Does it matter where I do my PhD?

[Steve J]

I'm currently in my third year (out of four) of study as a Mathematics undergrad at Cambridge. I plan to do a PhD afterwards but I'm doubtful that I'll be admitted to one of the big four (as in the four largest and most prestigious UK mathematics departments: Cambridge, Oxford, Warwick and Imperial) and so I'll probably end up going to somewhere like Bath, Bristol or maybe Edinburgh; all good Universities and home to good faculty, but not in the same league as Oxbridge (certainly not for undergrad, anyway). If I do my PhD at one of these places, will it hurt my chances of getting a good job as a quant?

My tutors tell me that among the top ten departments in the UK, the differences in ability between PhD students are actually quite small (excluding a few rare geniuses) and if I go on to apply for an academic position then provided I write a good thesis, this won't matter particularly. This seems reasonable: althought it's rare, there are a few mathematicians working in Cambridge (which I naively interpret as meaning that they're good) who have got their doctorates from a UK but non-COWI institution; but I'm also aware that investment banking isn't academia and branding and prestige are likely to be important. Will they be suspicious of a PhD from Bath, say?

Maybe it's just a hang-up I have: it feels wrong doing a PhD at a place where you'd have a hard time walking into a FO position as a recent graduate.

Thanks!

 

[Oxer]

opinion: you should manage to end up at one of the big 4 unless you are like failing at cam. second, you should try to get into the big 4, it would definitely be suspicious to see you land from cam to bath or something.

another opinion: why are you looking at a PhD? you could probably land a job right out of cam, or go for an msc perhaps. oxford mfe?

 

[Steve J]

opinion: you should manage to end up at one of the big 4 unless you are like failing at cam. second, you should try to get into the big 4, it would definitely be suspicious to see you land from cam to bath or something.

Failing is relative I should walk out with a first, but it'll be a low to mid-first as opposed to top-10 or something. This is very unlikely to be high enough to get me in at Oxford, Cambridge or Imperial, especially with the current funding climate (I've emailed various people about this and they all reply with the same answer). Shame too, as even a 2.i from Cambridge is an unbelievably strong degree. But I agree, going elsewhere could look like a big step down.

another opinion: why are you looking at a PhD? you could probably land a job right out of cam, or go for an msc perhaps. oxford mfe?

I just enjoy it: I'll have a great time spending 3 years doing a PhD before starting my career.

 

[Barny]

First of all, you need to drop your insufferable attitude with respect to Cambridge. I can firstly tell you that the sun doesn't shine out of Cambridge's arse, and that Cambridge graduates aren't head and shoulders above the rest of the country's graduates, as your tutors mention (even the one's who didn't do their undergrads at Oxbridge).

After that, you should forget about collecting brand names and aim to be good at what you do. The two are rarely synonymous.

 

[Steve J]

I can firstly tell you that the sun doesn't shine out of Cambridge's arse, and that Cambridge graduates aren't head and shoulders above the rest of the country's graduates, as your tutors mention (even the one's who didn't do their undergrads at Oxbridge).

After that, you should forget about collecting brand names and aim to be good at what you do. The two are rarely synonymous.

I agree with both of your points: my concern is that the recruiters don't have this attitude. I really don't know how recruitment works in the city.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

DominiConnor is a recruiter in the City. You can search for his previous posting with that keywords to get some insight.

 

[Barny]

I agree with both of your points: my concern is that the recruiters don't have this attitude. I really don't know how recruitment works in the city.

Brand names are important. The thing is, there are many universities other than Oxbridge that impress city recruiters, and you already have a BA (Cantab), so you have more flexibility. And really, you'll have to work on being more convincing when it comes to your attitude

 

[Steve J]

DominiConnor is a recruiter in the City. You can search for his previous posting with that keywords to get some insight.

Thanks for the reply. I'll have a look.

 

[bigbadwolf]

After that, you should forget about collecting brand names and aim to be good at what you do. The two are rarely synonymous.

I agree but in status-conscious Britain it does matter. Not only in the City but in academia as well. Shouldn't be this way but it is.

 

[Oxer]

First of all, you need to drop your insufferable attitude with respect to Cambridge. I can firstly tell you that the sun doesn't shine out of Cambridge's arse, and that Cambridge graduates aren't head and shoulders above the rest of the country's graduates, as your tutors mention (even the one's who didn't do their undergrads at Oxbridge).

After that, you should forget about collecting brand names and aim to be good at what you do. The two are rarely synonymous.

I disgree sir, Cambridge grads are indeed head and shoulders above the rest of the country's grads. At least that is what admission officers and recruiters I have talked to in Britain say.

