Non-traditional doctoral students

[simone von c]

I am a highly-qualified but very non-traditional student who has applied for admission to several doctoral programs. I wonder what are your thoughts about the idea of having a 50-ish woman in your cohort?

[Trinoide]

I also--male, 50's, starting (I hope!) a Ph.D., but entering with a Masters'. I've been teaching in a high school for a long time.

[rsldonk]

I am a highly-qualified but very non-traditional student who has applied for admission to several doctoral programs. I wonder what are your thoughts about the idea of having a 50-ish woman in your cohort?

I'm in my 30s but I think that's pretty cool. Good luck getting through the process. You should be great.

[simone von c]

I am also entering with an MA. Thank you for the responses, and best of luck to everyone!

[ChibaCityBlues]

I'm in my early 30s and just started a PhD program where I'm the second oldest in my cohort. The oldest is just a few years older than I am. In my MA institution, there were two students in my cohort who were in their 40s and 50s and I thought that was great. With so many grad students in their mid- to late-twenties and with many of them never having done anything else other than being a student, there's a general lack of life experience going on. I think this is interesting considering that most of them are training so as to paint with very broad brush strokes the life experiences of others. There's a great way in which students who have been around the block bring to their comments during seminar and their written work a depth and nuance that students who have only ever been students don't.

I remember being in a seminar with a kid who fancied himself the next generation of Marxist intellectual revolutionary. He was great and really really smart. For whatever reason the discussion moved towards the family as a center of politicization and he just refused to go there. He wouldn't take seriously that idea people might become political anywhere other than public spaces. He was all about print culture, social discourse, mobilization, etc., but resisted the idea that parents, siblings, and friends might have something to do with it as well. This isn't to say he was clueless. I just think if he had his own kids or if his older sibling had kids, or if his parents were older and started getting sick and he had cause to reflect on his relationship with them, etc., that he might become more open to the idea that the family, for example, is a really interesting place to look for historical persistence and change.

In my current institution, where I'm among the oldest, I kind of wish the average age was a bit higher for intellectual reasons, but also for "professional" reasons. There's a lot of complaining going on here that only highly educated and exceedingly privileged kids studying at a high-ranking national university are capable of doing. It's kind of ridiculous.

[TMP]

I'm in my mid-20s but did my MA straight out of undergrad. I was the youngest in my class the whole time. I seriously appreciated older students' perspectives and my professors' as well, if they had experience outside of academia. When people are young and they have so much ahead of them and they've been nothing but a student, your experiences can possibly arouse curiosity of those students as well as encourage them to take a little time off after the MA degree. Although I was very unhappy about not starting PhD this past fall, I am so happy that I am taking the year off to get a little more life experience and having this chance (And I know that one of my professors is secretly happy that I am in this position because she wanted me to get some more life experience before starting the PhD).

Without exposure to more adults (remember professors often have little life experience outside of academia in general), young students don't "get" why it's worth taking time off because they don't really know what's out there. They are also all nervous about falling off the track with "distractions." So, I think, it's important that when you draw from your life experiences in the seminar and your responses, you make your life experience seem worthwhile and be inspiring to others to do the same if they can.

[datroy]

Assuming I get in somewhere, I'll be 29 when I start in the fall. I did an MA in international relations at U Chicago (history major in undergrad at a school in NC) and have been working for the past 5 years as a consultant for various offices in the Defense Department on counterinsurgency/irregular warfare policy and strategy. I am going for my PhD in what is essentially military history, focusing on the effect that the interaction of the Patriots/Whigs and local communities in the American Revolution had on the inability of the British to carry out their Southern Strategy in the Carolinas and Georgia. I hope to be able to get into the structure of the "resistance movement" in the colonies, how they interacted with the population, and the effect of British response.

I applied to UNC Chapel Hill, Duke, UVA, Texas A&M, Ohio State, Wisconsin, Yale, Harvard and Oxford. Just waiting to hear now! Good luck to all.

