Your Road to a PhD

I'd like to call out some of the lurkers who read my blog to come forward and make some comments. I'm curious to find out what influences a student's decision for choice of graduate school in chemistry. So, if you have your PhD, are in a PhD program now, or going to join a PhD program soon, please tell me what was important for your choice of school. Was it location? Science? Stipend? What? Did family issues change your decision? Would you only look at schools on the coasts, or did you look across the middle of the country too? How influential were your undergraduate mentors? What about international studies? This would apply to those from the US going abroad as well as those from outside the US coming to America. And finally, what sources did you use to find graduate programs? Do you put any stock in the web sites that list rankings of graduate programs?