Cornell vs. Johns Hopkins - help?

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Where should I go (read below first)?

Cornell
9
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Johns Hopkins
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Total votes: 9

kittycat
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Cornell vs. Johns Hopkins - help?

Post by kittycat » Sat Apr 10, 2010 10:14 pm

I have to make a decision by Wednesday as to what grad school I will be attending in the fall, and I am torn between Cornell and Johns Hopkins. I plan on going into high energy experiment and am interested in doing data analysis at CMS. Does anyone have any advice or know anything about the HEP programs at each school? Here's a list of the pros and cons as I see it:

Cornell
-
pros - large program, large HEP group (7 faculty), great location, strong condensed matter and accelerator physics groups (in case I want to switch fields), has a good name, I liked the students better, stipend is $1000 more than Hopkins and cost of living in Ithaca is cheaper
cons - theory group is not as strong, many of the HEP people are junior faculty or fairly new to CMS, quality of research is questionable (impression I got from what professors at other schools said about the program)

JHU -
pros - strong theory group, I really like the one professor and his research (he would be a great adviser), CMS group has some veterans who know what they are doing and have some well defined interesting research
cons - CMS group is very small (only 3 strong faculty), not many HEP grad students, location kind of blah, not as strong in many other fields (so if I want to switch fields I'm kind of limited), a few of the grad students are kind of odd (at least the ones I met), less money

Any input would be greatly appreciated!

Mataka
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Re: Cornell vs. Johns Hopkins - help?

Post by Mataka » Sat Apr 10, 2010 10:38 pm

About your pros and cons, when you say ''theory group'' I'm guessing you're talking about the HEP theory group ? well I could be wrong, but I do think that the theory group of Cornell is much better than the theory group of JHU...I'm curious why you would say the converse ?

kittycat
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Re: Cornell vs. Johns Hopkins - help?

Post by kittycat » Sat Apr 10, 2010 10:51 pm

Mataka wrote:About your pros and cons, when you say ''theory group'' I'm guessing you're talking about the HEP theory group ? well I could be wrong, but I do think that the theory group of Cornell is much better than the theory group of JHU...I'm curious why you would say the converse ?
This is just the impression I got from talking to professors at my own school and a few other schools I visited. One of my good friends is a HEP theory student, and he agrees that Cornell's theory program is terrible.

quantumele
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Joined: Wed Apr 07, 2010 1:41 am

Re: Cornell vs. Johns Hopkins - help?

Post by quantumele » Sat Apr 10, 2010 11:08 pm

I don't know much about HEP theory groups in hopkins,but I think their CMP theory groups are great. I heard the ratio of faculties/students in hopkins is small. You probably want to take this into consideration...

Mataka
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Re: Cornell vs. Johns Hopkins - help?

Post by Mataka » Sat Apr 10, 2010 11:22 pm

kittycat wrote:
Mataka wrote:About your pros and cons, when you say ''theory group'' I'm guessing you're talking about the HEP theory group ? well I could be wrong, but I do think that the theory group of Cornell is much better than the theory group of JHU...I'm curious why you would say the converse ?
This is just the impression I got from talking to professors at my own school and a few other schools I visited. One of my good friends is a HEP theory student, and he agrees that Cornell's theory program is terrible.
Well, hopefully someone can back me up here, but I honestly think that most people in the HEP-TH community would say that the theory group of Cornell is better than JHU. Here is something that may convince you: http://www.physics.utoronto.ca/~poppitz/Jobs94-08.pdf
It shows that in the last 15 years, Cornell produced 8 HET professors, while JHU produced 3.

kittycat
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Re: Cornell vs. Johns Hopkins - help?

Post by kittycat » Sun Apr 11, 2010 1:17 am

Mataka wrote:
kittycat wrote:
Mataka wrote:About your pros and cons, when you say ''theory group'' I'm guessing you're talking about the HEP theory group ? well I could be wrong, but I do think that the theory group of Cornell is much better than the theory group of JHU...I'm curious why you would say the converse ?
This is just the impression I got from talking to professors at my own school and a few other schools I visited. One of my good friends is a HEP theory student, and he agrees that Cornell's theory program is terrible.
Well, hopefully someone can back me up here, but I honestly think that most people in the HEP-TH community would say that the theory group of Cornell is better than JHU. Here is something that may convince you: http://www.physics.utoronto.ca/~poppitz/Jobs94-08.pdf
It shows that in the last 15 years, Cornell produced 8 HET professors, while JHU produced 3.

I don't think that really is an accurate way to judge the quality of a program. There is a difference between quality and quantity. Yes, Cornell has a large number of HET faculty, but how good are they? Johns Hopkins has a few well known theorists/phenomenologists, including Raman Sundrum and Jonathan Bagger. As a counterexample, consider Rutgers, whose theory faculty are better than Cornell, yet they only hired 4 HET professors recently. Also you need to consider the size of the school. Cornell is huge in comparison to JH.

Anyway, I don't think it matters too much in terms of my decision how good the theory program is. I care mainly about the presence of phenomenologists who actively work with experimentalists. I have some very reliable sources (ie a well known phenomenologist and a few unbiased experimentalists active in the field) who agree that JHU has a stronger HET department at least in terms of phenomenology.

dgiraffes
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Re: Cornell vs. Johns Hopkins - help?

