Wow @MLM so you’re saying admissions in your experience acts like rolling admissions? That has not does not jibe exactly with what our sources have told us. That was my fear that early apps meant greater chance of admission but s advisor was not convinced of that.
S has fully researched the programs and profs he wants to study with and has attended conferences to network as well. His passion truly is theoreticsl physics and while I saw the word “passion” bandied about on CC all the time, it’s not until the last year or so that I saw it in person in my son. He loves learning and doesn’t want his education to stop with his B. S. Plus he loves teaching.
I would suggest when the OP’s S is interviewed, he should request a meeting with existing doctoral students. First, figure out the morale and how happy they are. If he is interested in employability, he can surely get a more realistic picture from the current students than from the faculty. He can surely also ask about how secure the funding tends to be. Probably the most important question is to figure out what is the typical length of time at that school for getting a PhD, 5 years, 6 years, 7 years? I have heard in some programs they tend to keep people for unnecessarily too long.
A lot of stylized facts and patterns about admissions mentioned above have a lot to do with the funding model for doctoral education in basic science. It is largely a grant model. That is, a faculty member (the boss) secured a grant, this grant is used as the main source of funding for recruiting one or more doctoral students. These students are admitted to perform research projects associated with the grant. As a result, this particular faculty member has a lot to say about who he/she wants to admit. The decision process is centered around maybe just one person within the department. The graduate school is not actually doing whole a lot, and is more about dual diligence and processing necessarily paper works. Thus the quality of admission processes varies a lot. The university (particularly one of those not so well endowed ones) often see doctoral programs in basic science as cost centers, and would not want to spend operating budget on these programs. This is one of the reasons why the university has little say on the admission process.
Because not all bosses are good people, there are occasionally adverse outcomes. For example, one particular doctoral student is particularly capable and useful for his/her boss’s grant projects. The boss may have incentive to have this particular student staying in the lab as long as possible and thus postpone this student’s graduation. I am not saying this is common, but it did happen and sometimes the Provost even needed to step in.
So talking to the current doctoral students and figuring out the culture of the program and the reputation of the boss can be important.
Pursuing a doctoral education does not have to be about employability. I will volunteer my 2 cents only if the OP’s S is interested in employability.
Definitely was for my D who went thru the process last year.
Each Dept at a Uni works on a standard review calendar. (you can figure most scheduling out on Grad Cafe.) The best app even on the last day will likely receive an interview.
My DD went through this last year. For the most part I was just a sounding board for her. The one area where I feel like I provided some valuable input was to provide advice in evaluating offers. We created a spreadsheet to help with this, as the differences were typically subtle and not always obvious. Things to keep in mind when evaluating the offers include…
Is the stipend for 12 months or 9 months. If 9 months are there opportunities for the remaining 3 months.
Is there a cost for health insurance. For my DD the costs ranged from $0 to $1,700 annually.
Are there any fees that must be paid. All of my DDs offers covered full tuition, but a couple of schools had additional fees that were around $2,000.
When will do you start receiving pay and what is the payment frequency. You may need to start paying for housing a month or two before getting paid. This varied, especially if the stipend is funded from multiple sources.
Cost of housing. We checked average rents in the area around each school as there were some significant differences.
Cost associated with setting up an apartment and moving to the location.
Will a car be needed?
What are the residential requirements. All of the public universities my DD was accepted to required that she become a resident of the state within the first year to maintain full tuition coverage. This process does not typically have much cost associated with it, but you want to understand the requirements.
Factored in with all this are the academics, but this can be helpful when schools are close academically.
There are a few wealthy PhD students even at the topflight PhD programs who are doing it “for fun” without concern for employabilitly.
One case mentioned by an elite U prof I had for a summer class in his/her department is a member of a family well-known for their wealth and political connections. I also met a few who were scions of foreign wealthy/political/aristocratic families at another elite college where I took some graduate classes.
