lady_coffee

RockDenali, you seem doggedly determined to get a rise out of the literary studies folks, and I’m not entirely sure why. Granted, you could have meant for the comments you made to come across ironically, however they don’t naturally lend themselves to that interpretation. Whichever you intended, I’m surprised anyone who studies languages and communication (literature or rhet/comp) doesn’t take extra special care to guard tone while participating in an online forum, where the absence of intonation and body language in conversation increases the likelihood of miscommunication.

In any case, I don’t know why seemingly apropos of nothing you’ve chosen to post antagonistic remarks in a thread where people are legitimately trying to provide the OP and others with helpful advice. We all have varying interests within the English discipline (none of which, in my opinion, maintain an inherently superior or inferior status to another, but contribute to a collective understanding of the language), and whether they’re literature, rhet/comp, Early Modern studies, Victorian studies, or flying carpet theory, there’s no need to discredit the posts of literary studies GCers (especially on the basis that we can’t seriously consider their input because they focus on literature rather than rhet/comp—which, speaking of argument analysis, I believe is an ad hominem.). Personally, I view rhet/comp methodology as critical to my literary studies approaches, so I take particular offense at some of the assumptions you make about scholars in my field. What’s more, setting one field against another is unnecessary, unproductive, and worst of all, destructive; as society continues to dismiss the relevance of the humanities, those of us who recognize and believe in their intrinsic value need to band together and endeavor to put our best intellectual foot forward for the sake of preserving the discipline. We don’t stand a chance if we’re constantly bickering among ourselves.

I assure you that I’m not trying to pick a fight here, RockDenali. I’ve read some of your posts in other topics, and I sincerely appreciate your contributions. I think you’ve made many insightful, down-to-earth comments that others have undoubtedly found helpful—hence why I’m particularly confused by these aggressive bursts. Sorry for the monologue: I just want the sandbox to be as amiable an environment as possible.

I'll be the dissenter and say that it's not necessarily bad to mention your other offers. Schools regularly compete to enroll the students they admit, and I've definitely heard of cases where stipends will be increased or packages improved in order to be competitive with other offers you have. But don't do it so early, before you've probably heard decisions from all your schools, and certainly not before you've heard what School A is actually offering you.

Also something to keep in mind: if School A gives you a livable stipend but you know others are not guaranteed funding...I might feel not so great about pushing for more. It should be about livability, not just because you were offered more at another place. But if School A gives you a package that had unfunded years or something like that, I would definitely mention other offers to see if there is room for negotiation. Don't do it just to see if you can get more money - too politically risky, aside from being kind of sketchy in general.

And yes, you should be tactful when and if you do it, and only do it if it's reasonable request. But don't jump the gun. Be patient and see what they offer you first, because it might not even be necessary to bargain. And you you should try to avoid bargaining if you can. Plenty of time before April 15.

I got a phone call this weekend from a professor on the adcomm offering admission to the PhD-track program. They're admitting seven students with the goal of having a cohort of four or five. Shocked, thrilled, and a host of other things, too!

I got a phone call this weekend from a professor on the adcomm offering admission to the PhD-track program. They're admitting seven students with the goal of having a cohort of four or five. Shocked, thrilled, and a host of other things, too!

I got a phone call this weekend from a professor on the adcomm offering admission to the PhD-track program. They're admitting seven students with the goal of having a cohort of four or five. Shocked, thrilled, and a host of other things, too!

I got a phone call this weekend from a professor on the adcomm offering admission to the PhD-track program. They're admitting seven students with the goal of having a cohort of four or five. Shocked, thrilled, and a host of other things, too!

I wrote up an exhaustive--and exhausting--list of questions before my visit last year and am pasting it below. Keep in mind that encoded within these questions are assumptions and preferences that are likely specific to me and what I was looking for. Also, though I asked many of these questions during my visits, I also found that, in the scheme of things, most of these questions--or, I should say, most of the answers--didn't really matter in my decision-making process. In much the same way that stats tell you something, but not necessarily something useful, about what programs are looking for and what your fellow applicants are like, these questions often tell you structural things about a department but not what it actually feels like to be there. Everyone's mileage will vary, of course, but I found myself not caring if, say, prelims were written or oral (though I had a preference) if everything else about the program was appealing. In the end, if it's a program you love, you'll jump through whatever hoops it presents. I highly recommend visiting schools, as there were programs at which my instinctive reaction told me everything I needed to know after about 5 minutes of being there. Additionally, visiting schools lets you make contact with people who will be important to your work regardless if you end up working with them directly. Good luck! It's an exciting, if unnerving time, and as difficult as it was last year to weigh the options, I found myself missing the sense of possibility after I had made a decision that I was (and am) very happy with.


