Canis

Hi Zhong, Hige was teasing you for not spelling it "St. Louis." Instead you wrote "St Louise" which is clearly a typo. I'm sorry I can't help, I don't know anything about these schools or programs, it's not my field. Good luck making the decision!

I saw the PhD program admission from the inside for a large university. The program was social science. In all the discussions the only mention of LOR authors was if someone on the faculty knew them personally, or if they were 'famous' in the field. Otherwise, the LORs were never discussed. The primary factor in the admissions process I witnessed was fit with the program's character and interests, and fit with specific professors. Profs would literally say "Yes, I'd work with her" - or "No, I couldn't see myself working with her" - that would make or break applications. There was never once a discussion of the content of LORs. That said, I do think they're very important. But for students applying to this program who were coming from jobs at the UN, or other NGOs, for example - all of their LORs were non-academic and I didn't hear a peep about it. I think the only disagreement you're seeing here is that I'm looking at it from social science. Obviously a social scientist will be interested in an LOR from an employer, will be interested in the narrative of the person's life. If you're looking at it from Behavioral Neuroscience, however, the only thing that will matter is someone with a PhD in the field or a closely related field who can speak about the applicants research abilities. Whereas in sociology, for example, someone's work experience outside the discipline might be important for their project - and their ability to do well at the job might indicate success in the field, especially in terms of fieldwork. So, like pretty much everything on this site, it seems to vary by discipline!

I've never seen an LOR form that asks for the LOR writers highest degree. They do ask for their title however. So if someone with a BA is the Chairperson of the Board for the Open Society Foundation - no one is going to care (or know) that they don't have an MA or PhD. This varies by discipline, but every FAQ I've read at universities about LORs states that if you have been in the 'working world' that letters from employers are fine. Yes, the letter should be from the person who is best qualified to write about your potential to succeed in the program. But a professor with a PhD who doesn't know the applicant will probably write a generic LOR and generic LORs are listed in the Kiss of Death study... So, while I think the ideal is the highest status person within the Academy who knows the applicant well - if there are high status people outside the Academy who know the applicant well and none available within - it would be better to go with the higher status referee outside the academy than the lower status person within who DOES have a PhD, such as an adjunct...

How do you politely decline an informal invitation to visit? I keep having great email exchanges with professors, potential POIs at all of the PhD programs I'm applying to. However, they repeatedly say that they're excited about my work, and encourage me to apply, and hope that I can come visit - and when I do they would arrange meetings for me with other faculty as well. However, I'm already spending over $500 just applying to these schools, and all of that is on credit cards. Coming out of an unfunded MA program (they don't fund anyone in this program) - I have no money, I actually have negative money. A lot of negative money. So, how do I politely decline these invitations to visit and meet. My instinct is to be honest and write something like: I do wish I could visit, however the high cost of education means I am unable to do so for the moment. However, if that should change I will be in touch about meeting. Any advice from those who have dealt with this?

The most important thing for a LOR is their ability to write a detailed reference that is specific and about you. Those who have the most experience working with you and most knowledge of your abilities are the best reviewers. If you've been out of school, that could be employers. Every program and committee are different, but there is a great benefit to having LOR from people who are in the same field as those reviewing your application - and there's no question that people in that field who are known/respected/trusted by your admissions committee will have a greater impact with their LOR. But you have to do what you can, and you're much better off having people write for you who know you well, and who have been in positions similar to being your professor, such as employer, manager, director of something you worked on, etc. You're better off with a reviewer who knows you well and isn't a professor than one who doesn't know you at all and is a professor. Most all LOR forms ask how long they have known you and in what capacity. If you're wondering who to choose, a great way is to look for the form that your university of choice has available to download for LOR writers who can't use the online form - see what questions it asks and think about who would answer them the best.

The key question is: What do you want to do in your PhD? There are certainly great schools who admit students without a previous background in anthro - but without it you might find it very hard to even formulate your research interests in your statements for applications - simply because you're unfamiliar with the field. Every discipline has a way of approaching the world, and you will need to speak in the language of anthropology to 'sell' yourself to a PhD program. I highly recommend finding a good MA program that is near where you want to live, and contacting them - let them know you would like to take a course or two as a non-matriculated student. Take the courses for credit and see what you think after one semester or two. If all goes well, and you're inspired - you'll have anthropology courses on a transcript and some recommendations from anthropology professors for your PhD app. This would be much more useful than taking a job in business or finance (unless you do both at once). Also, if you want to change fields and you want to make a compelling case that you want to, then you need to start now - not wait and work in your old field first. Alternatively - if you double-majored, then just tell the story differently as you go forward. Many people integrate area studies or language study into anthropology courses of study. So you could put yourself forward as a Chinese major who also studied Finance - because you are interested in, for example, doing research on the way that capitalist ideologies take on local forms through language communities in Hong Kong. You could use your background to make a very compelling case for studying something like this - and if you got into a PhD program, you can always end up writing about something else in that area.

