perpetuavix

I'm nearing the end of my philosophy PhD career (finally!) and I am not pursuing any academic jobs whatsoever. I wrote several very gloomy paragraphs about how bad the market is, which has always been true, because graduate programs are incentivized to overproduce PhDs. And I think the OP's friend is straight up wrong that going to a top 20 (or top x) program ensures (or honestly, substantially increases) success on the market. But I will limit my commentary on the academic market and instead focus on what I think grad students can do to be competitive for non academic jobs. I agree with above that you should expect to look outside academia, and perhaps be pleasantly surprised if you get an academic job. My biggest tip: look for experiences that aren't teaching or research that build skills that other jobs care about. If your department has any roles that aren't traditional TA or RA jobs, apply for those. Join the committee for your grad conference, or assist a professor with planning a workshop. Seek out roles in professional organizations; the APA has a graduate council, but more specialized organizations in your subfield have other ways to get involved, too. Get a twitter, do some public philosophy, or write an op ed. Use your tuition waiver to take a language class or a class outside your field. If you have no idea what skills might be relevant outside of academia, use your university's career center. They will have workshops all the time, and you don't need to go to all of them. But I can almost guarantee they have one that involves how to identify academic skills that transfer to non-academic jobs. If you go to one of these early in your career, it will also help you identify experiences you can seek out in the meantime to build skills. There are also lots of good resources online for people transitioning out of academia; I recommend The Professor is Out facebook group. Also: networking is stupid important to any job search, academic or not. Many academics are bad at it, to say the least (I include myself in this category). But maintain a LinkedIn, don't forget you do know people outside of academia, and when you update your CV, update your resume, too. Be realistic about what you can do to prepare. You can't do all of these things and write 19 publications while in grad school. But you can get a variety of experiences and publish a few papers, too.

Seattle is generally a pretty safe place. It has more property crime than most cities, but it has less violent crime. University District, the neighborhood around campus, has more crime than some areas, but Blakely Village and Laurel Village are away from the worst parts of UDistrict, so I'd imagine it's plenty safe. You can look at Seattle PD's data for a more complete picture here: https://www.seattle.gov/police/information-and-data/online-crime-maps Summer is a good time to find an apartment; summer is always a popular time to move in a city, and it's before most students are back. As you get closer to September, the rental market is a little more competitive, but it's still pretty easy to find a place to live in Seattle. You'll generally find a lot of apartments that are available at the beginning of June, July, August, and September, and a few that are available in the middle of the month. You can look at apartments now to see prices and what will generally be available when you're looking in the summer, but you shouldn't expect to see something now that will still be available in a few months. You can reasonably start looking at apartments two weeks--a month at the most--before you expect to move. The poster above gave you a good list of neighborhoods. Just make sure you check google maps to see how long your commute will be. A transit pass is included in your tuition, so most people take the bus or ride a bike to get to campus. Parking on campus is insanely expensive, so don't plan to drive to campus unless you want to spend $1200 on parking over the year.

Placement matters, and it matters a lot, but it's not the only thing that matters. Visit, if you can. That's probably the best way to get some sense of whether or not either is a program where you can succeed. Placement only matters if you actually graduate, and there's a lot of attrition in PhD programs. Here's a source saying that the median rate of completion within eight years for philosophy PhD programs is about 40% (meaning 60% of students don't finish or take longer than eight years). I choose a much lower ranked school (top 50 but barely) over a higher one (top 15) because it had a better community and a lot more support, which I found out by visiting. It also helped that the 'lower ranked' school had the better climate (which should matter to you, even if you aren't a woman or POC) and good placement for my AOS/intended supervisor. I also don't put that much stock in PGR, which made it a lot easier to rely on my own impressions of the programs and information I gathered. Deciding between programs isn't easy, and I don't think it can be boiled down to just looking at the placement pages, even if placement is an important factor.

