Employment prospects: degree from an R2 university

[TheMercySeat]

Thoughts?

There has to be SOMEBODY here who went through a R2.

I am interested in a non-academic research scientist job, and I need to learn more about the R2 job prospects before I decide where I'm going for graduate school.

Alternatively, please advise if somebody else knows of a forum outside of grad cafe where I can get some sound advice. I already have something similar on the jobs subforum here without any bites

Edited April 1, 2015 by TheMercySeat

[tha1ne]

Thoughts?

There has to be SOMEBODY here who went through a R2.

I am interested in a non-academic research scientist job, and I need to learn more about the R2 job prospects before I decide where I'm going for graduate school.

Alternatively, please advise if somebody else knows of a forum outside of grad cafe where I can get some sound advice. I already have something similar on the jobs subforum here without any bites

 

PM me. ;P

[spunky]

i've always been under the impression that if you're not interested in an academic job, then the kind of opportunities you will have access to are mostly be limited to things like how well can you network, how much previous experience you have, etc. you know, regular 'job' stuff. i find it difficult to believe that any person in a non-academic setting will look at your CV and say "oh yes, this candidate is a member of such and such lab with publications in such and such high-impact factor journals". or at least that has been my experience in my musings with jobs in the "real world" (<--- stoopid "real world" jobs, the only reason i don't hate your jobs is that they pay well.. )

Edited April 2, 2015 by spunky

[TheMercySeat]

i've always been under the impression that if you're not interested in an academic job, then the kind of opportunities you will have access to are mostly be limited to things like how well can you network, how much previous experience you have, etc. you know, regular 'job' stuff. i find it difficult to believe that any person in a non-academic setting will look at your CV and say "oh yes, this candidate is a member of such and such lab with publications in such and such high-impact factor journals". or at least that has been my experience in my musings with jobs in the "real world" (<--- stoopid "real world" jobs, the only reason i don't hate your jobs is that they pay well.. )

Thanks!!!

 

Believe it or not, my current employer (nonprofit research) actually does actually care about such matters, and so I work with lots of PhDs from ivy league institutions. I just spent a few hours looking at RAND and AIR experts, and it seems as if the same standards apply :x

To refine my question... does anybody know how representative this is of other non-academic research jobs?

 

Which leads me to the next question: what the hell happens to PhD psych graduates from R2 universities?!

I don't have an overly informed idea yet, and honestly the R1 bias is irking me! An R2 that I am considering has more rigorous quant/methodology training than some R1s I interviewed at :x

Edited April 2, 2015 by TheMercySeat

[spunky]

Thanks!!!

 

Believe it or not, my current employer (nonprofit research) actually does actually care about such matters, and so I work with lots of PhDs from ivy league institutions. I just spent a few hours looking at RAND and AIR experts, and it seems as if the same standards apply :x

To refine my question... does anybody know how representative this is of other non-academic research jobs?

 

Which leads me to the next question: what the hell happens to PhD psych graduates from R2 universities?!

I don't have an overly informed idea yet, and honestly the R1 bias is irking me! An R2 that I am considering has more rigorous quant/methodology training than some R1s I interviewed at :x

 

sorry, i guess my comment was out for more general "industry-type" jobs but i just noticed that you're specifically inquiring about research jobs, just outside of a traditional academic setting (e.g. university). then yeah, i totally agree with you. sometimes the pettiness of people in places like that irks me because they seem to marry the worst of both industry and academic jobs. the prestige of your university suddenly becomes a thing, the prestige of your lab is also relevant, whether your advisor is well known or not... sigh. i only once worked in a place like that (a research company that's somehow indirectly connected to my uni) and it.was.HELL.

 

still, let's just assess the situation objectively. you're in an R2 university now. can you transfer to an R1 university with all the goodies and perks of where you are? if yes, go. if no (which is the most likely possibility) i guess you're gonna have to work twice as hard to make up for the lack of academic "pedigree" so that's more conferences to go to, more networking, tackling on more ambitious projects... basically just make yourself a candidate that's too good to say not to. like a molten lava cake! 

[TheMercySeat]

sorry, i guess my comment was out for more general "industry-type" jobs but i just noticed that you're specifically inquiring about research jobs, just outside of a traditional academic setting (e.g. university). then yeah, i totally agree with you. sometimes the pettiness of people in places like that irks me because they seem to marry the worst of both industry and academic jobs. the prestige of your university suddenly becomes a thing, the prestige of your lab is also relevant, whether your advisor is well known or not... sigh. i only once worked in a place like that (a research company that's somehow indirectly connected to my uni) and it.was.HELL.

still, let's just assess the situation objectively. you're in an R2 university now. can you transfer to an R1 university with all the goodies and perks of where you are? if yes, go. if no (which is the most likely possibility) i guess you're gonna have to work twice as hard to make up for the lack of academic "pedigree" so that's more conferences to go to, more networking, tackling on more ambitious projects... basically just make yourself a candidate that's too good to say not to. like a molten lava cake!

