Picking a program

[vandersems]

Hello everybody,

 

as I am planning on applying for PhD programs in the next cycle, I thought I'd take advantage of the flurry of activity of successful applicants on the forum at this point.

I have a rather simple or perhaps even stupid question. How did you pick your programs and POIs? What would make a professor be interested in supervising you? What constitutes a good faculty/program fit?

What is more important, regional or topical overlaps with your POI/the faculty? Surely one's research interests are not going to be too similar to one's supervisor's, otherwise one's work would be unoriginal and/or it would be boring to be working together, right? Or, as is the case for me, there is really not much research being done on the combination of region and topic that I am interested in, so I wouldn't even be able to find somebody whose work is exactly down my alley.

 

I'd be very grateful for some advice.

[Dexterchi]

I used some of my favorite articles as a starting point. I looked up the authors and researched their institutions, this gave me my first list. Depending on how recent the articles were, I looked at the authors' CVs to see who their mentors/advisees were. Once I had a solid list of people who could help me advance in my topic of choice I emailed all of them and the ones who said they were taking students became my "short" list (I had about 10 schools on it), then I looked at competitiveness, funding and how my stats matched up. I had a limited budget for applications so I had to be careful with applying to too many reach school. 

 

There were a few other factors I looked at but this is how I got started. I hope this helps.  

[pears]

hey there! when i was still an undergrad, i did the same thing as dexterchi: i kept mental sidenotes when i was writing my capstone about whose work i was citing the most often, whose research i enjoyed, lab and school names that popped up, and so on. from there, i narrowed it down to places with terminal MA options (since that's the right move for me, at least for now). i also talked with co-workers, classmates, friends, et al. to see if they knew of any programs or professors that had a lot of overlap with my interests. i shifted from meso to the north american west (mostly pac nw, but also great basin, california in general) so i kept an ongoing, ever-changing list. once i narrowed it down to a few, i started sending out emails and checking out course catalogs. i considered factors like personality mesh, short-term research projects (aka what i could be a TA/RA for), etc. after i'd finished applying.

 

out of curiosity, what's your field of interest?

[jmu]

In my subfield (it overlaps between anthro and geography) there aren't many schools with a number of people doing it so I had to look carefully at each program and see how my interests overlapped with everybody else's. This was also important because there is no one actually looking at what I'm interested in at all so there is no "perfect fit." I first looked to see if they had at least one person with the same regional interest and if this person had similar interests in the goings on of the region. Then I looked to see if they had a person in my subfield and I looked at their most recent research to see what they were doing and if it would be mutually beneficial. I also looked in other departments to see if there was overlap. I considered all of these factors combined and talked to my professors about the programs and the people I was interested in to get their thoughts. I ended up with a list of about 10 schools. Deciding I wanted to stay in the US to make family visits easier narrowed that to 7. Two of the programs were a really big reach for me so I decided to only apply to one as money was a factor. I didn't get my materials ready in time for one (the website I was looking at was out of date and the deadline had been moved forward by over a month) so that was eliminated. I applied to the remaining five.

 

A DGS I spoke with described the whole process perfectly: alchemy.

[radiomars]

You can also look at specialized groups that organize conferences and see what schools/faculty are members. I am interested in evolution & biological anthropology, so I looked up HBES (Human Behavior and Evolution Society) and checked out their list of participating schools and departments. Super helpful.

[anxiousanthro]

Hello everybody,

 

as I am planning on applying for PhD programs in the next cycle, I thought I'd take advantage of the flurry of activity of successful applicants on the forum at this point.

I have a rather simple or perhaps even stupid question. How did you pick your programs and POIs? What would make a professor be interested in supervising you? What constitutes a good faculty/program fit?

What is more important, regional or topical overlaps with your POI/the faculty? Surely one's research interests are not going to be too similar to one's supervisor's, otherwise one's work would be unoriginal and/or it would be boring to be working together, right? Or, as is the case for me, there is really not much research being done on the combination of region and topic that I am interested in, so I wouldn't even be able to find somebody whose work is exactly down my alley.

 

I'd be very grateful for some advice.

 

this was sort of a ridiculous way to do it, but I looked at the faculty members for every school on this list (http://chronicle.com/article/NRC-Rankings-Overview-/124703/) and then narrowed a list down from there based on who i would want to work with, places i absolutely would not live etc.  I think the best way to see if you might have a good fit with the dept is to contact current graduate students.  it feels really intimidating (or at least it did to me) but they are so friendly/helpful/open about their experiences.  they will give you tips about who is super busy, who might be retiring soon, who is a great supervisor, the overall atmosphere in the dept. etc.  you can use this to see if you would be a good fit and then contact faculty members too.  i was told to aim for working with associate professors and above because their place at the uni was more secure/certain.

 

for me, i felt topical/theoretical overlap was more important, but ive made sure to check and see that there are at least some people competent to advise me on working in a certain geographical area (not necessarily faculty in the anthro dept too).  i actually found it reassuring that i was accepted to work with people who don't necessarily have "expertise" in a certain country, because to me it signaled that they weren't just interested in producing intellectual carbon-copies of themselves. 

 

good luck!

[anthropologygeek]

I looked at the faculty of every university to see if there was a fit