It is somewhat of xy problem too, so please read the post for more details.
A bit about my background - I am currently doing Bachelours of Technology (last semester) from a somewhat reputed university. (If you belive in those sham rankings - it is in top 200 in world).
I want to do a doctorate (and stay in academia/research, not interested in industry). I am still not fixated on a particular research field (intersted by many things) but I have a strong inclanation towards one, so currently that only.
One option is to do phd in my current uni only, but thing is that my uni is not that great in terms of research (can be generalised to country as well to some extent) - mostly it comes down to lack of funding and lack of students interested in doing research, most people are interested in joing some or other industry.
Other option is to go abroad. Considering the current environment, my current preference would be "Europe only".
From what I know, doing a doctorate in most european schools requires masters.
Also before anybody says this - I know for doctorate, the school matters less, and a good supervisor matters more. I understand this, but I can not really find any way to find a good supervisor. Maybe it is my ignorance, but I have never really paid attention to any names, and If I staart looking up names, there are tons. Also, I don't really know how to rate people. One thing would be to find someone with my interests, and ask them, but I do not know anyone. One is to rank them by their publications, but that definitely does not feel right to me. Some people just have a easier chance to get in bigger journals. I know at the end of the day, citations do not depend much on journal, but still it does not feel right. Also, most newer profs are definitely handicapped here (because they just have not had enough time to get enough citations, or may be their research may not be justly appreciated)
Another thing is, I would prefer to do masters in the same institution in which i would be potentially doing my phd, mostly because I do not want to spend a lot of time relocating (I am lazy).
Another thing is - I would really prefer a school where there is no or low academic fees (for low, lets say 1000-1500 Euros, because that is roughly what I pay currently). I do not really want to burden my parents anymore, and not having to pay a exorbident amount would be a great help.
I have done some lookup - in europe, from what I can find, it is mostly german uni which are offering no tution fees (I know that is not a general statement, for example I checked TU Munich has my prefered interest as masters program, and also no tution fees, but there are more)
I have tried doing "interest" phd and "interest" masters and a billion results come, mostly reasearch groups - but they all seem good to me.
One way to compare is use the said "sham" rankings. I think they do a good-sh job in rough categorisation, for example if they say some school is top 10, and some school is 1000+, I would generally accept that (but I think in that sense, most people would be able to tell that, sometimes just by having a look). But how their rankings swing wildly for some schools, where nothing really changed, and also, they don't put out weights for individual components, they say they use n number of components to judge, and also claim n components have n different wieghts, but we don't know them. They also sometimes give subject/domain wise rankings, which is better, but there is still a fundamental problem - their sources for ranking, and being private ventures, potential for being swayed by "some people" is deal breaker for me. So I can not blindly depend on them. I would much rather prefer human opinion on forums. Reddit has helped to some extent - but there are definitely both sides of opinions present, and I can not compare.
Also if anybody wants to know how did i choose when I did for bachelours - well I did not choose. In our country we have a nation wide entrance exam, for our best schools, and you are alloted based on ranking in that exam. So only choice I had made was to give that exam.
I want to know both - in general - how to compare different schools/supervisors and more specific to me - what should I do (for this part, name of schools/programs would be helpful)