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[betterslac]

The letter of recommendation thread got me thinking again about my grad school experience and the choices I made, particularly with regard to the choices that pit money against the strength of a program and whether it is better to be at the top of an incoming cohort or in the middle of the pack

On that thread, Seniorscholar noted that sometimes top students come into programs with large scholarships that do not require them to teach as much as others, and bomb out because they think they know everything, skip classes, etc.  So is it better to go to a program where you are not the best in the cohort but don't get as much support, or go to a place that is slightly lower ranked, get more support but have the pressure of being considered (at least initially) in the top portions of the cohort?

When I applied (more than 25 years ago), I was accepted to a range of places and had received a university fellowship from Very Good program that I initially had aimed for. I had also applied to Very Top program on the advice of my primary advisor, but had little hopes of getting in. To my surprise, and after I had already settled on going to Very Good program, I was accepted into Top Program, but only with a tuition waiver.

As I see it, if I had gone to Very Good program, I would have a) had more financial support, b) a closer working relationship with faculty, c) been considered among the top of my cohort, and therefore d) had more pressure to perform and, perhaps, would not have been challenged as much by other members of my cohort.

As it was, I went to Very Top program and a) had a much tougher time financially, b) had little working contact with faculty, even my primary dissertation advisor, c) was only middling in terms of my cohort and d) was continually challenged.

I have gone back and forth as to whether I made the right decision. It is true that degree from Very Top program may be opening doors even now that a degree from Very Good program did not, but it may have also been the case that I would have received better mentoring at the latter and the financial security may have allowed me to finish more quickly and get more publications out earlier. Then again, I may have flamed out in the way Senior Scholar and others have described and the choice to be in the middle of a cohort may have been wise.

So from the experiences of others here, how would you weigh these choices and (apart from the mantra of "go to the best program you can"), how would you parse this for aspiring grad students?

[watermarkup]

Betterslac, I kinda sorta took the other path, and I ask myself as often as you do if I wouldn't have been better off somewhere else. Long story short, I didn't apply to what most people would guess would be the Very Top Programs in my field, because I was interested in subfields that those programs weren't strong in, while Very Good U had several nationally-known senior scholars in those areas. Also, Very Good U offered me a competitive university-wide fellowship that required no teaching for 3 years, or exactly the kind of fellowship that produced the flame-outs Seniorscholar mentioned.

I didn't flame out. Instead I loaded up on seminars and finished MA and doctoral coursework in the first three years, and I had time and support during the summers for extra research projects and an MA thesis, which led to three or four articles in quick succession after I had my doctorate in hand. I clicked with a great advisor whose influence I feel to this day. I finished my Ph.D. with no debt.

That was the good part. But there were also drawbacks, like:

• Resentment from other grad students. Line from a pre-semester grad student meeting: "Why doesn't Watermarkup have to teach Etruscan 101?" That kind of sucked.
• A lot of the grad student interaction revolved around teaching. I barely got to know the other grad students for the first couple years. What's really hurt my professional network is that few of the other grad students completed their Ph.D.s.
• My degree closes doors at some places. If you aren't in my subfield, you won't know that Very Good U had stronger faculty in that area than almost anywhere else. My job applications have never gotten much traction with high-end SLACs and B.A.-granting departments at top-tier R1s.
• I finished with more limited teaching experience, even with three years teaching 1-2 or 2-2-1, than other grad students who had been teaching for 6 years or more by the time they were done. Some of them had taught 101, 102, 201, 202, designed their own courses, and won teaching awards. I had mostly taught 101 and TA'd for a few lecture courses.

So I don't know. Maybe I'd be a stronger scholar today if I had had seminars with the kind of grad students who were into Zizek before Zizek was popular. Maybe I'd have a better shot at the R1 jobs I really want if my degree were from an Ivy rather than from Blue State Flagship. If I better understood how things worked when I was applying to grad school, I probably would have chosen differently. But maybe the result would have been only that I would be in pretty much the same place as I'm in now, only with more debt, and without having been able to work with the advisor who influenced me. I don't know.

[lohai0]

I am at a good, but not top, school for my field with an excellent track record for placement. I lucked out and got assigned to Very Famous Guy we hired the year after I got here. There are two of us near the top of our cohort and we push each other. I think I lucked into the best possible situation for me, but I'm still terrified of going on the market in a few more months.

