Go big or go home?

[évariste]

Hey there!  I'm new to this site (will drop in on the 2018 applicants thread shortly) but generally quite anxious about graduate admissions.  I was chatting with a philosophy professor about graduate school and he seemed to imply that if one wasn't admitted to a ranked (or even top 20ish?!) Ph.D program, given the slim pickings of the academic job market, it might be a wiser move to cut one's losses and leave academia right then and there.  His reasoning was that there are more graduates from even top 10 programs than jobs available, which is...true?  But even a cursory perusal of this forum reveals that most users here have safety schools.  So I'm curious to hear about your take on this "go big or go home" mentality--are you worried about correlations between prestige and employability, or does it matter more to you that you're just getting to do philosophy in some way?

FWIW, from the CVs I've perused, literally all of my professors are from top 15 philosophy programs--so it's entirely possible that my professors have never even had to consider attending an unranked school.  The professor in question is one of the least arrogant people I know, but maybe it's hard to relate to us plebeians...? 

[fuzzylogician]

One should be aware that the academic job market in most fields is extremely tight. Even with all the right credentials and very good work, it takes people years to find a job, if at all. It involves years of uncertainty, often the need to be mobile and move to undesirable locations at short notice, sometimes away from family and friends, and staying productive through high teaching loads and not-great institutions -- and that's if you're one of the lucky ones. So yes, your professor is right that if you want an academic job, you need to give yourself the best chance, and apply to top schools. Attending a school that doesn't have a good placement record will make your life that much more difficult. Again, even with the right school and advisors, nothing is guaranteed, so you should always have a fallback plan in case you don't get a job or decide academia just isn't for you (happens often enough). If you google for it or search the board, you will find a variety of discussions about the job market and whether doing a PhD is a good idea in the first place. The answer is really that it depends on your goals. 

[isostheneia]

I think it depends partially on what you want to do. I think that your professor's advice is good if you want a research job, and work in analytic philosophy. But there are a number of schools that primarily do continental philosophy, aren't ranked terribly highly (at least by the PGR), and have good placement at research jobs at other continental schools. And there are also some schools that aren't ranked very highly but have extremely good placement records at teaching schools -- Georgetown, e.g.

[ThePeon]

This is something I'm thinking about a lot. I think there is intrinsic value to graduate study in its own right, and that I could be happy in a teaching job if that is where I ultimately ended up. However, I feel like I'd be unhappy if, once I hit the job market, my (lack of) graduate pedigree prevented me from ever having any realistic chance at a research job no matter my merits. I'm mostly targeting MA programs this season given my weak transcript, but I will apply broadly to PhD programs too just in case I get lucky. Given the state of the job market, I personally would strongly consider turning down a lower ranked PhD offer for a top MA if I am (lucky enough to be) in a position to make that choice. I believe somebody on this forum from last application season was in such a situation and ultimately went with the MA due to job market concerns.

 

3 hours ago, isostheneia said:

I think it depends partially on what you want to do. I think that your professor's advice is good if you want a research job, and work in analytic philosophy. But there are a number of schools that primarily do continental philosophy, aren't ranked terribly highly (at least by the PGR), and have good placement at research jobs at other continental schools. And there are also some schools that aren't ranked very highly but have extremely good placement records at teaching schools -- Georgetown, e.g.

This is broadly correct.

With respect to the bolded part, I would just add that my (possibly false) impression is that the more desirable teaching jobs are often (but not always) taken by graduates from top-20 schools as well. What I mean by "desirable teaching jobs" are those that are at prestigious undergraduate universities and SLACs, those that are in more desirable locations, those with relatively larger departments, and those that have a lower teaching load.

There's a difference between, on the one hand, working a 2/2 or 3/3 job at a well-known SLAC or undergrad university where you have significant time to mentor individual students, be involved in campus life, and even do a little research (though less than at a research job obviously), and on the other hand a 4/4 job at a third tier university branch campus or community college located in a less desirable location where you have little time to do anything but teach.

Now, there's nothing wrong with the latter set of jobs that I described, the people who work there are doing very important work for philosophy and for society by exposing larger swaths of the population to philosophy. But I think most people would generally consider the former set of jobs to be more desirable.