-PLACES TO STUDY AND WORK
-Where do most people do their writing and reading?
-What study spaces are available? Do students get a carrel? Do those who teach get or share an office?

-LIBRARY
-What is the library system like? Are the stacks open or closed?
-What are the library hours?
-Are there specialized archives/primary sources that would be useful to my research?
-Are there specialist librarians who can help me with my research?

-FACULTY
-Are the faculty members I want to work with accepting new students? Are any of those faculty members due for a sabbatical any time soon?
-Are professors willing to engage you on a personal level rather than just talking about your work?
-Are there any new professors the department is hiring in areas that align with my interests?
-Students’ relationships with their professors – are they primarily professional, or are they social as well?

-FUNDING
-Is funding competitive? If so, do students feel a distinction between those who have received more generous funding and those who haven’t?
-How does funding break down among the cohort? i.e., how many people receive fellowships?
-How, if you don’t have much savings, do you make enough money to live comfortably?
-Are there external fellowships one can apply to? If so, what is available? Does the program help you apply for these fellowships? How does receiving an external fellowship affect internal funding?
-If people need more than five/six years to finish, what funding resources are available? (For instance, Columbia can give you an additional 2-year teaching appointment.)
-Do you provide funding for conferences or research trips?
-How often is funding disbursed? (i.e., do you get paid monthly or do you have to stretch a sum over a longer period of time?)

-COHORT
-Do students get along with each other? Is the feeling of the program more collaborative than competitive?
-Do students in different years of the program collaborate with each other, or are individual cohorts cliquey?
-How many offers are given out, and what is the target number of members for an entering class?
-Ages/marital status of people in the cohort – do most people tend to be married with families? Are there younger people? Single people? What sense do you have of how the graduate students interact with each other socially?
-Do people seem happy? If they’re stressed, is it because they’re busy or is it because they’re anxious/depressed/cynical/disillusioned?
-Is the grad secretary/program administrator nice?
-What is the typical time to completion? What are the factors that slow down or speed up that time?
-I’ve read that there are two kinds of attrition: “good” attrition, in which people realize that the program, or graduate study, isn’t right for them and leave early on, and “bad” attrition, in which people don’t finish the dissertation. What can you tell me about the rates of each, and of the reasons why people have chosen to leave the program?

-JOB MARKET/PROFESSIONALIZATION
-What is the placement rate? How many of those jobs are tenure-track?
-What are examples of institutions in which people in my field have been placed?
-How does the department prepare you for the job search? Are there mock interviews and mock job talks?
-Are the people helping you navigate the job search people who have recently gone through the process themselves?
-If you don’t get placed, is there anything the department can do for you? (e.g., can you stay an extra year?)
-How does the department prepare you for and help you attain conference presentations and publications?

-SUMMER WORK
-What is encouraged/required?
-If there separate funding/is the year-round funding enough to live on during the summer?
-Do people find themselves needing to get outside work during the summer in order to have enough money?
-Am I expected to stay in town in the summer, and what happens if I don’t?

-LANGUAGE REQUIREMENT
-What is done to help people who don’t have language proficiency attain it? Does the university provide funding?
-What is the requirement, and by when do you have to meet it?
-Given my research interests, what languages should I study?
-When do you recommend doing the work necessary to fulfill the language requirement? (i.e., summer before first year, summer after first year, while taking classes, etc.)

-LOCATION REQUIREMENTS
-How long are students required to be in residence?
-How many students stay in the location for the duration of the program? (i.e., how many dissertate in residence?)
-How is funding affected if you don’t stay?

-Incompletes on papers at the end of the term: What is the policy, how many students take them, and how does this affect progress through the program?

