[Honest rejection letters]

Ha!

I got an honest response of "not being as familiar with faculty work" and "not having enough experimental work." Naturally, I was competing against current UGs at this program, so there's no way I can know professors better than their students who see them daily. I had to get a job after graduating (the perils of not being independently wealthy), and most paid research jobs (at least the ones I've seen in my field) are applied gigs. Applied gigs with real-world consequences present little opportunity for pure experimental work because of those pesky ethics

[Sole authorship when getting hired as a prof... is it a BIG DEAL?]

So....I have kind of a professional-type question for when you go out to apply for (academic) jobs, particularly tenure-track positions in Psych. 

 

In my department candidates are interviewing for a tenure-track position and one criticism I hear people in the hiring committee are making  is that many candidates do not have publications where they are sole authors. They have publications where they are the leading author (some in high-impact journals) but apparently not many are solo authors in them. 

 

Now, I have heard before that it's important for us to publish with many different people and not just with your adivsor or within your lab so you can demonstrate versatility. And that you should also aim for 1st or 2nd authorship... but does anyone know if sole authorship is becoming a thing now to get hired? Has anyone heard of this before?

 

It seems like a REALLY hard thing (logistically) for a student to do, unless if a program negotiates to 'fix' authorship with unacknowledged ghostwriters.

 

I have a colleague* who has been interviewing for R1 TT jobs who keeps getting told that he does not have enough independent teaching experience. From my perspective, this creates quite the conundrum: the R2s I interviewed with require oodles of independent teaching opportunities, while some R1s lack teaching/TA placements altogether (seriously). The more I learn about R1s vs. R2 and the politics of the job market, the less sense it makes

 

*I do not know if he has sole published work.

[Age at start of degree - POLL]

I will be 28, and I hope my incoming cohort is younger!

I'm single, so it's not like I can bond over what it's like to be a parent with other students. All silly insecurities about age go out the door when I work with people who are in their 30s/40s and working on grad degrees at Ivy league institutions.

[Employment prospects: degree from an R2 university]

I'm going to assume that you are comparing a better-reputed R1 to a less well-known R2, because R1s don't always have a better reputation in a given field than R2s. The other thing I'll say is that your career interests may shift, sometimes considerably, over the course of graduate school. I started out also wanting to be a non-academic research scientist, and this fall I'll be on the market for academic positions - my first choice would be an R1 or R2 university, actually.

 

Other than asking about placement of recent graduates, the other thing you can do is attend an R2 in a large city and/or nearby connections and work those connections in graduate school while earning your degree. I did go to an R1, but it was in a big city with a lot of think tanks and social science-oriented nonprofits in and around that city. Even though I wasn't even trying, I ended up making contacts with people at several organizations that hired psychology/public health/social science PhDs to do research for the org through various assignments (data collection, supervising undergraduate interns). A lot of my colleagues in doctoral programs at my university did consulting work for nonprofits and NGOs, and a few of them turned that consulting work into full-time jobs - like one friend who works at (UNESCO? UNICEF? I think UNICEF) now after doing consulting work for them for a couple years while finishing up.

 

If you went to an R2 in a small or large city that had that kind of nonprofit/NGO/think tank infrastructure nearby, you could start doing freelance consulting work for them in graduate school and network your way into a full-time job. Even if they didn't hire you, that kind of nonprofit work can really help you when looking for other non-academic research jobs, because it shows you know how to function in a non-academic setting. (The same goes of for-profit: if you decided you wanted to work in market research, an internship at a company in your city can go a long ways towards helping you get a job.)

 

Firms that hire a lot of researchers will actually be knowledgeable about reputations of departments - and actually might find themselves concerned with those reputations. As pointed out, top think tanks like RAND and AIR tend to hire people coming from top programs. So do consulting firms, like McKinsey and BCG. But there are LOTS of think tanks out there, lots of non-academic social science research organizations and not all of them care about "prestige." They're going to care about the work that you do and your output. So tailor your research agenda towards something that could be applied and of interest to think tanks* and publish early and often! Also give lots of presentations at conferences and when you are there, find people who work at non-academic jobs. There are a lot of them, especially at the big conferences like APA and APHA.

