How to Pick a Ph.D. Program

I have a number of friends who have come to me for advice on applying for a Ph.D. program. I have collected my "best of" advice from my emails, and I thought I would share it with my readers (all 4 of them). If any of you have advice you'd like to add, feel free.

So You're Thinking of Getting a Ph.D.

1. Don't. I can't say this strongly enough, and yet, I have never been able to convince anyone not to do it. The only reason you should be getting a Ph.D. is if you absolutely need one to pursue your chosen career. This means you want to be either an academic, or you want to work in a science lab. Bad reasons to get a Ph.D. include:

• "I'm sick of my job. I'd like to take a break." Believe me, a Ph.D. is not a break.
• "A Ph.D. is sooooooo much more impressive than a masters." This may be true, but even put together with the previous reason, it's not worth it.
• "The economy is in the crapper." Don't worry, it will turn around well before you get out in 5-8 years.
• "I'm great at classes." Ph.D. programs are not really about classes.

Basically, don't go unless you are 100% sure you want to do it, have really done your homework, and know that having those 3 letters after your name is essential to doing what you want to do and there is no way you can do it otherwise. So I haven't convinced you? All right, fine. Read on for advice on how to pick a program.

2. Talk to current students or recent Ph.Ds to find out who has the best programs in your desired area. You should find these people through your personal networks, not randomly email ones you found listed on the school website. My colleagues and I get emails all the time from people (usually from outside the U.S.) wanting information on how to get a Ph.D. in the U.S. We generally ignore these emails. It is nothing personal, but we just don't have time to email random people we don't know. Use your LinkedIn contacts, ask your friends and family, ask your undergrad advisor, etc. Academia is a pretty small world, and you might be surprised whom your friends know.

If you want to do academia, you will be better off going to the very best program that you can get into. You will have more options this way. Students are great for finding out this because really, they don't have anything invested in you coming to their school. Ask them "what are the best programs in this area?" It will be helpful if you have a narrower idea of what area within the field interests you. So if you want to get an English Ph.D., it will help you pick a program if you have a general idea of whether you are interested in Shakespeare or 20th century African-American literature. If you're interested in the latter, it's not smart to go to a program, no matter how great the overall reputation, if they don't have any scholars there currently doing anything with 20th century African-American literature. This won't be a problem with bigger programs, who tend have enough people to cover most areas, but even so, some programs are stronger in particular areas than others.

3. Realize that it is going to take you MINIMUM five years to finish. Some programs (like mine) like to sell their programs as four-year programs. The only people I have heard of who finished in four years came in on DAY ONE with their dissertation idea and dataset. If this isn't you, you're going to take five years. If you're lucky. Ask how long it has taken the most recent graduates to finish. If you can get the median time to graduation, this is helpful too. Ask about the requirements. I picked a program with an abnormally high number of requirements, and this means that students in my program take a long time to graduate.

4. Once you get in, do your homework to pick the right program. You will get the most honest information from current students (with the caveat coming later in the post), but be sure to talk to faculty as well. Best case scenario is that your school will fly you out so you can see the campus and talk to students and professors. I am assuming that if you got this far, you want to be a professor. If you don't, see #1. Seriously.

Here's the big caveat about talking to current students. They will be too scared to say anything bad about their program or the professors (especially the professors). Here's why. They don't know you. We don't know if we tell you "Oh, Professor X is horrible" or "in our program, the professors use the grad students as slave labor." that you're not going to go to the next school on your list and say "Yeah, I heard from students at PreviousUniversity that the professors there are a nightmare." And then it gets back to the faculty at our school! So we're not going to say a word that is directly negative about our program. Now, if I am talking to a close friend, I might be more candid (although, truthfully, most of the negatives in my program are administrative, and I feel fine about being candid about these) If you are clueless about how this works, you can miss some important information or be blindsided by some pretty nasty stuff when you arrive. So if you hear them avoid answering a question, or give neutral or noncommittal answers, feel free to interpret that as a negative. They will be positive about things that are positive.

