At my school we didn’t choose advisers until near end of first year. By that time we had taken classes from many of them or TA’ed for them. Or at least gone to brown bag talks by them and their post-docs.
Wow. D met all prospective Advisers when interviewing. She didn’t apply to any school that didn’t have an Adviser in her desired specific specialty who was accepting a first year Ph.D student.
I think this varies a lot by field. In the humanities, incoming PhD students typically spend the first couple of years taking classes, and so may not pick a phd advisor until several years in, when they begin their dissertation. I was assigned an ‘adviser’ when I was a first year incoming student, but everyone knew it was just a formality, really he was the person I might go to for advice if there was a problem, but he wasn’t an academic supervisor.
First year chem PhD students in my department took 3 classes a quarter, ta’ed freshman chem or O Chem all 3 quarters, and studied for written comps (given in June)
Not much time for research. That kicked in the summer after first year. So no real need to choose adviser before then.
@Nrdsb4 @chzbrgr Each PhD program and college handles it differently. My (chem) son has been visiting the colleges he’s been accepted to and some follow the procedure @vickisocal has mentioned where you take classes the first year and select advisor to work with 2nd year (and begin research the 2nd year) and at other colleges you begin working with an advisor the first year and also begin research immediately.
I hope they have a lighter class load, because between teaching and my classes I was busy that first year.
^Glancing at his acceptance letters, it appears a couple which start research the first year (along with having a full courseload) don’t require teaching the first year. Teaching starts 2nd year. Others are as you described. Lots for him to think about.
Oh I’m so sad. S has not heard anything from any schools. So I’m guessing that is not a good sign. I had no idea physics grad programs were so difficult to get into.
Congrats to everyone with acceptances!!
I know that econ programs (which my daughter applied to) are starting to notify applicants but maybe physics programs are on another timetable. If your son doesn’t get in this year, I suggest he look at the elements of his application and see if there are areas he can work on, for example, raising his GRE.
@surfcity, I know exactly how you feel, been there… It’s still not too late. There will be offers going out through March, and even later for some. So hang in there and keep yourself distracted as much as you can, it’s not done yet.
@MLM are there really PhD programs in the US that don’t have a taught component in the first year or two? That’s how it works in most European countries but I thought that in the US “graduate courses” were unavoidable?
It really depends on the graduate department and school.
I’ve known grad students in some departments at one elite university in some top 10 departments having classloads of 2-3 courses/semester(light-reasonable)…and other top-10 departments at the same U taking as many as 5-6 classes/semester(heavy to insane for most grad students).
And none were in engineering.
I’m wondering whether you’re talking about the fact European PhD programs typically don’t have mandated coursework in the first two years or so that’s common in US PhD programs or whether you’re talking about whether first year PhD students TA courses or not.
If the former, US PhD programs almost always mandate ~2 or more years of coursework before the dissertation writing stage whereas in the UK/Europe, it’s usually all research/thesis.
If the latter, this can vary by university and each department. Some universities/departments mandate TAing of courses for first-year PhD students others hold off until the second year.
Also, some universities/departments allow the avoidance of any TAing duties(much more common in the past) if one earned a more competitive Research Assistant(RA) fellowship. This was not only considered more prestigious and harder to get, it also facilitates the finding/research of one’s dissertation topic and starting one’s research publication production at an earlier stage of one’s grad school career.
Heard this has been curtailed in the last couple of decades due to a mix of funding cuts for research from public/private sources and an increasing trend towards mandating all PhD students including those who gained RA fellowships TA classes to gain some “teaching experience”.
My kid is at one that does not require teaching experience. She has no interest in going into academic careers.
My program mandated 2 years (6 quarters of teaching)
Coursework varied depending on if you came in with an MS or a BS.
How is everyone holding up? My kid just had a visit experience that was so bad that she got an apology letter from the department for how unprofessional one of the profs was. Not specific to my kid, but overall to the prospective student group. I guess someone else complained, and they emailed as damage control.
@intparent, I’m sorry to hear about your daughter’s bad visit experience. Bad enough to take a good prospect off her list?
No visits yet for my daughter but they’re scheduled. She’ll have one in a week and a half (I think) and then three in the first week of April. I, being me, am worried most about her traveling being uneventful. The second worry, of course, is about the decision-making stress.
My S has a Skype interview offer! He also has only two rejections so he’s holding out hope that he will get offers in the “second round”. So if your kid plans to turn down an offer, please encourage them to do so sooner rather than later
@rosered55, she was unimpressed before the rudeness that resulted in the apology. But she had a good visit last week at another school where she will probably end up. And she ended up stuck in Dallas overnight last week when she missed her connection for weather – but made it back the next morning.
@surfcity, I hope his interview goes well!
Are there any international students on this thread? I’m working with a PhD student (applying to biomedical engineering/genomics/bioinformatics, etc) who is still having interviews. Are there different time tables for acceptances of international students?
I think it depends on the school, but I’ve heard that some schools/departments send a wave of US acceptances, then later a wave of international ones.