Edited May 9, 2017 by ThePeon

[Duns Eith]

15 hours ago, évariste said:

Hey there!  I'm new to this site (will drop in on the 2018 applicants thread shortly) but generally quite anxious about graduate admissions.  I was chatting with a philosophy professor about graduate school and he seemed to imply that if one wasn't admitted to a ranked (or even top 20ish?!) Ph.D program, given the slim pickings of the academic job market, it might be a wiser move to cut one's losses and leave academia right then and there.

Hate to be a downer, but this is quite true. It might be wiser to cut losses.

The general advice is "If you can do something else, do that." There are plenty of less competitive, yet high paying, jobs out there. If, say, you can work in IT, become a business consultant, or do data-analysis, you're gonna be in much better shape from a risk-cost-benefit analysis.

For some people, they would not be wise to cut losses: they have been given every encouragement to pursue philosophy, they are doing excellent work (far better than peers), and they have no other skill-set that is marketable.

15 hours ago, évariste said:

His reasoning was that there are more graduates from even top 10 programs than jobs available, which is...true?  But even a cursory perusal of this forum reveals that most users here have safety schools.

Depends on what you're counting for "jobs." A university "research" job? Extremely rare and competitive. A university teaching job? Quite a few out there, perhaps fewer openings than there are top-10 graduates. A college job? There's a lot. By far, they are adjunct or visiting associate professor jobs, but they do indeed exist. It is hard to live off the last category, though, as you may need to work at 2-4 colleges, without benefits, and still have no job security.

There is no such thing as a "safety school"... but realistically, the odds are better at lower ranked (or unranked) schools. If your goal is to get in somewhere, then definitely apply to those. But if you don't want to get in just anywhere, then you shouldn't apply to those lower schools.

15 hours ago, évariste said:

So I'm curious to hear about your take on this "go big or go home" mentality--are you worried about correlations between prestige and employability, or does it matter more to you that you're just getting to do philosophy in some way?

I know a lot of people who take that mentality. I think it's dumb, and only perpetuates the disparity. I mean, it makes sense from a vantage of "I simply can't be happy unless I get a tenure job at a university, so I gotta"; but even then, there are so many factors that go into employability, to the extent that being in a top-10 (or even top-20) cannot corner the market on all the factors.

I care more that I get to do philosophy. I care more that I get to teach.

In order to make up for the lack of prestige where I will be attending (and I guess I was going to take this route anyway), I am gearing everything I can toward making myself competitive as a teacher.

• Developing a growing list of courses of which I have been instructor of record (4 different courses now) -- syllabus, course schedule, exams, etc.
• Creating materials that can be reworked and repurposed across classes -- lecture notes, examples, handouts, etc. (literally, just focusing on presentation of material intensely)
• Creating a data-set of my evaluations -- scores on several metrics, written feedback
• Developing good relationships with the chair, administrative assistant, and DGS -- getting letter writers for my dossier
• Networking at conferences, sending my CV to local schools, etc. -- getting my name out there and always checking for availability even when no job offer is posted

Other professional things that matter

• Conferencing papers, giving talks, etc.
• Getting feedback so I can get published in a journal

All this can be done without a PhD, but with PhD in-hand, many of these things (if developed properly) can outshine someone at Princeton or Harvard. Depending on the school's needs, they may want someone who has demonstrated excellence in teaching time and time again, so as to reduce risk and raise confidence in long-term benefit to the university. Some top-rank schools don't even have their grad students teach during their entire program.

15 hours ago, évariste said:

FWIW, from the CVs I've perused, literally all of my professors are from top 15 philosophy programs--so it's entirely possible that my professors have never even had to consider attending an unranked school.  The professor in question is one of the least arrogant people I know, but maybe it's hard to relate to us plebeians...? 

This is indicative of a few things.

1. When your professors were hired, there were fewer PhD programs and fewer grad students. This raises the probability that they were accepted at those fewer, longer established programs. Given that they were hired in the 70s, 80s, 90s, and early 2000's, such hires are a sort of snapshot of the way the university (used to) hire(s).
2. This also indicates that prestige does matter. More often than not, the top schools crank out better qualified professors than "lower" schools. There are exceptions, but this can't be ignored. A lot of it is tied to the details of the hiring process...
3. Human resource directors in general, and universities deans in particular, want to pay as little as they possibly can for the highest qualified, most stable candidate they can afford. For academia, it is a buyer's market: they can have their pick among 50 excellent applicants and turn down another hundred great applicants. But, again, they can choose a candidate who came from a great school but didn't have any teaching experience (or very little), or they can choose someone with a ton of experience but a lesser known but recognizable school (e.g., Purdue, Mizzou, etc.). Likely, they will choose the candidate who has both qualities. But sometimes that doesn't describe the best candidate. Sometimes, though, a chair will pass over a candidate who is likely to take a job elsewhere on short notice (not stick around) because they are "overqualified". (I wouldn't stress this too much though; it is the exception)

