How much does undergrad matter if planning on going on to a Ph.D.

[Anonymous]

There's a distinction here too between the different fields. For some of the sciences it may be better to be at large R1s where they have the research infrastructure. And there is a difference between fields where nearly every institution has a program (biology, math, humanities) and fields where there may only be dozens or hundreds of programs throughout the country (oceanography, astronomy, etc.).

[Anonymous]

New professor here. The previous professors have given good advice.

1) It is a little strange for a parent to guide a Ph.D. applicant. You need to be mature and interested enough to get information on your own.

2) In economics (and probably many fields), there is a strong network/prestige factor in placement. The top 5 programs easily place their good students in professorships. The top 20-25 have strong academic placement. But below that, it is much harder to get a tenure-track academic job at a good research department. Instead, many students end up at teaching colleges, government, or industry. Graduates of top Ph.D. programs get invited to conferences to advertise their research, and seems to publish good (but not great) work very quickly and easily. It is important to be connected to the thought leaders and gatekeepers of your field.

3) Every realistic applicant to selective Ph.D. programs has high scores and grades. We compare applicants like an American with 95th percentile math and verbal to a Chinese guy with 99.9th percentile math and 50th percentile verbal (in English). Some applicants already have Ph.D.'s in physics or statistics! We look for hard courses (real analysis, not just calculus) and research experience. For example, an applicant might have worked as a research assistant at a central bank. We want letters with concrete explanation of research skills at a high level. We do not want a bland letter from a prestigious professor who barely knows the student.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Gemstone program at UMD does a wonderful job preparing students for the PhD.

Not sure if I agree w/ this. Gemstone is a wonderful program but not sure what you mean by "preparing students for the PhD". When my kid applied to PhD programs (he was in Gem too), "research" his group worked on barely made his application. Wasn't signifcant enough compare to other real relevant research he had done.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:New professor here. The previous professors have given good advice.

1) It is a little strange for a parent to guide a Ph.D. applicant. You need to be mature and interested enough to get information on your own.

2) In economics (and probably many fields), there is a strong network/prestige factor in placement. The top 5 programs easily place their good students in professorships. The top 20-25 have strong academic placement. But below that, it is much harder to get a tenure-track academic job at a good research department. Instead, many students end up at teaching colleges, government, or industry. Graduates of top Ph.D. programs get invited to conferences to advertise their research, and seems to publish good (but not great) work very quickly and easily. It is important to be connected to the thought leaders and gatekeepers of your field.

3) Every realistic applicant to selective Ph.D. programs has high scores and grades. We compare applicants like an American with 95th percentile math and verbal to a Chinese guy with 99.9th percentile math and 50th percentile verbal (in English). Some applicants already have Ph.D.'s in physics or statistics! We look for hard courses (real analysis, not just calculus) and research experience. For example, an applicant might have worked as a research assistant at a central bank. We want letters with concrete explanation of research skills at a high level. We do not want a bland letter from a prestigious professor who barely knows the student.

Agree with all this. The interesting thing is for 2, while professorships are still the gold standard desire for many PhD students, the field has been steadily widening with now some of the top students not wanting to go into academia after seeing different pathways. A friend was a math PhD at one of the better programs but was not quite good enough to get a full professorship so went into finance right when the quants were starting to lead--he now endows university buildings where the mean math prof salary is 150k. Profs usually love their work but the academic life is a grind and more fields outside of academia have viable and more lucrative routes for PhDs--and not just in STEM, but in the social sciences too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The number one rule of getting a PhD is "don't do that". The country is totally oversaturated with PhDs and has been since at least the 1990s. 300 applicants per tenure track position.

+1 Unless you have something spectacular to offer or are from an underrepresented group, I would not advise it. I left a very good PhD program in the 1990s because so few of the graduates were receiving TT job offers even then.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The number one rule of getting a PhD is "don't do that". The country is totally oversaturated with PhDs and has been since at least the 1990s. 300 applicants per tenure track position.

+1 Unless you have something spectacular to offer or are from an underrepresented group, I would not advise it. I left a very good PhD program in the 1990s because so few of the graduates were receiving TT job offers even then.

