If you wanted to specialize in another subfield

[Catria]

... what schools would you have considered but didn't? Alternatively, what schools would you have crossed off your list?

This question is addressed to those who once contemplated a different subfield while applying to PhD programs, or those already in a PhD program.

I'll start: if I wanted to become a particle experimentalist (rather than a theoretical particle cosmologist), I would have applied to Yale without fail, and I wouldn't have considered WUSTL, Vanderbilt or Dartmouth at all.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

I would have applied to Yale without fail, and I wouldn't have considered WUSTL, Vanderbilt or Dartmouth at all.

Why is that?

 

[Catria]

Yale had what I would want in an experimental particle group, while WUSTL, Dartmouth had no particle experimentalist at all, and I hated CMS (hence no Vanderbilt and no Minnesota either)