 

*I don't mean find a think tank and make your work align with theirs; I mean don't do something abstract or theoretical if your goal is outside of academia.

 

Thanks!!! This is spectacular advice.

 

I naively took to heart the idea that everything will be 'okay' if you hone in on locating a POI who shares the same research interests, and I had the misconception that reputation isn't as important for all alt-AC paths. I hope this thread (and everybody's comments) helps somebody along the way in the future

[Employment prospects: degree from an R2 university]

spunky, in my experience, it does work. You ask them (or look at prof's CVs) to see how many grad students they've had. Then, you ask where those students are now. My advisor was quite honest with me about where his former students were working, including citing a student that dropped out and worked a "manual labor" type job these days. I never inquired about the department as a whole because I was going there to work with one specific person and mostly cared about his track record since he was a fairly recent arrival to that program. At any rate, if you know how many students are admitted each year, you can figure out if they're only giving you placement information for some. If you have their names, you can use google, LinkedIn, etc., to find out where they are working now.

 

 

Most programs bluffed me or told half truths

Case in a point: one professor was pretty smug about producing professors... one of his former students has been through five jobs in the past five years, and is currently working two adjunct jobs at two different universities (one is The Chicago School of Professional Psychology, which has a reputation for being a diploma mill). Another student of his was a court mediator for three years before securing a professor job at a community college. The professor only posts the year that students take on professorships on his faculty page and omits the years his students struggle in the workforce post-graduation.

These are outcomes for an R1 university, ~top 50, btw. 

[Employment prospects: degree from an R2 university]

Can you contact the program to find out what their alums are doing now? That might be helpful to you.

Thanks!!!

That's actually the approach I took (and the best approach I have, to be honest). It wasn't as informative as I had hoped-- the department had rockstar research scientist placements, and then all of the professors (with the gov ties!) retired in the past 5 years. I think going into this department with newer (yet brilliant) faculty is diving into the great unknown :( which is, may I add, upsetting! R2s are not heavily discussed anywhere, and I feel like many of them deserve more credit when I see the caliber of research they produce plus the rigorous curriculum requirements (the R2 I'm considering has impressive stat training :x)

It's tricky because I haven't had a PhD interview yet where professors really spoke of having students who struggled on the market, but it's statistically impossible that all of their students met their career goals :x

[Employment prospects: degree from an R2 university]

sorry, i guess my comment was out for more general "industry-type" jobs but i just noticed that you're specifically inquiring about research jobs, just outside of a traditional academic setting (e.g. university). then yeah, i totally agree with you. sometimes the pettiness of people in places like that irks me because they seem to marry the worst of both industry and academic jobs. the prestige of your university suddenly becomes a thing, the prestige of your lab is also relevant, whether your advisor is well known or not... sigh. i only once worked in a place like that (a research company that's somehow indirectly connected to my uni) and it.was.HELL.

still, let's just assess the situation objectively. you're in an R2 university now. can you transfer to an R1 university with all the goodies and perks of where you are? if yes, go. if no (which is the most likely possibility) i guess you're gonna have to work twice as hard to make up for the lack of academic "pedigree" so that's more conferences to go to, more networking, tackling on more ambitious projects... basically just make yourself a candidate that's too good to say not to. like a molten lava cake!

Blah!!!

Thanks. :x

I'm actually mulling over offers between a R2 (stellar fit, groundbreaking research, everything rocks about this program) and a R1 (subject matter in program is dull relative to the R2, I will only be in it for the PI if I go here). Oh, so frustrating!

Either way, I'm going to work like a dog-- I may or may not be still traumatized from going on the market after discovering that employers don't really care about a track record of success during an UG and MA career.

