@mackinaw @romanigypsyeyes, thanks so much for your responses. I now have a better understanding of what to expect should he be lucky enough to get some acceptances. It sounds like qualified PhD students have some great opportunities if they are willing to ask for them.
I don’t know any PhDs nor do I have first hand knowledge of PhD programs. But for those who are familiar, would you mind sharing the essential qualities/traits that make a successful PhD student?
Good thread. Thanks.
My 23 yr old D has applied to PhD programs. She was told by someone that many professors get annoyed if you try to contact them before you are admitted - they view it as trying to game the system (well yeah, so what!). Personally, I can’t see why they would, but she has been spooked out of doing that. I was dismayed to hear that schools will reject candidates that are likely to go to another school. On the other hand, her near perfect GRE and prestigious undergrad might help keep her in the game.
D and I are at the point in the parent-child relationship that my involvement in her career needs to be close to zero, so I’m basically staying out of it but of course rooting and watching from afar with hopeful anticipation. I guess we’ll know soon enough.
Contacting the head of the graduate program with specific, well-thought-out inquiries, however, shouldn’t be taken as a negative—I mean, that’s what they signed on to do!
Heck, some of the apps even ask “who you have discussed this program with” or something of the sort. OTOH, some PI’s say that they will not speak with folks in advance; instead, they has a canned e-mail response that says, ‘thanks for your interest, I am/am not taking students next year, and I won’t speak with applicants until after the app deadline’… Not a big deal.
Some departments are very explicit about whether or not you should reach out to profs (some say NO! others say OF COURSE! and others in between)- if it’s not explicit you might want to consider going through the grad coordinator or whomever the graduate contact person is. Their job is to help prospective and current grads so don’t be afraid to reach out.
@bogibogi it’s going to vary considerably based on the field. I took a very non-traditional route (BS Anthro/BA Arts & Humanities -> MPH program -> PhD American Culture, concentrating on US medical history). I am the only historian admitted in my cohort without a history degree and it is highly unusual to break into history without the proper background but I was able to do it because of my extensive research with a top medical historian.
On the other hand, if I was trying to get into something like most STEM fields, it simply wouldn’t be doable because I don’t have the necessary pre-reqs to study at such a high level. That doesn’t necessarily translate to history and other social science/humanities fields. In humanities/soc studies fields, the emphasis tends to be on writing and independent research experience. In STEM it tends to be more on research and less on writing.
Thanks romani. I should have been clearer with my question. Assuming he gets accepted somewhere, what would it take to be a great PhD student? What would make an admissions committee feel like they made the right choice? Is there some type of performance assessment, like grades? Or is research progress the main factor?
I’m not sure if I’m asking the right questions because I don’t know what I don’t know. Just trying to get a sense of how the whole PhD thing works since it it so unfamiliar to me.
You might want to make another thread on this to get a wider range of answers 
But again, it’s going to vary considerably by department. I think what tends to be typical in humanities & social sciences (again, only speaking from my very limited experience) is two years of coursework and a few years of teaching along with research. You are graded on the coursework but it’s not quite like undergrad. You’re expected to already perform at a high level and these courses tend to be more for gaps in your knowledge and for helping you hone in on your specific research interests. At some point in your second year you have a review where the faculty has to say you’ve done a good job with coursework and should continue in the program. Then in your third year you take exams based on reading lists that you or the department have created. (For us it’s 3-4 lists of about 100 monographs each). Once you pass that you advance to candidacy and focus almost exclusively on your dissertation- taking courses and teaching as necessary.
Again, I stress this is from my very, very limited experience which is why you might want to start your own thread to get more answers. It would also be helpful if you gave the general field. (My apologies if you already gave it and I missed it)
I don’t recall how many interviews my son went on, but he often met the same candidates. He ended up contacting one of these candidates, who decided on same grad school, and they’ve been roommates for 5 years.
I only know what it’s like in biology and all second hand. DH evaluated MD/PhD students and there are also grad students who aren’t going for MDs in his school. The thing I hear him complain the most about his how many students who have done undergrad research don’t really understand what the project they were working on was all about. It drives him crazy. He looks at grades in science courses and good quantitative scores. He tends to look for higher scores and grades from institutions he’s never heard of.
As for what makes a good PhD student. Certainly successful progress on a project is good. I saw a few students at Caltech basically being given a courtesy Masters when their mentors didn’t like their work. They still had to pass their qualifying exams.
@bogibogi; Exceptional grad students are characterized by their motivation to learn- as simple as that. They ask questions at seminars and read voraciously to understand a subject thoroughly in order to formulate their own research topic. They seek guidance but they do not need to be told what to do on a daily basis. This is from a life sciences perspective but I suspect it is true in any discipline.
