How to select schools outside of research interest?

[EvelynD]

Hey guys, its me again. This time I have a question about selecting additional schools that do not offer a specialization in my primary research interest (which is human-animal relation studies). So far I have been able to locate 4 schools where I could go for my PhD, since all of them have at least one professor that is involved with animal studies. Unfortunately one school (UCSB) might have to be scratched off my list since their MA+PhD trajectory takes at least 7 years (and I have already spend 10 years on two Ba's and one RMA). I'm not giving up on this school until I have discussed this with their secretary and I'm 100% sure it can't be shorter than 7 years, but I'm afraid it won't be. 

This means I have 3 schools left, and I wanted to apply at at least 5. Do you guys think its a good idea to look for schools that do not have someone working in animal studies, but that do have a good 'general' anthropology program? Or that maybe have a theoretical similarity, or a specialization such as environment, ethnic studies, or rural areas, so that the 'background' of my research ideas is at least covered? (I'm planning on focusing on the relation between humans and horses in Latin America, or horses with jobs worldwide). If I take out animal studies I feel like I am back where I started and have to look through all those schools again. Also, if I take out animal studies I feel like I won't have a specific goal in my studies (even though I could always still do it and be aware that it might just be a bit more difficult this way. 

Any thoughts on this first world problem of mine?  

[museum_geek]

Not sure about animal related stuff, but in terms of geography I know that UT Austin, University of Florida, and Vanderbilt all have really strong emphases on Latin America.  You might also want to check out the University of Georgia, as their specialty is environmental anthropology.  Hope that helps!

[EvelynD]

Thank you for responding! Do you think its a good idea to look for 1 or 2 non-animal study universities? I remember that I really liked Duke's Latin American and Ethnic studies specializations, so I'm going to look into that uni. I'm not doing it just as a safety net; I equaly like all the uni's I applied for and I want to continue that. Thanks for the suggestions, I was a bit bummed out that Santa Barbara isn't really an option anymore because I would love to live there (living in the US is part of the experience for me). But then again, the States are so big and beautiful, there will always be something nice!

[bioarch_fan]

7 years for a MA+PhD isn't really that bad actually. The average for a PhD in Anthropology in the States is about 8.5-9 years. So I wouldn't cross it off just because it's a long time to be in your program. Plus, you can also get done with your PhD sooner if you get through your coursework quickly and do data collection and dissertation write up quickly. Just some food for thought about the matter.

[EvelynD]

Oh Really? I knew it was longer than the 4 years we take here in Europe, but why would you spend so long on a PhD? And I wouldn't mind it that much if it wasn't for the 10 years I have spend on my 2 BA's and my RMA. I'm gonna be 30 when I start my education in the States and I feel like I can't spend that long because at one point I need to stop studying and get to work. I think I'll wait until the faculty emails me back and I have another word with my POI, maybe that will convince me. 

[museum_geek]

The PhD takes so long because most programs require at least two years of coursework before you can commence fieldwork.  The rest depends largely on your subfield, research site, and how fast/well you write your dissertation.  For example, if you're an archaeology student and you can only access your field site 2-3 months a year then it will probably take longer to complete your degree than if you're a sociocultural student doing ethnographic work in the United States.  It can vary wildly - one of my professors finished his PhD in 5 years, and another took almost a decade.  

[Quickmick]

@EvelynD while this spreadsheet is a little dated it has a lot of useful information about various programs and what they offer, I am posting it here as it has average time to complete degree statistics as part of the data : http://sites.nationalacademies.org/PGA/Resdoc/

hope this helps a bit!

Q

[farflung]

On August 31, 2016 at 8:08 AM, EvelynD said:

Oh Really? I knew it was longer than the 4 years we take here in Europe, but why would you spend so long on a PhD? And I wouldn't mind it that much if it wasn't for the 10 years I have spend on my 2 BA's and my RMA. I'm gonna be 30 when I start my education in the States and I feel like I can't spend that long because at one point I need to stop studying and get to work. I think I'll wait until the faculty emails me back and I have another word with my POI, maybe that will convince me. 

You should ask programs what their typical time to degree is. Often it's posted on program websites. 

