"collegial vs. competitive" top programs

[socscholar]

Every program seems to tout a "collegial instead of competitive atmosphere."

What do you guys think of this? Besides the programs typically cited as competitive/cutthroat (Berkeley, Wisconsin, Chicago), have you heard of other schools having this culture?

Obviously we will all visit and speak to people and try to find this out for ourselves, but I think the rumblings around town are sometimes a useful foil to the overly cheery choreography of visiting weekends.

[splitends]

Berkeley is not cutthroat! I get that people might be more stressed out about money than they are at other top schools, but the grad students here are some of the nicest and most supportive people I've ever met in my life. I know there are people here and there that could certainly be called competitive, but I just don't think it's part of the overall institutional culture. I know I can't speak for everyone, and I know that I've mostly seen things from the outside looking in as an undergrad at Berkeley, but I've gotten a bit of a peak behind the curtain since getting accepted into the PhD program and I just have to say that it doesn't seem that way to me at all.

I'm much less knowledgable about Wisconsin, but I've heard that that reputation is outdated. In the last few years they switched from a model of admitting large cohorts with precarious funding to one focused on admitting small cohorts with 5 years funding guaranteed, which is supposed to be reflected in more collegial dynamics between the grad students. Everyone I've talked to there has also insisted it's super collegial (though of course, it's hard to say how accurate that assessment might be...)

I absolutely hear that about Chicago, though, which is a huge part of why I didn't apply.

I've heard weird and slightly more mixed things about UCLA and Harvard along those lines, though. Does anyone have any other info on those schools?

[Darth.Vegan]

Wisconsin is no longer super competitive because they fund everyone.

[socscholar]

I wonder about that, though, because they only started that with the 2011 cohort. And the department is massive. Can things really change that quickly?

Any thoughts on Michigan?

[Darth.Vegan]

I wonder about that, though, because they only started that with the 2011 cohort. And the department is massive. Can things really change that quickly?

Any thoughts on Michigan?

Michigan I would imagine is not too bad either.

All students

admitted to the Sociology Ph.D. Program are provided with

five-year funding packages.

Source: http://www.lsa.umich.edu/soc/graduateprogram/financialsupport

[Karlito]

I've heard from solid sources that Harvard is very much a breeding facility with a highly competitive environment

[splitends]

I don't know that funding packages are necessarily the only source of a competitive atmosphere. After all, University of Chicago is hardly short on money (though I don't know the specifics of what they offer their grad students) and I do insist that Berkeley grad students can be incredibly cooperative and supportive despite their impending poverty. I got the impression (and none of this was from super solid sources) that Chicago strategically encouraged competition to try to get the most out of their students intellectually, not that it was a result of competing for the same pool of limited resources.

I would like to hear more about Harvard if anyone knows. I heard some frightening things from one grad student, but I do think that person might have been an outlier. [@Karlito: what exactly do you mean by "breeding facility" and where did you hear that? Feel free to PM me...]

I am really curious about this topic in general, though-- please spill if you've heard anything about any programs, especially if it comes from relatively legit sources!

[sciencegirl]

@karlito, specifically the Soc. department or other departments at Harvard? And what do you mean by "breeding" - I don't think its necessarily a factory.. though its competitive by the nature of it being a top program... but I also think the OP is asking about specific programs being extra competitive.. and I would agree with splitends that Berkeley would not be lumped into Chicago and the old school Wisconsin... and I would also agree with @splitends about Chicago's structure.. a best friend of mine went there undergrad and said something similar about the encouragement to compete there...

Its sort of funny that top programs would even be competitive since you think it would be more prevalent in the schools between rank 10-30.. where there is a lot more fierce competition to stand out and get ahead...

And I also don't think it always has to do with money...

I will say that some great advice was to judge your cohort if you go on visits... see if you like them, can work with them, etc. These people will be with you, for better or worse, for the rest of your life.. so you are not just entering a relationship with the school and faculty, but with your cohort...

[lovenhaight]

I've been told by several reliable sources that Stanford is another program that encourages the cutthroat mentality...