-TEACHING
-What sort of training is provided?
-What types of courses do people teach?
-Does teaching entail serving as a grader? Serving as a TA? Developing and teaching a section of comp?
-How are students placed as TAs? Is there choice about what classes you teach and which professors you work with? Do classes correspond to your field?
-How many courses do you teach per semester/year?
-How many students are in your classes?
-How does the school see teaching as fitting in with the other responsibilities/requirements of graduate study?
-How do students balance teaching with their own work?
-Is the department more concerned with training you as a teacher/professor or with having cheap labor to teach their classes?
-How, if at all, does the economic downturn affect teaching load/class sizes?
-What are the students like? Can I sit in on a course a TA teaches to get a sense of them?

-METHODOLOGY
-Is a theory course required?
-What methodology do most people use?
-Where, methodologically, do you see the department – and the discipline – heading?
-Is interdisciplinarity encouraged, and what sorts of collaboration have students undertaken?

-Typical graduate class and seminar sizes

-What should I do to prepare over the summer?

-Ask people I know: What are the questions – both about the program itself and about the location – I should ask that will most help me get a feel for whether this is the right program for me?

-Ask people I know: What do you wish you knew or wish you had asked before choosing a program?

-Is the school on the semester or the quarter system, and how does that affect classes/teaching/requirements?

-What is the course load for each semester, and how many courses are required?

-What kind of support is provided while writing the dissertation? I worry about the isolation and anxiety of writing such a big project. What does the program do to help you break the dissertation down into manageable pieces, and to make the experience less isolating?

-What do writing assignments look like in classes? Do they differ based on the type/level of class and/or based on whether you intend to specialize in the field?

-Ask professors: what have you been working on lately?

-Ask professors: What is your approach to mentoring and advising graduate students?

-How long are class meetings?

-How often do professors teach graduate courses?

-Are course schedules available for future semesters (10-11, etc.)?

-Can I see the grad student handbook? Are there any other departmental documents – such as reports on the program prepared for accreditation – that I can see?


-QUALITY OF LIFE
-Prices – how does the cost of gas, milk, cereal, etc. compare to other places I've lived in?
-Cost and quality of typical one-bedroom apartment.
-What does the university do to provide you with or help you find housing?
-When (i.e., what month) do people start looking for an apartment for the fall, and where do they look?
-Is it easy to find a summer subletter?
-How close to campus can—and should—one live?
-What grocery stores are there in town?
-How late are cafes, bookstores, malls, restaurants typically open?
-What do people do to make extra money?
-Does the town have more of a driving or a walking culture? What is parking like near campus (availability, ease, cost)?
-Where do most English grad students live? Most other grad students? Most professors? Where is the student ghetto? Do most students live near each other, or are they spread out far and wide?
-How far does the stipend go in this location?

Every English lit program I've encountered asks for both a writing sample and a statement of purpose.

Also, while your statement of purposes tells them what you want to do, your writing sample is the piece by which they actually judge your ability to do it -- that is to say, it is what demonstrates your scholarly potential. And I think we can all agree that if they don't see strong potential in the writing sample, they aren't going to give two beans about what you're interested in and who you want to work with.

I agree that camaraderie is the great benefit of TGC, but I wouldn't discount the value of some threads on the lit boards. I had an unsuccessful first round and found TGC soon after, and some threads -- particularly on the SOP -- have been great resources/wake up calls. While yes, any advice on these boards is anecdotal, so too is the advice we receive from our advisors, whether those people are professors, current grad students, former grad students, etc. So I think your caution -- while certainly to be taken into account here -- also must be taken into account elsewhere. Our advisors are not gods, and they are certainly not always right. Some of us went to liberal arts schools and our professors, while fantastic, have been out of the grad school admissions game for years -- and that makes a difference in the sort of advice they give, no matter where they got their PhD. I received some truly "off" advice from brilliant advisors re: the SOP, advice I discarded this round largely due to the general consensus from friends currently in/recently out of grad school and, yes, the current grad students students here on TGC.

Ultimately, we need to be critical of the advice we're being given, no matter the source. Our advisors have a leg up on TGC -- they know us, have actually read our work, etc. And yes, a lot of stuff on TGC is genuinely out of left field. But for establishing a general consensus on general aspects of the English admissions process, let's not write these boards off just yet.

But -- that's just my .02. Take with salt.

(edited for clarity)

In one sense, you might be right. Applicants here seem to get hung up on the insignificant details of the application process: "Should I retake the GRE to bump my 690 verbal?" "Double or single space?" "Is it acceptable to go 50 words over the limit?" Etc.

