I said, “with few exceptions.” We have to get away from such intensive hierarchical thinking that CC seems to apply to all kids, all the time.
It is true that, even in the humanities, a PhD from a top school can grease more wheels. But that’s only the tip of the iceberg. It doesn’t even begin to explain the CC obsession with defining superiority in narrow terms.
And fellowships are not the “be all” in humanities. Research and mentoring count for more. I’m afraid we just can’t box all this into neat blanket statements that still hang on generalizations. Or anecdotes.
The thing is that the prerequisite for getting and maintaining that fellowship or moreso, getting outside grants for one’s PhD studies is precisely one must demonstrate strong research skills and the potential for being a topflight research scholar in the field. If one doesn’t have any fellowships or grants on their CV by the time one’s on the market or worse, graduated with the PhD, many Profs on hiring committees such as some I’ve chatted with at friends’ academic conferences would have serious concerns about whether the student was considered so lacking the department, especially in elite universities where nearly all qualified PhD students not pursuing the PhD as a leisurely hobby activity are granted full departmental fellowships refused to risk their reputation by funding that student itself or assisting in obtaining outside research grants.
As for mentoring, how would that factor in for a PhD student? From what I’ve gathered from several Profs and relatives and friends who are academics or recent PhD graduates…mentoring doesn’t seem to count for much. If anything, many of them felt the demands of being a TA for undergrads took too much time away from tasks which really counted in their educational situation, research and being able to maintain/gain more research grants for their research to complete their dissertation and getting on the market for tenure-track jobs.
I also know of several college classmates who were forced out of PhD programs because they were considered by advisers to have “misplaced priorities” for spending “too much time” mentoring undergrads in their TA role rather than on their PhD research.
Gawd, cobrat, now you’re talking DH’s world. There may be some fellowships/grants for humanities work, but it isn’t de rigeur. No matter some conversations. You’re painting one picture, for a field I didn’t think you are in. I don’t think you understand the importance of the mentor for humanities Phd candidates.
Nor is this about some grad student mentoring someone younger.
It’s that due to the scarce tenure track job openings and the large numbers of PhD graduates and soon-to-be on the market PhD students with such fellowships and/or outside grants along with strong research/publication records from top 8-10 programs in their respective fields/subfields, the one without any fellowships/grants looks extremely lacking in comparison.
Combine that with an awareness that PhD programs…including elite ones use admission of PhD students without fellowship or funding as a “soft rejection” because their package didn’t meet the standards of the admission committee and/or the student concerned is a scion from a wealthy family doing it as a leisurely hobby with no intention of pursuing an academic career and the one without a fellowship is understandably viewed as a pretty dubious quantity.
Incidentally, this “soft rejection” happened to one older college friend who felt I was exaggerating the issue. Our undergrad Profs and his MA adviser at his grad school both confirmed that I was correct that the university which admitted him as a “full-pay PhD” student was effectively giving him a “soft-rejection” and that he’d be foolhardy to accept their admission offer if he wanted to pursue a career on the tenure track.
Agreed. One good case is a friend’s list of top PhD schools in her field of Philosophy:
When it comes to hiring new Assistant Professors in my field (a STEM field), there are only a few applicants who have already received any sort of grant. The NIH does sponsor “Faculty for the Future” grants, which a post-doc may receive. But those are relatively rare. There are nationally awarded fellowships for grad students and post-docs. Those also are impressive on the resume, but again, they are not crucial. My department funds 100% of the students we admit for Ph.D.s, although the funding is split between periods of appointment as a TA (at least one year) and appointment as a Research Assistant.
The features that my department looks for in hiring are:
Strong publication record
Strong proposal for independent research, with good prospects for funding in the future
Strong letters of recommendation
Strong interview–research seminar, discussion of research plans, meetings with individual faculty.
I think we are aligned with most research-intensive departments in this.
Sorry that this is off topic, really, but it provided me with a rare opportunity to enter a discussion fully supporting lookingforward’s position.
I’m also beginning to think that some people don’t understand what appears to be simple English here.
When you say something is the biggest predictor, it doesn’t mean that’s the only predictor. It’s like peoples’ minds snap shut, unable to consider any other factors. I’ve seen the same odd thing in many other threads here.
In the late 70s, my high school had an advanced track and weighted classes and people took classes at lunch or in summer to improve their class rank. I think there were far fewer AP classes, just one Calc and one English and one Chem, but we all took them and since the high school was small same top 20 people were in almost all of them. We all worked hard and calc teacher had never had a student get a B in college. English was taught college style, with long summer reading list, and class devoted to in depth discussions of books and then essays that were way outside the Cliff notes capabilities.
4 NMF, 10 commended in class of 120, at least 6 students with Ivy admissions (3 or more each, including HPY), full scholarships, etc. It’s still a top school district, state but not nationally ranked.
If you move into a top school district, there are lots more offerings, but also lots more competition.