5. With this in mind, here are some things you should ask about.

• Ask where graduates from the last several years (I would say the last five years) have gotten jobs. Some departments have this information on their websites, but others will say that they've placed graduates at "a variety of universities including Flagship State University, University of SmallState, and FancyPants University." When the placement info is given so generally, it's a pretty safe assumption that the person who got a job at FancyPants University is probably the one superstar from 10 years ago, and this is not at all representative of where the average graduate from this program gets placed. All else being equal, you want to go to the school that has the best placement record. The caveat is that I think it is better to go to a school with a slightly worse placement records if the faculty is more supportive and helpful and nice.
• Does this school function on a "star" system? I know of some programs where if you're a star student, you get a lot of attention, but if you're a middle-of-the-road student, you will have a hard time getting resources and attention.
• Try to suss out the nature of the relationships between the faculty and students. If possible, you want to go a place where the faculty members treat the students with respect, support them in their learning, give them opportunities for coauthorships, and aren't abusive.
• What is the funding like? Do you get grants or do you have to TA for most of your money? TAing is not as bad as you hear sometimes; it depends on the professor, but the less TAing, the better. How many years do you get guaranteed funding? Is it a problem to get funding after you're not guaranteed? For instance, in my program, you're only guaranteed funding for 4 years, but really, there are so many TA positions that it is easy to get funding as long as you need it (if you are in town and able to TA).
• Do they kick people out a lot? This is a very important question to ask. Some programs that I know of get rid of 50% of their students within the first two years. This is crazy to me. You really don't want to go somewhere that kicks out a lot of their students. This is often a sign of department dysfunction. Sometimes kicking people out is a necessary evil- people don't progress, can't cut the work, etc., but this should be somewhat of a minimum.

6. This brings me to a very important point: Do NOT go anywhere that does not give you a masters if you either leave or get kicked out after a certain point (usually after the qualifying exams) If you fail your exams or if you pass them but decide to leave because academia isn't for you and you've realized that you've made a colossal mistake, you want to get something for your trouble without having to sit through 5-8 years of misery. Sometimes programs will say that this is so they don't reward people for dropping out or getting kicked out, but this is BS.

7. And finally, do not go to a program because there is one professor there for whom you would like to work. This is basically putting all your eggs in one basket. People go on sabbatical, they move to other universities, or worst of all, they could be abusive and horrible. There should be at least a few professors there who appeal to you.

Edited to add: One more thing-- ask current grad students at one university about other universities. Because while we won't talk smack about our own, we have no scruples about giving you the scoop on other places, if we know anything.

The Final Offer

The final job offer came through this week. This makes five total. So, here's the lowdown:

• 21 first round interviews
• 12 flyouts
• 5 offers

Of the 12 flyouts, he cancelled the final 2, which leaves 10. Of those 10, 1 told him that he was their first choice, but they knew that one of his other offers would win out (no contest), so they made an offer to another candidate. That leaves 9. 2 of those 9 made decided not to make any offers, one because of financial reasons, and one b/c they couldn't reach consensus. That leaves 7. Of those 7, 2 were flat out "no, we gave the offer to someone else who was in a different area."

5 out of 10 is a really great rate. Really, 5 out of 9, excluding the school that got its funding taken away. I don't think anyone else from his university has done as well. The other guy in his department who has four offers doesn't have quite as good of a spread, and he only got offers from places that hadn't seen DH. Anywhere that had to pick between him and DH at the flyout level picked DH. So there.

This 5th offer is from a department at a university that he has already gotten an offer from (another department), so it doesn't add a new geographic possibility. Good thing, too. It is getting too confusing!

A Not-As-Depressing Book on Working and Motherhood

I just finished reading a fascinating book called Kidding Ourselves by Rhona Mahony. I am surprised that I hadn't heard of this book until recently, given the relatively large number of depressing feminist tomes on working and motherhood that sit on my bookshelves. As it turns out, many of these books (which include Flux and The Price of Motherhood, to name a couple) actually cite Kidding Ourselves, which made it doubly surprising that I hadn't heard of it before, although I think I have figured out why. It is a fairly academic book that might not appeal to the masses in the way that the anecdotal Flux or the "written by Wall Street Journal Economic Reporter" Price of Motherhood might. It also deals with a topic that I don't think many women want to face- the prospect of househusbands. Mahony argues that until men do as much childwork and housework as women do (which will end up decreasing the total amount that women do), women will have a hard time getting ahead professionally. Much of her book details how women can negotiate with their husbands to have them take on more of the household tasks, not just in approach, but also how to strengthen your own position.