But, I can corroborate that PhDs in Anthropology at American universities will almost all take you 6-7 years. I think 8 years is the national average -- 6-7 years is the standard in my program. This is because you can't just start PhD work immediately in the US -- here, PhD programs are set up as MA + PhD programs. So you're in classes for 2 years getting an MA degree (sometimes you can skip *some* coursework if you come in with an MA in Anthropology or a sister discipline, but you'll still spend 2 years getting an MA). Then you spend year 3 doing coursework/writing grants/advancing to doctoral candidacy. Then in years 4-5 you're doing fieldwork. After fieldwork you write your dissertation, TA to make money, apply to fellowships to make money, etc. and usually can graduate by years 6-7.

PhD programs in the States are a serious commitment and will set you back financially (in terms of lost wages) and career-wise if you even slightly think you want a career outside the academy (in terms of lost time you could have been getting work experience). Just an honest thought from someone near the end of this endless PhD. 

[knp]

+1 to farflung's questions about time-to-degree, but I hope you manage to answer those questions to your satisfaction and work it out!

I'm a little surprised how few schools you've been able to find with people who work on animal studies, actually! It's true that it's a really new, emerging field, so there aren't as many established scholars as in some older fields, but it's definitely on an upward trajectory right now. One of its great strengths, I think, though, is its interdisciplinarity, which also seems to have the consequence that its scholars are scattered in all sorts of departments: I've seen some sociology and anthropology, but also a lot of English, or regional studies/literature, or women's and gender, or STS. Can you make that work for you? If there is a professor of Spanish or sociology, e.g., who works on animal studies at a university whose anthropology department otherwise interests you, I would think that's a strong combination and one that would be definitely worth an application from you.

Wesleyan has some good resources for looking at who's working on the field more thoroughly, but some names I might throw out there for you to look at are NYU, Notre Dame, UCSD, and the University of Washington. (Sorry for institutions, rather than scholars! I know of some of these through PhD students working on animal studies there, but I'm not familiar enough with their institutional contexts to know exactly which of their committee members are strong on animal studies.) Have you mentioned McGill yet? It may have some intricacies of which I'm unaware (I only applied to US PhDs, nothing in Canada) but I would have thought that How Forests Think would put it pretty close to the top of your list!

[EvelynD]

Thank you! I dont know why I haven't been able to locate more researchers, probably because I have been looking to anthro/socio faculties only? I've searched academia and journals but I've only come up with UCSB, MSU, and U of Toronto. Maybe I haven't search enough because there is so much to look through, its like finding needles in a haystack? Or there are so many trees you can't see the forest anymore? Through various facebook groups I discovered that human geography is also a way into animal studies so I've added that on the search list. I'm surely not done looking for schools! I feel like there isn't anything too loose anymore so in the next week or so I'm going to email everybody that could be even remotely of interest (like people working in other departments but that could adise me their anthro dep for example, as long as I can colaborate with them).

I've also found one school on your list Knp, but I've emaild my POI two times but he hasn't returned my mail so I'm not sure if I should apply there. Do you need to have established some form of a relationshop / contact with your POI?

As we speak I'm eating chocolate sprinkles out of a bowl with a desert spoon, because I'm 'depressed' about my GRE math progress. No matter how much I study I keep failing at the math, and I'm afraid I'm gonna blow the test so bad no one is going to even concider me. That makes me think I don't have enough school options, which makes me think its all not going to work out, which makes me eat more sprinkels. I don't want to work in customer care for ever ánd be fat!!

[knp]

Here's the thing about animal studies, I think: it's definitively, and newly, on trend, in a way that means there may not be a lot of scholars who have already published books on it. It being of the moment, though, means that there are many more scholars who have maybe started to work on it in the last five years—not necessarily in a publications way yet, but in a "I'm going to talks and panels on the subject and, as part of my burgeoning interest in the field, would now be interested in supervising graduate students in it." You might have more luck looking for anthropology graduate students who do animal studies, actually, and then back-analyzing to figure out who their advisors are. (I wouldn't go looking through any general lists of anthropology graduate students by department—that's definitely a needles in a haystack situation—but look for anybody who is helping organize a conference or a panel you find online.) Another thought: some archaeologists are very into human-animal questions, not necessarily in the way that "animal studies" frames the question, but in a way that might increase the strength of a department for your interest. I also found a book series called "The Animal Turn" coming out of Michigan State University Press that you will want to look at, both for the authors in the series as a whole and the authors of chapters in the edited collections. I didn't analyze the disciplinary breakdown of authors, but it's another starting point.