Advice:

• Find the faculty you want to study under by looking at the specialty rankings for different fields. Look at their CV's. See what they have been writing on, and where they went to school. Put their name down as a person of interest. Then simply look at the placement record of the school with that faculty. That is, forget that the school has a PGR ranking.
• Compare the placement records along the lines of four categories: tenure-track (or tenure), post-doc or VAP, or adjunct (lecturer), and then left-academia or unknown status. Compare the stats for each of the programs you are taking seriously. I think PGR should only be a proxy for this very metric, and it isn't an excellent one. You can go to an unranked school with a better placement record than some mid-ranked schools.

In other words, climb up the PGR ladder in the specialty areas, then after you've isolated enough programs to take seriously, kick away the PGR ladder and evaluate the schools yourself.

Edited May 9, 2017 by Duns Eith

[hector549]

There's some good advice in this thread. I think a very important consideration, one that other posters have mentioned, is how much intrinsic value one places in a graduate education in philosophy.

If you only finish an MA, or get a few years into your dissertation process, and leave (as many people do; attrition rates are high) because you realize it isn't for you after all, or because you're tired of being really poor, or because of other extenuating circumstances, will having studied philosophy for some years be worth it to you, even if you didn't finish the PhD?

If you complete your doctorate in 7-9 years (from what I've read and seen, taking this long is very common, and could be eleven years or more if you first do an MA), and the job market forces you to leave academic philosophy, will the process of obtaining the degree still justify the opportunity cost? Put another way, are you willing and able to give yourself new skills and start over with a new career after completing the PhD, even if you're in your mid- or late-thirties (or a bit younger or older, depending on your age), and have few resources? What if you need to get another MA, or something of the sort? If starting over is what you have to do, how much will it bother you? This is probably the harder question, since it's difficult to predict the person you will be in 7-9 years, and how your values might change, as well as what you're willing to put up with in a job/life. In other words, I think sometimes if you're earlier in your twenties, it's easier to think that if you have to work some shitty jobs in ten years while you reinvent yourself and start a new career from scratch, that that won't be a big deal. It's really not when you're, say, 23. As one gets older, I think that thought often becomes less attractive (it has for me).  I think it's useful to do a kind of thought experiment, in which this has happened to you. What will you do? I say this, because it's easy, I believe, to think hypothetically of the outcome, but not really grapple with the reality of being in the situation as much as you're able to imagine it.

The necessity of finding a post-PhD career outside academia is, probably, somewhat more likely if you're coming from a lower-ranked or unranked program, and therefore, how much intrinsic value you place in the graduate study of philosophy is an important consideration if you're attending such a program, but it's really important to think through this even if you attend a highly ranked program. I went to a top-10 (PGR) program for undergrad. I was friends with the graduate students in the philosophy program, and I know some of them who languished on the market after finishing their doctorates. One took a corporate job. Another cobbled together several part-time academic-related jobs. This is anecdotal, sure, but the point is, competition for jobs is so strong, that attendees of even top-10 programs should, I think, consider what they'll do if/when they leave academia.

Finally, I don't think it's enough to look at current outcomes for programs in which you're interested. You also should consider where the job market will be in 7-9 years. Obviously, this is impossible to predict with great accuracy, but I do think it's almost certain to be as bad as it is now, and likely to be worse. I'm no economist or expert, but the economic downturn post-2008 hasn't exactly been kind to the humanities, including philosophy. While the economy writ large has rebounded somewhat, growth has happened more in some sectors than in others. Academia hasn't rebounded to where it was pre-2008, and it's not likely to do so. A lot of administrators at universities were forced to think about the bottom line more than ever because endowments took a hit in the Great Recession. It's not clear that that has changed. Looking around at the humanities/higher ed blogosphere, you're likely to see a lot of talk about an increasingly corporatized environment, shrinking autonomy, and, sometimes, departments that are consolidated or shuttered.