And I think that much of the advice here needs to be taken with a huge grain of salt. No one can read the minds of an adcom. The admissions process is arbitrary and not-at-all transparent (I have a hunch that connections and behind-the-scenes phone calls figure much more prominently in the admissions process than we might want to admit), and these forums are simply evidence of our very human impulse to understand what's beyond our control. I even think that much of the advice from current grad students is yet another attempt to impose a narrative on a process that was absolutely mystifying.

Having said that, I do think that there is useful information here. Not everybody has a wealth of information at their fingertips; not everyone can ask their professors, mentors, and other fellow applicants for help. I did not have any help at all when preparing my application. I'd been out of school for several years, and my former adviser was dead. I don't think I would have ever, ever gotten into grad school at all without some of these forums, which introduced me to a language of professionalization I was not aware existed. (I seriously didn't even know what a conference paper was.) I spent a lot of time googling other people's interests and research terms. Before I frequented these communities, I was an applicant who merely liked to read and had a vague idea of one author I wanted to focus on. After lurking and reading hundreds of posts, I was finally able to define my interests and write a statement of purpose that wasn't completely cringe-worthy.

My bottom line "truism": if you're brilliant, well-prepared, well-connected, have an in-the-loop adviser, and have university resources at your fingertips, you probably don't need TGC. But if you're missing one of these vital pieces, you'll find the information here useful. At least--more useful than anything you might channel or mysteriously divine while alone in your bedroom.

I agree that camaraderie is the great benefit of TGC, but I wouldn't discount the value of some threads on the lit boards. I had an unsuccessful first round and found TGC soon after, and some threads -- particularly on the SOP -- have been great resources/wake up calls. While yes, any advice on these boards is anecdotal, so too is the advice we receive from our advisors, whether those people are professors, current grad students, former grad students, etc. So I think your caution -- while certainly to be taken into account here -- also must be taken into account elsewhere. Our advisors are not gods, and they are certainly not always right. Some of us went to liberal arts schools and our professors, while fantastic, have been out of the grad school admissions game for years -- and that makes a difference in the sort of advice they give, no matter where they got their PhD. I received some truly "off" advice from brilliant advisors re: the SOP, advice I discarded this round largely due to the general consensus from friends currently in/recently out of grad school and, yes, the current grad students students here on TGC.

Ultimately, we need to be critical of the advice we're being given, no matter the source. Our advisors have a leg up on TGC -- they know us, have actually read our work, etc. And yes, a lot of stuff on TGC is genuinely out of left field. But for establishing a general consensus on general aspects of the English admissions process, let's not write these boards off just yet.

But -- that's just my .02. Take with salt.

(edited for clarity)

I agree that camaraderie is the great benefit of TGC, but I wouldn't discount the value of some threads on the lit boards. I had an unsuccessful first round and found TGC soon after, and some threads -- particularly on the SOP -- have been great resources/wake up calls. While yes, any advice on these boards is anecdotal, so too is the advice we receive from our advisors, whether those people are professors, current grad students, former grad students, etc. So I think your caution -- while certainly to be taken into account here -- also must be taken into account elsewhere. Our advisors are not gods, and they are certainly not always right. Some of us went to liberal arts schools and our professors, while fantastic, have been out of the grad school admissions game for years -- and that makes a difference in the sort of advice they give, no matter where they got their PhD. I received some truly "off" advice from brilliant advisors re: the SOP, advice I discarded this round largely due to the general consensus from friends currently in/recently out of grad school and, yes, the current grad students students here on TGC.

Ultimately, we need to be critical of the advice we're being given, no matter the source. Our advisors have a leg up on TGC -- they know us, have actually read our work, etc. And yes, a lot of stuff on TGC is genuinely out of left field. But for establishing a general consensus on general aspects of the English admissions process, let's not write these boards off just yet.

But -- that's just my .02. Take with salt.

(edited for clarity)

I agree that camaraderie is the great benefit of TGC, but I wouldn't discount the value of some threads on the lit boards. I had an unsuccessful first round and found TGC soon after, and some threads -- particularly on the SOP -- have been great resources/wake up calls. While yes, any advice on these boards is anecdotal, so too is the advice we receive from our advisors, whether those people are professors, current grad students, former grad students, etc. So I think your caution -- while certainly to be taken into account here -- also must be taken into account elsewhere. Our advisors are not gods, and they are certainly not always right. Some of us went to liberal arts schools and our professors, while fantastic, have been out of the grad school admissions game for years -- and that makes a difference in the sort of advice they give, no matter where they got their PhD. I received some truly "off" advice from brilliant advisors re: the SOP, advice I discarded this round largely due to the general consensus from friends currently in/recently out of grad school and, yes, the current grad students students here on TGC.