Blah!!!

Thanks. :x

I'm actually mulling over offers between a R2 (stellar fit, groundbreaking research, everything rocks about this program) and a R1 (subject matter in program is dull relative to the R2, I will only be in it for the PI if I go here). Oh, so frustrating!

Either way, I'm going to work like a dog-- I may or may not be still traumatized from going on the market after discovering that employers don't really care about a track record of success during an UG and MA career.

I REALLY hope the R2 professor doesn't ask why I turn down her program because I am going to feel like such a jackass for acting on such a superficial reason

Moreover, I thought R1s piled "academia or bust" rather thickly

Edited April 2, 2015 by TheMercySeat

[rising_star]

Can you contact the program to find out what their alums are doing now? That might be helpful to you.

[TheMercySeat]

Can you contact the program to find out what their alums are doing now? That might be helpful to you.

Thanks!!!

That's actually the approach I took (and the best approach I have, to be honest). It wasn't as informative as I had hoped-- the department had rockstar research scientist placements, and then all of the professors (with the gov ties!) retired in the past 5 years. I think going into this department with newer (yet brilliant) faculty is diving into the great unknown :( which is, may I add, upsetting! R2s are not heavily discussed anywhere, and I feel like many of them deserve more credit when I see the caliber of research they produce plus the rigorous curriculum requirements (the R2 I'm considering has impressive stat training :x)

It's tricky because I haven't had a PhD interview yet where professors really spoke of having students who struggled on the market, but it's statistically impossible that all of their students met their career goals :x

Edited April 3, 2015 by TheMercySeat

[spunky]

Can you contact the program to find out what their alums are doing now? That might be helpful to you.

 

 

even though this is solid advice i sometimes feel it could work against you. like.... in all seriousness, which prof or department head is gonna level with you and say something like "to be honest, most of our graduates end up underemployed in some nameless call centre in the mid west". it's in their best interest to only tell you about their most successful students so you get the impression that it is a good program... even if they only get 1 success story out of every 10 not-so-successful stories.

[rising_star]

spunky, in my experience, it does work. You ask them (or look at prof's CVs) to see how many grad students they've had. Then, you ask where those students are now. My advisor was quite honest with me about where his former students were working, including citing a student that dropped out and worked a "manual labor" type job these days. I never inquired about the department as a whole because I was going there to work with one specific person and mostly cared about his track record since he was a fairly recent arrival to that program. At any rate, if you know how many students are admitted each year, you can figure out if they're only giving you placement information for some. If you have their names, you can use google, LinkedIn, etc., to find out where they are working now.

[TheMercySeat]

spunky, in my experience, it does work. You ask them (or look at prof's CVs) to see how many grad students they've had. Then, you ask where those students are now. My advisor was quite honest with me about where his former students were working, including citing a student that dropped out and worked a "manual labor" type job these days. I never inquired about the department as a whole because I was going there to work with one specific person and mostly cared about his track record since he was a fairly recent arrival to that program. At any rate, if you know how many students are admitted each year, you can figure out if they're only giving you placement information for some. If you have their names, you can use google, LinkedIn, etc., to find out where they are working now.

 

 

Most programs bluffed me or told half truths

Case in a point: one professor was pretty smug about producing professors... one of his former students has been through five jobs in the past five years, and is currently working two adjunct jobs at two different universities (one is The Chicago School of Professional Psychology, which has a reputation for being a diploma mill). Another student of his was a court mediator for three years before securing a professor job at a community college. The professor only posts the year that students take on professorships on his faculty page and omits the years his students struggle in the workforce post-graduation.

These are outcomes for an R1 university, ~top 50, btw. 

[spunky]

 If you have their names, you can use google, LinkedIn, etc., to find out where they are working now.

 

this is something that i actually do a lot and that i totally think is valid. like you start off gathering info from the program and then it's up to you to do your own research. it usually provides you with a much more realistic story.

 

 

Most programs bluffed me or told half truths

Case in a point: one professor was pretty smug about producing professors... one of his former students has been through five jobs in the past five years, and is currently working two adjunct jobs at two different universities (one is The Chicago School of Professional Psychology, which has a reputation for being a diploma mill). Another student of his was a court mediator for three years before securing a professor job at a community college. The professor only posts the year that students take on professorships on his faculty page and omits the years his students struggle in the workforce post-graduation.

These are outcomes for an R1 university, ~top 50, btw. 

 

well... technically, they are *still* professors, right?