I know how I got into top Ph.D. program. And how my husband did it. Scientific projects, publications, personal connections. GRE was irrelevant. I was hired as a Ph.D student and started working in the lab even before I took GRE. My husband had a job “promise” before GRE. His GRE score was dismal, well below the average. It didn’t matter. Personal connections and scientific publications. IMHO, only.
Thank you for all the responses; they have been very helpful. He is driving this train and I’m just in the background feeling nervous because there is so much I don’t understand about the system. Given his passion for his subject, I’ll just have to trust that everything will work out for him.
One thought, @bogibogi: And even if he doesn’t get in, yes, it’ll sting and sting bad, but in light of studies done on life fulfillment among graduate students and academics, that wouldn’t really be a bad outcome, either.
I earned PhD back in the day, and I have seen others go off to grad school (various biomedical departments) in the years since. My impression of the importance of GRE for most applicants is that a good GRE score won’t get you in but a bad GRE score will likely keep you out. But with a sterling research/publication record and/or close important personal contacts a bad GRE score can sometimes be overcome.
One thing that IMO has changed over the years in PhD admissions is the rise of the interview. Back when I applied (mid-1980s) I applied to 7 schools and only one of them interviewed me - and that seemed to be mostly for the purpose of quizzing me closely to make sure I wasn’t trying to use their program as a back door into the medical school after a year or two. Apparently they had lost several students that way in recent years. None of the others mentioned even the possibility of an interview in their admissions literature. The school I ended up attending did not interview me. They and another school accepted me completely sight unseen.
Contrast this to two years ago when a friend applied to PhD programs. She also applied to about 7 schools and I think 6 of them interviewed her as a routine part of the process.
That was an interesting article for me to read right now, as I am currently serving on the admissions committee for my graduate program. It’s a top program in my field, which is primarily in the natural sciences but also involves some social science. Much of what was discussed in the article sounded about right, especially the fact that most of us serving on the committee are well aware of the issues raised but often don’t know what to do about it. As a matter of fact, yesterday I was going over some literature that the admissions chair provided to us reviewers, and top of the list was an academic journal article written by none other than the woman who wrote the book from the article, which covered many of the points highlighted in the article.
We had a meeting today where we had lots of discussion about the meaning of merit and diversity, and the value of GRE scores. We went over an example of an African American student with an impressive application, but extremely low GRE scores. After we discussed the applicant and how we rated it, the leader of the meeting revealed that it was a real applicant, and that the 6 reviewers had given scores that covered a range from very low to very high. She had been denied from our program, but accepted to another top program and ended up receiving a prestigious national research fellowship. So it’s hard to say what we should do with GRE scores.
We do have a first cut, which drops the applications that are fully reviewed from a couple hundred to half that. I believe that in past years this first cut may have been made based on GPA and GREs, but the first cut is now more holistic.
Even so, at the meeting we saw some statistics on applications and admissions rates for different gender and ethnic groups. And in looking at those statistics it becomes very, very apparent that the real barrier to diversity is applications. Over a 10 year period, there were only a small handful of applications from minority groups. Looking at this year’s crop of applicants, things seem to be improving, but the numbers are still very small.
Interesting. When I was going through the process more or less the same time, I interviewed at three institutions prior to applying, and just applied to my first choice. The student has to be as comfortable with the situation as the department.
D1 is a fourth year PhD student. Interviews were integral. There would have been no offers made to her without an interview, and she would never have accepted a spot at a school without one. I’m surprised to read that there are programs where the students are accepted based solely on an application. These programs are long and very involved. I cannot imagine accepting a spot at a school I hadn’t visited to work closely with faculty I’d never even met.
Neither of the two programs I applied to/was accepted to did interviews with me. As far as I know, only some potential advisors conducted interviews before agreeing to take on a student. OTOH, I don’t know anyone who was accepted who didn’t communicate in some way (generally email) before applying.
PhD interviews are another very funny part of PhD admissions. As with all other aspects of PhD admissions, standards vary by field. I believe is is standard in bioscience fields to invite a subset of applicants for an interview weekend. Looking at the websites for a few programs, this part of the process is explicitly stated. Unfortunately things are different for computer science. I was accepted to my program without an interview, or any contact with the department before applying - though I did talk to a faculty member after asking for an update on my application. On the other hand, I know for a fact that Skype interviews are required for the PhD program at UC Berkeley, and I believe the same is true at Georgia Tech. But no one can say for sure, because nowhere on their websites is the possibility of an interview even mentioned!