Ultimately, we need to be critical of the advice we're being given, no matter the source. Our advisors have a leg up on TGC -- they know us, have actually read our work, etc. And yes, a lot of stuff on TGC is genuinely out of left field. But for establishing a general consensus on general aspects of the English admissions process, let's not write these boards off just yet.

But -- that's just my .02. Take with salt.

(edited for clarity)

Second-year grad student here. Short response: it sounds like you know exactly what you're doing, and I don't think you should be worried about it at all!

As for me, I made my list of schools to apply to based on the (false) assumption that if a program has a good reputation, it would be a fit. So when I wrote the traditional fit paragraph at the end of every application, what I found most useful was the way it forced me to go through and actually think about whether a school would be able to support the work I wanted to do. In some cases, I had a really hard time filling that paragraph. You've already done the research, though, so you're set. When I visited programs to which I'd been admitted, no one mentioned my fit paragraph--not even as a comment on the research I'd done about their school. If you present your interests engagingly and have a strong writing sample, a school's going to snatch you up whether or not you make a case for fit (and I realize both that this is exactly what you said in your post and that you ARE making a case for fit in your SOP). When professors introduced me to their colleagues, they did it on the basis of, "Your interests would be a good match for this person," not "you mentioned this person in your SOP."

We all know of people who scored horribly on this exam who still received offers from top-notch programs. (My stats professor's voice comes to mind -- "Correlation does not affect causation!") And ~gestures above~ there are a number of excellent programs who explicitly reject any validity this test claims to have re: measuring applicants' ability. Seriously -- do not fret. I scored sub-600 last year and yes, it's frustrating, and yes, you feel like it's time and money down the drain, but take heart. In the end, it's just a hoop to jump through, and if you have worked the bejeezus out of your writing sample and SOP, you are in a good position. What I took away from my (unsuccessful) application round last year was, it's all in the writing -- hence why I threw my energy into strengthening the WS and SOP rather than trying to improve my subject test score. I know that others have taken the approach that they want to improve as many aspects of their application as they can -- ultimately you're the only person who can weigh whether or not this is the best strategy for you, and for you first-time test takers, I sincerely hope that this ~is~ the only round you have to go through.

Once again, at the risk of sounding like a broken record: it's all in the writing.

Last note -- congratulations to those of you who did well! That is no small accomplishment, and a good score certainly doesn't hurt!

P.S. I had a wonderful conversation with the director of graduate studies in a dept. that gave me a more personalized rejection ~chuckle~ and his suggestions focused entirely on the writing components. This was a school that required the subject test, and it was never mentioned as a way I could improve my application. This is just one case, but based on the discussions in this forum, his advice seems representative.

Alette is right; it's standard for an academic CV in the humanities to list languages and the degree of proficiency achieved in each. So, if you speak a language and/or studied it prior to university, but it's not on your transcript, the CV can list it - you just have to be prepared to back up your claims if they decide to check up on you by having you use those skills in some aspect (e.g. written test, interview, etc.) An example of this would be:

Languages

Arabic - fluent, first language in home
Spanish - fluent, near-native proficiency
French - intermediate proficiency
Latin - reading ability

And so forth. HTH!

I know nothing about creative writing, but in general an SOP for, shall we say, "academic" (not the right word, I know) subjects contains the following, in some order:

1. what you want to research (specifically; this can change once you're in the program, but for a PhD it should be pretty focused)
2. why you want to research that*, and why you are qualified to (not just a rehash of your resume and transcript)
3. why you want to study it at this particular program (this is the "fit paragraph" that everyone talks about--what professor(s) do you want to work with, what resources does the school have that will help your project, etc)
4. what you want to do with your [name of degree] - for an academic PhD program in the humanities, you should almost ALWAYS say 'research and teach'; programs want to be able to brag about the % of students who get jobs in academia, and you won't be doing yourself any favors by saying straight off, "I will lower that percentage" (public history and the like being exceptions) (other people may disagree with this, but I stand by it)
5. if absolutely necessary, explain any holes in your record or why your lack of a specific qualification doesn't matter

* In general, this means from undergraduate onwards; it's not a great idea to talk about your childhood visits to the aquarium or how you've *always* wanted to study something (unless maybe you're applying to study neo-Platonism and you want to emphasize that you're on board with the preexistence of the soul and the return to the origin...).