Unfortunately, much of the strengthening goes on long before you have children. Mahony argues that one of the best ways to improve your outcome in a negotiation is to improve your BATNA. BATNA stands for "best alternative to a negotiated agreement." How do BATNAs work? Say you want to buy a new car. You go to the dealership, and try to negotiate the price on a car. Your BATNA is what happens if you and the dealership can't agree on a price, and you end up walking away. If you don't have a car, your BATNA might be "don't take that job across town, but find a job closer to home, and I can ride the bus." That is a pretty bad BATNA. Being able to take that job across town might be worth a lot to you- more than the blue book value of the car. When you have a bad BATNA, you are more likely to do worse in a negotiation, because your reservation price (the most you are willing to pay) is going to be pretty high.

But if you can convince your parents to lend you their car for a while to get you to and from work, your BATNA then becomes "borrow Mom and Dad's car." This is a pretty good BATNA. It doesn't cost you anything. Maybe it's a 1992 Buick, and maybe they will only lend it to you for a couple of weeks, but it means that your reservation price goes down. You can still take that job across town, and you don't have to pay anything extra in the immediate future. You are willing to walk away at a lower price.

This is a really simplistic example, but you get the idea.

So women need to improve their BATNAs. Part of this BATNA is your employability, your ability to earn money. In other words, how dependent are you on your husband? More dependent = worse BATNA. Less dependent = better BATNA. Your education and qualifications largely determine your employability, your ability to earn the big bucks. Mahony isn't saying that women should leave their husbands if they don't help out, but your ability to exist on your own factors into how you and your husband approach this negotiation. She also suggests that having a better BATNA can prevent physical abuse. I am not so convinced on this point- I think it probably helps women get out faster, as I know at least one well-educated career woman who stayed in an abusive relationship for a little too long, but as for preventing it... I am not so sure. Anyway....

What earns the big bucks? In short, math and science. The more math and science that you take, the more options that are open to you. My husband and I found this out when hearing about my dad's experience getting his plumber's license at the age of 59. My dad is a smart guy (and a licensed contractor for 25 years), and has a bachelor's degree in civil engineering. He lacked confidence about his abilities to pass the test (supposedly it's hard) and get his plumber's license. He signed up for a prep class at the local community college halfway through the term. It turns out that he was outperforming the other guys in the class by leaps and bounds. Why? Because he knew geometry. He passed the test the first time. (go Dad!!!) My DH and I said that high schools should put up posters everywhere that says "If you don't take this math class, these careers will be cut off for you!" Who knew that if you didn't know geometry, you would have a hard time becoming a plumber???

So girls need to take more math and science in high school. Taking 4 years of math and at least 3 years of science in high school keeps potentially lucrative college majors open to you. This is the second part of increasing your BATNA- majoring in something that will help you get good-paying, gainful employment. Mahony is sympathetic to the liberal arts perspective (I get the feeling that this is her ideal, but she knows she lives in the real world), but one of the nicest things about this book, as compared to most of the other books on this topic that I have read, is that it is not just for upper-middle class women. This book is intended for women of all walks of life. It's not a pretty fact of life, but if you are scraping to put yourself through college, your time might be better spent majoring in economics, chemistry, or engineering, rather than something like English or philosophy. The first group of majors positions you for more lucrative employment than the second group. And more money = better BATNA.

Okay, check! I took 4 years of math in high school, 4 years of science, and majored in something eminently practical (and am pursuing a graduate degree that might be a waste of time in one sense, but will also make me more employable, at least in theory). Phew! At least that's one thing I didn't screw up.

To make that money, women also need to put themselves in positions where they keep making it, and not gear themselves for the flexible, part-time work that many women consider when picking a career (okay, I am at least a little guilty in this respect- most women I know are, even the well-educated ones).

