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συγχίς-sygchis

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  1. When I was picking a grad program, I was very much interested in community tone, and it played an important role in my final choice. That said, with hindsight I'd probably try to break down the issue a bit. I think I'd try to distinguish between parts of the 'sense of community' that are related to structural components/ issues of the program, and those that are purely a product of the personalities of the group of grad students. (Of course, the two are in many ways inseparable.) But the parts directly related to structural factors (like: people fighting over funding; or conversely, a robust program-run mentorship program for new TAs) are probably more lasting than those related to individual personalities. Because-- and here's the hindsight part-- the social tone of a grad program can (and in my experience did) change from year to year. It's because the people who set the tone for the program are usually those in coursework, and if you figure three years of coursework, it means that 1/3 of the department is new each year. When I'm around in my department now, there are lots and lots of people I don't really know-- and the group dynamic feels pretty different to me than it did in my first year. The people who were most important in my grad experience, furthermore, were those in my specific cohort. But of course, it is often impossible to know ahead of time who's going to be in your cohort. So, that also complicates things. I also think that a grad program's community is sort of an "l'État, c'est moi" situation: once you get into a program, you actually have a tremendous power to shape the social community, because it pretty much depends on you-- so even if the current grad students aren't organizing group happy hours or trivia nights, that doesn't mean that you can't. Of course, I don't mean to ignore the possibility of walking into a situation that is truly an uncomfortable fit-- but just to say that my own observations about program climate during interviews and visits assumed a greater degree of diachronic stability than I have actually experienced.
  2. Yes- I am just now looking at the UNC link you posted @pro Augustis (thanks!)- good for them for the transparency. That's a strong model for other programs. The attrition question is really a hard one. I mean, life happens for people in different ways, and so while high attrition can reflect underlying problems in a department, it can also be a statistical blip. It is just hard to say. Anyway, I didn't mean to side-track this conversation about decisions. It is just that we so often discuss 'placement' in kind of unnuanced ways that gloss over problems with discipline-wide reporting, as well as the complexities of our tiny little academic universe. Good luck to everyone making choices, though!
  3. This is good information for programs to be providing, and it makes me glad to hear. Nothing this specific was provided by any of the schools to which I was accepted (although that was now a fair number of years ago). At most I was given general statistics, "we've had x number of graduates, of whom y% are in TT jobs." But, nevertheless, department-provided statistics are still not the same as a discipline-wide survey-- and there is a fair amount of wiggle room even in the seemingly straightforward numbers. For research and discussion about the German job market that reveals some of the complexities of this situation, see the series of posts here: http://zugunglueck.blogspot.com/2014/03/how-job-market-in-german-really-works.html I suppose the thing I've realized is this: the job market issues become less and less clear-cut, the more information you have. I'm torn, because I truly believe that we need better data about job placement for our field, and more conversation about what post-PhD life looks like in this era of contracting higher education hiring. But at the same time, the number of graduates in our discipline is and always will be so very small, and extrapolating from this data seems quite risky to me-- departments also change quite fast, so the results of a student 7 years earlier might not have much bearing at all on your own experience. In any case, I don't have any real answers, just some reflections about how my own perspective has changed over the last few years.
  4. So, here's the problem: there is no comprehensive placement data for our field. If you ask, you typically get anecdotal data from faculty or grad students that is selectively incomplete, and that can't be compared to a discipline-wide benchmark of any type. With most people now spending several years in VAPs/ postdocs/ non T-T jobs before perhaps landing a T-T job, it becomes very difficult to track the actual placement rates of programs. Furthermore, the small size of cohorts means that there are not a lot of data points even for the main schools, so generalizing is difficult. And finally, many (many!) people end up not going on the academic job market at the end of their PhDs, which further complicates the picture. To get a better sense of the job market world though, people should check out the Classics Wiki, which lists the recipients of jobs and their PhD institutions. Names are mostly not up for this season yet, but are for last season. Of particular interest: scroll down to the bottom and look at who is getting short-term and VAP contracts: these tend to be the more recently graduated people. But to be fair, even after being on the job market, I find this data really hard to interpret.
  5. Hi everyone, I just wanted to jump in on this- I'm an advanced ABD student at a strong program. I'd argue that the situation really is as rough as some are suggesting, and I feel that it is incumbent on current ABD students to speak up and offer our perspectives, although I'm not doom-and-gloom all the way. I'm quite happy with my choices up to this point. I am in a pleasant department, have supportive faculty, a dissertation that I have enjoyed working on, and great financial support. But I also know that the hard part is yet to come-- the job market. I want to second what Sappho said about watching friends who have been superstars all through grad school crash on the job market. It is absolutely frightening- and I've seen it happen every year that I've been here. There are, of course, people who are successful on the market. But there are many who aren't, and the difference between the two groups is not always clear from my point of view (so, grad students who are, as far as I can tell, good scholars, respected and collegial members of the community, and who have significant research output and teaching experience nevertheless fail to find TT jobs even after applying widely 3 or 4 years in a row). What distinguishes the successful from the not-successful seems to be luck, as much as anything else. Maybe, of course, there's some quality that hiring committees can see that I can't-- it is totally possible-- but I have no idea what that may be, or whether I myself have it. I think that this is a very important point to emphasize, because it speaks against the narrative that things will work out if you're a strong student. They might work out, but it's far from a sure thing. And, we're still shy/ embarrassed about discussing alt-ac careers, so there's a lack of open communication about these opportunities. As I am about to embark on my first year on the market next season, all of this is deeply sobering. While I understand that some people are pursuing a PhD out of personal interest, I entered hoping that I'd be able to make a career doing this, since I enjoy it and have spent the last n years getting quite good at it. When I applied to PhD programs, I was aware of the bad job market, as I can see that many of you are. But I'm not sure that I really appreciated how random the whole process is, or how very low the success rates are, even in a great program. Furthermore, in today's world, VAPs and post-docs are now the norm. But I'm not sure how often these lead to TT jobs, because it gets hard to keep track of people after they've been gone for 3 or 4 years (I mean, obviously I know where my close friends are, but I don't have a good grasp on the wider field). I am, however, completely certain that we're all working without real data, since statistics about post-graduation careers are so opaque-- this is really something that our field needs to address. For the time being, ABD students usually have the clearest sense of departmental track records in recent years (since we've been around longer than other students). Reach out and talk to us, even if we might not be around during interviews or visiting weekends as much as the grad students in earlier stages. Like I said at the beginning, I'm not wholly (or even mostly) negative about grad school- I've had a somewhat low-paying but stable job for the last years (low-paying relative to national statistics for college graduates, but comfortable to live on in the city where I am). And, it is a job that I've really enjoyed, which is worth a lot. But, what comes next-- the transition to a long-term career-- is really brutal, and we do our fields no favors by sugar-coating it.
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