[barred_owl]

Your final question is a good one, Betterslac.  For aspiring graduate students, I think the answer depends on what those students want to do in their post-graduate years. 

I was a reluctant Ph.D. student.  I didn't really want to wind up in a high-pressure, publish-or-perish type of environment, yet I knew that I wanted to teach in a STEM field at the college level.  I knew enough, way back when, to know that I'd need the doctorate in order to secure a college/university teaching job, so I jumped all the hoops to get the degree, but at my R1 (or whatever...think land-grant, major midwest research institution) I "accessorized" my degree by taking as many undergrad teaching gigs as I could manage, with some encouragement by my Ph.D. advisor. 

Given the setting, I was an outlier; many of my cohort followed the straight-and-narrow path and scrambled and clawed their ways into post-docs or--after several years--faculty positions.*  There were times when I thought I'd made a huge mistake, but I kept going nevertheless.  I was lucky in that my major advisor saw my potential as a teacher and made certain that I had as many varied opportunities for teaching as possible.

I landed my first TT gig (at which I subsequently earned tenure and promotion) just a year after receiving my doctorate, with no post-doc in between, at an institution that valued teaching prowess far above research productivity.  For me, that outcome was as close to nirvana as I could or will ever hope to get!  Nowadays, it's also just about as close to fantasy as one can get, especially in STEM fields.

So, I guess what I'm saying is that there's no use in looking back with regret or a sense of "what if?"--but there IS a great purpose in querying prospective grad students about their eventual goals.  To a certain extent, and arguably, the "name" of the institution granting the doctorate isn't everything--depending[/b] on what that particular student wants to do some day.


*To my knowledge, about 90% of the women in my cohort got married either during or shortly after graduate school and were never heard from again, academically.  Of the men, about 75% eventually got TT jobs, mostly research-oriented.  I'm fairly certain that one other female grad student and I were the only women in that cohort to eventually have TT jobs.  For what it's worth...

[systeme_d_]

When I applied (more than 25 years ago), I was accepted to a range of places and had received a university fellowship from Very Good program that I initially had aimed for. I had also applied to Very Top program on the advice of my primary advisor, but had little hopes of getting in. To my surprise, and after I had already settled on going to Very Good program, I was accepted into Top Program, but only with a tuition waiver.

This was exactly my experience, but I chose Very Good Program because of that fellowship.

In my field, there is one university that contains Top Program In The Entire Field, but Top Program was then Not Good At All in my subfield.  (It has since improved in that area.)

To this day, I do not regret my decision one bit, and I still advise aspiring PhD students to Follow The Money.

[totoro]

I applied to two schools only and both offered me a fellowship. One was for 3 years and one for one year only. Even though the 3 year one was in a low cost of living area and the 1 year one a high cost of living area I went for the 1 year one. I had never been to America and moving to a small city in the mid-West sounded scary. It turned out that I made the right choice in terms of academic connections etc. This was all in pre-WWW days of 1989-90 and I just had some guidebooks and brochures to look at in the Fulbright Commission office in London to try to work out where to apply to. Knowing what I know now I would have also applied to some top programs in my related field, which is what my masters adviser in London said I should do. I did my undergrad degree in both discipline areas and had worse grades in the that area. My undergrad alma mater wouldn't have allowed me to do a masters in that field with those grades so I decided that I had no chance applying for PhDs in that area either.

I think it is useful to have some teaching experience but I don't understand why you'd want so much of it as described up thread (but I'm in quantitative social science not humanities). I'm happy I didn't need to do anything on the teaching front and got my PhD coursework out of the way in the 1st year. I was a TA the second year and then got a dissertation grant from a foundation. By the 4th year I was already in a post-doc back in the UK. So I would say: "Apply to some top programs and some OK ones and go to the best program that will pay you livable money".

[polly_mer]

I don't know the answers to any of the questions, but I can share my story.

I was finishing up my BS degree when I was asked to do a funded master's degree at the same university, but a different field.  Basically, I was recruited into a master's program because I was a great student in the professor's class so when he ended up with a funded project out of the blue and was beating the bushes for a student, I got an email. 