Another part of the equation that is very, very important is picking the right person, a person who is willing to chip in and do his fair share, has a certain mindset about equality, etc. Mahony argues that women should be willing to marry down- marry men who make less, have flexible careers, men who will be in a position not to say no when you tell them that they need to do housework and help with the kids.

Here is where we part ways. I think that marrying down and having the flexible career matters less than marrying someone who is willing to help and is sympathetic to the values of equality. Mahony admits that she herself married laterally (she married a college professor), and she writes, which is a relatively flexible career, yet she has managed to work out a 50-50 agreement with her husband.

Everyone that I know who has married down has paid for it. Yeah, if your husband is in a law firm or a McKinsey consultant, he's not going to be doing the childcare, but I've seen too many guys in flexible, low-paying careers who don't pull their weight either. And then they get their egos all in a twist and pissed b/c the woman is the breadwinner. Guess what? Some of these guys are in these flexible, low-paying careers because they are lazy. A lazy guy is not going to do the work around the house no matter what. If I'm going to have to do all the housework on my own, I at least want to marry someone who brings in enough money to hire it out. I think the solution is to go for a happy medium- marry someone who is smart and ambitious but working in a maybe not-as-high-powered job as he could be (for instance, college professor instead of investment banker), but liberal-minded enough to not be squeamish about doing house and child work and nice enough to want to make his wife's life easier.

My parents are a good example of this. My mom stayed home until I was about 12. Since my dad was a licensed contractor who worked for himself starting when I was about 5, he had a relatively flexible schedule. Although I swear to you I can hardly remember my dad doing ANY housework (my mom is a perfectionist, so she just did it all), my perception is that he was quite involved with the day-to-day things that you have to do to raise kids. He insisted on helping bathe us as babies, would tell us bedtime stories, take us on outings so my mom could get a break (I remember one time, he took us fishing at a local pond, and I ended up catching a HUGE snapping turtle. Talk about freaky.), help us with science fair projects, etc. Probably my mom did do a lot more of the day-to-day nitty gritty, like making sure we ate, were dressed properly, did our hair, and did most of the laundry, but I really do remember my dad being very involved.

There is another twist to this story. My mom was agoraphobic, and didn't get treatment until I was about 12 (just before she started working part-time). This meant that my dad took care of lots of errands. He took us to school every morning (he was great, because he would drive fast and cut through parking lots on the corners, so we would get there quickly!), did a lot of the outside errands, and also he and I would go grocery shopping every Sunday morning. My mom would make the list, give us the coupons, and he and I would go. We would park our car in the middle of Kroger, split the list up, and divide and conquer. We were a very efficient team.

All of this happened, despite the fact that my mom had a pretty bad BATNA. She does have a college degree, but it was in French education, not something she really wanted to do. She was agoraphobic, and had stayed home for bunches of years. If she had asked my dad to do more (like make dinner once a week, etc.) he would have. The reasons why she didn't are mostly related to her own perfectionism (Mahony talks about this too- if you want your husbands to help you, you've got to lower your standards.).

So what did I take away from this reading? Most of all, marry a nice guy who wants to make you happy, and recognizes that this doesn't necessarily come in the form of jewelry (although I love bling, don't get me wrong), but often comes in the way of taking away the daily drudgery of dishes, cooking, and laundry.

Latest job market update

Wow. The job market has gone really well for us. I say "us" because I view my husband's success as my own success. He has four offers, one from a top 5 department, and 3 from well-respected departments in other areas of the universities. We expect another offer from a top 10 department this week.

We will be taking a tour of the top 3 schools and their respective geographic areas, two of which we both are pretty unfamiliar with. There are so many things to think about. Do we go with the swanky, old-money town? Or the ghetto-but-regentrifying town? Or the big city, with tons of people of my ethnicity and career opportunities (both academic and industry) galore? Where can we buy a house? How much house can we afford? What about schools?

In reality, the geographic concerns are relatively unimportant. All of the top 3 are located in places that I think would be acceptable. Now, if we visit a place, and I hate it, that would mean something. But right now, the most important thing is the academic environment that is most conducive to my husband's success. His advisor even took us both out to lunch, ostensibly to "strategize," but in reality, we just ended up talking about my family, his wife and kids, and all his former roommates/grade school friends who are in positions such as Chairman of the Fed, dean of the nation's best law school, top professors in similar fields, etc. He has his own opinion about where my husband would be happiest, and we take this opinion very seriously. I think he and my husband are a lot alike, so his recommendation holds weight with me.