 

[Oxer]

Failing is relative I should walk out with a first, but it'll be a low to mid-first as opposed to top-10 or something. This is very unlikely to be high enough to get me in at Oxford, Cambridge or Imperial, especially with the current funding climate (I've emailed various people about this and they all reply with the same answer). Shame too, as even a 2.i from Cambridge is an unbelievably strong degree. But I agree, going elsewhere could look like a big step down.

I just enjoy it: I'll have a great time spending 3 years doing a PhD before starting my career.

exactly, a 2:1 is a very strong degree out of Cambridge. Take my word for it, at least Warwick and Imperial will be little trouble . That is where branding gets you in the U.K but its not all branding, an upper first class at a rigorous course is solid.

 

[bigbadwolf]

I disgree sir, Cambridge grads are indeed head and shoulders above the rest of the country's grads. At least that is what admission officers and recruiters I have talked to in Britain say.

That's my opinion as well, at least with regard to pure math. The courses are structured and taught far better. I went to King's College London and the courses were a joke. In number theory the prof was in the USA for half the semester and left the teaching to an unprepared PhD student of his. In Galois theory, the lecturer was copying verbatim from Stewart and Tall's book on the subject. In algebraic geometry, the lecturer didn't know the subject himself and was using someone else's lecture notes. At the MSc level both the Lie groups and algebraic topology courses were an utter joke, not even comparable to Cambridge Part 2 courses -- let alone the far more demanding Part 3 courses. Imperial was a bit of an improvement (the MSc was intercollegiate at that time) but still far from the stellar standard of Cambridge. The brand name isn't coming from nowhere: it has to be maintained. The courses are superior, the lecturers and professors are on average far superior, and the students on average are far superior.

 

[Steve J]

Thanks for all the replies. I've had a look on LinkedIn and maybe I shouldn't worry too much, it does like it can be done even though I suspect it'll be harder. If I want to go down the academic route at some point, this is pretty encouraging: http://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/contact/details/henderson

 

[Barny]

I disgree sir, Cambridge grads are indeed head and shoulders above the rest of the country's grads. At least that is what admission officers and recruiters I have talked to in Britain say.

As a Cambridge alumnus, I'm telling you it's not true.

 

[Barny]

The courses are superior, the lecturers and professors are on average far superior, and the students on average are far superior.

Again, as someone who did part III, I can tell you that's incorrect. The lectures are on the whole dreadful - and the only difference between the students at Cambridge and other Russell Group unis is that BA-Cantabs really believe their own hype, despite having little evidence for their superiority other than doing well at (ridiculously easy) A-levels. One difference is that maybe the lecturers are better on average, but there are pockets of excellence at other UK universities too. It's neither here nor there anyway. How good your prof is at research has no impact on you when he's delivering a 24 lecture course on stuff he learnt 30 years ago. If you're doing cutting edge research - probably useful, but you won't be doing that in your undergrad years.

 

[Andy R]

Again, as someone who did part III, I can tell you that's incorrect. The lectures are on the whole dreadful - and the only difference between the students at Cambridge and other Russell Group unis is that BA-Cantabs really believe their own hype, despite having little evidence for their superiority other than doing well at (ridiculously easy) A-levels. One difference is that maybe the lecturers are better on average, but there are pockets of excellence at other UK universities too. It's neither here nor there anyway. How good your prof is at research has no impact on you when he's delivering a 24 lecture course on stuff he learnt 30 years ago. If you're doing cutting edge research - probably useful, but you won't be doing that in your undergrad years.

Hard to say. I thought there was a big step up going from Bristol BA to Oxford MFoCS: the work was much more demanding and the pace was faster. I did object to the exams though as they seemed to expect obscene amounts of scholarship over problem solving; while that's necessary and useful "in-the-wild", I still maintain that it's more important for a mathematician to be able to present a creative solution to a tough problem than have an encyclopedic memory. When you're expected to know a proof that takes up about 100 pages in your notes (Classification of Complex Semisimple Lie Algebras, for example) it gets a bit silly. Quality of the students? Right at the top end, there did seem to be some freakishly clever people (as in, some of the guys doing finite group theory, jeebus...) and the average standard was very high: I met some great guys. But again, who can say? In the end, I guess it doesn't really matter.

 

[bigbadwolf]

Again, as someone who did part III, I can tell you that's incorrect. The lectures are on the whole dreadful - and the only difference between the students at Cambridge and other Russell Group unis is that BA-Cantabs really believe their own hype, despite having little evidence for their superiority other than doing well at (ridiculously easy) A-levels. One difference is that maybe the lecturers are better on average, but there are pockets of excellence at other UK universities too. It's neither here nor there anyway. How good your prof is at research has no impact on you when he's delivering a 24 lecture course on stuff he learnt 30 years ago. If you're doing cutting edge research - probably useful, but you won't be doing that in your undergrad years.