Hi math people, my partner applied to some biostats and stats programs this year, and he's leaning towards UIdaho but has some questions. This is what he wrote: I would like to work as a statistician in the medical research field, possibly in clinical trials. I need help choosing a statistics MS program from among the schools to which I have been accepted: Oregon State - offered me a TAship Washington State - the most mathematically rigorous, or so I've heard Oregon Health Science University (Biostatistics) - focused on applications that interest me - lots of research opportunities University of Idaho - I'm strongly leaning toward this one. Here's why: I live in Seattle with my wife, who is in her second year of a PhD. UIdaho will let me take classes online so that I can stay here. This also means that I can do an internship with a company in Seattle (Fred Hutchinson and Benaroya Research Institute come to mind, along with some consulting firms that work with pharma companies) and make contacts that I can use to find a job after I graduate. I can finish this program by the end of summer 2017, whereas all the others will take two years starting in September. They don't really have biostat-specific courses for me to take online, but I can take some supplemental courses online at Penn State. Here's what I'm planning to take: Fall 2015 - I took Math 461 Probability Theory @ U of Illinois, equivalent to UIdaho Stat 451 (3 cr) Summer 2016 STAT 422 Sample Survey Methods STAT 452 Mathematical Statistics @PS - STAT 483 SAS programming Fall 2016 STAT 507 Experimental Design STAT 565 Computer Intensive Statistics STAT 501 Seminar (1 cr) @PS - STAT 555 Statistical Analysis of Genomics Data Spring 2016 STAT 519 Multivariate Analysis STAT 550 Regression STAT 597 Consulting Practicum (2 cr) @PS - STAT 509 Design and Analysis of Clinical Trials (3 cr) Summer 2017 - Internship (3 cr) Here is some information about the courses I want to take at Penn State: Statistical Analysis of Genomics Data STAT 555 https://onlinecourses.science.psu.edu/statprogram/stat555 Design and Analysis of Clinical Trials STAT 509 https://onlinecourses.science.psu.edu/statprogram/stat509 Statistical Analysis System Programming STAT 483 syllabus attached I'm also looking into doing an independent project with a local chiropractor in which I would analyze a dataset of patients' pain levels, treatments administered and changes in bone positioning over time which could lead to a publication. Before I make my final decision, I would like to get some input from the GradCafe community. Will going to a relatively unknown school hurt my job prospects? Will my ad-hoc biostatistics program be as good as a real biostat MS? This program seems very applied, but that's probably fine given that I don't intend to seek an academic career. I would especially like to hear from anyone who works in the medical/healthcare/pharma industry, especially those who make hiring decisions, any anyone who attended UIdaho or knows an alumn(a/us).

June is a good time to look. There will be options pretty much everywhere; summer is usually a busy time for moving in any city, and undergrads will be leaving their apartments with 9 month leases in UDistrict (and there's nothing a landlord who usually leases to undergrads for 9 months wants more than a responsible grad student who will sign a 12 month lease...). Having a cat will somewhat limit your options, but not terribly. And if you don't like noise, you'll love Seattle; the majority of the city is made up of quiet residential neighborhoods. If you'd be okay with roommates, you can probably find a nice house with a few bedrooms to rent, or there's a lot of 'mother-in-law' apartments in the basements of houses. I'd suggest looking in Wedgewood, Maple Leaf, or Ravenna. Do you mean will you need to develop RBF or do you need to get rid of it? I don't think either is the case, so don't worry. Don't live in UDistrict. If you're particularly worried about crime, SPD has some crime maps here: http://www.seattle.gov/seattle-police-department/crime-data/online-crime-maps But generally, if you're worried about noise and/or safety, the best thing you can do is visit the neighborhood on a Friday or Saturday night (although if you move during the summer, UDistrict will be unusually quiet; most undergrads don't stay for the summer). It sounds like you're unfunded. I would think long and hard before accepting UW's offer, if that's the case. The legislature recently froze tuition for undergrads, which is good, in the sense that college shouldn't keep rising in price, but bad, because it means the entire College of Arts and Sciences is facing a substantial budget cut for next year. Many departments are cutting TA and RA positions as a result, so there will be both substantially fewer positions available next year and much more competition for those spots than in the past. GFIS has info about TA positions and other funding opportunities: http://lib.washington.edu/commons/services/gfis If you are entering without funding, it is much less likely that you will be able to find funding while at UW than it would have been a few years ago. Many buildings close to campus start pre-leasing for September during spring quarter, so you may be able to find a place pretty early. Unless you really want to pre-lease, you can wait until at least late August to start looking. I've never lived in Boston, but I've been there plenty of time. I also grew up on the East Coast and lived in NYC before moving out here, so I have many thoughts on Seattle's differences from the East Coast generally. Seattle is much more spread out and much less dense than Boston. Seattle is much less diverse. The pizza in Seattle is terrible (not that it's always amazing in Boston, but at least you can find decent pizza with relative ease). Seattle feels more like a small town than Boston (which is saying something). Seattle does some things well (pho/Vietnamese food generally, salmon, Ethiopian food, Chinese food if it's from International District), but is lacking in a number of things that I expect of a city (pizza as already mentioned, bagels, Italian food, readily available decent Chinese food, Dunkin Donuts (there are no DDs in all of Washington state, a serious tragedy)). The people here are generally friendlier in casual interactions than people in East Coast cities (although less so than in California, because people who move up from CA complain about 'the northwest chill'). Seattle also has lots of parks and easy access to outdoorsy stuff, and the summer here is insanely beautiful and pleasant. Also, it does rain a lot, but not that much.

