<p>hi folks</p>
<p>just curious - i know its been said that certain people, after obtaining their PhDs, fail to get faculty appointments and are mired in doing one post-doc after another.</p>
<p>i imagine a Post-doc is obviously some kind of additional research fellowship - but what exactly is it? how long are they for? how much funding does one typically receive? are they "mandatory" in the way that residency is for MDs? </p>
<p>thanks in advance.</p>
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just curious - i know its been said that certain people, after obtaining their PhDs, fail to get faculty appointments and are mired in doing one post-doc after another.
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<p>In certain fields, post-docs are extremely common as almost all people (except the true superstars) will fail to get an academic placement immediately upon graduation. In fact, in these fields, it is no mark of failure to end up in a post-doc, as that's just par for the course. For example, molliebatmit, one of our most esteemed posters, is getting her PhD in biology at Harvard, and she fully expects to end up in a postdoc afterwards.</p>
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i imagine a Post-doc is obviously some kind of additional research fellowship - but what exactly is it?
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<p>It varies from discipline to discipline, but basically you join somebody's lab for a few years, getting paid more money than a PhD student does (but not much more), and is an opportunity for you to publish more papers and build more contacts and more experience. Most PhD students obviously have to worry about completing their PhD thesis, so they don't have that much time to publish that much. As a post-doc, your PhD is done, so you can devote yourself to publishing. Obviously what you publish is contingent upon the lab that you've joined, so it behooves you to join a lab of which you have the knowledge with which to generate publishable results. {But of course, if you don't have the right knowledge for that particular lab, the lab probably won't offer you a postdoc position anyway}. </p>
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how much funding does one typically receive?
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<p>Also varies, but generally it's fairly miserly. Say about 30-50k. </p>
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are they "mandatory" in the way that residency is for MDs?
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<p>They're not truly 'mandatory' in that nobody truly has to do it. Rather, it's just that the competition for academic positions is so high in certain fields that it is rare to obtain a position in those fields without a postdoc. If you just want to work in industry, then you may not need a postdoc, but even this is dependent on where you want to work in industry, as many of the prestigious industry research positions tend to prefer people with postdoc experience. </p>
<p>If you just want to get your PhD and use it to get into management consulting or investment banking or some unrelated field, then you probably don't need a postdoc.</p>
<p>in clinical psych, you do a postdoc to gain the hours you need to be able to take the licensure exam.</p>
<p>You only need those post doc hours for clinical psychology licensure in some states.</p>
<p>Even some superstars do post-docs. A guy in my lab has some faculty offers from good schools but feels that he will be better served by doing a postdoc for a year or two. He wants to immerse himself in research and foster some ideas that he can run with when he is done and moves into a faculty spot.</p>
<p>I would find it absolutely terrifying to go straight from grad school to a faculty position. Luckily for me, that almost never happens in biology. ;)</p>