Grad students who weren’t schooled at elite universities face real challenges in a squeezed academic job market. But many talented grad students do reach tenure when they receive the same support and guidance offered in elite universities.
Grad students who weren’t schooled at elite universities face real challenges in a squeezed academic job market. But many talented grad students do reach tenure when they receive the same support and guidance offered in elite universities.
In a recent panel organized by Ashley Leeds and the Women in Conflict Studies (WICS) group, I had a chance to reflect on some things I wish someone had told me while I was getting my Ph.D. The...
certainly sounds like my 20s… The Duck hasn’t had a good video up in awhile, and for all of you thinking about grad school apps this fall, well, here it is…
Spring (where it exists) is the time of year when applicants to PhD programs find out the outcome and decide where, if any place, to go. While there are many factors that one must take into...
I get a lot of emails asking for advice about putting together their graduate-school applications. I also get a lot of emails asking how to "improve" an application to make it "more competitive." I suspect that these emails come to me because I am Director of Admissions in the Government Department, and people assume that part of my job description is "helping them get into graduate school." Nonetheless, because I like to think of myself as a "nice person," I try to answer these queries with the sage advice that comes from many years on admissions committees. But it grows tiring to...
This is the nerd equivalent of a dad joke. A pair of posts today from political scientists I admire prompts me to postpone my musings on the Hunger Games and to talk about how to get to graduate school in political science again instead. In an effort to convince you to read on, I'll name the authors of the two posts: Dan Drezner and Chris Blattman. Dan Drezner writes about how a post-graduate (non-Ph.D.) degree can help you to get into the doctoral program of your dreams. I'm surprised, by the way, that Dan doesn't address the burning issue of whether it's a good idea to go directly from...
Lots of posts these days about whether to go to grad school for a PhD, including by Dan Drezner. Drew Herrick has a nice post that not only presents his views but heaps of links to past posts by various folks (including myself) on this topic. What these blogs have largely omitted is any discussion of what happens to the aspirants who do not get in or who get in but without funding (which most folks then say "run away!").When I was applying to grad school in a galaxy far away, in a time long ago, I didn't get into several schools, and those were the ones that notified me the most quickly. ...
Matt Groening's Life in Hell comic strip is requiredby federal law to be posted in all grad studentlounges. There's a reason for that.By now, acceptance and rejection letters (or emails) have begun to filter back to graduate school applicants.I want to offer some advice for people who want to be graduate students. I begin by making it clear: I'm loving graduate school; it's been on balance the best time of my life; and nevertheless there have been times when (to quote a colleague) I've wished I'd taken the blue pill and kept my job. (Most of those times were during coursework.)Erik Voeten...
Inspired by the post below on the broken letter of recommendation system, I began to think about the difference between what I write and what I mean. Here are the results. Please fill in your own personal favorite euphemisms below. WHAT WE WRITE: Dear Admissions Committee, I am delighted to write a letter of recommendation for Nicolette Mediocrides, who was a student in my class on international relations in Fall 2009. Nicolette was a very good student, receiving a B+. She was particularly involved in class discussion, frequently posing trenchant questions about the class material. Nicolette...
Erik Voeten is spot on with his post at The Monkey Cage today on the flaws in the current recommendation letter system: There may be all kinds of things wrong with law schools but they sure have figured out how to run an applications process. You submit one letter for a student, answer a few questions about how to rank the student compared to others, and that’s it!By contrast, each policy school and PhD program has its own application process. I am sure this is annoying for students. It’s equally annoying for professors. If you have ten students who each apply to ten programs, then you need...
That's right, coming soon to a campus near you. (Or if not, click here to arrange your own screening.)PHD Movie Trailer from PHD Comics on Vimeo.
[Updated]No sooner do I pen an intemperate, semi-coherent rant about the culture of pretending-to-know-things among graduate students, then Nawal Mustafa makes a probing comment:From the student side of things Dan, it strikes me as a deeper problem that transcends the academy. Certainly, I concur students should take responsibility to ensure they are actually learning, and not view their seminars as merely an exercise in impressing others, or securing great letters of recommendation by purporting to "know" the material. That said, there is a deeper problem where success and achievement, even...