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[anon]

well, how you see yourself, enjoying your work, and putting food on the table

[GroovyOldDude]

True, we all gotta eat and pay the bills, but the part about enjoying your work you mentioned is the most crucial thing you listed, IMHO.  

Constantly comparing ourselves to others is a sure-fire way road to misery, because there is always someone around somewhere who is better at some aspect of the job/work than we are.

To quote Quigon Jinn, "There's always a bigger fish!"

So it's best, in my opinion, to set personal goals and standards and adhere to them.  I'm usually tougher on myself than anyone else.

[Sympathizing]

Sandy Bell wrote:

> Sugar,
> let's not hide by saying "at my univ. every PhD was very good
> as well". There might be millions of very good graduate
> students. The question is: Is X student in the top 20 in his
> generation? The top 20 go to Ivy Univ.; the remanining very
> good students (no. 21 - infinity) go to lesser univ. They are
> very good but they are NOT anywhere near the top. And the profs
> at Ivy Univ. are brilliant enough to detect those applicants
> who are as brilliant as they are.
>
> In other words, you are not by accident at a 2nd tier. You
> are there BECAUSE you are a 2nd tier yourself. Which doesn't
> mean that you are not very good. It's simply that you are not
> among the best. Not the cream of the cream...

Unbelievably, Sandy, you fail to account for those students who were accepted into Ivies, Chicago, Berkeley, Michigan, and the like (apologies to any I've offended by leaving off their excellent institution), but chose not to attend.

[Anon Again]

My, Sandy Bell is very very proud of Sandy Bell.
Speaking as someone who went to top schools (and I don't mean top 10, I mean #1 and #2) I can assure you that all profs and students are not super genius. Most are highly intelligent but a few got lucky. I have met profs and students at "lesser" schools that were far brighter. As a general rule, yes the cream rises to the top, but it ain't always so, Sandy.

[thinking about leaving]

The problem with this board is that I can never be sure who is being serious and who is being sarcastic.

But seriously, in observing others in my field, those who are truly deserving (published regularly in the top journals) always have the option of moving up. Having only a comparable record to the current faculty at a prestigious U is, however, not enough. They would rather hire a brand new Ph.D. for their potenital. So the obvious way of moving up in research is to publish lots in great places that attracts people's attention.

I am not sure how one can move up in the liberal arts college rankings. Teaching is so hard to measure and so many people have good teaching evaluations. I guess one would have to develop a national reputation for teaching excellence.

But, there is always the option of being happy where you are. And in my case, being very happy to leave academia ( but not leaving my field, which I identify with infinitely more than academia itself ) in 5 month.

[wondering]

Regular Joe talkeda bout being at a Masters U. Does that mean it has masters programs but no doctoral programs. Does it also have a good undergrad program? All these labels have my head spinning!

[wondering]

To Sandy Bell what a load of hogwash! In some fields the top universities are not Ivies nor R1! And some top people choose because of geography or family to go to what you would call 2nd tier. It is just not as simple as you make it out to be.

Now, go wash your mouth with soap!

[2nd tier graduate]

Am I the only one who went to a 2nd-tier grad program because as a working-class kid of 21 I wasn't sophisticated enough to know any better?  I'm from the south and only applied to southern programs, even though my 780, 760, and 750 on the 3 GRE sections compared very favorably to those who got into the Ivies... as did my 4.0 at a regional state university in the honors program.  I got into all 5 programs I applied to, with good funding, but none of the programs I applied to were in the top 30 as I discovered 2-3 years later.

I'm sure to those who were born and bred for the Ivies, it beggars the imagination that I could have been so naive, but it's a true story.

[moom]

"780, 760, and 750 "

You beat me on the logic. That was my weak point. Maybe why I didn't apply to study econ at a top school :) But geography at a weak geography school (a private R1 though) and then do econ stuff or whatever anyway...

[Pogo]

Sandy Bell wrote:

> Sugar,
> let's not hide by saying "at my univ. every PhD was very good
> as well". There might be millions of very good graduate
> students. The question is: Is X student in the top 20 in his
> generation? The top 20 go to Ivy Univ.; the remanining very
> good students (no. 21 - infinity) go to lesser univ. They are
> very good but they are NOT anywhere near the top. And the profs
> at Ivy Univ. are brilliant enough to detect those applicants
> who are as brilliant as they are.
>
> In other words, you are not by accident at a 2nd tier. You
> are there BECAUSE you are a 2nd tier yourself. Which doesn't
> mean that you are not very good. It's simply that you are not
> among the best. Not the cream of the cream...

Sadly, I think these posts are for real--S.B. and others are trolls who lurk the list waiting for an excuse to feel superior.  But seriously, folks: we all know that really gifted, successful, well-adjusted people don't waste their time attacking people anonymously on message boards!

Well, on second thought, maybe Sandy's post IS a joke.  Either that or it was written by a high-schooler...

[recent PhD]

First, in answer to the question about summer programs: you might get a certificate or something informal.  Obviously, it's not as important as your PhD program.  But it's a way to improve your "pedigree" in a clear and finite way.  Also, it puts you in conversation with other people who are very engaged intellectually.  So it can actually make you a better scholar, in addition to improving your cv.

Regarding Sandy Bell's comment: I attended a top program in which about 6 grad students were chosen from about 250 applications.  When I applied, I had this fantasy, this little story I made up, that maybe only half of the 250 applicants were actually qualified, so I was really only competing against about 125 other people.  Plus, I figured, about half of the qualified people would be boring, so I was really competing against only about 60 people.  So my chances, in this story I told myself, were not 6/250, but rather 6/60.

One day, after I had been in the program about 4 years, I saw one of my professors plowing through a stack of applications.  I told her the story I had told myself as an applicant, and asked her if it had any relationship to reality.  

She LAUGHED at me and told me, no, about 90% of the applicants are totally qualified and would do great work if they got in.  She told me that the committee is usually able to discard about 10% of the applications immediately, but after that, every cut is heartbreaking.  The bottom line, she told me, is that every year, about 225 people fully deserve, in every way, to get in, and 119 of them will be rejected.  There's no way around that.  If you have many more qualified people than you have slots, many qualified people will be rejected (not even waitlisted!).  

I always think about that.  I think about the people who didn't get in, who ask themselves, "Why wasn't I good enough?"  And they don't have the opportunity to have the conversation I did (which is why I'm telling you about it now).  They may go through their entire lives thinking they did something wrong on the application, or they weren't smart enough, or whatever.  But I'm here to tell you: once you make that first cut, it's luck who gets in and who doesn't.  It has to do mainly with the distribution of research interests.  If 10 brilliant applicants all want to work with professor X, only one or two of them will get in.  It's not fair, but that's the way it is.

So I don't believe that second tier students are at second tier schools, and first tier students are at first tier schools.  A lot of it is just luck.

[moom]

As someone who is admissions director for a small decidedly second tier or worse program, the odds here are similar to what you imagined at the top program. There are relatively few applicants. Half are just not qualified. The people we fund are the ones that deserve funding. Those that we admit but can't fund and so don't come are ones that look like they have potential, but they are higher risk, perhaps they are still undergrads, while the people we fund have masters and sometimes some career behind them. Maybe our top one candidate would be competitive anywhere. But they like our philosophy and approach, or the location.