I think what has change is that more people even think of applying to top 20 schools, larger demographic, and that people think moving in a good school district guarantees their honey will get into an Ivy.
Writing high level essays is not busy work, and if you learn to write (or to do CalcBC or Physics C work), the reward is lower level of stress in any college you choose to attend. Move to >50 ranked, you will feel like a superstar. Learning to write includes the skills to organize a good essay and all the grammar and language skills, so that a good essay won’t take days to write. Reading skills can also be trained to a really high level.
I will say that our school (nationally ranked) seems less cutthroat and more cooperative, up to and including the top 5% than what has been portrayed here. If you are moving into a top school district on purpose, rather than have one magically appear in your neighborhood (must really help your home resale), maybe that is something to investigate … the fit of your HS, High School Confidential is on its way !
In the humanities and social sciences, not every student admitted for PhD studies is provided departmental funding. From what I’ve gathered from the Profs at the academic conference who were there to interview and hire PhD graduates and soon-to-be on the market PhD students, an interviewee who received no funding from his/her department would be red flagged as it signifies he/she wasn’t deemed as academically qualified as those who received departmental funding and/or the student is pursuing the PhD as a leisurely hobby with no intentions of pursuing an academic career.
And its understandable when they explained that priority for departmental funding goes to the most academically qualified/promising admits. Therefore, for those who were admitted without funding…the department is communicating a clear message that they didn’t feel they were as academically qualified/promising as the students who were admitted with funding. In many cases, this is meant as a “soft rejection” and the recipient is expected to be understand that well-enough to decline it…or if not…be advised to do so by his/her undergrad/MA adviser as happened with that older college classmate when he felt I was exaggerating.
Cobrat, speaking with “the profs” from some friend’s academic conference- ? That’s anecdotal and not the same as functioning inside the U. And I’m surprised they would reveal their hiring perspectives to you, a guest, not an academic in their field, not there for academic purposes. Especially something as sweeping- and seriously internal- as red flagging and assuming about any kid without funding. It’s just not the sort of thing that gets casually discussed with a bystander.
These sorts of comments raise their own questions. Someone about to receive the PhD-or who recently did- is clearly qualified in his dept’s eyes. You may think some significant number come in with hobby intents or you toss out the phrase “soft rejection” (which would apply to the admit, not the subsequent work.)
But in the same breath, you are describing students who made it through the program, met the requirements, did the research and presented it in the same format and to the same standards required of other candidates and are now endorsed for the job hunt, have their job apps in, with recommendations- and all of it good enough to be selected for interviews.
The entire point was that while their CVs may be sent to them, the ones from candidates who didn’t receive any departmental funding are extremely unlikely to be selected for the interview stage unless they did something far above and beyond PhD cohort classmates with departmental funding and possibly outside research fellowships/grants. Barring that, their CVs are usually destined for the circular file.
Another factor to consider is that the candidates who didn’t receive departmental funding are also likely to suffer in comparison with PhD cohort classmates with departmental funding because they’re far less likely to receive good mentoring and strong LORs precisely because most Profs in many such departments would view them as academically mediocre or “non-serious” students and would rather prioritize mentoring time with the more academically stronger/promising admits/students…those who received departmental funding.
While I was a guest, I was asking the question in the context of confirming advice I heard from undergrad advisors and academic relatives who gave me that advice. And those Profs were more than happy to provide their perspectives and confirm that advice with the intention to prevent prospective grad students from accepting a PhD admissions offer which is not only going to put them in ginormous financial debt, but put them in a weaker competitive position when it comes time to go on the market for tenure-track positions in their field which happened to be related to the ones I was considering.
One of those conferences WAS in one of the fields I was considering entering as a PhD student.
You did originally say, interviewee. I’m not sure some purported casual conversation can be revealing enough to then make generalizations for a field not your own. I just don’t think you have an insider view of what these programs are really like, regardless whether you heard something, somewhere, at some point, from someone.
The kids who suffer lack of a mentor and who flail won’t make it to the PhD endpoint. At many schools, they are dropped after the Masters. They won’t be up for interviews, unless its for some college willing to settle for a non-PhD hire.
And now, I suggest we let the thread get back on track or peter out.
Who the hell enters a rigorous Ph.D program as a “leisurely hobby”?! As the parent of a Ph.D student, there is absolutely NOTHING “leisurely” about working for a Ph.D. It is extremely hard work, incredibly stressful, and all consuming. “Leisurely hobby”? BALONEY.
While taking a class at an elite U one summer, the Prof mentioned in passing that a member of one prominent political family(think Clintons, Kennedy, Bush) was doing a PhD in her department as a hobby. Curious, I later asked her to explain more and that was when I first heard there are people from well-off families who do enter PhD programs as full-paying students because they are doing it as a leisurely hobby.
Later on, I found more instances of well-off people pursuing PhDs for leisurely hobby reasons. There’s even a long-running ad which profiled a case of a retiree pursuing PhD studies for his personal fulfillment…a.k.a. leisurely hobby.