Along the lines of my last two suggestions, but more generally, I would continue to google book series, panels, conferences, symposia, website, interdisciplinary consortia, etc. about animal studies as a way of casting a wide net for relevant scholars by seeing who participates (and who's organizing). Once you find good leads, whether professors or, in this case, even graduate students, I am a big fan of asking people who work in the field where else they'd recommend you apply. Under American-Canadian academic cultural norms, it's an acceptable and even good question to ask, and you can find some great schools that way that you might otherwise have overlooked.

For the one who hasn't emailed back, for me, it depends on how much you like the school. I dumped one school from my list for having some annoying administrative policies, but it wasn't that great of a match anyway. I would never get rid of a school in the top half of "fits" for anything less than extreme disinterest or rudeness: a general difficulty communicating with that POI might cause me to choose somewhere else if admitted, but right now you're only allowed one medium to try to communicate, really, and plenty of people who are bad at email are good by phone or in person once you are admitted and get license to contact them that way.

PS Should you and @Peanut maybe compare notes?

[Ilikekitties]

Hey OP! I thought that I'd chime in. I applied strictly to anthropology programs last year for human-animal relationships/multi-species ethnography. Among those mentioned here, I applied to Notre Dame, McGill, UCSB, and Toronto. I was rejected by all of them. If you wanna message me about this, feel free!

As for my approach for this year, I think that I'm going to apply to more MA programs and a mix of animal studies/animal policy and anthro.

It also looks like we're in different boats, as I'm fresh out of undergrad and don't really know much about anything lol. I know that plenty of people have gone straight from undergrad to PhD programs (one year ago I wanted to do this), but now I'm teaching at a Chinese university and honestly it was the best decision that I could have made.

[EvelynD]

@knp, thanks for your advice! I didn't realise I should look for people this way but it sounds smart! I'm going to take a couple of days to approach things this way (like going through the conference lists of whatever I can find on 'animals and society', or on conference lists of the American geographers society. And I'm going to email the archaeologists I found, I mean, why not?  

@Peanut, we actually send each other some messages a while back, which gave me some good leads and idea's! Did you actually move to China?

On another note, I booked my GRE test last night! After about a month of being denied access to the site I was finally able to log in. Of course my preffered date (October 25) wasn't available anymore, but I was able to book it on the 19th. This means I have one week less to prep (goodbye weekends) but at least I have a date now!

[Ilikekitties]

Yep, I'm in China!

[EvelynD]

Wow! Good for you!!

edit: when you applied to Notre Dame, did you apply to the anthropology department?

Edited October 5, 2016 by EvelynD

[EvelynD]

Can you guys give me some advice? I've been practicing for the math section of the GRE for about 1,5 month now, with little to no results. I've run out of time and still have to do about half of all the video's, and even if I use other sources I get super confused (always been bad at math and because no one here knows the GRE my tutor cant help me very effectively). I'm at a point where it has become too much, i'm stuck, and a good score for the math section is out of the question.

It seems to me like my options are:
1. Drop studying for the math and focus all of my energy on the language

2. continue studying for the math, feel worse and worse, and have worse scores for the laguage section because I has less time to prep.

It has come to a point where I am even concidering not applying for grad school because why bother, no one is gonna hire me with low GRE scores. 
If only I had known about this test 6 months ago, didn't work  two jobs, and was not totally retarded in math :/ 

 

[museum_geek]

I would focus on the language sections of the GRE.  From everything I've read, most departments tend to weigh your verbal/writing scores more heavily than the math.  At least that's how things are for cultural - it might be different for other subfields.  In any case I think it's important to remember that the GRE is only one part of your application, and low scores don't necessarily preclude you from succeeding at the doctoral level.  You can do it!

[EvelynD]

Thanks!!! I know I might be overreacting (hence the dramatic posts from time to time  ), but since I'm not from the States and nobody is helping me in this proces (exept you guys of course!!) I have no idea what I'm doing. My new stragety is to study the ETS math review and watch only the most important Magoosh video's. I've finished all the icecream I brought so I feel particularly fat today, so I went shopping and got some muffin-top covering stuff  That always does the trick. 

Btw, I'm also going to apply at Notre Dame! Seems like we're gonna be competitors