What's better: paper rejected from a strong conference or a paper accepted into a weak conference?

Question

What would be better for a PhD admission?

I'd suspect having a weak conference paper would certainly be the better option, but my supervisor was very adamant about not sending it to a weak conference, that a strong one would be preferable, even if rejected. And I think the chances of it being accepted into this strong conference he has in mind are practically zero.

Edit: Just to clarify, by "PhD admission", I mean being accepted into a PhD program, to which I intend to apply. I'm currently a M.Sc. student.

Answer 1

It's easy to get a paper rejected from a strong conference - just submit something written in gibberish. Getting accepted is a different matter since it implies your paper meets some minimum standard. Therefore it's better to be accepted by a weak conference than rejected from a strong conference.

Your situation however is different. You have an advisor (i.e. someone who is much more experienced in the field than you) who thinks you should submit to the strong conference. You judge the odds of acceptance as minute, but your advisor clearly doesn't think they are minute, or he would not recommend you submit there. Your advisor is more likely to be right than you are simply because he is much more experienced than you, so you should follow their recommendation.

Note that getting rejected from a strong conference does not mean you will not be accepted by the weak conference; you probably still can get accepted there (if it is a recurring conference).

Answer 2

If you plan to apply for a PhD in 2+ years, I would submit to the strong conference. If your current advisor is pushing for you submit to a top conference and has previously published in top conferences, he may have better insight as to whether it will be accepted. I would first submit to the conference your advisor has in mind, and if it gets rejected, you can later submit to a weaker conference.

Depending on your field and the type of PhD program you're applying to, often times many students may not have publications when applying. If I were on a PhD committee, I would of course look for research experience. However, I would not judge a candidate who has a paper accepted at a conference with an acceptance rate of 75%+ to be superior to another candidate with similar experience.

Answer 3

A possibility no one has yet mentioned: your advisor may be planning to write in your letter of recommendation “we wrote this paper that was so great we submitted it to...”

From this purpose, it’s irrelevant whether the paper is rejected or not!

Answer 4

The premise that getting rejected from a top conference is worth anything at all is ridiculous. To be rejected, all you need to do is submit something, even gibberish as @Allure’s answer suggests. This is no achievement whatsoever, and to submit something you think would definitely get rejected just so you can say you submitted to a top conference is an abuse of the academic publishing/conference system, and on top of that, one that doesn’t actually confer any advantage. It is only reasonable to submit to a top conference if you see a chance (even a small chance) of the work getting accepted.

One can debate whether the low-ranked conference you might consider submitting to instead of the top conference would help with your PhD applications — it is true that for certain predatory or junk conferences the opposite would be the case. But for a legitimate conference with real standards, even if they are not the highest you can find, getting your paper accepted there would count at least as a modest achievement.

One can also debate whether a small chance of getting accepted to a top conference is better than a higher chance of getting accepted at a not so well-ranked conference. Those types of questions definitely deserve careful consideration. But as I said, a rejection from a top conference is by itself worth nothing, and thus by definition is an inferior “achievement” to anything else whose value isn’t strictly negative.

Answer 5

Any accepted publication is better than no publication.

However, strong conferences usually have good reviewers providing useful feedback that will help you to get the paper in shape for another strong conference.

Answer 6

What do you mean by PhD admission, Dan? If you are at the MSc stage and looking to get onto a PhD programme, then having produced a paper worth consideration is already a nice plus. Timing is critical - if the paper is still in submission when the decision is taken, the prestige of the conference itself is more significant than the paper's ultimate fate.

If you are talking about one of several papers submitted to obtain a PhD, the situation is more delicate and rather depends on the mores and prejudices of the field you are in. But some general considerations are: (1) The thesis is to be judged on its quality, independent of the publication status of its parts. (2) Having been published is obviously a plus, having been publicised in a reputable place all the more. (3) Many people feel every paper should be submitted to the most prestigious journal and or conference where it has a smidgen of a chance (with people having widely varying opinions on how much that smidgen should be!).

Reading between the lines, by the way, it sounds to me like you might have dredged up a rather fly-by-night conference and your advisor said something like fergossakes don't even bother.