Test Optional Strategy

[hebegebe]

I have created a new thread about tenure track jobs in academia in case the mods want to move any posts there.

The brutal competition for tenure track academic jobs

There were several posts in the Test Optional Strategy thread about how difficult it was to get tenure track academia jobs, and I thought it might be worth its own thread. I have previously described the job struggles of a well-known CC poster who got her undergrad in MIT and then got a PhD at Harvard in 2013 (I won’t reveal her name or CC id). She also had publications in journals like Science, Neuron, and Cell, and was even featured in an episode on NOVA. But after her PhD she ended up doing two post-docs, and held three different roles as adjunct professor. This fall she finally landed a position as an assistant professor at a respected New England LAC. I used her as an example to my kids of just how hard the struggle to a tenure track position can be. Apparently it worked, as neither of my kids showed any interest in getting a PhD. Now onto more recent examples. Before college, my two children were fortunate enough to do three years of research at separate HYPSM colleges. Each on…