 

from your posts it seemed to me that you had fallen head over heels for the R2 program you got invited to. i honestly would consider just going there and start working on become employable from day 1. you never know what the future holds

[juilletmercredi]

I'm going to assume that you are comparing a better-reputed R1 to a less well-known R2, because R1s don't always have a better reputation in a given field than R2s. The other thing I'll say is that your career interests may shift, sometimes considerably, over the course of graduate school. I started out also wanting to be a non-academic research scientist, and this fall I'll be on the market for academic positions - my first choice would be an R1 or R2 university, actually.

 

Other than asking about placement of recent graduates, the other thing you can do is attend an R2 in a large city and/or nearby connections and work those connections in graduate school while earning your degree. I did go to an R1, but it was in a big city with a lot of think tanks and social science-oriented nonprofits in and around that city. Even though I wasn't even trying, I ended up making contacts with people at several organizations that hired psychology/public health/social science PhDs to do research for the org through various assignments (data collection, supervising undergraduate interns). A lot of my colleagues in doctoral programs at my university did consulting work for nonprofits and NGOs, and a few of them turned that consulting work into full-time jobs - like one friend who works at (UNESCO? UNICEF? I think UNICEF) now after doing consulting work for them for a couple years while finishing up.

 

If you went to an R2 in a small or large city that had that kind of nonprofit/NGO/think tank infrastructure nearby, you could start doing freelance consulting work for them in graduate school and network your way into a full-time job. Even if they didn't hire you, that kind of nonprofit work can really help you when looking for other non-academic research jobs, because it shows you know how to function in a non-academic setting. (The same goes of for-profit: if you decided you wanted to work in market research, an internship at a company in your city can go a long ways towards helping you get a job.)

 

Firms that hire a lot of researchers will actually be knowledgeable about reputations of departments - and actually might find themselves concerned with those reputations. As pointed out, top think tanks like RAND and AIR tend to hire people coming from top programs. So do consulting firms, like McKinsey and BCG. But there are LOTS of think tanks out there, lots of non-academic social science research organizations and not all of them care about "prestige." They're going to care about the work that you do and your output. So tailor your research agenda towards something that could be applied and of interest to think tanks* and publish early and often! Also give lots of presentations at conferences and when you are there, find people who work at non-academic jobs. There are a lot of them, especially at the big conferences like APA and APHA.

 

*I don't mean find a think tank and make your work align with theirs; I mean don't do something abstract or theoretical if your goal is outside of academia.

[TheMercySeat]

I'm going to assume that you are comparing a better-reputed R1 to a less well-known R2, because R1s don't always have a better reputation in a given field than R2s. The other thing I'll say is that your career interests may shift, sometimes considerably, over the course of graduate school. I started out also wanting to be a non-academic research scientist, and this fall I'll be on the market for academic positions - my first choice would be an R1 or R2 university, actually.

 

Other than asking about placement of recent graduates, the other thing you can do is attend an R2 in a large city and/or nearby connections and work those connections in graduate school while earning your degree. I did go to an R1, but it was in a big city with a lot of think tanks and social science-oriented nonprofits in and around that city. Even though I wasn't even trying, I ended up making contacts with people at several organizations that hired psychology/public health/social science PhDs to do research for the org through various assignments (data collection, supervising undergraduate interns). A lot of my colleagues in doctoral programs at my university did consulting work for nonprofits and NGOs, and a few of them turned that consulting work into full-time jobs - like one friend who works at (UNESCO? UNICEF? I think UNICEF) now after doing consulting work for them for a couple years while finishing up.

 

If you went to an R2 in a small or large city that had that kind of nonprofit/NGO/think tank infrastructure nearby, you could start doing freelance consulting work for them in graduate school and network your way into a full-time job. Even if they didn't hire you, that kind of nonprofit work can really help you when looking for other non-academic research jobs, because it shows you know how to function in a non-academic setting. (The same goes of for-profit: if you decided you wanted to work in market research, an internship at a company in your city can go a long ways towards helping you get a job.)

 

Firms that hire a lot of researchers will actually be knowledgeable about reputations of departments - and actually might find themselves concerned with those reputations. As pointed out, top think tanks like RAND and AIR tend to hire people coming from top programs. So do consulting firms, like McKinsey and BCG. But there are LOTS of think tanks out there, lots of non-academic social science research organizations and not all of them care about "prestige." They're going to care about the work that you do and your output. So tailor your research agenda towards something that could be applied and of interest to think tanks* and publish early and often! Also give lots of presentations at conferences and when you are there, find people who work at non-academic jobs. There are a lot of them, especially at the big conferences like APA and APHA.

 

*I don't mean find a think tank and make your work align with theirs; I mean don't do something abstract or theoretical if your goal is outside of academia.

 

Thanks!!! This is spectacular advice.

 

I naively took to heart the idea that everything will be 'okay' if you hone in on locating a POI who shares the same research interests, and I had the misconception that reputation isn't as important for all alt-AC paths. I hope this thread (and everybody's comments) helps somebody along the way in the future