I REALLY hope the R2 professor doesn't ask why I turn down her program because I am going to feel like such a jackass for acting on such a superficial reason

Moreover, I thought R1s piled "academia or bust" rather thickly

[Employment prospects: degree from an R2 university]

i've always been under the impression that if you're not interested in an academic job, then the kind of opportunities you will have access to are mostly be limited to things like how well can you network, how much previous experience you have, etc. you know, regular 'job' stuff. i find it difficult to believe that any person in a non-academic setting will look at your CV and say "oh yes, this candidate is a member of such and such lab with publications in such and such high-impact factor journals". or at least that has been my experience in my musings with jobs in the "real world" (<--- stoopid "real world" jobs, the only reason i don't hate your jobs is that they pay well.. )

Thanks!!!

 

Believe it or not, my current employer (nonprofit research) actually does actually care about such matters, and so I work with lots of PhDs from ivy league institutions. I just spent a few hours looking at RAND and AIR experts, and it seems as if the same standards apply :x

To refine my question... does anybody know how representative this is of other non-academic research jobs?

 

Which leads me to the next question: what the hell happens to PhD psych graduates from R2 universities?!

I don't have an overly informed idea yet, and honestly the R1 bias is irking me! An R2 that I am considering has more rigorous quant/methodology training than some R1s I interviewed at :x

[Employment prospects: degree from an R2 university]

Thoughts?

There has to be SOMEBODY here who went through a R2.

I am interested in a non-academic research scientist job, and I need to learn more about the R2 job prospects before I decide where I'm going for graduate school.

Alternatively, please advise if somebody else knows of a forum outside of grad cafe where I can get some sound advice. I already have something similar on the jobs subforum here without any bites

[On nonprofit research/industry/government jobs...]

Hi all,

So I have been accepted into two PhD program (social sciences) that are amenable to having students pursue non-academic research scientist positions upon graduation, and I'm trying to resolve a dilemma now so that I don't have regrets later. I appreciate all of the feedback I can get:

(1) R1 institution, strong reputation. Traditional program, complete with qualifying exam and old school thesis/dissertation.

(2) R2, reputation is neutral. Students secure two paid research internships in lieu of comprehensive exams. Journal publication in lieu of thesis.

Both universities have impressive professors, graduate quant certifications, connections to industry/gov, and so on.

The million dollar question: how much does institutional reputation matter in non-academic social science research gigs? I REALLY want to write off reputation because it's silly, superficial, and (sometimes, so I'm told) unwarranted, but I fear it might make a difference.

Advice, please

[Low quant GRE: successes and failures]

One university (in fact, the only one out of the 10 or so that I interviewed for) drilled me about the GRE Q during interview, informed me that the chair is insistent on a hard GRE cut off, and then subsequently rejected me. They also told me on interview that all of their students drop out and go into industry, which I later corroborated by viewing student/alumni profiles and former student co-authors on their program website. In fact, I assumed that they had a terminal MA program until I was informed on their dropout rate during the interview. 

 

Common sense indicates that if something isn't working out (i.e., if a program cannot successfully identify students who persist into degree completion for selection), do something different.

 

Cost of $13k stipend for 5 years = $65,000

Cost of tuition waiver = ~$50,000 for five years (crude estimate based on undergrad rates at this specific institution)

Cost of fellowships/conference travel = $5,000 ($1,000 a year if the student is awesome and wins a lot)

Cost of the university's investment on students who drop out after 5 years = $120,000. 

 

Quite a substantial investment with absolutely nothing to show for it.  

[What surprised you the most going through this whole process?]

Been on ~10 interviews for psych programs, about half of which were at R1 institutions. Have not met any ivy leaguers who are either (1) prospective candidates or (2) current PhD students. 

 

I work for a social science research firm and nearly all of my PhD, BA/BS, and MA/MS level colleagues have ivy league pedigrees.

Do they all become disgruntled with academia and head for the hills? If so, I don't blame them one bit because I have a few acceptances, and I already feel like doing the same. 

[2015 Psychology Applicant Profiles and Results]

From what I've been told by faculty, it depends on which branch you are aiming for. Counseling is so female heavy, that males and minority cultures actually receive special status. However, in brain sciences, females receive it instead. There are very few females in the cognitive/neuropsych/etc branches.