All this being said (and I know it sounds pessimistic), I think it's still possible to choose to go to graduate school in philosophy if the intrinsic value of the degree is high enough for you that you will still believe in five years, or eight, or ten, that studying philosophy at the graduate level was worth it. It could also happen that you could choose not to pursue academic philosophy, enter a different field, and then end up making a career-change in ten years anyway. Or you may feel that you just don't have anything to lose, since you're not sufficiently interested in any careers other than academic philosophy, and that you feel you must take the risks associated with your choice. In any case, I believe that these are factors to consider as you're thinking about programs and your eventual goals.

Edited May 13, 2017 by hector549

[maxhgns]

There's been lots of great advice in this thread already (especially from Duns Eith), and I agree with most of it. I'll just chip in with a few remarks.

 

On 5/9/2017 at 2:52 AM, évariste said:

His reasoning was that there are more graduates from even top 10 programs than jobs available, which is...true?

It's probably not literally true, but it's also not as hyperbolic as you might wish. There are around 200-250 or so full-time entry-level jobs in philosophy advertised each year in the Anglophone world. That's TT jobs, postdocs, VAPs,and full-time adjuncting. The top ten programs don't graduate that many students each year, and I doubt they come very close to that number even when you account for the backlog. But only about 80 or so of these jobs are TT, meaning that there are only 80 or so real jobs up for grabs each year. And I wouldn't be surprised if there were at least half that many T10 grads in the market pool. For reference, I applied to 75 jobs this year and around 100 last year, and the average number of applicants seems to be about 650. One job had 1200+ applicants, and some have reported numbers as low as 180. Doubtless some have far, far fewer applicants. But for the most part, everyone is competing against hundreds of other perfectly qualified candidates.

 

On 5/9/2017 at 2:52 AM, évariste said:

So I'm curious to hear about your take on this "go big or go home" mentality--are you worried about correlations between prestige and employability, or does it matter more to you that you're just getting to do philosophy in some way?

It didn't matter very much to me when I started out. Now that I've finished up and hit the market (and that I've invested considerably more time and effort in it), and now that I understand the kinds of doors that prestige can open up for people, it matters a lot more to me (or, rather, it would). It's worth observing, however, that even students at the most prestigious programs struggle on the job market. There are no winners here--at least, not until they get an actual offer. It's also worth observing that program prestige and PGR rank aren't quite the same thing.

Finally, my own experiences and my observations of my colleagues on the market lead me to think that although prestige helps, it's not the be-all or end-all of one's job market run. Your advisors and their standing in the profession matter a lot. Your publication history matters a lot (though not as much as we might wish it did). And your professional network matters a lot (e.g. being known in your subfield can open doors for postdocs, invitations to publish in edited volumes, etc.). 

 

On 5/9/2017 at 2:52 AM, évariste said:

FWIW, from the CVs I've perused, literally all of my professors are from top 15 philosophy programs--so it's entirely possible that my professors have never even had to consider attending an unranked school.  The professor in question is one of the least arrogant people I know, but maybe it's hard to relate to us plebeians...? 

Yeah... remember that your professors are lottery winners. The job market was better when they were on it, but not so much better that it wasn't still largely a lottery. In this profession, everybody who gets a job--no matter where it is--is a lottery winner. The best and brightest are lucky to get any TT job at all, let alone a job a research institution or SLAC.

On 5/9/2017 at 3:08 AM, fuzzylogician said:

One should be aware that the academic job market in most fields is extremely tight. 

With apologies for being pedantic, but isn't a tight labour market one in which job seekers face embarrassment of riches (there's a high price for the product or service)? So the academic job market would be actually be extremely loose.

On 5/9/2017 at 1:05 PM, isostheneia said:

I think it depends partially on what you want to do. I think that your professor's advice is good if you want a research job, and work in analytic philosophy. But there are a number of schools that primarily do continental philosophy, aren't ranked terribly highly (at least by the PGR), and have good placement at research jobs at other continental schools. And there are also some schools that aren't ranked very highly but have extremely good placement records at teaching schools -- Georgetown, e.g.

Honestly, the "continental schools hire continentalists from continental schools" thing is pretty much a myth (and a self-serving one to boot). They might be more likely to hire someone from one of the more prestigious (but nonetheless unranked) continental programs than ranked schools are, but that's still not saying much. Just count up faculty lists at a few of these schools, and you'll see that the bulk of them still come from ranked programs. Besides which, nobody going on the job market in philosophy should have any expectation of ending up at a school with a graduate program. There are very few of those posts and the competition for them is incredibly fierce, even at unranked schools. 

