Pretty much. I got my PhD from the same school and department as the author. The only thing I would say though is it&#x27;s more like &quot;this is what a PhD is like at a good research group&#x2F;department&quot;. There are a few excellent researchers at &quot;non-elite&quot; schools where I have friends doing very well, publishing in top journals, and being extremely productive. There are also people at &quot;elite&quot; schools doing not so well because their research direction just isn&#x27;t that school&#x27;s forte or they didn&#x27;t encounter the right group of people for their own passions.<p>In any case, when I applied to grad school, my strategy wasn&#x27;t really to apply to safety schools after the competitive schools. Instead I applied simultaneously to competitive schools as well as several companies, and decided that if I didn&#x27;t get into a PhD program at a place I liked, I was going to go to industry or industry research instead.