I know of two anecdotes that support this.

First of all, I had a professor at my undergrad (a state school focused on agriculture, not literature) who had previously worked at a very highly ranked English program on the East coast. When I asked him how the two compared, he preferred the smaller and less prestigious department for a few reasons: the relationships between students and professors were more personal, and the environment in general was more collegial and relaxed because the pressure on both students and professors was less intense. I know the teaching/learning environment differs at every school, but it has already formed my professional opinion somewhat. I would be perfectly happy to come back and teach at a smaller department, to not make the most money in my field, and to not be some sort of America's Next Top Scholar. I'm okay with that.

The other heartening anecdoate is this: I've spoken to several professors at a local community college who ultimately preferred to teach at these schools than larger state and private schools. I'll admit none of them were English professors, but their observations seemed to go beyond something specific to a discipline. At this community college, the majority of the students were non-traditional and returning to work towards their associates or a transfer to a bachelor's program elsewhere. They WANTED to be there-- they weren't some aimless, hungover kid straight out of high school who got in because of money and connections. A community college seems like a less than ideal environment for good scholarship, but I guess the students completed their work and had lively discussions with heartfelt input-- far moreso than the professors' students at the actual universities they had taught at before the CC. I imagine the pay was lower, but a job is a job. A job where you can be happy to show up? Even better.

I'll be happy to have a stable, family-supportable, position at an institution where attending work doesn't make me want to run my car off the highway every morning during the commute.

I am a tenured associate prof in political science at a large state university. I posted this several years ago under the screen name "realist" when I first learned about this forum. At the time, I read through the threads and couldn't help but think about all the things that I wish that I had known before entering my PhD program. So with that, I thought that I'd give you all some advice from an actual PhD. I've made a couple small changes from the original version but this is basically the same as what I wrote before. While some of this may be hard to read, I offer it as-is, with only the thought that more knowledge is better than less knowledge.


CHOOSING GRADUATE SCHOOL

Your graduate school choice is probably the most important choice that you'll make in your career. Do not take this lightly. There are many reasons, but they boil down to some uncomfortable truths.

1. Only the best schools place students in academic jobs. While there are thousands of universities in the United States, there are many many many thousand more political science PhDs. 5-7 years is a very long time to spend in a low-paying job (which is what graduate school is) only to realize that you have very little chance for promotion. Even at top 10 institutions, a good half of entering students do not end up with a PhD and a tenure track job. Is it fair that this is the case? No. Are there very smart graduate students that are not at top departments? Absolutely, there are literally thousands of them. But this is how the world works. And you have no chance to change it from "the inside" unless you are already at a top department.

2. Advisers are fickle beings. Especially outside of the top institutions, they are busy and pressed for time, and they cannot offer you the type of guidance and support that you may believe that you are going to get. I had a very close relationship with a very influential adviser, and saw him for about 10 minutes once every two or three weeks. This is the norm. Do not assume or expect that you will have a different experience (although there is a small chance that you will). Moreover, good scholars are often terrible advisers. I think that one of the worst aspects of our profession is that at middle-range departments, top scholars often will not even acknowledge graduate students.

3. Graduate school is an unequal partnership between students, who receive very little and give very much, and faculty, who have many other things to do but rely on students to do things that are in the university's best interests. Graduate students are (1) essentially powerless and (2) extremely cheap labor. Universities have an incentive to keep a lot of graduate students around to fill instructor slots and TAships. This means that they will keep on a lot of graduate students who will never have a chance at a tenure-ladder job. This is a pathological system of incentives, and I find it repugnant, but this is the reality.

So what sort of advice does this lead me to give? First off, above and beyond almost anything, you need to go to the best possible graduate school. It doesn't matter if you don't like Ann Arbor as much as Athens or Austin, graduate school matters tremendously for your future ability to get a job. At nearly every university or college, a PhD from Michigan will get your file looked at when applying for jobs. I know that this sounds harsh, but for most jobs, a job file from a school out of the top 25 won't even be considered. It will just go on the trash. Let this sink in.