With the field being so counseling/clinical dominate right now, that's what you're seeing.

That makes sense!

I'd argue social/community is female-dominated, too. I speculate the same with UG programs.

[2015 Psychology Applicant Profiles and Results]

:semi-relevant tangent:

Is being a female in psych really special status? Every psych department I've ever seen is wicked female-dominated at the UG and grad levels.

Side note: not trying to start a debate! I'm seriously ignorant to gender affirmative action in the social sciences, and my (non-scientific) gut/observations lead me to believe that gender balance would be achieved by recruiting more males if such a system were in place.

[Ready to tell the world where you'll be attending?]

I'm stuck between a big name uni with stronger funding and a no-name uni with a newer program in a stellar location with some impressive opportunities :x

I know I'm in VERY competent hands with the former, while the latter grants me more autonomy to carve out my future. Yikes!

[Venting Thread- Vent about anything.]

Have you tried calling?

Lost about 1.5 hours today due to ringing the office!!! FINALLY got ahold of a current student who got the ball rolling.

[Venting Thread- Vent about anything.]

The professor from a program that accepted me keeps ignoring my emails.

I'm flying halfway across the country for visitation day. I will be at the airport in 12 hours and I have NO idea who is picking me up at the airport, where I am staying, and where I have to report to at what times. Again, the chair and the secretary keeps ignoring my damn email.

[Venting Thread- Vent about anything.]

Leaving a job that treats me well to sustain myself off of a PhD stipend in hopes that there will be a job for me in 6 years.

I need a drink.

[Venting Thread- Vent about anything.]

My parents still support my older sister in every sense of the word. My sister can't hold down a job for more than three months at a time "because of her ADD." I'm talking... Car insurance, rent, bills, her tuition from all of the classes she failed, health insurance, the works.

I rarely ask my parents for anything, but my request to have a ride to the airport for PhD interviews didn't bode well.

...did I mention my sister is 31 years old?

I'm really sick of being the black sheep of the family, and I am glad that I will have a reason to not attend family functions once I move to where ever to work on my PhD.

[Best Rejection Reactions - 2015]

Duke U; Applied Mathematics, PhD (F15); Rejected

"Grad GPA 3.95, two papers. So rude! Somebody is not as good as me but got an offer! Do not know the conditions for admission, quite upsite"

 

Such modesty.

 

And other kind young soul:

 

University Of Texas At Austin; Electrical And Computer Engineering, PhD (F15); Rejected

"Fuck that professor who told me that he would support me until last week, but refused to answer any emails after that. Probably he found another student. Please behave according to ethics you filthy beasts at UT Austin."

What a lovely piece of dark poetry

[Low quant GRE: successes and failures]

...did I just see a measurement invariance study cited from 1982?

Really?

TBH I don't have the time/energy for this so I'm not going to fall for it beyond this: http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/199607/gender.cfm

Look at the section on how speededness and the multiple choice format favors males. There's a whole body of literature out there on how those concepts contribute to the gender gap that you can google and cite to wow anonymous people on the Internet with.

[Impressions of Illinois: A Nevadan/Oregonian's Prespective]

I KNOW WHAT YOU MEAN!!!

I'm an east coaster with a similar dilemma. Having an open mind usually works out much better for me than it did when I visited a Midwestern university :(

I 'get' that grad school leaves little room for free time, but I think that exacerbates the issue because I won't be in a lab 24-7 and I wont have the time to drive two hours if I want to be in a non-homogenous environment. I'm not sure what I'm going to do yet :x

[The Wait is Getting Scary, Now]

How did you go about contacting them? I sent an email and one replied with "they should be finished by the end of March" and the other is just radio silence.

I think it is reasonable to contact your POI directly if you can package it in with a burning question, "in the event that I'm still under consideration, I want to ask about [blah]." I think it's a good way to gauge your candidacy without sounding desperate or pushy and it bypasses any potential miscommunications from an administrator. I recommend doing this via email so that the POI isn't caught off guard or thrown on the spot.

