<p>How many PhD programs should an avg. student apply to? I've heard some say 5 and then I've heard some say 15...How many do you think is a good number (considering all of the schools have your research interests)?</p>
<p>depends on the competitiveness of your field. for example, in clinical psych (average acceptance rate of 5%) its recommended you apply to 7 at the bare minimum.</p>
<p>For history, I would say at the minimum 5 schools. It also depends on your field. For example, I am U.S. Social and Urban History (with a focus on African American history).</p>
<p>It depends on the program and where you want to go. I applied to only one, as I simply continued where I was after my Master's degree. But I know someone (who had probably the second highest undergrad GPA out of 20 000 students) who applied to 6 top universities in physics without even bothering to apply at his alma mater (not a bad place either). He got rejected by all of them, though there is no doubt he could've been accepted in some top school (at the very least his undergrad school) if he had bothered to apply elsewhere. It certainly did not help him to be overconfident and say he wanted to be a purely theoretical physicist (didn't want to bother with labs). The moral of the story: don't be overconfident, apply to a variety of places and don't paint yourself into a corner (that is, don't narrow your research interests too much and tailor each application to the specific strengths of each school you apply to).</p>
<p>Yeah, Blobof is right. I made the same mistake, applying to too few schools, only top top schools, and specializing too much. I also got rejected from all six schools I applied to. I thought my very high GPA would get me in. I am also in History, but not a trendy field at all so that certainly hurt me as well. Now, I did get into a great graduate program, but it is in another field and a masters rather than a Ph.D. I know that the application fees can really add up but better to apply to a few more places and diversify more.</p>
<p>I applied to 8 schools and got into three of them. The three I got into I had close and personal contact with professors in the field I was applying to. The others I didn't. Two of my rejects were from schools that I thought I would easily get into, three were from top schools.</p>
<p>Thanks everyone. I figure the more the better yet, I did not want to potentially overwhelm my recommenders by applying to too many programs and on top of that fellowships!</p>
<p>So far I have a list of 12 which I was considering narrowing down to 8 or swelling to 15.
They can be narrowed down by me excluding the schools that only have one person of whom I'm interested in working with (I would prefer the institution have at least 2).
The list can swell by me including the schools which have only one person I'm interested in working with or by including 2 or 3 more than have strong programs and interests which are tangent to my own.</p>
<p>What do you think is best?</p>
<p>I really don't want to end up somewhere for the next 3-5 years unhappy. However, I've been told it's just a PhD hurry up and get it out the way.</p>
<p>If you can only find one person at a given school whose research fits your interests, I think you're better off not applying. That's an awfully big gamble -- that professor might already have enough graduate students, or could go on sabbatical, or move to another school... </p>
<p>Just keep in mind that it starts to get really expensive to apply to a large number of schools, not to mention time-consuming. I applied to nine schools last year and ended up paying around $1200 (fees to take the GRE and the subject test, fees to send the GRE scores, fees to re-send the GRE scores when ETS failed to send them, application fees... books that I bought in the airport on the way to interviews...)</p>
<p>I applied to nine, and in retrospect I should really have only applied to the five in which I was seriously interested.</p>
<p>I wouldn't narrow it down unless doing 12 applications really is a hassle for you. Recommendations aren't much of a hassle once your recommender has done the first one (after that, it just requires minor tweaking for the others). 12 places sounds pretty good, but if you can afford to do 15 applications (financially and time-wise), then by all means, do all 15.</p>
<p>EDIT: As you are still an undergrad, don't worry too much about picking a particular research advisor/supervisor yet. Yes, you might have particular research interests right now that coincide with certain professors' field of expertise, but going through grad level work is bound to open new horizons for you, so your interests (and the hot topics of research in your field) are likely to evolve while you work on your PhD.</p>
<p>Thanks molliebatmit and blobof!</p>
<p>molliebatmit: No offense Mollie (seriously though.... you know how people say that but they don't mean it...I digress) but you are not an average student, I consider you to be far above average. I really wanted to know how many would be appropriate for an average student. I can understand you could have only applied to 5 and gotten into them all but I would be really stressed to have so few. You're so right about the financial part, this is a really expensive endeavor which is another reason I was wondering if 12 (more or less) would be a good idea.</p>
<p>Blobof: I'm currently a masters student so my interests are focused yet not overly focused as of now. I feel like they would expect a more general idea of what direction I want to go with my research yet they would still want me to be open minded as well. This is just my idea, but I assumed they would expect more from a student with a masters.
Also, the recommendation part is really simple in retrospect. On top of that half of my recommenders that I had for my masters program I'm going to use for the PhD programs so they have to do even less.</p>
<p>penny- what field are you in?</p>
<p>Currently child development (masters) however I'll be applying to PhD programs in human development, social psych., and developmental psych. The majority of the PhD programs in human development are in education departments yet they have a psychology emphasis.</p>
<p>for phd programs in psych, you should aim for 10.</p>
<p>Thanks Huskem, I'm going to narrow it down to my 10 programs that have the most faculty I'm interested in as well as the best programs.</p>