His advisor is now on my good side, after getting off to a rocky start. The first time I met him, he insulted me. It was the summer after our first year, and my husband had rocked his exams. I mean, completely blew everyone away. His exams were at the beginning of the summer, and mine were at the end. He mentioned this to his advisor upon introducing us, and his advisor replied, "Well, there's no way she can do better than you!" He was trying to compliment my husband, but instead, insulted me. He apologized to my husband later that day, but I was the one who was insulted! Wasn't I the one who should have received the apology? Harumph.

He completely redeemed himself this summer, though, after my car broke down 90 miles from home, four days before our anniversary, when driving to my husband's university, where he was (approximately 400 miles away). I couldn't just leave the car (I did rent a car and drive back home), the repair shop had a hard time finding the part (it was a part that was still under warranty and shouldn't have broken). Our second anniversary was just days away, and it wasn't immediately clear that I would be able to make it there. We didn't really have the money for a plane ticket, and we were stressing out that we wouldn't be together on our anniversary. We weren't together on our first anniversary (he had a really important conference, I had my sister's wedding), and we were really angry that we might be apart again!!

My husband happened to have a meeting with his advisor that day, and when his advisor asked "How are you?" my husband launched into the whole story, leaving out the plane ticket money part. His response was, "That is terrible! You definitely need to be together on your anniversary! There is no excuse for that! How much is a plane ticket?" My husband replied $120, and his advisor just pulled out his wallet, and pulled out 6 $20 bills, handed them to my husband, and said, "Happy anniversary!" Since that day, his advisor is now on my good side. He is also really good to my husband, and is a terrific advisor, so that helps him too!

People keep asking me, "Where do YOU want to go?" Truthfully, if I were single, and just looking to move to a new place, I would pick the big city. Obviously. One of the strange things about marriage, though, is that my interests become almost indistinguishable from his interests. Almost. Not entirely, but if he does poorly, I end up suffering as well. We will have to move (rather than deciding to move, and moving to a similar or better university with a pay increase), he will be more unhappy and less pleasant at home, and he will have to work harder to accomplish the same amount. We will ultimately go wherever we think he will be most successful.

In the meantime, we are imagining that things like grocery stores and housing prices matter. Ooh, which place has a Wegman's? Which place has Trader Joe's? What about Whole Foods? Where do we live? How far is the commute? It's fun to pretend that these things will actually impact our decision. In reality, we feel very fortunate that we have any choice at all. It is not the normal outcome.

Job market update

My husband is kicking ass on the job market. It is a huge relief. He has 11 (count 'em! 11!) flyouts, 10 of which are for really good schools. The 11th is also to a good school, but a troubled department within that good school that doesn't seem like it would be the best fit. He wasn't sure whether or not to take it.... even though he has 10 other great flyouts, he didn't feel like he is in the position of turning down flyouts, which I guess means that he would take an offer from them over going into industry, which I had thought wasn't the case.

I went with him to his big conference, to provide moral and practical support while he did 21 interviews in 2.5 days. Wow, did he ever need it.

What we did not expect:

1) He would sweat through his shirts by lunch time. We had planned to have an extra shirt for each day in case he spilled something on himself, but hadn't planned on undershirts. I had to go to Marshalls to buy more. I also had to take shirts to the cleaners, because some of the "extra" shirts weren't that nice.

2) the fashionable but still nice looking blue striped tie was TOO fashionable. Go conservative. One of his interviewers, whom he had interacted with previously, saw him after lunch in the new shirt (white) and different tie (red with traditional looking stripes) and said, "Oh! I'm glad you changed your tie." It didn't really matter that much, but it freaked us out.

3) He would throw up at least one meal a day, out of sheer nervousness. Huge drag and very demoralizing. We should have expected this, and kind of did, but we didn't expect how annoying this really was. Also not great for energy levels. However, apple juice and fruit seemed to be relatively successful when it came to keeping food down and energy up, at least temporarily.