As I was finishing that MS degrees, my advisor asked, "So, what's the next step?", and encouraged me to apply to the best programs in my discipline, which spans several fields.  Since I already had published papers, multiple mentors since the project required interaction with a giant in the field who is stationed at a non-academic research institution, and was spending my off-cycle time (I graduated in December) in a postmaster's research fellowship with the institute that funded my MS project, I got funded offers at a multiple top-five programs in different fields.  I chose the offer with the best funding: full tuition and $25K stipend so that my selection of an advisor was what I wanted to do, not who had money to fund me.

I spent a year and a half at that top-five program and left without a degree.  The research facilities were incredible.  I acquired wonderful mentors who weren't officially my advisor, but were top people in the field who were willing to help with my research.  However, my undergraduate education wasn't in this field so I struggled mightily with classes.  Since I didn't pick the program to take classes to be a <field> expert, but instead to get better training in specific research techniques from world-renowned experts, when my marriage started to suffer, I left that program to return to the place where I did my BS and MS.  However, my time at that place wasn't wasted because I went to a zillion seminars, did good networking, had productive research to culminate in publications and presentations at international conferences, and the classes I did take broadened my horizons.

My Ph.D. at my alma mater went very quickly because, at that point, I was an experienced researcher and could transfer a bunch of classes.  I simply needed to bang out publications on my new project, which was funded and co-advised by a senior scientist at a world-class research institution.

I then did a postdoc at the non-academic research institution where that senior scientist was working, but on a different project with different mentors.  Along the way, I attended every workshop I could find on teaching and did a lot of outreach activities.  Like Barred_Owl, I knew that what I wanted was a position that wasn't tippy-top R1 research.  Instead, what I wanted was a position like many of the professors at my triple alma mater had with small classes to teach about 50% and with research and outreach in collaboration with colleagues who would have fabulous research facilities to visit. 

Consequently, when my current teaching postdoc was offered, I jumped on it to get that teaching experience while still having some research encouragement.  I am now getting interviews with places that want people who are solid teachers and can do research with undergraduates/master's students.  My research background, teaching experiences, and time spent at different kinds of institutions are an asset now.

When I advise students, I ask them what they want to do for the next few years and how that plays into what they want to do in the future.  For those who are checkbox, linear thinkers (aka smart people become professors and I need a doctorate to do that so I'll get a doctorate), I also mention that of my cohort that started at the top five program, fewer than half of those people finished a doctorate and I, with my degree from Unranked U, am one of a bare handful of people who are still actively researching, as evidenced by publication and conference presentations, in that field.  The others are not using their degrees in ways typically envisioned by prospective graduate students and the most prestigious research degree is not necessarily the best preparation for the jobs that people want or that are available.

[totoro]

Of the 8 who started with me in my PhD program was is a research professor still at the same institution. One is an associate prof at US state flagship and I am a prof at Go8 university in Australia. Neither of those other two are networking contacts. It was my advisers who opened the doors to the network. So I'm skeptical about people who say that your fellow grad students are so important. But maybe it is different at Harvard, MIT etc. than at a middling R1 (second biggest private uni in the US) like I went to.

[watermarkup]

Totoro, two replies:

In many humanities fields, if you don't have significant teaching experience, you will not be a serious candidate for a substantial fraction of the jobs in your field. In a department of, say, three people, do you hire the one who can teach 101 if you happen to be using the same textbook they're familiar with, or the one who can hit the ground running at three different levels of undergraduate classes? I didn't love teaching in grad school, but I would have been unemployable in my field afterwards without it. I don't think any program in my field, no matter how thick the gold plating, will hire a weak teacher, no matter how smoking hot the dissertation. Things work differently in other fields, of course, but the humanities programs who let students finish a doctorate without getting teaching experience are doing their graduates a huge disservice.

As for professional networks, I'd probably see things differently if I hadn't been forced to switch advisors at the dissertation stage to someone who has never done a thing to make his professional network available to me. Instead, my source of advice and tips and job leads has been limited to the near-contemporaries who I met while in grad school. I know of a couple other programs in my field with very noticeable network effects in job placement. It's great if you can get by without it, but sometimes a friend, or a friend of a friend, in the right place can come in handy.

[totoro]

Networking was definitely important to getting jobs (despite what people often say here on the fora) but it was people much more senior to me who helped. My PhD advisors though only got their PhDs the year before I started the program. So they weren't that senior themselves.