As a corollary, you need to think long and hard about graduate school if you do not have the opportunity to go to a top one. You should understand that you may not have a good chance of landing a tenure track job. The one's available to you, moreover, will likely be at "directional institutions" (think Northern X State) or small, low-ranked liberal arts colleges in the middle of nowhere. Even there, you will be competing with Harvard and Berkeley PhDs for a job. It's hard. It's not as hard as English or History, but nevertheless it's really hard. You should know this and plan accordingly.

The academic job market has gotten much harder in the two years since I first wrote this. There are thousands of students right now chasing a couple hundred jobs, and every year it gets worse because most people who strike out in one year go back on the job market the next year. Do not assume that the academic job market will get easier in 5-7 years, when you are going onto the job market. First, there will still be a substantial backlog of unplaced PhDs. Second, trends in academia are leading to more adjunct and lecturer positions and fewer tenure-track positions in all but the very best schools (and it's starting to happen there too). I would not still be in academia if I didn't have a tenure-ladder job.

Let's say you don't want to go be professor. Maybe you want to work in a think tank or a political consultancy. OK, fair enough: but in this case, I would recommend against getting a PhD in political science. There is little that you can gain from a PhD in political science that a think tank will find attractive that you cannot also have gotten from a good MPA/MPP/etc. program. Outside of academia, the PhD has little value-added over most professional masters degrees. Given the opportunity cost, the only people who should get PhDs in political science are people who have a passion for college teaching, or those who have a passion for academic research AND who are willing to settle for college teaching if the academic research thing doesn't work out.

Do not choose graduate school based on one individual who you "want to work with." Instead, you should choose the best program (by subfield) that you can. Why? Let's say that you identify one faculty member whose research interests match yours perfectly. For this to be the person upon whom you rely for your entire PhD course of study, it must be the case that (1) your research interests don't change (which is rare), (2) that your potential adviser is a nice and approachable person (which is about a 50-50 shot to be honest), (3) that your own research is interesting to that potential adviser (which you should not assume, regardless of what is said on recruitment weekend), and (4) that that adviser doesn't leave (which is common, especially for productive faculty at top-50-ish departments). If you chose a program based on that individual and any of these don't work out, you're in trouble. If you've chosen the best program, you'll be OK because there are other options; if you've banked on one faculty member, you're out of luck.

You should be flattered by faculty who are nice and approachable during recruitment weekend. But recruitment weekend is not like the other 51 weekends a year. Remember, faculty are approachable during recruitment because you provide them with an unlimited supply of discount labor. They have their own worries and incentives, and these rarely align with yours.

Likewise, funding matters. My general advice is that outside of a top 25 institution, you should not go to graduate school unless you have a full ride and a stipend large enough to live on. Without these, graduate school is a long and expensive process with little reward. There is a constant demand for doctors, so doctors can pay for medical school and still come out ahead. $200,000 in debt and only qualified for a very low paying job is a terrible situation that many PhDs find themselves in.

It is tempting to think that a potential adviser's kind words mean that you are special. You are special, but so are many many others. Wherever you are, you will likely not even be the smartest or most successful member of your cohort. Do not fool yourself into thinking that you are the one who will buck the trends that I have described. It's just not likely.

Finally, I have made a big point about top 25 schools. We all know that Stanford is and Purdue isn't, but what's the definitive list? Simply put, if you have to ask, your school is not in the top 25. And of course subfield matters more than overall ranking. Emory is not a top-25 theory department so think long and hard about going there for theory. JHU is not a top-25 American politics department but it's a different story altogether for political theory. If you need to convince yourself that your program is a top-25 program, it's almost certainly not.


YOUR CAREER

If you decide to go to graduate school, congratulations. I mean this sincerely. You are embarking on the most intellectually rewarding period of your life. (Of course, intellectually and financially rewarding are not the same, as I mentioned previously.) Here are some brief tips.

The best political scientists are the following five things: smart, creative, diligent, honest, and nice. Smart is obvious. The rest are not.

The best political scientists are creative. They look at old problems in new ways, or they find new problems to look at. A good way to land a middling job (or no job) is to find a marginal improvement on an existing estimator, or take lessons from Paraguay and apply them to Uruguay. The best political scientists show us how our estimators are incorrect, or better yet, find new things to estimate.