See above poster though--these days the opportunities for PhDs outside of academia have expanded. It's a way to get a graduate degree fully funded, with a stipend. I personally started a PhD without a prior master's. I figured I could get full funding and if I hated doing the PhD I could get paid to do a master's in passing. My employment opportunities widened considerably post-PhD.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:New professor here. The previous professors have given good advice.

1) It is a little strange for a parent to guide a Ph.D. applicant. You need to be mature and interested enough to get information on your own.

2) In economics (and probably many fields), there is a strong network/prestige factor in placement. The top 5 programs easily place their good students in professorships. The top 20-25 have strong academic placement. But below that, it is much harder to get a tenure-track academic job at a good research department. Instead, many students end up at teaching colleges, government, or industry. Graduates of top Ph.D. programs get invited to conferences to advertise their research, and seems to publish good (but not great) work very quickly and easily. It is important to be connected to the thought leaders and gatekeepers of your field.

3) Every realistic applicant to selective Ph.D. programs has high scores and grades. We compare applicants like an American with 95th percentile math and verbal to a Chinese guy with 99.9th percentile math and 50th percentile verbal (in English). Some applicants already have Ph.D.'s in physics or statistics! We look for hard courses (real analysis, not just calculus) and research experience. For example, an applicant might have worked as a research assistant at a central bank. We want letters with concrete explanation of research skills at a high level. We do not want a bland letter from a prestigious professor who barely knows the student.

Agree with all this. The interesting thing is for 2, while professorships are still the gold standard desire for many PhD students, the field has been steadily widening with now some of the top students not wanting to go into academia after seeing different pathways. A friend was a math PhD at one of the better programs but was not quite good enough to get a full professorship so went into finance right when the quants were starting to lead--he now endows university buildings where the mean math prof salary is 150k. Profs usually love their work but the academic life is a grind and more fields outside of academia have viable and more lucrative routes for PhDs--and not just in STEM, but in the social sciences too.

This was a flash in the pan. The math phDs who were lured away to finance have mostly returned to the fold. It could all happen again, but no one should be fantasizing about that right now, and I don't know why it's being mentioned so frequently around here. Some strong math undergrads with research do apply to Econ. As outlined above, they can access a higher tier of grad programs because their skills are more grad school ready than a typical Econ undergrads.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The number one rule of getting a PhD is "don't do that". The country is totally oversaturated with PhDs and has been since at least the 1990s. 300 applicants per tenure track position.

+1 Unless you have something spectacular to offer or are from an underrepresented group, I would not advise it. I left a very good PhD program in the 1990s because so few of the graduates were receiving TT job offers even then.

See above poster though--these days the opportunities for PhDs outside of academia have expanded. It's a way to get a graduate degree fully funded, with a stipend. I personally started a PhD without a prior master's. I figured I could get full funding and if I hated doing the PhD I could get paid to do a master's in passing. My employment opportunities widened considerably post-PhD.

Opportunities outside academia are incredibly field-dependent.

-Historian

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:New professor here. The previous professors have given good advice.

1) It is a little strange for a parent to guide a Ph.D. applicant. You need to be mature and interested enough to get information on your own.

2) In economics (and probably many fields), there is a strong network/prestige factor in placement. The top 5 programs easily place their good students in professorships. The top 20-25 have strong academic placement. But below that, it is much harder to get a tenure-track academic job at a good research department. Instead, many students end up at teaching colleges, government, or industry. Graduates of top Ph.D. programs get invited to conferences to advertise their research, and seems to publish good (but not great) work very quickly and easily. It is important to be connected to the thought leaders and gatekeepers of your field.

3) Every realistic applicant to selective Ph.D. programs has high scores and grades. We compare applicants like an American with 95th percentile math and verbal to a Chinese guy with 99.9th percentile math and 50th percentile verbal (in English). Some applicants already have Ph.D.'s in physics or statistics! We look for hard courses (real analysis, not just calculus) and research experience. For example, an applicant might have worked as a research assistant at a central bank. We want letters with concrete explanation of research skills at a high level. We do not want a bland letter from a prestigious professor who barely knows the student.