I can only speak for pure math. Part III and the post-Part III courses bridge the gap (or used to, in my day) between undergrad courses and research frontiers. The courses in algebraic topology, algebraic geometry, number theory, representation theory, elliptic curves, and so on did just that. The MSc courses at London -- even if they had the same title -- never came close. The London courses were a diffident intro to the area; the Cambridge courses assumed you'd had an intro during your Part II and were now prepared for the real thing. For example the London MSc course on Riemann surfaces didn't even cover the crucial Riemann-Roch theorem -- that would be inconceivable at Cambridge.

Yes, I agree completely that there are pockets of excellence at other universities -- but that's precisely the point. They're not excellent overall. Thus in my day QMW had a rep for group theory and many Cambridge wranglers would go there for their PhDs.

The two key words I should use to qualify my contentions are ceteris paribus -- "other things equal." I doubt any of us quibbling here will argue that ceteris paribus Oxbridge grants an edge -- we're probably only arguing about the extent of the edge.

 

[Barny]

I can only speak for pure math. Part III and the post-Part III courses bridge the gap (or used to, in my day) between undergrad courses and research frontiers. The courses in algebraic topology, algebraic geometry, number theory, representation theory, elliptic curves, and so on did just that. The MSc courses at London -- even if they had the same title -- never came close. The London courses were a diffident intro to the area; the Cambridge courses assumed you'd had an intro during your Part II and were now prepared for the real thing. For example the London MSc course on Riemann surfaces didn't even cover the crucial Riemann-Roch theorem -- that would be inconceivable at Cambridge.

Yes, I agree completely that there are pockets of excellence at other universities -- but that's precisely the point. They're not excellent overall. Thus in my day QMW had a rep for group theory and many Cambridge wranglers would go there for their PhDs.

The two key words I should use to qualify my contentions are ceteris paribus -- "other things equal." I doubt any of us quibbling here will argue that ceteris paribus Oxbridge grants an edge -- we're probably only arguing about the extent of the edge.

I don't know what the sate of Algebraic Geometry et. al. are like, but the QFT and AQFT course at Cambridge are nowhere near the cutting edge of modern quantum field theory. There is a significant jump from the part III course to research.

And as Andy R said, the amount of bookwork you need to know to do well in a Cantab exam is truly staggering. My part III QFT exam - you could have scored 100/100 just by learning all the proofs and definitions in the notes verbatim. No problem solving ability or brain power required.

 

[bigbadwolf]

I don't know what the sate of Algebraic Geometry et. al. are like, but the QFT and AQFT course at Cambridge are nowhere near the cutting edge of modern quantum field theory. There is a significant jump from the part III course to research.

I'm looking at the Part III math courses for 2011-2012 here:

http://www.maths.cam.ac.uk/postgrad/mathiii/descriptions.pdf

It remains impressive. I doubt any other school in Britain is offering so many worthwhile high-standard math courses. And even to be prepared to take these assumes a very thorough undergraduate training.

 

[Barny]

I'm looking at the Part III math courses for 2011-2012 here:

http://www.maths.cam.ac.uk/postgrad/mathiii/descriptions.pdf

It remains impressive. I doubt any other school in Britain is offering so many worthwhile high-standard math courses. And even to be prepared to take these assumes a very thorough undergraduate training.

What is your argument? 50% of people doing part III come from universities other than cantab. The fact that cantab admits them and thinks they'll be able to cope is testament to the fact that Cambridge's standard of education is not head and shoulders above decent courses at other decent UK universities, and that those who do well in said courses will be able to cope just fine with part III or a cantab phd.

And as I mentioned, what courses they offer is frankly superfluous, and is often at the whim of the faculty. One course some of my friends took last year repeated the part II course for 50% of the material, and the other 50% was the lecturers personal way of solving a particular differential equation encountered in medical imaging. That's a far cry from the standard of the part III black holes course, for example. There is no standardisation. You cannot add apples to oranges. The courses are not universally good, or challenging.

And further to my original point, if you offer a course on string theory but the only questions you get asked are bookwork, what is the point in that? Sure, you've memorise some equations and derivations, but have you learnt how to be a professional mathematician or physicist, more so than at any other institution? No. And that ultimately is the point of a masters course.

I can hands down say I'd be much more impressed with someone who has a 2:1 at a russell group uni but has done a decent undergraduate/masters project than someone who got a distinction in part III, where you do no original research or project.