Not to be contrarian - but I actually got a few emails from POIs today - this is the first time they've had a chance to go through their email... So, holidays aren't so bad - we all tend to catch up on things over the holidays. And not all profs are celebrating x-mas.

It's a great idea to continue conversations with POIs as long as the conversation has substance. Engage with them out of intellectual curiosity, look at their writing - talk about your interests and projects. When the time comes for your app to be reviewed they will ask to look at it, they will give the AdCom their thoughts on you. It makes no difference if you've listed them on the app or not - everyone you talk to in the program can influence the outcome.

Hmmm, despite the record - I'd call this: Starting a provocative conversation. Rather than trolling... So I'm going to feed the Provocative Conversation Starter. The first thing that comes to mind are the hundreds of whiny opinion pieces showing up in HuffPo and elsewhere by college grads who don't understand why they weren't handed a job after finishing their B.A. in Medieval Literature.

Are you doing physical, biological, or archaeology? OR, is this outside the US? Most PhD programs outside the US require an MA first. But US schools don't and they use their MA programs to fund their PhD programs. Of course if you're doing something STEM-like, you can get funding for your MA.

You open with a phrase that doesn't mean anything: "With the myriad of growth" I stopped there, and so will the admissions committee.

Another thing worth considering is a different cultural model for the role of the PhD. For example, in most European schools, PhDs are jobs you apply for. There are open calls - but most of them are positions with topics already decided - you apply to work on a specific problem that the university wants to fund. In many ways education in the EU is contrary to the North American model where a students individuality and their choice play a bigger role. I wonder if some of that might be at issue here.

On these two points: 1. I suggest finding some successful statements and looking at the structure of those. I was able to find statements at one university (highly regarded) that were from students who were admitted. They were offered as examples on that university's web site. These were extremely helpful to me. 2. Here's the thing. They KNOW that you will probably end up studying something completely different from what you write about in your proposal. Almost everyone (outside of so-called 'hard' sciences) does. So, the key is to present a compelling argument for studying something VERY specific and to sound like you really, really know what you're talking about. Basically you do that by saying: Paragraph1 (or first sentence of paragraph 2): I plan to study X. More specific info about X. Interesting question about X. Paragraph 2: These scholars have looked at A, B, and C (Citations). And these scholars have looked at D, E, and F (Citations). But they haven't looked at how A and D relate to X in terms of B, C, and F. I will address this gap by looking at X through the work/lens/framework/ideas of Person Q and Idea Z. Paragraph 3: I developed these ideas because I blah, blah, blah. My previous work on blah, blah, blah has prepared me to look at this. Paragraph 4: The PhD program in History at University X is the best place to do this research because of the focus on Topic S. I want to work with the following faculty: John Green, Sandra Blue, and Linda Purple. Prof. Green's work on Topic W fits with my work because... Prof. Blue's work on Topic M fits with my work because... Obviously you don't use the language I used - just the structure. And this is just one approach. But you need to show that you can write an organized proposal in a short space. The idea is to make a proposal for what you will study and WHY you should study it there. Think about it this way - they are HIRING you to work with them for as long as 7-8 years. All based on this statement describing what you'll do while you're there. Obviously you might end up writing on a different topic, but you need to convince them that not only do you have the ability to figure out a cohesive research topic, but you understand what kind of work they do there and how your work fits into it. It's find if you want to suggest several topics of interest. Or if you want to suggest a broad area and several ways you might study it - but being concrete is good and helpful. If you're concrete then you show a match between you, your interests, and the interests in the department. There are concrete ways that each department looks at the world, and topics that each department studies and you need to align with them. It sounds like this must be a department that has lots of great faculty in American Political History - otherwise you wouldn't have chosen it, right?

In some ways I think it is a trick question. Because they want to know who they're up against. If it's Local State University and you've applied to Duke, Princeton, Harvard, and Yale - then it could really matter if you tell them that. I can tell you that from what I saw in one admissions committee, they used this information in some interesting ways. If students had applied to Harvard, Yale, etc. they would sometimes say it wasn't worth it to consider them for certain funding. For example - special funding that the department has to apply to the university for. This is because they had to be certain that if they offered the funding to that student that the student would say yes. Those who had applied to schools who could offer more were sometimes excluded from these lists because they weren't seen as likely at accept the funding and offer of admission. So, in some ways, listing your other schools (and which schools they are) can hurt you depending on who you are telling. But this all depends on a lot of things and I can only speak from this one example, in one department, at one school

So far, I've had several POIs at different schools tell me that the word limits are not enforced or really even noticed - that if your research plan/statement is really well written, they don't care how long it is. Obviously, schools will be different. This seems to apply to schools who want a research plan that is more focused on proposed topic, as opposed to the more essay driven schools.

