Thanks for your guidance offered for threads. Here is an update that need some insight.
My son applied for PhD program in many schools. No one offer an admission. He is frustrated after putting effort and submitting reference etc. He find hard to digest this setback.
We do not have an idea, what went wrong here. Who is able to review and provide assessment/diagnosis?
You know schools are closed for this pandemic and all facing difficult situation.
As he graduate in May 2020, he will be in academic limbo.
No one expected this when he applied to programs.
What are the next course of actions available to him?
In Astrophysics, as with many other graduate programs, your “fit” with the department matters a lot. You could have a 4.0 GPA and 17 first-author papers, but if there’s no one there who is able and willing to supervise you for the PhD: you get rejected. So it’s equal parts qualification and preference. For PhDs especially, the department and supervisor are agreeing to work with you in quite a personal and involved setting, so they need to like you as a human being and not just as an academic powerhouse.
As for what to do now: he may be able to still apply to some Masters and PhD programs, but the deadlines have passed for most places a long time ago and the places that remain might not be worth the money.
He almost certainly shouldn’t take a full year out though, so another option is to do more research with his home university and reapply for Fall 2021 for both PhDs and Masters programs. He does need to take the feedback from the most recent applications into account though, and perhaps aim a bit lower in terms of prestigious programs/universities, otherwise next year will be a repeat of this year.
The people who would provide your son with the best assessment of his application would be his recommenders. Who wrote his recommendation letters? If he selected well, they should be professors in his field (or a related one) who would know what it takes to get into a PhD program in his field.
If he has an advisor at his undergraduate college, or another professor in his department that he trusts, he should set up some time to talk to one of them to get feedback.
But the pandemic may also have affected this - many programs may have had to cut back on the number of students they are admitting this year.
Your son should probably apply for jobs now. Or perhaps post-baccalaureate programs in his field, but the deadlines for most of those will have passed.
Hi @MDRI - I took a look at your previous thread and I see that your son has a 3.58 GPA and maybe did not take the PGRE. You did not mention what schools he applied to but I am pretty sure that if he was aiming for the most highly selective programs with little research experience, then the odds are very poor for admission. The most highly selective programs have many applicants who have nearly perfect GPAs and lots of research experience.
Now the question is what he can do. There are two possibilities:
Apply to a Masters program that will give him the opportunity to get some research experience and prove that he can maintain a good GPA in graduate courses. The good thing about this is that applications are likely still open for the Fall in many programs. The bad thing is that these programs are self funded. However, if he wants to avoid taking a year off, this is a possibility. My suggestion is that he apply to some programs that are Masters only and may have some funding for their graduate students. In astrophysics, UTEP comes to mind and some of the Cal State schools are good for this too. One of our graduates a few years ago took this route and then moved on to University of Arizona for her Ph.D.
Find a job for a year, preferably in a research environment, and reapply to less selective programs next year. The lack of research still may be an issue but he would have time to work on the PGRE and less selective programs generally look at every application carefully (we certainly do at Illinois Tech). One of the challenges your son probably faces is that without research experience, the letters of reference are lacking that personal view that a research mentor can provide. If your son can get a job in a research-related area, he might be able to get such a letter from a supervisor.
Finally, the physics community has been working hard to bring more underrepresented (in physics) students into Ph.D. programs. The program is called IGEN/APS Bridge and has been going on for a few years. Generally, this is for students with a significantly weaker GPA than your son and it is also specifically for underrepresented students so this might not be an option for your son. If he is eligible this could be a fallback position for next year as the deadlines are all passed for this year.
And there is the better-known and more competitive McNair scholar program, but again this is for underrepresented groups, although may have a higher GPA requirement.
I know two very smart kids who recently went through the process of applying to grad school for astronomy/astrophysics, and both fared far less well than they had expected (both were admitted to a program, but not until enduring a long string of rejections). @MDRI, if your son decides to reapply next year, he might find the link below useful – it’s advice from a current astronomy graduate student who struck out the first year he applied but was admitted into a program on his second attempt:
McNair is indeed awesome, but as a note, most McNair scholars programs are for junior and senior undergraduates enrolled in colleges (despite it being called a “postbaccalaureate achievement” award; the title’s referring to their hope that the program prepares scholars for achievement post receiving their baccalaureate degree).
I find this had been a particularly rough admission cycle for applicants to grad school, and that some schools had accepted fewer students than usual because of COVID-19 issues (budget cuts, the possible need for fewer teaching assistants, etc.).
Many students expressed this .
Many schools re-thinking about graduate programs and how to operate with growing pressure for virtual model.
How will the future graduate programs look like ?
is-it-possible-to-work-full-time-and-complete-a-phd in parallel?
How will a student find a job that facilitate to continue a PhD?
How will future graduate programs look? I don’t think anyone knows the answer to that right now. I’d guess than 15+ years from now, most educational programs will have virtual/digital alternatives or components to them, and there will be more online programs from reputable universities that people can do completely remotely. But in the next 10 years? I don’t think anyone knows. It won’t happen overnight, and many academics are particularly resistant to online education.
I’m sure it is theoretically possible to complete a PhD and work full-time, but without some special circumstances it’s generally a bad idea. Many PhD programs prohibit students from working outside the program, either at all or over a certain number of hours. Even if your program does not, though, completing the things you need to do not only to graduate but also to be competitive for jobs post-graduation takes a tremendous amount of time.
I have seen more people successfully work full-time when they are completing their dissertation, but even then, it’s difficult to do that.