[aginath]

I'm not in History, but I do have experience with non-traditional classmates in Education. I'm mid-30s and in my first semester, I took a mixed level class that included graduate and undergraduate students. One of my teammates on a project was a 40-something undergraduate senior who had been a sailor in the Navy and jack of all trades. He graduated this past Spring and will start on a Master's soon. In the co-hort above mine, there is a 50-something woman. Generally speaking, our co-horts can range from 24-50 in age, with the average student being late 20s to early 30s.

In any case, age has never been an issue or question for any student.

[qbtacoma]

I look forward to interacting with older students in graduate school.

[natsteel]

I am a highly-qualified but very non-traditional student who has applied for admission to several doctoral programs. I wonder what are your thoughts about the idea of having a 50-ish woman in your cohort?

Im in my 30s and took 2 grad classes, one at the CUNY Grad Center, this past semester. Both of the classes had students even less traditional than myself including 1-2 women in their 50s in each class. In both classes, these women brought all kinds of experiences to bear on their comments and critiques of works and generally added a great deal to the discussion. Coming from a very large public university, I've learned how valuable diversity can be in the classroom.

[mandarin.orange]

I am a highly-qualified but very non-traditional student who has applied for admission to several doctoral programs. I wonder what are your thoughts about the idea of having a 50-ish woman in your cohort?

I think it would be great, and inspiring. Of course, I will be non-traditional myself (32 upon starting in the fall). I would probably gravitate toward you...many of the close friends I've made in my current city tend to be older.

Now, one poster had mentioned the 20-something "complaining of the privileged" - I remember that well from my M.S. program and was fully immersed and a part of it. Lots of interdating and gossip went on among the students in their 20s. Many of them could take one offhand comment from their advisor or a student SO deeply personally and not just ignore it or brush it off...amusing that the same crowd often considers taking time away from grad studies for work, jobs or having kids as "distractors." There were also plenty of older graduate students (and undergrads!) at the time...sadly, I don't remember getting to know them extensively, but they were quite focused, doing amazing work, had less angsty/complicated relationships with their advisors, and often some of the best teachers and TAs. I look forward to being part of that crowd!

[simone von c]

I am so encouraged by these positive responses. I spent many years raising a family and in the business world; this move to academia is a long-cherished dream. I have worked hard to place myself in the best position for acceptance to a doctoral program but wonder how the admissions committees will respond when they see my birthdate. Thank you for taking the time to let me know that my possible colleagues will be welcoming. I'll let you know how things turn out.

[Henry Hudson]

I'm 42, and know plenty of grad students older than me. Some possibly into their 60s.

It doesn't really seem to be a big deal; people with all different 'real life' backgrounds seem to be making it work.

[Bibliophile]

I am so encouraged by these positive responses. I spent many years raising a family and in the business world; this move to academia is a long-cherished dream. I have worked hard to place myself in the best position for acceptance to a doctoral program but wonder how the admissions committees will respond when they see my birthdate. Thank you for taking the time to let me know that my possible colleagues will be welcoming. I'll let you know how things turn out.

Hi my friend! This is nice feedback. Good idea to post this question here.

I also qualify as a non-traditional applicant. I am in my mid-40s and do not have a history BA but will finish my MA in European History this spring.

[Goldwater64]

In my current institution, where I'm among the oldest, I kind of wish the average age was a bit higher for intellectual reasons, but also for "professional" reasons. There's a lot of complaining going on here that only highly educated and exceedingly privileged kids studying at a high-ranking national university are capable of doing. It's kind of ridiculous.

In all fairness, the whiniest and most often complaining person in my program is not the youngest but the oldest. The oldest tend to have life experience, but they also tend to be the people who have the most changed living situation upon starting graduate school, and for some of them the trade off is not necessarily worth it.

[natsteel]

In all fairness, the whiniest and most often complaining person in my program is not the youngest but the oldest. The oldest tend to have life experience, but they also tend to be the people who have the most changed living situation upon starting graduate school, and for some of them the trade off is not necessarily worth it.

Whether people complain a lot has more to do with their personality than their age, so this is certainly not something that's worth generalizing about. In my own personal experience in graduate classes taken as an undergraduate, older students contributed to discussion in a very valuable way by approaching many topics from a different perspective than many of the younger students. But that is only my own personal experience. Obviouly, YMMV...