Fall 2019 Applicants

[KuroNeko]

6 minutes ago, Fantasmapocalypse said:

I'm headed to bed so I didn't read the entire article, but since I didn't see it I thought I would ask you if they differentiate between foreign applicants with foreign degrees vs. Americans/domestic applicants with foreign degrees? I'd be interested to see how that data parses.

My intuition and understanding has always been not that foreign degrees are necessarily worthless, but rather, they are valued different on American applicants applying for American jobs for example vs. an international applicant. Hence, someone from NZ with a German PhD or wherever with whatever is contextualized differently than the corresponding American/westerner.

But absolutely agree, good to have data!

Unfortunately they do not, but they do acknowledge that the data contains both Americans and foreigners with foreign PhDs. I would also like to see all of the data differentiating those, plus exactly which programs/schools were present - it's a very different situation if it is mostly or entirely Canadian and UK PhDs, for example. 

Nonetheless, hiring is not done based entirely on where one's PhD came from, but on a multitude of other factors as well. I thought I'd just point out that study for anyone else reading here who might be considering going abroad for their PhD that it is far from hopeless with a foreign PhD in the American market. I also plan to return to the US afterwards, so only time will tell! 

[scarseed]

Only a gut read but 5.5% almost surely means that people who did foreign PHDs were much more likely to get a TTP.

[phyanth]

6 hours ago, KuroNeko said:

5.5% of the tenure track positions obtained from 1994 to 2014 were from PhDs obtained at foreign institutions. See: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0202528

Honestly, those aren't terrible odds considering that only 21% of PhD graduates in the US land a tenure track job in the US. That 5.5% for foreign PhDs does not tell us the percentage out of those who applied with foreign PhDs were successful, but looking at the top universities where PhDs were hired, only 5.6% came from the highest ranking university, Chicago, for example. Only five schools made it into the 96th percentile, plus foreign universities as a whole. In terms of sheer market share, then, chances are pretty good for foreign PhDs in anthropology. 

This is saying that 5.5% of TT positions came from foreign institutions in general meaning, multiple universities. 21% of American graduates land a TT job, but they also make up 94.5% of TT positions. So actually, odds are very slim for foreign PhDs, unless you are coming from an high ranking foreign university (e.g. Oxford, Cambridge, Kyoto, etc.). 5.6% of PhD hired came from Chicago alone. That's one university whose graduates make up 5.6% of all PhD's hired versus 5.5% of a bunch of foreign universities. That's insanely good because only a few people are graduating each year with their PhD from Chicago, so most of them are landing TT positions upon graduation (theoretically). 

That being said, I don't know what the statistics are for how many graduates from foreign countries are trying to land a TT job in the U.S. (and what percentage of applicants for each position are graduates from foreign universities), so obviously that will affect how to look at this. I'm not trying to be discouraging at all, but just am being pragmatic so nobody is surprised if they go to a foreign university and find it extremely difficult to land a position stateside.

Also for those of you who are worried about going to a "lower ranked" school, look at biological anthropology (my subdiscipline). If you add up the percentages of the top 8 (including foreign) universities, they make up 32.1% of the market. That means 67.9% of the rest of TT positions are occupied from other U.S. universities! Other schools that aren't in the 90% percentile and above are likely not graduating as many PhDs annually, so that actually makes sense to me.

I'm at a smaller program, but almost everyone who has graduated has landed teaching positions, and most in TT positions. That being said, we're trained so we can also get positions at medical schools (anatomists), so we have more options.   

At the end of the day, if TT is what you want, just work hard on doing well in your program, keep applying and see what happens! You never know. I think it's just abysmal in general because people in academia don't leave until they're very old, and universities (apart from the top institutions) just aren't funding anthropology programs well. It's a bit of a crazy at the end of the day, because hiring programs are looking for such a specific fit. 

Edited March 13, 2019 by phyanth

[adamanthro]

has anyone been invited off the waitlist @ CUNY? 

[mickjagger666]

does anyone know when nyu is expected to release decisions for the skeletal biology master's? 

