I think OP should go with the better PI, however suggestion
| Stanford and Berkeley have the same level of prestige seems
| wrong to me
| gaze wrote:
| prestige among who? As a physicist, I couldn't care less
| what my school's prestige was amongst those outside of
| the physics community. Maybe you want to go work for a
| hedge fund, where Berkeley is also respected. Maybe it's
| worse to McKinsey? I don't know. Know your audience.
| cozzyd wrote:
| In the limited context of a Physics PhD, to people within the
| physics community, the reputations are essentially identical,
| and also essentially identical to MIT (though that may be
| different between the asker's specific subfield, which I am
| not super familiar with).
|
| Outside of the physics community, there may indeed be some
| differences in reputation, though I'd expect them to be
| small, since anybody hiring physics PhD's will have a rough
| knowledge of Berkeley's excellent reputation in physics.
| Sure, in other fields (or for undergrad), the reputations may
| not be equivalent. NB: I'm Stanford undergrad, MIT physics
| PhD, so I have no personal reason to hype up Berkeley (the
| opposite bias, in fact...).
| oefrha wrote:
| 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.
| osnium123 wrote:
| Going to the open houses is an absolute must if you can.
| SJC_Hacker wrote:
| If its an integrated MS/PhD, seven years doesn't seem long for
| experimental science. If you already have an MS, which normally
| takes two years, then its maybe another 4-5 years.
| azalemeth wrote:
| 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, ~EUR57k/year, ~PS47k/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...
| araes wrote:
| To the HN folks, maybe we need a "Who wants an academic
| opportunity?" type thread? Seems like there's a need for
| Masters / PhD / Post-Doc openings to find Masters / PhD / Post-
| Doc candidates. "Who wants to be hired?" doesn't seem to
| register quite the same way.
|
| Something like: Location, Grad funding or financing available,
| degree type desired, field and project of study, background or
| education desired.
| librasteve wrote:
| SLAC by name and slack by nature
| osnium123 wrote:
| 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.
| guywithahat wrote:
| 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.
| jedberg wrote:
| > Berkeley is the safety school for people who don't get into
| Stanford.
|
| This is true for some undergrads, although there were plenty of
| people who got into both and chose Berkeley.
|
| But it's definitely not true at the Graduate level. It just
| depends on the program. Some programs at Cal are better than at
| Stanford, and vice versa. But in make cases the two schools
| collaborate quite a bit. It's not unheard of for someone at
| Stanford to have a Cal professor as an advisor for example, or
| the other way around.
| guywithahat wrote:
| I think as you move further from the specific work your lab
| did, school brand name matters more and more. Berkeley is a
| public school, and it's going to be more closely associated
| with other top public schools like UW-Madison, while Stanford
| will be associated more closely with private schools like
| MIT.
|
| I think people in the Bay Area forget this, but as you move
| further from the bay Berkeley is regarded more and more like
| another public school. I'm not saying it's fair, but it is
| just another public school, where Stanford is a globally
| recognized school.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > I think people in the Bay Area forget this, but as you
| move further from the bay Berkeley is regarded more and
| more like another public school.
|
| As someone who lives far from the Bay Area: This is
| ridiculously wrong - especially when applied to PhD.
|
| It all depends on the discipline you're in. And when it
| comes to engineering, most of these top public schools
| outrank most of the Ivy's. Almost no one cares if you got
| your EE PhD from Princeton or Yale. They definitely will
| care if you got it from Berkeley. Or Ann Arbor. Or
| Illinois, And so on.
|
| Reminds me of a coworker who went to Princeton for his
| Mechanical Engineering PhD who deeply regretted it. He was
| coming from abroad, and naturally assumed an Ivy would be
| better. He really wishes he had gone to one of the Midwest
| public schools instead. He hadn't heard of any of them
| before coming to the US (and clearly hadn't bothered doing
| his research before applying).
| 331c8c71 wrote:
| I assure you Berkeley is also globally recognized
| (disclaimer: no links to either school).
|
| EDIT: I'd also personally would want to stay as far away as
| possible from people who would see a PhD from Berkeley as a
| lesser one (based on general "prestige").
| jedberg wrote:
| Multiple brand surveys have shown that Berkeley is one of
| the best known brands outside the USA after Harvard, right
| alongside Stanford. Especially in Asia.
|
| https://news.berkeley.edu/2017/06/15/berkeley-ranks-among-
| wo...
| osnium123 wrote:
| One more thing to check would be to see the ease of getting an
| advisor from adjacent fields like EE/EECS or Materials Science.
| ableSprocket11 wrote:
| - 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.
| criddell wrote:
| 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.
| antognini wrote:
| 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.
| SJC_Hacker wrote:
| Are you counting the MS portion, or only the portion after
| masters is awarded?
| antognini wrote:
| This is including both MS and PhD.
| qnleigh wrote:
| It's not like that in the physics department though. By all
| means look at the numbers, but they were quite reasonable last
| I checked.
| mhh__ wrote:
| Put your career into the right hands.
| light_triad wrote:
| 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 protegee 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.
| whistle650 wrote:
| 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.
| spot5010 wrote:
| 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.
| GlibMonkeyDeath wrote:
| 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.
| brcmthrowaway wrote:
| what job did you end up doing
| mnky9800n wrote:
| The original version of a PhD is not enough references
| transparencies for giving talks and it reminds me the world
| used to be very different not so long ago. I think the new
| edition only talks about power point.
|
| Actually I gave a talk a couple months ago that was well
| received where I refused to use slides and only used the
| chalkboard. Tbh that was way more fun imo.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Between these two, the school doesn't matter. Choose it based on
| your advisor and your desired living situation.
| nothrowaways wrote:
| Berkeley or Caltech
| gaze wrote:
| Meet with Dan Stamper-Kurn, Jon Simon, and whoever else at
| length, go get coffee with their grad students without any
| postdocs or the PI present and ask them to tell you the shitty
| bits, and make your pick. Don't worry about the school -- it's
| not important. The advisor is. Also, pick by what you won't put
| up with. The bad bits add up differently than the good bits.
| azhenley wrote:
| Carnegie Mellon ;)
| zem wrote:
| apart from anything else, write to potential advisors and make
| sure they are taking PhD students this year. when i was in grad
| school a classmate learnt this one the hard way - there was only
| one professor working in the area he wanted to do his PhD in, and
| they had decided they weren't going to be taking new student that
| year.
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