4) How bad we would sleep. Not hugely surprising, but I really thought we'd sleep better than we did.

5) How stressful and exhausting it would be for ME, the spouse. I was doing a lot of running around and errands, etc., plus his performance affects the rest of our lives. Talk about stress for both of us.

6) How fast the flyouts would come. He had 3 by Saturday night, and he hadn't even finished his interviews yet. We were expecting Monday at the earliest.

He is getting them all done by the first week of February. Maybe we will have an offer by Valentine's day!

Busy

Hey folks (if anyone still reads this anymore....)!

I haven't been updating lately because I have been busy with school. I have a big deadline in a few months; I basically have to pass to candidacy by then, and they sprung the new deadline on us a couple of months ago. Yark. I think I can do it, but by no means is it a sure thing, so I have been doing a lot of work lately. I got one paper off to my committee, and I'm working on the data analysis for my second.

My husband is also on the job market, so we have been really involved with that. It is going okay- we wish it were going better, though- he has a high number of interviews, but only a couple at top-notch departments. His committee has been assuring him all along that he will do well, etc., (by well, they mean "place at a top 30 department"), but the students that his advisor had kind of dismissed are getting few interviews, but the ones they are getting are the top places. So this is sort of nerve-wracking.

We are not worried that he will not get a job; he will, but we (well, really me.) are concerned that he will be at a crappy school or in a crappy location, or worse, both. The crappy location is not so bad if he is at a good place, because he can go on the market again in a few years, but the crappy school is worse, and crappy school/crappy location is a really bad combination. If he is at a crappy school/crappy location, we will probably have to go on the market again in a few years, and then again a few years after that to try to claw up a little bit. I have had to explain to my parents that, no, you can't really move up. The exceptional people can move up a little bit (my advisor had a student who moved from a second-tier no-name research university to an excellent state school after a couple of years. He had a major publication come out after getting his first job, and I think that helped him move up. People that I know who have moved up have gone on the market again practically immediately- maybe they waited two years.

He just has to get an academic job that is better than working in industry. He is not very inclined to work in industry. He would do just fine in industry, but is more suited for academia. If he wanted to go into industry, he would have done it already and skipped the academic path totally.

Big Decision

I realized I haven't posted about this yet on my blog, but I made a big decision.

I'm not going into academia.

At least, not the research side. I would consider going to a teaching school. I just don't like the research process. I'm great at coming up with ideas, terrible with the followthrough, and I hate all the details you have to take care of to produce good research. I think my talents are better used elsewhere.

After the whole "certain professors don't want to work with you" fiasco, I did some thinking, and I realized that I didn't want to go into academia. Not just didn't want to go, but really felt that if I went into academia, I would be ignoring my own best counsel, much like I did when I decided to go into a Ph.D. program to begin with. I have always done best when I have listened to my inner voice and ignored what everyone else around me was saying (because usually my inner voice contradicts all the other advice that I get). I basically decided that just like I have resisted pressure to follow a more traditional path in the past (not that my life is so non-conformist, but I did take paths that my teachers, parents, etc. didn't always expect me to take), I need to do the same now. There is incredible pressure to go into research, but I have to stay strong and resist. My advisor and committee are not the people who are going to live my life, and I need to do what makes me happy.

I had decided this before my big retreat, and I had made a commitment to myself that I would talk to the professors at the retreat. They are both lecturers, but one (FormerAdvisor) was tenure track for six years, and decided not to go up for tenure because she didn't like research. The other lecturer is someone with 35 years of professional experience. After he retired, he went back for his Ph.D. I thought FormerAdvisor would be helpful in giving me the moral support that I knew I wouldn't get anywhere else (except for DH), and I thought that the other one would be able to help me see the professional benefits of a doctoral degree, which is something I am having a hard time seeing right now.

Turns out FormerAdvisor left academia for pretty much the same reasons that I don't want to go into it. We have pretty similar personalities, so this just confirmed my confidence in my decision. The other professor wasn't as helpful in terms of encouragement (I don't think I made my question clear enough), but he said that we should talk again, and he has lots of professional connections with whom he can connect me.

More later.