Agree with all this. The interesting thing is for 2, while professorships are still the gold standard desire for many PhD students, the field has been steadily widening with now some of the top students not wanting to go into academia after seeing different pathways. A friend was a math PhD at one of the better programs but was not quite good enough to get a full professorship so went into finance right when the quants were starting to lead--he now endows university buildings where the mean math prof salary is 150k. Profs usually love their work but the academic life is a grind and more fields outside of academia have viable and more lucrative routes for PhDs--and not just in STEM, but in the social sciences too.

This was a flash in the pan. The math phDs who were lured away to finance have mostly returned to the fold. It could all happen again, but no one should be fantasizing about that right now, and I don't know why it's being mentioned so frequently around here. Some strong math undergrads with research do apply to Econ. As outlined above, they can access a higher tier of grad programs because their skills are more grad school ready than a typical Econ undergrads.

In my field (Biochemistry) just as many great PhDs go on to work in industry as they do in academia.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As the parent of 2 kids who are in PhD programs, I just want to thank all - especially the profs - who have contributed to this thread. There's a lot of good info and advice here.

Agree. I have a daughter going through the application process now. This thread has been very affirming of what her mentors (who are PhDs and professors at her school and outside the school) have said. It is a nerve wracking process, especially when the student chooses a niche program with limited programs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are some schools that are heavy hitters in feeding kids into PhD programs - Swarthmore, Reed, Carleton, Harvey Mudd, etc. You're going to find the feeder schools to be largely SLACs because so much in admissions for PhD programs is about recommendations and connections. PhD cohorts tend to be very small - many programs accepting fewer than a dozen students/year - so good grades and high GRE scores alone won't cut it.

Macalester has an exceptionally high percent of students getting NSF scholarships for grad study which really help you get into the phd program of your choice. They say it’s cuz so many of their students do research and graduate with publications.

[Anonymous]

What about commitment to activities outside major? My kid is doing well in STEM major but two clubs are music based. Would that eve be considered?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What about commitment to activities outside major? My kid is doing well in STEM major but two clubs are music based. Would that even be considered?

No! Professors have an almost autistic or religious obsession with their field. My post-doc friend worked in a university lab like characters on the "Big Bang Theory", funded by grant money controlled by a senior professor. Her professor boss told her to go in on Saturdays and Sundays to make sure the Ph.D. students were working.
Furthermore, he told her to run his experiments during the week, and use the lab for her own experiments on weekends.

Look at this successful scientist in Hawaii. "He retired in 2005, but continued working on natural and assisted reproduction [at the age of 77]."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryuzo_Yanagimachi

At my old elite university, the chair of Religious Studies complained that Ph.D. students were not fluent in Hebrew, Ancient Greek, and Aramaic.

Some Ph.D. graduates end up in dead-end fields, working in support roles for mediocre money. But others view the field as a calling. One old Ph.D. friend had some type of offer from Harvard's math department for terrible money. He thought of asking for a couple thousand dollars more. Then he realized that math pays poorly, and other graduates would like nothing more than scribbling on a blackboard with historically famous mathematicians. So, my friend went to Wall Street instead.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What about commitment to activities outside major? My kid is doing well in STEM major but two clubs are music based. Would that eve be considered?

This is not college admissions. No one cares about your extra-curricular activities.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My child is a junior and I'm wondering how much your undergrad school matters if you are planning to go on to get a Ph.D. - If so, what specifically does matter in college selection?

GPA extremely important. Plus prior research experience.

So, a top (4.0) student from U of Oregon will do better than a 3.8 kid from Harvard. Top SLACs will have faculty more involved with their students, more research opportunities, mentoring etc. All of which helps too.

Tenured prof at an R2. 'Research experience' as an undergrad can be pretty useless in some fields. We look for very high grades in the major and the highest possible levels of coursework, meaningful related work and growth in the field (think summer programs), high test scores (they are a predictor in my discipline), above-level writing skills, and a strong and realistic line of reasoning connecting the potential PhD with career goals. Prior teaching experience is a plus, as is already having a master's before applying for a doctorate.