[tt503]

I've heard from solid sources that Harvard is very much a breeding facility with a highly competitive environment

I don't know about the sociology department, but I've had pretty close ties to other graduate departments at Harvard and they don't have a "competitive" vibe at all--mainly because these programs admit a small-ish cohort, and everyone in a given cohort seems to have a different research interest (often stratified because professors usually take 1 student every two or more years). Everyone has seemed really friendly and I've often seen graduate students help each other with various parts of research (even co-authoring papers together).

[MarxianSociologist]

I've got it on good authority (a fairly recent Chicago alum) that Chicago is not a happy place to be for grad students.

However, if you want to be in Chicago, I just visited Northwestern, and it seems super collegial. They are very egalitarian with their funding, and the grad students seem to get along very well.

[sciencegirl]

@tt503... yeah, that's sort of my understanding with Stanford too.. that they seem to balance out a cohort so that no one's interests overlap so there isn't a direct competition. It would be helpful I think for posters to be a bit more descriptive maybe in what they mean as cutthroat for an environment. I mean, I think at all the top 10 programs, you will have smart, ambitious people - and naturally people will feel pressure to succeed and do well, but I think OP is trying to figure out what programs seem to be more collegial vs. competitive.. I don't get a sense at all from Stanford that its not collegial (the grad students I've spoken too seem incredibly warm and nice and no one has mentioned the word cutthroat). Stanford's program also has a lot of teams working on experiments together which I think adds to a more collegial feel among these students. So @lovenhaight's comment seems really odd from what I've encountered interacting with the students there - are there certain professors who encourage students to compete with each other? My sense from what I'm feeling out from that program is that its probably not as warm as Northwestern, but no where near Chicago on the other end of things.

I think its just more helpful for some of us to actually to get details - and of course, PM us if its stuff that you can't post.

[wannabeaphd]

When I accompanied my SO to campus visits last year, the collegial vs. competitive thing was a big deciding factor.

Here is the rundown for the schools we visited:

UCLA = extremely competitive

USC = very collegial

UCI = very collegial

UC Davis = some of both

UCSD = more competitive than I would have suspected

Hope this is helpful!

[ANLstyle]

Does anyone know why UCLA's atmosphere is so competitive?

U of Washington's atmosphere is very collegial. Everyone co-publishes and there is much equality in the program.

Edited March 5, 2012 by ANLstyle

[Karlito]

@ all for Harvard: specifically for the sociology department. "Breeding" was certainly excessive - but essentially competition permeates the department's life from what I've heard. But students are not underfunded and as intensely subjected to harsh competition in such places as UCLA or Chicago I guess.

Edited March 5, 2012 by Karlito

[wannabeaphd]

Does anyone know why UCLA's atmosphere is so competitive?

It's not very charitable, but I think it's because 1) the professors aren't really invested in teaching, 2) the university needs lots of TAs but not lots of PhD program graduates, so people get lefft by the wayside, and 3) they feel (like at Berkely) that "the cream will rise to the top" so they don't really need to be invested in all of their students because talent will show itself.

[ANLstyle]

It's not very charitable, but I think it's because 1) the professors aren't really invested in teaching, 2) the university needs lots of TAs but not lots of PhD program graduates, so people get lefft by the wayside, and 3) they feel (like at Berkely) that "the cream will rise to the top" so they don't really need to be invested in all of their students because talent will show itself.

Thanks for this, wannabeaphd! You should add sofreakingbad to the end of your username, that way you can be like Bruno Mars.