 

Just remember that the pay is generally pretty bad (like, 40-50k starting at most places, without much room for improvement [although it can be double or sometimes triple that at research institutions]), the work is hard, long, and unforgiving (60+ hours a week of your brain in high gear), and even if you win the job lottery you don't get any choice at all in where you live. Not the city or the state, and sometimes not even the country.

[isostheneia]

18 hours ago, maxhgns said:

Honestly, the "continental schools hire continentalists from continental schools" thing is pretty much a myth (and a self-serving one to boot). They might be more likely to hire someone from one of the more prestigious (but nonetheless unranked) continental programs than ranked schools are, but that's still not saying much. Just count up faculty lists at a few of these schools, and you'll see that the bulk of them still come from ranked programs. Besides which, nobody going on the job market in philosophy should have any expectation of ending up at a school with a graduate program. There are very few of those posts and the competition for them is incredibly fierce, even at unranked schools. 

I think I just disagree on the numbers here. At DePaul, 4 of 17 faculty come from ranked programs. At Penn State, it's 6 of 17. At Boston College, it's 10 of 25. 

Of course, this is in no way to deny that it's an ultra-competitive job market, regardless of where you go. I just think that there's less of a correlation (though not none) between a school's ranking, or its being ranked at all, and its placement record than some people think.

Edited May 14, 2017 by isostheneia

[maxhgns]

1 hour ago, isostheneia said:

I think I just disagree on the numbers here. At DePaul, 4 of 17 faculty come from ranked programs. At Penn State, it's 6 of 17. At Boston College, it's 10 of 25. 

Of course, this is in no way to deny that it's an ultra-competitive job market, regardless of where you go. I just think that there's less of a correlation (though not none) between a school's ranking, or its being ranked at all, and its placement record than some people think.

And Memphis is 6/11, Oklahoma 11/14, Stony Brook 11/17, Vanderbilt 10/15, Emory 6/17, NSSR 7/11, Fordham 20/29 (1 unknown), Duquesne 6/17... so at just over half of unranked continental boutique-y schools, more than half the faculty come from ranked programs (often pretty fancy ones, too).

I mean, it looks like it's true that they do more hiring from outside ranked programs than ranked programs do. But that doesn't amount to all that much, especially considering (1) how few openings there are from these programs each year and (2) how many students graduate from even just these eleven programs each year. And even among their unranked hires, just a few schools show up again and again and again.

They may be friendlier to one another, but that doesn't mean they're friendly.

[ExponentialDecay]

On 5/9/2017 at 2:52 AM, évariste said:

FWIW, from the CVs I've perused, literally all of my professors are from top 15 philosophy programs--so it's entirely possible that my professors have never even had to consider attending an unranked school.  The professor in question is one of the least arrogant people I know, but maybe it's hard to relate to us plebeians...? 

This is not unlikely. I've heard that, if you're not good enough to make it into a competitive program, you're not good enough for academia, because getting in is the easiest part. And that person was in an excellent academic job market. And I know a lot of people who legitimately didn't consider anything but the top programs when applying, not least because they didn't have to. The more I live, the more I think that the chief benefit of attending an elite institution for undergrad is that you understand what you're getting into.

[Duns Eith]

23 hours ago, ExponentialDecay said:

if you're not good enough to make it into a competitive program, you're not good enough for academia, because getting in is the easiest part.

I think this is a helpful way of thinking about it. I think of a similar concern about getting into an MA program without funding. If you can't get funding into a grad school, then there are really only two routes: you just aren't a competitive quality and should tap out, or the odds were against you this time around. So apply again, or get out. Don't take an unfunded offer. It bodes your chances getting a philosophy job are extremely slim.

This gets back to something I've been wondering: when should we discourage each other from continuing in philosophy? It seems like every time I see an applicant who earnestly wants a philosophy PhD but lacks the chops and I suggest that they try a plan B, I get down-voted or people post in direct conflict with me (along with a long pep-talk). There are some people who, even if they don't fit the "go big or go home" mentality, they just simply aren't competitive for even an MA program.

Don't get me wrong, I think all some people need is encouragement, but for some of them I feel obliged (especially if they literally title the thread asking "do I have a chance") to tell them to invest themselves elsewhere.

Edited May 15, 2017 by Duns Eith

[maxhgns]

2 minutes ago, Duns Eith said:

Don't take an unfunded offer. It bodes your chances getting a philosophy job are extremely slim.