I moved from NYC to Seattle; money goes a lot further in Seattle than it does in New York. I pay $1200 for the whole apartment. Depends on what you mean by 'close'. If you mean walking distance, 1br are about $1000 and up for something small and usually not very nice (I looked at about 10 apartments in UDistrict before deciding I preferred a nice place to live somewhere with a 20 minute commute than a shithole with a 5 minute commute). Something decent is probably more like $1200+ in UDistrict. Generally, the further away from UDistrict, Cap Hill, or downtown a neighborhood is, the cheaper it is. You can look at craigslist and see the kinds of places available now just to get a sense of pricing and areas.

I'm a UW grad student and I get paid less than $2250 a month, and i do just fine. Grad students are unionized so the salary schedules are all online: https://www.grad.washington.edu/students/fa/salaries/salary-schedules.shtml Having a Masters degree also affects your pay, so possibly others who reported higher stipends had Masters degrees already. Seattle is an increasingly expensive city, but there are still plenty of inexpensive neighborhoods. I live in North Seattle and I pay less than $1200 for a 900+ sq ft 2 bedroom with a walk in closet and a balcony. I live on an express bus line to campus so my commute is usually around 20 minutes. Two new light rail stations are opening that will connect South Seattle to UW; I have friends who live in a 3BR in Rainier Valley for $1500 or something equally ridiculous. If you want to live in Capitol Hill (which is expensive, but has a ton of good restaurants, bars, clubs, etc) or UDistrict (which is expensive and....not great), you can still make it work with the stipend, but it's more difficult.

As MentalEngineer said, Carolyn Dicey Jennings has been doing a lot of work looking at placement data. This is probably closest to what you're looking for (ie. placement rates by departments) but is limited in a number of ways. She also has a report on a more aggregate view of placement here, started a website for placement data here, and blogs about various aspects of placement, mostly at NewApps.

They don't pay $100, but they do pay $20+ per application: http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2013/11/interfolio-costs.html

My partner applied to the UW Biostats Masters program and hasn't heard anything back yet. He's been in touch with them a few times, and every time, they say he'll hear soon, and then we don't hear anything. The results page only shows offers from last month. Any ideas about what's going on?

Just as another point of data: I have medical, dental, and vision covered through my grad student insurance. The grad students are unionized, which almost certainly contributes to our solid health care plans. But when I didn't have dental insurance or a lot of money, I would go to a dental student clinic. That may be an inexpensive option if you don't get insurance.

ETS does score essays, but it's not free (see here). They do have sample essays for each score for one question of each type on their website (for free) so you can practice with those questions and then compare your essay to the samples they give to get a sense of how you would score (see here and here).

As another data point, I submitted an 18 page writing sample to every program I applied to, with no note about what to read if adcoms didn't feel like reading the whole thing. The programs where I was admitted were programs that requested 8-12 page writing samples. It may depend on who's on the committee in a given year, but it's not obviously a disqualifier to go over the page limit. There is almost certainly an upper limit on what's reasonable to send, although what it is, I don't know.

There is a wiki of phil bio programs here: http://philbio.net/Main_Page It has essentially every philosophy program with at least one philosopher of biology. They're all philosophy departments, though. For interdisciplinary programs, it seems like science studies or science and technology studies programs might be a good place to look, as well. I know MIT has a really well regarded STS program, but I don't know of any other programs. I'm doing an STS certificate, and it seems like if you want a more interdisciplinary approach than what phil bio will give you, STS might be what you want. As an aside, the template that was used to make the phil bio wiki has been used to make wikis for other specialties, and is available if anyone wanted to make their own wiki for a specialty that isn't already covered. You can see all the current wikis or make your own here: http://philwiki.net/index.php/Main_Page

I lived in an amazing NYC apartment (800sq ft or more) for $1050 per person (not $1500...) with some utilities included. My downstairs neighbor paid $1725 for a slightly smaller 2 bedroom. I looked at multiple 2 bedrooms for $1500-$1600 in Harlem. My point is that CUNY's housing is not a good deal for the neighborhood and what you get.