[Low quant GRE: successes and failures]

You're looking at the sample-size corrected correlations. When looking at a meta-analysis the "true" correlations, called operational validities here, should be looked at. They are bolded in the table and are likely correcting for unreliability in the predictor and criterion.

 

That you didn't find them (the sample size-corrected correlations--again, you should be looking at the operational validities which are much larger) impressive doesn't really take into the account the effect sizes that can be expected to be found in social science research. Cohen (1992) and this article itself (pg. 168) considers most of these corrected correlations to be moderately large. The weighted composite of the general GRE would be considered large. So just because it seems weak doesn't make them so when considered within the context of social science research. 

 

Also, you missed that GGPA measures GPA in graduate school beyond the 1st year, usually as the final GPA, and the various GRE component scores were all moderately large in predicting this.

 

The authors discuss and mention that are certainly a lot of non cognitive and situational variables that may explain or moderate the relationships between GRE and other criterion such as degree attainment and research productivity. Again, nothing is perfect. No one said anything predicts anything else perfectly. The point is whether it predicts validly. And your qualms about the "weak" correlations and variance explained is already addressed within the article itself on pg. 176 starting with "The argument that one should reject a predictor because the variance accounted for is only 1%, 2%, 5% or 10% is shortsighted, not to mention potentially wrong (Ozer, 1985)."

 

The test bias/fairness argument is really a separate one altogether from validity which has a very specific and clear meaning within the social sciences. Btw, the article does show that the GRE is a valid predictor for non-traditional students (i.e., those over 30) and the GRE-Q is actually a better predictor of GGPA for non-native speakers than for the entire sample

 

Retention is really not a good metric for performance within a grad program because people are by definition no longer in the program when they leave. There are so many factors that predict this outcome--some like flagging interest in the topic, practical concerns about making money after starting a family, etc..

 

I don't have any hypotheses about the difference in scoring on these tests. As I have said, this is a thorny issue and something that people who create general mental ability tests grapple with as well. There are very consistent differences between race groups in these GMA tests, for example. Some have said that the items are biased in that they assume knowledge that some racial groups have experienced. When items are created by subject matter experts of the racial groups' associated "culture" (whole different can of worms) are tasked with writing/approving items that are not biased, the performance gap actually gets worse. I personally think a small part of this worsening effect is a result of stereotype threat, but I'm not entirely sure. In any case, there are people constantly trying to make these tests more fair and less biased, but there are no easy answers in how to go about doing this or what could explain the gap that emerges in performance between groups. i find some comfort in knowing that academia at large and psychologists in particular tend to be very sympathetic to minorities and fight for fairness on their behalf with their research. People are trying and nothing is perfect.

I concede-- the operational validities are stronger, yet still negative on some measures for time to completion. Maybe rejecting a predictor isn't the answer.. but for the degree of faith (and billions of dollars) invested in the testing industry, I think it is reasonable to expect stronger correlations. 

 

Test bias undermines construct validity, though. 

 

Also note that when I reference retention, it is in the context of enrollment into degree completion. PhD programs want to invest in students who persist into degree completion on opposed to students who drop out, yes? 

Which brings me to another point... what is it about the selection process in European schools that results in higher rates of degree completion? How can they pull it off without the GRE?

[Low quant GRE: successes and failures]

Also worth mentioning...

 

Attrition is still high in US doctoral programs: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/college-inc/2010/04/nearly_half_of_doctorates_neve.html

 

Many programs in the UK or EU do not use the GRE in selection processes, yet they boast a much better completion rate: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/phd-completion-rates-2013/2006040.article

 

Page 11 gives a nice visual of completion rates by domestic v. international programs: http://www.phdcompletion.org/resources/cgsnsf2008_sowell.pdf

 

Granted there are several differences between international and domestic programs, but it does not make sense how international programs maintain superior completion rates without the benefit of using a speeded algebra test to determine whether or not a student is capable of becoming a psychologist, writing a publishable scientific paper, or thinking about how to operationalize a variable of interest.