The advice is sound: nobody should ever take either an unfunded or a partially-funded offer for grad school in philosophy. No serious PhD program in the US or Canada even makes such offers. 

But I'd hedge a little on the second claim. Everyone's chances are extremely slim on the job market, even Princeton grads (seriously: I know several with no interviews and no offers). People who take unfunded offers in the US and Canada are being taken advantage of by unscrupulous programs. They're not necessarily bad programs on paper, but they're definitely wronging applicants. Now, none of that actually speaks to an applicant's real quality or capacity to do good philosophy; so many people apply to grad school that it's largely a crapshoot, and most students will grow a lot over the course of their time in a PhD program. But an offer at one of the programs that doesn't fund its students isn't going to do anyone any favours--partly for practical reasons, and partly just because everyone knows which programs do this, and it reflects poorly on them irrespective of the quality of the education they bestow.

 

2 minutes ago, Duns Eith said:

This gets back to something I've been wondering: when should we discourage each other from continuing in philosophy? It seems like every time I see an applicant who earnestly wants a philosophy PhD but lacks the chops and I suggest that they try a plan B, I get down-voted or people post in direct conflict with me (along with a long pep-talk). There are some people who, even if they don't fit the "go big or go home" mentality, they just simply aren't competitive for even an MA program.

Frankly, I don't think any of us--certainly not grads and prospective grads, but not profs either--should be actively discouraging anyone from continuing in philosophy. It's not our decision to make. What we should do is provide our students (and each other) with accurate information about what the process is like, what grad school is like, what the costs and prospects are, etc., and leave the rest up to the student and the trials of the PhD process.

Tell students that they're competing against two or three hundred other students, all of them also tops of their classes, for five spots in a cohort. Tell them how high attrition rates are. Tell them they're going to be just one of dozens--hundreds!--of very good candidates, and that these bad things happen to people every bit as good as they are. Tell them that once they graduate, they'll be competing against six hundred or more applicants for a single spot at a shitty institution in the middle of nowhere. Tell them that they will have exactly zero control over where they will live (not the city, not the state, not the coast, maybe not even the country). Tell them that the lucky ones scrape by on 20-30k for most of a decade, moving across the country every year, before landing a permanent job that pays 40k in a shitty place. Tell them that once they land a job--if they do--they it'll be even harder to switch to another job somewhere else. Tell them that being an academic--even one of the lucky ones with a job--means facing rejection after rejection (many of them quite nasty and impolitic) with nary an encouraging word. Tell them that you were one of the lucky ones who made it to the end of the race, and that they can have zero expectation of making it to where you are. Warn them that depression and impostor syndrome are rampant, and that they don't go away when you get the PhD, or even when you get a job.

Just tell them the truth, unvarnished, and let them decide for themselves. You don't have to be a dick about it, of course. But be honest, and don't take it upon yourself to push them in one direction or another.

[évariste]

On 5/14/2017 at 9:36 AM, isostheneia said:

I think I just disagree on the numbers here. At DePaul, 4 of 17 faculty come from ranked programs. At Penn State, it's 6 of 17. At Boston College, it's 10 of 25. 

On 5/14/2017 at 0:02 PM, maxhgns said:

And Memphis is 6/11, Oklahoma 11/14, Stony Brook 11/17, Vanderbilt 10/15, Emory 6/17, NSSR 7/11, Fordham 20/29 (1 unknown), Duquesne 6/17... so at just over half of unranked continental boutique-y schools, more than half the faculty come from ranked programs (often pretty fancy ones, too).

My original claim wasn't empirically verified, but now I'm curious!  Looking through my department's website now, of 26 faculty (not counting emeriti/professors by courtesy/etc--just because that was already a lot of web pages to sift through):

Graduates of ranked programs below top 15: 4
Graduates of unranked programs: 1

Okay, so 25/26 faculty are from ranked Ph.D programs, and 21/26 from top 15.  Well, that was terrifying

And that's probably enough information that my department is easily identifiable, lol!  I feel kind of creepy having read all these CVs now...

All silliness aside, though, this is really solid advice from everyone--I truly appreciate the perspective!

Edited May 16, 2017 by évariste

[maxhgns]

14 hours ago, évariste said:

My original claim wasn't empirically verified, but now I'm curious!  

I'm sorry I corrupted you!