The best political scientists are diligent. They think about problems for years and years, they rewrite their draft papers repeatedly, they collect giant datasets from scratch, and they go into the field, learn the language, and stay there until they have learned something. There are no quick research trips, there are no obvious philosophical points, and there are no datasets that you can download with results you can write up in a week.

The best political scientists are honest. There are many points at which you might fudge your work: creating a new dataset from scratch, during fieldwork, in writing up your results. You will be astounded at how frequent this is in our profession. Don't do it, for it always hurts you in the end. Being wrong and honest about it is OK. Being wrong and hiding it never works.

Finally, the best political scientists are nice. It is tempting to be prickly to make yourself seem smart or to protect your ego. But the same person you criticize today might be in a position to give you a job tomorrow. As they say, make your words soft and sweet, for you never know when you may have to eat them.

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I hope this helps you all. I wish you the very best of luck with your careers.

I heard back today and got the impressed-but-rejected email. And that's a wrap for me - 0/12 this season. But I'm in a really good place about it. It's pretty freeing, actually - I'm finishing my senior year and I can do anything right now. Grad school will still be there next year. :-)

Oh my, did I ever open up a can of worms with this post!!

Regardless of nationality, my idea of a friend is someone who is supportive of your dreams, whether they understand them or not. I feel the same way about family. Family members who are not supportive, as far as I'm concerned, don't get much attention from me. I'm super super lucky - I have an INCREDIBLY supportive family overall (give and take a few little quirks - but even my extremely picky grandfather - the Irish Catholic one, is very very supportive of my grad school goals, as is my dad, and my mom, and my extended family, even if they don't quite understand why). And my American friends that I've kept up with over the years were absolutely THRILLED for me when i started talking about pursuing a PhD.

Basically, the people who know me well, and know that I'm happiest with my nose stuck in a book, or teaching the book ("you should really be a teacher / college professor" is the most common comment I get from close friends and family), are supportive. I think I was shocked by the conversation with my friend this morning, since I thought she knew me well, but obviously, she doesn't.

re the cultural thing - my ex-bf, who's British, never really took my academic "bent" seriously. Whenever I would blather on about going to school in the UK (I was planning to move there at one time), he was supportive, but not gung-ho about it. Meaning - he would make the supportive sounds, but I could tell his heart wasn't in it, really, and that he'd much rather I become a brood mare and produce loads of children with him, while my mind atrophies. He barely finished high-school (although he is extremely smart), and I always suspected that he was extremely intimidated by my academic goals (i.e. get into Oxford and then teach). Obviously, his attitude doesn't reflect the British in any way, but it's extremely varied.

In Israel - we have five VERY respected universities. We have a few Nobel prize winners in the sciences, in economics, and Israelis are always very proud of them. But here's an anecdote, not related to my own experiences - a few years ago, I had a friend who was pursuing a PhD in History, here in Tel Aviv University. She was getting the "raised eyebrow" from just about everyone - her ex-husband, her friends, her parents. On the other hand, every single person I know that has gone to study law, medicine, or get an MBA has been wholeheartedly approved of. Not to say that there aren't brilliant academics here. But there is a prevalent underlying cultural attitude in which advanced studies in the humanities (science is ok, because you can get a GREAT hi-tech or bio-tech job) is considered to be a waste of time. Or at least... not a practical way to go through life.

Personally, I don't expect everyone to love the same stuff and want to do the same things. I respect my friend's enjoyment of her steady, calm job, watching and discussing the Israeli version of "Survivor" and "Big Brother" (think the US and UK versions and multiply the atrocities by a thousand), and never picking up a book. Dude, do what ever rocks your boat. Seriously. I don't tell her that I don't get why she DOESN'T use her brain for anything more complicated than analyzing the latest reality show. I don't go and tell her that I think "Big Brother" is a waste of time (although I do). I respect her choices. She's happy, I'm happy. For me, that's what friendship is all about.

It's tough for me sometimes, not having people to discuss the things I love with, yet another reason I can't wait to go to grad school. But the least I expect from my close friends and family is enthusiasm for MY enthusiasm, if you guys know what I mean (I'm sure you do). For all of you who share these feelings of semi-alienation - we will make new friends. Our families will see how happy we are, and lay off the criticism. And everyone else who isn't supportive... well... they can go to hell in a handbasket .

Thanks for sharing everyone! I really appreciate it!