[mystictechgal]

Posting only to make sure it comes up later, when I'm having to make these decisions later. Thank you all that are posting.

Polly, what you say you wish to do, coupled with what you have done and can do, would make you an excellent candidate at my school. We don't have the greatest research facilities, but we have 2 very good in-state universities with very good facilities within a 20-minute drive, a State flagship 3 hours away, and another world-class State flagship from another State only about a 60-minuite drive away. I don't know that we are expressly hiring, but I'd be willing to bet that sending a CV would get some attention. We don't have tenure but from what I can tell even adjuncts have academic freedom, and the Deans and Chairs are devoted to excellence. The support is there. Given that we've just recently made the change from college to university it might also mean that an unsolicited CV might make sense. We're also located in an area where you can live in a pretty low-cost of living section of the country, Or even area, yet many of the schools available are tops.

PM me if you'd like more information.

[ticklemepink]

Very interesting posts here and I'd like to hear more thoughts.

While having a conversation with potential adviser some time ago at a Very Good U, somehow our conversation turned towards the job market.  She wasn't trying to discourage me from applying for the PhD, but rather laid the cards on the table and said along the lines of "I want to know from DAY 1 what my students want to do with their PhD.  I want to make sure they're taking the right classes and doing all the things they need to do to get that job.  You don't have to make a final decision on Day 1 but at least have some idea.  The training for X will be different from if you want to do Y."

I was stunned.  It was the first time anyone said anything like that.

And this is in a field that's making a slow and painful transition in terms of thinking what can and should be able to do with this PhD, which is virtually anything that requires such skills.  I think there are plenty of (potential and current) students who are still too terrified to admit that they don't want to do what's considered "ideal" (be a professor in a publish-or-perish R1) or want to explore other options in addition to being a professor. 

So, are potential students better off going to a Very Good U that offers money, support, and an open environment which students can feel comfortable exploring different options over a Top 5 that has money and network power but extremely focused on training for that "ideal" job as a TT professor at a R1?

[totoro]

So, are potential students better off going to a Very Good U that offers money, support, and an open environment which students can feel comfortable exploring different options over a Top 5 that has money and network power but extremely focused on training for that "ideal" job as a TT professor at a R1?

Go to the website of a department at a very good SLAC and see where the faculty got their PhDs. These places obviously value both teaching and research. I just checked out maybe the top department in my field at a SLAC and almost everyone had PhDs from the top few schools: Harvard, MIT, Yale, Chicago, Stanford, Princeton, and Brown and Michigan.

[polly_mer]

So, are potential students better off going to a Very Good U that offers money, support, and an open environment which students can feel comfortable exploring different options over a Top 5 that has money and network power but extremely focused on training for that "ideal" job as a TT professor at a R1?

Go to the website of a department at a very good SLAC and see where the faculty got their PhDs. These places obviously value both teaching and research. I just checked out maybe the top department in my field at a SLAC and almost everyone had PhDs from the top few schools: Harvard, MIT, Yale, Chicago, Stanford, Princeton, and Brown and Michigan.

While what Totoro writes is true, the corollary "only people who have their degrees from a handful of schools get jobs at good SLAC's" is not true.  As one of my mentors explained it, the famous schools are famous in part because they have many graduates.  Indeed, top programs tend to admit 15-30 people every year and graduate 10-20 people every year.  In contrast, programs that only graduate one student every two years cannot populate programs anywhere in large numbers.  So, even if you look at ok programs ranked at about 100, you're still going to see mostly the same top programs represented just because those people comprise most of the candidate pool for academia. If you look at good SLAC's specifically with an eye toward how many people got their degrees from places other than Harvard, etc., you might be surprised to find the statistics are 20-30%, as they are in my fields.  However, those numbers don't jump out because the people are dispersed among lots of schools whereas the Nth Harvard graduate sticks more readily in a person's mind through repetition.

In my fields, people who know from the gitgo that they want to be in industry, government, or teaching-intensive institutions don't go to the top research programs; they go to places that have good track records in placing people in the jobs that the prospective students want.

[totoro]

Polly - my point is that you can go to one of these top programs and still get a job at a teaching oriented university and it will increase your general chances of getting a good job. It won't make you a research-only misfit. So if you have a chance to go to a top program, go (if the money is liveable). And the best way of deciding where to go is to check where the people at your dream jobs got their degrees.