Question about getting a PhD

Newres

I recently finished my Msc and got offered a PhD studentship. I like the university, the city, the subject area in which I will be working on, everything basically. The only problem is that altough the subject in which I will be working is in the area of computer science (in which I got my Msc) it is the Lingustics departement's project so I would be getting my phd, if everything goes well, in Lingustics and not in C.S.

My question is will this matter ? I like the area in which I will be working and would not mind continuing with it in my future research but I do not want to cut off options. To be honest I have no idea how much the department in which you got the PhD will matter especially in relation to the thesis itself.

Rook

Departments don't matter, at all. Anybody looking to employ you because of your phd will be well aware of this and will be looking at your experience.

(I'm a biochemist doing my phd in an engineering department)

grungebox

I think it matters a little bit in a few ways. Just as background, I'm a year from finishing my PhD in electrical engineering, though my research would probably fall under applied physics or materials science at any other school, and in fact over half my lab is applied physics students. So in that sense I've had to deal with the departmental "label" issue a bit.

You should look at departmental requirements. Linguistics might require more or fewer classes or maybe forces you write a different qualifying exam or whatever. Applied physics at my school requires 9 classes total, electrical engineering requires 12 classes (which is a lot when you're researching 40 hours a week as well), so I was still taking class my fourth year while the other half of my lab wasn't. You might also be forced to defend your thesis to a different type of committee or whatever. I know you have your MSc but you may not know fully the differences in say, committee assignments between departments (can you choose the members, do they choose, what's the failure rate in Linguistics vs CS, that sort of thing).

If you are set on academia, then no the department has absolutely no bearing whatsoever. Academic positions care only about your work/publications, not the label you have. Rook is correct about that, 100%.