They are treated differently with lower academic expectations/mentoring levels because they aren’t intending or being perceived as “being serious” about pursuing a tenure-track career once they graduate. And judging by the Profs I met at a few academic conferences who were there to interview/hire tenure-track assistant Profs, they are well-aware of that and factor that in when reviewing CVs of PhD graduates/students about to graduate hoping for an interview accordingly.
oh please. One or two affluent hobbyists per year nationwide is not a trend. It’s not a blip. It’s not even a rounding error.
I find it difficult to believe that in the life of a single university they are creating policies/tracking/etc. for the EXTREMELY occasional PhD student.
In my class in business school there was a “bold faced name” student. Third or fourth generation from one of America’s leading industrial fortunes. Nobody expected her to participate in campus recruiting (indeed, she was heading to the family business) but other than that there was zero difference in how she was treated by faculty. Did she need to worry about her GPA? Likely not. But the university didn’t roll out the red carpet in order to make her happy- she applied, was accepted, and once she got her degree headed off to help manage the family business- which in this case, was a multi billion dollar enterprise.
There will always be some anecdote about some named family. From my perspective, it’s much harder to get into these programs as a dilettante (and we have been referring to humanities. I assume we mean core humanities, not some outlier program that can’t fill seats.)
Don’t make the mistake of assuming some few cases make for universal truths. Nor that some older person pursuing an interest isn’t vetted for the qualities he/she brings to the study of that field, in that dept, at that college. The more serious the program, the more intense the expectations, from the get-go. If someone isn’t serious, you expect us to believe they get into some tough, academically rigorous program without being able to contribute?
But, why are we arguing this? Show us something substantial.
Not necessarily if one has the cash or is financially foolhardy and is willing to be treated as an effective cash-cow by the department/university…including some elite ones in similar ways to how stand-alone Masters students are treated at the same institutions. This includes far lowered admission standards than for students admitted to PhD programs with departmental funding…including elite ones.
MBA programs are very different from PhD programs and run on a far more impersonal in the admissions and student life stage.
Then again, HBS has had a history of lowering the bar of admission for certain scions of famous families. After all it did admit one member of the Bush family into their MBA program in the '70s despite having a C/C- undergrad GPA and standardized test scores which got him rejected from UT-Austin’s law school…
While some could argue that he proved himself by becoming President thirty odd years later…others would argue that like that admission to HBS…a large part of the foundation and support was due to large inputs of family influence and exercising connections available only to the most elite families from an SES and political standpoints.
Oh, c’mon. These examples of some convo are essentially hearsay and still you want us to take you at your word because someone said so. We weren’t talking at stand-alone masters students. You’re declaring truths and we are disagreeing. Bush was over 40 years ago. We all know there are some UG legacy admits. Give us a link that supports this certainty they are filling seats with foolhardy cash cows, dilettantes.
I know I’m going to regret wading into this, but …
@cobrat - Please give it up. As far as I know, you were neither a graduate student nor have earned a Ph.D., have never been hired as a faculty member, and have never been on a search committee. A few posters have been in all four roles. Perhaps they might know a tiny bit more about this topic.
[ul]
[] Yes, in theory a hiring committee member might filter out those who are only were pursuing a Ph.D. as a hobby. They also probably look both ways when crossing the street to avoid being hit by a passing herd of unicorns. It just isn’t a real concern.
[] Nowadays, in many fields it’s quite rare for an assistant professor to be hired directly after a Ph.D. You are evaluating post-docs, not graduate students. So most of your comments are just totally off-base in most fields. The humanities are the biggest exception, but even that is changing somewhat.
[] Having a fellowship like an NSF or a Fulbright on your CV is a great thing since many of the very good students have been awarded them. But these aren’t the basis for hiring decisions … many of these fellowships are mostly just signs that a student was a very good undergraduate since they’re awarded in the senior year of undergrad or sometimes the first year or two of graduate school. They generally don’t represent any direct sign about a candidate’s current potential.
[] With respect to other departmental support - this varies much depending on the field, the funding situation, and the time to completion. You don’t look too much at this because of these factors and because listing of research assistantship support or departmental funding is all over the map. CV’s will mention time spent as a TA / instructor (some teaching experience is a good thing).
[li] With respects to grants - I don’t know how this works in many of the humanities or medicine, but I can speak to many other fields. It’s incredibly rare for a doctoral student to have been awarded a “true” research grant. In many fields, even at the very top departments this might only happen for a complete once-in-a-generation superstar (I’m not talking about grants to support dissertation work, which are a good signal but aren’t the same and depend highly on the nature of the work and the advisor’s grant situation).[/li][/ul]
I agree completely with @QuantMech 's list, though I might emphasize recommendations (formal and informal) more.
Saying the words “leisurely hobby” over and over and over again doesn’t make your story more believable. There is nothing “leisurely” about pursuing a Ph.D, whether one does it for personal fulfillment, or for purely professional reasons.