They are full-pay, subjected to lowered admission standards as a result, and given far less support/mentoring by many topflight advisors who prioritize PhD students with fellowships who are viewed as the best prospects to continue the department’s reputation for producing productive topflight scholars in academia and to a lesser extent related non-academic jobs.
Another group who aren’t concerned about employability are those who are going into PhD programs because they are doing it as part of their jobs and thus, continue to have salary/benefits through their employer such as private industry/government departments here in the US/abroad send their chosen employees and defray the costs of the PhD program themselves.
Some examples I can think of in this category are a few grad classmates who were sent by their their respective military services to start PhD programs so they have the qualifications to start their 3-year tour as FSA instructors, a few selected international grad students sent by foreign governments to pursue PhDs to facilitate their moving into research positions required for their career tracks, or private industry sending their employees to pursue PhDs related to advancing in their industry career tracks(mainly in sciences such as chemistry or engineering/CS).
I think there must be people, despite their high qualifications, who don’t get in anywhere. I worry my daughter will be one of these because of the very few grad school spots in her field. I worry about providing her with emotional support during this time (“this time” meaning first time since third grade that she might not achieve what she sought). If you’ve got any suggestions for me, I’d welcome them.
I can’t add too much to Juillet’s comprehensive post. I’d just say finding a PI you can work with is very important. One of my college boyfriends was accepted to Berkley, but after a year there couldn’t find a PI who would take him. He ended up quitting and going to med school instead. (He was smart, but not necessarily Mr. Tact.) My sil went to U of Michigan planning on studying Victorian novels, when she decided she wanted to study literature from the former British colonies she couldn’t find anyone to be her advisor. I know my husband went to Caltech intending to work for a professor who wasn’t even there yet. (He arrived a semester later. He was accepted by the Caltech biology department and worked temporarily in someone else’s lab.)
At the place where dh teaches now grad students rotate through the labs during their first year and then the professors sort of bid on them. Students who have outside support (from MD/PhD money I think?) are at a premium. Dh doesn’t currently have enough grant money to support the students he’d like to have.
I would treat it as a job application. IMHO, it is important to choose a lab, a supervisor, and a project. Project is most important. It has to have a potential to be a success!
Financially - all Ph.D. students get ridiculously low pay. It really does not make sense to compare pennies. However, in some labs Ph.D. students have, in addition to Ph.D. salary, personal consulting agreements (with the blessing of the supervisor) that bring real money (higher than Ph.D. salary). Further, it is important to complete Ph.D. as fast as possible (with good publications) to go into the real world with real salaries.
Identify Professors and apply directly. If Prof. wants to take a student - he/she will find a way to accept him/her. Regardless of the deadlines are GPA/GRE. Professors hand-pick grad students for their labs. The same university., same department may have very strong labs/Profs and very week ones. It is really important to find the right supervisor.
Identify labs with lots of publications and strong reputations. Good luck!
theoretical physics is a narrow field. It should be easy to identify luminaris and contact them directly. Again, if a famous Prof. (with independent funding) would like to take a student, department will always find a way to accommodate the request and create an extra opening to accept one more grad student.
My kid applied to a pretty wide range in terms of selectivity. As long as they had work going on in her area of specialty, she gave them a good look. When I look online at a website devoted to PhD programs in her major, her list doesn’t really look like everyone else’s. But her specialty isn’t exactly the same, either – she really knows what she wants to do.
My kid, despite what I thought were good mentors/advisers, got only two interviews and one offer out of ten applications, and after a visit he decided that the program was not what he wanted to be doing with the next 6-7 years of his life. (He was a little bit snobby – he thought the work people were doing was not that interesting, and the students did not seem driven to have good careers.) He tried again two years later with a shorter list of top-quality programs, and received only an offer of partial funding for a terminal masters program.
