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Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Prestige of university vs. the right supervisor

I am having trouble choosing between two offers that I have received for a PhD degree in a STEM field in the UK. I would appreciate any opinions that anyone might have - I'm sure that many others have been in a similar situation before.

My main two choices are: 

1. An established professor at Oxbridge, who is involved in research at several different universities and also writes books etc. so I can reasonably expect that he wouldn't be able to give me a lot of attention. His interests largely overlap with mine, although he also has started working on some other related fields which do not interest me. From his publication history I can see that he has an excellent record and is very active, but does not involve his students in many parts of his research. There are excellent postdocs in his group though.
1. A young associate professor who is a 100% match when it comes to my interests, and who was also recommended by my undergrad supervisor as a really nice guy. I believe that he only has 1 student at the moment so I'm sure that he would involve me in his research fully, which means both a great education and possibly more publications. The problem is that the university is only a top 40 one, with the professor's department getting excellent research ratings but still being held down by the overall reputation of the uni.

Honestly, if the choice was only between the two people, I would go for the younger professor as I prefer working in these conditions. However, the reputation of an Oxbridge degree with a distinguished academic is hard to pass by... Especially if I decide to leave academia later on, not many people will care about my supervisor if the university was not great. What do you think is the best way to approach this?
gpt
Advisor all the way.

Remember - when you come out of the PhD what counts is your personal output, not the institution you came from. Having an advisor who will champion you, introduce you to people, and get you up and running in your subfield is a golden ticket.