[jacib]

Yo, go visit you guys. Or better yet, try to talk with current graduate students if you can. I think my school has a reputation, but I don't think that reputation is accurate. Or rather, if it is true for a minority of students, it's not accurate for me as a graduate student. Wisconsin was super-competitive because of artificial scarcity. I don't think we're likely to return to that in sociology grad schools (one professor told me that back in the day, all the Harvard PhD just took normal summer jobs because they needed the money. She was a typist in this really sexist office every summer. Impossible to imagine now). Some places encourage competition, but I bet they do it selectively. Like for Harvard, I would guess that the quantitive/networks people felt like they were competing (for ASR articles, for jobs, for attention whatever--it's had good results) but maybe the ethnographers and people doing historical work experienced a really different environment. You know? I wouldn't believe everything you read on the internet, is all I mean, and even if it is true to some degree, unless there's a clear structural reason for it (like there was at Wisconsin, or if one huge name adviser has like 40 students or something, or maybe what people above say about UCLA, I don't know anything about that), I'd bet it is irregular even at a department it's "true" for.

At my school, I find myself cooperating with people from my same adviser, not competing with them. She has us look out for each other ("I'm worried about how his lit review is going. Will you talk to him about it and tell him not to freak out? He worries too much"). And I know she'd be like that at any school. I'm actively trying to recruit more people to come work with her from the admitted students to come here and work with her because to me, that's more people here with similar interests, more people who could read my work, more people that could suggest useful criticisms. Competition vs cooperation is probably as much about the adviser as it is about the department. One of the hot shot person here has taken to pairing up one of his most favorite students with other people who have potentially interesting projects that they don't have all the skills to do yet. It's assigned collegiality, and it's very much created by the adviser, not the department as a whole. My cohort has some potential cooperation in it because we happened to get along really well. I want to work together with some of these people because I straight up like them. That seems less likely for the cohort below me because, for whatever reason, they just hung out together less and hang out less. We experience the same program and the same advisers, but different levels of collegiality. Also, just a note, we don't have that many co-publishers that come out of our department, but I know like eight people who would take a look at a draft paper of mine and give me thoughtful criticisms.

This is also probably something that you can only figure out after you've been admitted though, because that's the only time you can talk to real graduate students, unless you have the social networks to know people already in the department.

My recommendation to you, whereever you go, have all the first years meet together for a drink at a bar a few days before school starts. That's one thing we did, and the younger cohort didn't do, that was a small step towards going down a friendly path.

[giacomo]

It's not very charitable, but I think it's because 1) the professors aren't really invested in teaching, 2) the university needs lots of TAs but not lots of PhD program graduates, so people get lefft by the wayside, and 3) they feel (like at Berkely) that "the cream will rise to the top" so they don't really need to be invested in all of their students because talent will show itself.

Re: #2, i get the first part but not the second. why would they not need many PhD program graduates? placement issue, probably?

[wannabeaphd]

Yes, I was thinking placement. If students drop out then they have fewer to place and their placement rate will look better...

[sciencegirl]

I wouldn't be as cynical as @wannabeaphd here.. especially since placement rate doesn't get reported in any way to USNWR or have any affect on grad school rankings in the way that graduation rates have for undergrad rankings.

I think an easier explanation is simply that UCLA has had historically large cohorts (this past year was 20 which I read somewhere on their Sociology newsletter awhile back).. most top private programs only have incoming cohorts in the range of 7-12... when you have that large of a cohort, and larger faculty to grad student ratios, students are more likely to fall through the cracks, not get the support they need, etc. I will speculate however that UCLA may be shrinking a bit, similar to what WIsconsin has done... this seems to be a real trend now, to move away from large cohorts and get smaller ones so that they can be better supported, both financially and with faculty energy.

[msafiri]

Yo, go visit you guys. Or better yet, try to talk with current graduate students if you can.

I definitely agree with this. That said, make sure you talk to a few students and from a few different cohorts if you can as each cohort is different.

My recommendation to you, whereever you go, have all the first years meet together for a drink at a bar a few days before school starts. That's one thing we did, and the younger cohort didn't do, that was a small step towards going down a friendly path.

While this is a great idea, it may not always work. A couple of people in my cohort tried this and the end result was always that it'd be the same 4-5 people each time (from a cohort of 15). The only time our entire cohort was ever together was at the departmental orientation and while sitting in the required first year course. And, in spite of that, I'd still describe my department as collegial even though my particular cohort is not.