The first round was very disconcerting – he had assumed he would be going to graduate school, and had never really developed a Plan B. By the time the dust had settled and it was clear he wouldn’t be going to graduate school, he was only about five weeks away from graduation with no job prospects and no career plans. The period from March (when he began to suspect that people weren’t loving his applications) to August (when he finally got a job offer that seemed worthwhile) was a difficult period in his life . . . and ours. The second round was not so disconcerting, because he knew going in that he was a marginal candidate for the programs to which he was applying, and that he needed to be thinking about other options if he wasn’t going to stay in his job.
He wound up deciding to do the masters program. At the time, he thought it would prepare him for another round of PhD applications, but what really happened was he decided that he didn’t really want to go through the PhD process at all, and that there were jobs he liked that he could get with the extra credential the masters program provided.
^This. In the biomedical sciences, there are often more job opportunities for people with a masters degree than people with a PhD. Carefully consider why you/your offspring are going for the PhD and make sure it’s for the right reason(s).
Well my son really wants to learn more physics. He says UG physics is all classical and you don’t get to study modern physics and more theoretical concepts until grad school. He loves, loves, research and reads all sorts of books, feynman lectures etc when he has the time. He also has enjoyed being a TA at school and thinks he would like being a professor but he knows that tenure track jobs and very difficult to come by.
I think he knows he could try to get a job in industry or maybe learn a little more software coding (?? I dunno what I am talking about) and get a job with that, but I hate to think of him not in the lab absorbing new concepts and learning from experienced professors.
DS is realistic about the low chances of an academic job after his PhD. However, he is enjoying his (expected) 5 years about which he says: “Mom, they pay me money to take classes and do math!” What’s not to like?
The money is not much but seems to be enough for a low maintenance single guy to live on…
One thing I forgot to mention as another reason to opt for top 8-15 PhD programs in one’s field beyond what I stated in a previous post, they’re much more likely to have more fellowship funding to fully fund the vast majority of admitted PhD students.
One illustration of this is how a private NY area University with departments/programs ranked somewhere between 30-50 can only provide fully-funded fellowships to a minority of its PhD admits.
A larger proportion are either only getting a tiny TA/RA stipend or worse, expected to be full-pay. With the exception of those from well-off families and/or possessing large personal trust funds, the vast majority of those not receiving full fellowships are drowning themselves heavily in grad student loan debt.
What’s more ironic is the full-tuition sticker price for grad school at this institution is several thousand dollars HIGHER/year than full-tuition sticker grad price at some top-8-15 PhD programs including those which happen to be at elite private Us like Columbia.
While employability is a concern for everyone, eventually (unless independently wealthy I suppose), I think the posts above by surfcity and ihs76 present examples of young people who really should be in a PhD program because they love the work. That love of the subject area, and of course the training itself, do translate into employment, but the primary motivator is interest and even craving to learn more. Those years in a (funded) PhD program are a wonderful, and sometimes the only, way to do what you love. Reality will hit at some point, but one always hopes the work can continue with the degree in hand.
@surfcity It sounds like your son has his head straight. I got a PhD in Physics in 5 years at a large research university outside the top 15, fully funded, pursued my interests, had a blast, and developed a good set of technical skills that has served me well in software development and scientific computing. This can be a very positive experience for him without leading to a career in academia.
“That love of the subject area, and of course the training itself, do translate into employment…”
Maybe yes, and maybe not.
Many employers would not want to hire too overly qualified employees when their jobs do not really need a PhD. These employees may not be that happy and thus may have a high turnover rate because it is a suboptimal match for this set of job seekers. This would reduce the opportunity set for job seekers. In addition, this person is now 5-7 years older. Many employers prefer younger applicants for entry level jobs.
I have seen my fair share of poorly placed PhDs. Of course, I also have many friends with a PhD landed their dream jobs. Employability is a very tricky thing for PhDs.
Note that the response rate is 57%. No data on 43% of physics doctorates. Thus there could be a selection bias, and this bias is often that poorly placed ones tend not to respond.
Again, if employability is not a concern, there is no need to read such a report.