[perpetualalligator]

17 hours ago, adamanthro said:

has anyone been invited off the waitlist @ CUNY? 

I haven't even received a decision yet ? I called on Friday to see what was up and they told me that not all decisions/acceptances have come out and they don't really know when they'll send the rest of the decisions out. Based on that I would assume that accepting people off the waitlist is not a priority for the right now? I don't know. I wish I could get and give you a straight answer.

[adamanthro]

@perpetualalligator thanks for the response! Yeah they are really dragging this out. It makes me feel bad because I have been waiting to hear back before accepting other offers so I might be keeping someone else on the waitlist. I might just make a decision before hearing back from them. 

[sierra918]

If anyone is still waiting on Vanderbilt, they have already made offers and invited people for interviews. Best of luck to everyone!!!

[Andromeda3921]

On 3/25/2019 at 3:22 AM, adamanthro said:

has anyone been invited off the waitlist @ CUNY? 

Well, at least this wait seems to have ended finally! Guess the waitlist continues to be so unless the applicant is willing to take on the Tuition only fellowship. 

[perpetualalligator]

Has anyone else not heard from CUNY? I'm sure I have been rejected but nothing has shown up in the application portal and I haven't received any emails. So rude. ?

[Fantasmapocalypse]

I just got my rejection letter from UCSB's EALCS program... I turned down an offer for the JET Program and ended up accepting an offer for UNR instead.

[archaeologysam]

I know this thread is just about dead but I wanted to give a final update on my experience with applying to graduate school. I applied to six departments in Classics and Anthropology. I applied to FSU's masters in Classical Archaeology and their masters in Anthropology, to UWF's masters in Underwater Archaeology, ECU's masters in Maritime Studies, UCLA's Cotsen Institutes interdisciplinary PhD, and UConn's PhD in Anthropology. I was accepted to both of FSU's programs, ECU, and UConn. All of these programs offered me funding. It's worth noting that ECU's funding offer was exceptionally poor however. I received an official rejection from UCLA and never heard anything from UWF officially but when I reached out to my POI I was told that they had filled all of their positions for the Fall. I have accepted the position at UConn and am very excited to start in the Fall. 

[Shee]

Hello everyone. Has anyone heard anything from UTK or Oklahoma state uni?? Both said they would get back to applicants in April and tomorrow is the last day in April. Being an international student, time isn't really on my side right now  so stressed just thinking about being rejected, these are my last options. Already rejected from NCSU and University of Oklahoma. I applied to the Microbiology department for a masters degree. Fingers crossed. 

 

Glad this forum exists. I was already losing my mind till I found out that I am not alone in this application cycle madness :') 

[perpetualalligator]

5 minutes ago, Shee said:

Hello everyone. Has anyone heard anything from UTK or Oklahoma state uni?? Both said they would get back to applicants in April and tomorrow is the last day in April. Being an international student, time isn't really on my side right now  so stressed just thinking about being rejected, these are my last options. Already rejected from NCSU and University of Oklahoma. I applied to the Microbiology department for a masters degree. Fingers crossed. 

 

Glad this forum exists. I was already losing my mind till I found out that I am not alone in this application cycle madness :') 

Hi! This is an Anthropology forum so I think you might this Biology forum could be more helpful:

As an international student I do understand your frustration, but don't worry about timing in terms of your visa; you could probably receive your I-20 by May and still have enough time to get your student visa. Best of luck and I hope everything goes well!

[Shee]

Just now, perpetualalligator said:

Hi! This is an Anthropology forum so I think you might this Biology forum could be more helpful:

As an international student I do understand your frustration, but don't worry about timing in terms of your visa; you could probably receive your I-20 by May and still have enough time to get your student visa. Best of luck and I hope everything goes well!

Oh I assumed it was a general forum. Thanks! ?

[Fantasmapocalypse]

On 4/6/2019 at 7:43 PM, Fantasmapocalypse said:

I just got my rejection letter from UCSB's EALCS program... I turned down an offer for the JET Program and ended up accepting an offer for UNR instead.

And I got funding!