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Whoo, questionnaires!

Where do you go and what made you pick that place? University College London. I got my first degree here, I knew people in the research group from my time as an undergraduate. As cities go: London >> Oxford. I briefly considered US study, then decided that the GREs are a pain in the arse, and I get paid better here.
What are you studying? Experimental high-energy physics
Best thing about your program: Best thing? Well, I'm in the control room at CDF as I post this, having just turned the detector off before the Tevatron shutdown. I get to live in Chicago while I get paid in GBP and the exchange rate is very awesome. XD
Worst thing about your program: The hours… and the fact that you can spend little time doing physics and rather spend more time fixing all the ******** bugs in your analysis code. And ROOT; ROOT is evil. [I also only have funding for four years study.]
What are your plans after completing your program? Postdoctoral research, quant or perhaps I'll just become a bum.
Anything else to add? I like cheese. In all seriousness, my comments about long hours will be true of all graduate programmes.

at my university if you are going to go into physics (at least I don't know about the other porgrams) you get funded for 6 years.

I have to say I'm considering doing my Phd in Maynooth, Ireland. it's the same college I'm in for undergrad but their Hamilton institute is top notch, especially for what I'll be looking into.

Well, I already had the equivalent [ish] of a Masters degree [MSci] upon finishing as an undergraduate [a four year course]. Had I only got a Bachelors [BSc, three years] then the normal process is to complete a further years study to get a separate Masters [MSc] before you can start a PhD. Assuming the opening years are the same

I can't explain why the system is how it is.

Where do you go and what made you pick that place?
I went to the University of Oregon. I had been working at an ISP and decided to take an abstract algebra class for fun. The instructor talked me into going back to school, and I eventually graduated after 7 years(as of about two months ago) with my PhD.
What are you studying?
I studied mathematics. I guess my specialty has become Clifford-Weyl algebras (not to be confused with either Clifford algebras or Weyl algebras-- Clifford-Weyl algebras are generalizations of Clifford algebras that are defined over Z2-graded vector spaces)
Best thing about your program:
Lots of good things-- good (and caring) professors (I had a great advisor too). Nice co-workers and society. A decent level of rigor.
Worst thing about your program:
An almost a complete lack of counselling. (partially my own fault), but a symptom of this problem is instructive: my advisor went to Canada to study symplectic geometry for a year without telling me in advance. That made things tricky, and set me back aways.
What are your plans after completing your program?
I worked as a visiting professor for a year up at Reed college, as I finished up my dissertation (we had discovered a problem with it just a few days before I was originally scheduled to defend, and it destroyed the entire argument-- it took me another year to fix it, and I'd run out of funding). Now, like most things in my life, I'm doing something barely related to my program and working a bioinformatics postdoc, but it's great place to work, and it looks as if I might be on to something really interesting, so I'm quite content.

Anything else to add?
Try to get an advisor who has already had at least a few students and be CERTAIN you know all the steps you need to complete to earn your degree. Don't let anything sneak up on you.

I've spent the last year swiping notes online from US colleges that don't secure their material, and I've found little evidence to back up my assertion above . So it seems the rumours were wrong. And the word on the street is (according to a friend of mine who participated in an exchange programme this year) you guys have to put a lot more work/time into your undergrad courses. It's all anecdotal evidence but I enthusiastically retract that post I wrote almost a year ago.

Out of curiosity: How many years does your undergrad entail?

The recent 3rd level institution league tables are a little disheartening (for me). Ireland used to have a good educational reputation, but colleges and universities here seem to be suffering the same problems that have plagued many U.S. highchools: Placing greater emphasis on the preservation of self-esteem than on genuine hard work and acheivement. Any masters qualification I get from Trinity simply won't carry as much international weight as it used to because of this.

It's a shame really. One of the main reasons my family moved to this country was because I could receive the equivalent of an Ivy league education at a fraction of the cost. But that doesn't seem to be the case anymore. And what's more, colleges and universities in the states (Especially New England, where I used to live) are offering more and more impressive bursaries and scholarships.

*shrug* oh well. *Makes a paper plane out of degree parchment.* rolleyes