Post by dgiraffes » Sun Apr 11, 2010 2:57 am

I have to agree with the others that Cornell's theory group is better than John Hopkins. I think Cornell is actually one of the best places to study high energy theory.

And for high energy experiment, I think again Cornell is one of the best places to study. I would definitely not question the "quality of research" there. The group joined CMS late because they have been involved with CLEO, an experiment on the Cornell campus. But they are very involved in software, analysis, and upgrades for the detector. In fact Cornell basically rewrote the entire CMS software. Also, since they have been working on CLEO for so many years they have a huge infrastructure of experts on high energy computing, accelerators, and so on. They do have two "junior" faculty, but they are very very good and I would actually say this is a plus. Younger faculty tend to take more students and are very active in research.

So I think the "cons" for Cornell are actually both pros.

physics43
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Re: Cornell vs. Johns Hopkins - help?

Post by physics43 » Sun Apr 11, 2010 9:16 am

kittycat wrote: I don't think that really is an accurate way to judge the quality of a program. There is a difference between quality and quantity. Yes, Cornell has a large number of HET faculty, but how good are they? Johns Hopkins has a few well known theorists/phenomenologists, including Raman Sundrum and Jonathan Bagger. As a counterexample, consider Rutgers, whose theory faculty are better than Cornell, yet they only hired 4 HET professors recently. Also you need to consider the size of the school. Cornell is huge in comparison to JH.

Anyway, I don't think it matters too much in terms of my decision how good the theory program is. I care mainly about the presence of phenomenologists who actively work with experimentalists. I have some very reliable sources (ie a well known phenomenologist and a few unbiased experimentalists active in the field) who agree that JHU has a stronger HET department at least in terms of phenomenology.
I would also agree with the others and say that Cornell's theory group is way better. And actually, the counter example you give is very weak since I also think that the theory group of Cornell is better than Rutgers. Here is a ranking that came out a few years ago:

"Elementary particles/fields/string theory"
1. Princeton University (NJ)
2. California Institute of Technology
3. Stanford University (CA)
4. Harvard University (MA)
5. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
6. University of California–Berkeley
7. University of Chicago
8. University of California–Santa Barbara
9. Cornell University (NY)
10. University of Michigan–Ann Arbor
11. Columbia University (NY)
12. University of Wisconsin–Madison
13. Rutgers State University–New Brunswick (NJ)
14. University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign
15. SUNY–Stony Brook
16. University of Texas–Austin
17. University of Washington

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grae313
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Re: Cornell vs. Johns Hopkins - help?

Post by grae313 » Sun Apr 11, 2010 9:45 am

kittycat wrote:Cornell - quality of research is questionable (impression I got from what professors at other schools said about the program)
What else are they going to say to have a chance at recruiting you? Cornell is clearly the best school you got admitted to.

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sergei
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Re: Cornell vs. Johns Hopkins - help?

Post by sergei » Sun Apr 11, 2010 10:32 am

Cornell doesn't even have hep-th faculty ( by hep-th, i mean hardcore String Theory, Supergravity stuff, TMG,... ) but Cornell has awesome phenomenologists. So, since you are in hep-ex, I think Cornell is way better than JH. However, if, at any point, you'd want to do hep-th, there is no way you could do it in Cornell ( only possibility is McAllister, who is, I believe no better that John Begger, or Sundrum ).
So, if you believe you might want to do a little bit of work in hep-th at some point, my suggestion would be to choose JH.
However, I don't really think that you will switch to CM, or hep-th all the way from Hep-ex, but i believe you might want to o a little bit of hep-ph at some point. Thus, I strongly recommend you to choose Cornell.

P.S: Rutgers is probably one of the best places to do String theory. I'd never compare Cornell an Rutgers in hep-th, BUT, aside from Strings, Cornell is way better!!!

physics43
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Re: Cornell vs. Johns Hopkins - help?

Post by physics43 » Sun Apr 11, 2010 10:56 am

sergei wrote:Cornell doesn't even have hep-th faculty ( by hep-th, i mean hardcore String Theory, Supergravity stuff, TMG,... ) but Cornell has awesome phenomenologists. So, since you are in hep-ex, I think Cornell is way better than JH. However, if, at any point, you'd want to do hep-th, there is no way you could do it in Cornell ( only possibility is McAllister, who is, I believe no better that John Begger, or Sundrum ).
So, if you believe you might want to do a little bit of work in hep-th at some point, my suggestion would be to choose JH.
However, I don't really think that you will switch to CM, or hep-th all the way from Hep-ex, but i believe you might want to o a little bit of hep-ph at some point. Thus, I strongly recommend you to choose Cornell.

P.S: Rutgers is probably one of the best places to do String theory. I'd never compare Cornell an Rutgers in hep-th, BUT, aside from Strings, Cornell is way better!!!
Last time I checked John Bagger and Raman Sundrum are not string theorists (especially with your tight definition of hep-th), their research is much closer to phenomenology-model building. So even if you wanted to do Hep-th, I think you would still be better off at Cornell.



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