Here's a recommendation for a bibliography on religion and the internet by Chas Clifton who is a prominent member of the AAR and does research in new/minority religions. This should be a good starting place for clarifying the theoretical approach you take for your research. http://blog.chasclifton.com/?p=2034

MA programs exist (mostly) to fund PhDs and other programs. That's why they don't give funding to a majority of MA students. That's also why they are 2x as expensive. An MA pursued on its own is meant to be a terminal degree for professionals who want to use it so they can further a career, a paying job-like career - not a flip-a-coin-and-hope-for-tenure academic career. So, it's a big investment. Which is why most advisors will tell talented academic-leaning undergrads to go straight to PhD programs. Sadly, without one of the few fellowships out there, an MA means taking out giant loans. It's worth it if it helps you get closer to another goal - so be sure that you're on the way to your goal and that going into debt for this MA will help you get there!

If your school has a counseling center, an academic advising office, or your department has any faculty whom you trust to talk about personal issues with - go and talk to them now. Don't wait and see how things turn out. It sounds like you need some help and support from your program and your school. They wouldn't have admitted you and given you a fellowship if they didn't have confidence in you and think you could do it - so let them help you when you have trouble - it's what they're there for - they're your colleagues.

They want you to fly in for an interview, for a masters program? Madness. Also, if your impression was that bad imagine what you'll see if you're studying there. Not sure which discipline, school, etc. but most MA programs exist to collect money not to take care of students. Why not apply for funded PhD programs?

Completely agree - of course FaceTime can be used from any Mac with a camera, iPad, or iPhone - but that doesn't bump the percentage up much higher. I've also found that as status increases in the university ability to use technology decreases - so it's possible the POI would have no idea what in the world you were talking about if you said "FaceTime" - they would probably think you meant meeting in person...

Thank you for all your replies and the discussion. I'm actually very interested to know how those trained in psychology think about standardized testing, which is why I posed these questions and made the above arguments. I'm interested in how scientists turn to certain methods based on discipline in order to answer both research questions and broader epistemological questions - how, for example, psychologists might ground their own ideas about 'knowing' in ideas from the discipline. I'd also be very interested to know your opinions on the methods of assessment used to grade the written portion of the GRE, which as you may know is scored by someone "trained" to read and score GRE essays, as well as a computer program. What do you think of this method? and Would it make sense to introduce such a computer program into the university to read all student work and "monitor the human reader" in the process of grading undergraduate papers? From "How The Test Is Scored": "For the Analytical Writing section, each essay receives a score from at least one trained reader, using a six-point holistic scale. In holistic scoring, readers are trained to assign scores on the basis of the overall quality of an essay in response to the assigned task. The essay score is then reviewed by e-rater®, a computerized program developed by ETS, which is used to monitor the human reader. If the e-rater evaluation and the human score agree, the human score is used as the final score. If they disagree by a certain amount, a second human score is obtained, and the final score is the average of the two human scores." (https://www.ets.org/gre/revised_general/scores/how/)

If you're feeling nervous about talking on the phone - don't worry, this is normal these days as we tend to do so much via video chat, texting, social media, etc. Just make some long phone calls over the next few days. Call parents and ask them to talk to you about your research interests - do this with friends, classmates, anyone who will sit on the phone with you for 30+ minutes and help you practice. You'll feel more confident because you'll work out the kinds of things you will probably end up saying through these phone call 'rough drafts.'

Couldn't he have written the letter already, but not finished and submitted it - which is what he did when you reminded him?

And a great example is this quote: "In part, the scores still reflect ability to read, write, and do math" Do they? Or do they reflect the ability to read certain things, write other certain things, and do certain kinds of math within very specific genres and presentations of those tasks? and under very specific, timed circumstances, without the technological, social, and (dare I say) psychological affordances one might have in, say, a library at school, or a study room at home, or on the couch, or on a blanket on the lawn or any other number of locations in which one might perform differently? How strange to assume that the human mind is a portable unit contained entirely within the body, which can be moved into a testing space and examined - and that the scores from individual experiences can then be compared as though every test taker responded to the experience the same way, or brought the same background to the experience. And even stranger to assume that the results of that test would indicate anything at all about potential success in completely different fields, at completely different schools, working with completely different faculty, subject matter, life experiences, etc. The whole thing is just baffling from the perspective of this anthropologist.

The best part about these exchanges is how utterly obvious it is that we are products of our disciplines. My position is so clearly anthropological. (cultural, post-representational, etc. obviously not all anthropologists) And all of these replies are just as clearly informed by psychological approaches to understanding not only how humans work, but how we ought to study how they work.