CHAPTER 1

ENTERING GRADUATE SCHOOL

If you are thinking about entering a doctoral program, you are notalone. In 2011, according to figures provided by the Council of GraduateSchools, there were more than 600,000 applications solely to doctoralprograms where students are aiming to earn a PhD or an equivalentdegree. Overall, the chances of being accepted to any given programare about one in four: rates of acceptance vary greatly by the qualityof the university and whether it is publicly or privately funded. Aboutone in eight applicants was admitted in the top tier of private universitiescompared to over one in three of the second tier of public universities,and almost one in two in the lowest rung of doctoral programsthat are classified as low-activity research programs.

Applications to doctoral programs have been steadily rising over thepast decade, especially among women, who now make up a majority ofapplicants and acceptances to graduate programs. Overall, more than70,000 new students entered doctoral programs in 2011; slightly overhalf of these first-time students were women. These new entrants todoctoral programs make up only a small proportion of the total enrollmentof graduate students in PhD or equivalent doctoral degrees,which numbers more than 440,000 students. In 2010/2011, about63,000 doctoral degrees were awarded, a 50 percent increase above theprevious decade. Although slowed a bit by the Great Recession, theUnited States remains one of the world magnets for higher education,especially graduate education leading to a doctoral degree.

If you are thinking seriously of becoming a professor, completinga PhD is virtually required. I say virtually because some peoplehave entered academia without a doctorate or its equivalent, althoughthis route has become much rarer over time. (There is more latitudeto teach without an advanced degree in many professional schools,although here, too, substitute qualifications count for less these daysthan they once did.) Many people who are ABD (all but dissertation)do manage to find employment in higher education, but they are almostalways confined to teaching in two-year institutions or the lowerranks of four-year colleges and universities. This is because in mostfields, there is no shortage of highly competent candidates vying forgood jobs. The academic marketplace is highly competitive in mostacademic disciplines, even for positions that are deemed to be less thanideal. Of course, there are many other career options besides an academiccareer that you can pursue with a PhD, as I will discuss in thenext chapter.

Most students are trained at a more prestigious graduate programthan the department in which they accept their first job. Or, to put itdifferently, nearly everyone will be downwardly mobile when they leavegraduate school. This makes it highly desirable, if not imperative, toattend the highest-ranked program that you possibly can, unless youare not contemplating an academic career, are willing to constrainyour future options, or have as a primary goal teaching rather thanscholarship. Settling for less early on increases the chances that youwill have to settle for less when you look for a job: "Aim as high asyou dare" is good advice for most people. In any case, it makes senseto think clearly about your long-term goals and ambitions before youenter graduate school, even if you will modify or refine them after youstart a program.

In many respects, the biggest decision is the first one: Should youtake the plunge and enter a PhD program? Deciding to go to graduateschool is not the same process for everyone. Every year a substantialnumber of students move seamlessly from undergraduate to graduatestudies. Indeed, a small proportion of graduate students begin theirprogram as undergraduates, taking courses as they complete their baccalaureate.This is especially true in the natural sciences, where professionalcommitments typically are formed earlier in life, oft en before orduring college. It may be less true in other fields, where the decision togo to graduate school may come after working for a while after college,even if getting an advanced degree was always a consideration.

I fell in love with academia and wanted to be a professor after I tookmy first sociology course in college. I remember thinking at the time,"Oh, this is what I want to do the rest of my life." As far as I can tellfrom observing hundreds of graduate students over the years, I was abit odd, certainly by today's standards or even by standards of a generationago when young adults made professional commitments at earlierages. These days most instead come to the idea of getting a PhD moredeliberately and gradually than I did. Like marriage and childbearing,career decisions have become more intentional and deliberate andtherefore protracted. Young adults are undoubtedly right to take theirtime and think about what they are getting into before deciding to goto graduate school.

In this era of a more leisurely transition to adulthood, it is extremelycommon for students to take some time off after college and exploretheir career options through practical experience in their chosen fieldbefore entering graduate school. This is generally a good idea becausestudents who come right out of undergraduate studies can founderwhen they discover that they have not fully realized exactly what isinvolved in obtaining a doctorate degree. The experience of graduatetraining is really very different from what it takes to earn a bachelor's degree.Much, much more will be expected of you as a graduate student.

Getting a PhD is a big deal, as most graduate students will tell you.First of all, it generally takes a lot of time. Programs vary widely in howlong it takes to complete a doctorate, but you can figure that at leastfive, and conceivably ten, years of your life will be consumed in theprocess. The length of time required to obtain a doctorate varies enormouslydepending on the discipline, funding, and the quality of supportprovided in a given field and the department. Graduate training isgenerally shortest in the natural sciences and engineering and longestin the humanities and for doctorates of education, with the social sciencesfalling in the middle. But that is in part because financial aid ismore plentiful in the natural sciences and scarcest in the humanities.The more depressing fact is that many who enter a PhD program willdrop out somewhere along the way unless they begin and remain utterlycommitted to finishing their degree and unless they have the necessarysupport and guidance to see them over the long haul.

And that is only the beginning. Becoming an academic usually involvesa lengthy apprenticeship that starts in graduate school but inmany fields stretches even beyond the time when you complete yourthesis. Many PhDs are not ready to become assistant professors for severalyears even with a degree in hand, oft en accepting a postdoc, a researchposition, or perhaps a teaching position off the tenure track. Inmany respects, the process is more analogous to medical training thangetting a law degree. Even in the natural sciences, few go directly fromgraduate school into an academic job; in the humanities, generally theprocess of gaining a tenure-track job can be very protracted.

But first things first: let's consider whether getting a PhD is the rightchoice for you.

SHOULD YOU GO TO GRADUATE SCHOOL?

How do you know whether you are a good candidate for graduateschool, much less an academic life? There are some easy answers tothis question, which I'll take up first, and there are many other considerationsthat can only be answered once you have decided to take theplunge. Assuming financial support—a big issue that I will return tolater on in this chapter—here are some pointers for whether you are agood bet for getting a PhD.

A friend of mine some years ago asked me to talk to his daughter,Emily, about whether she should get a PhD in history. Emily was abrilliant undergraduate who had been nominated for a distinguishedscholarship to enter a top PhD program. At first, it seemed like a no-brainer,but after talking to Emily, whom I knew pretty well, for anhour or so, I was convinced that she was not ready to get a PhD andprobably would struggle in an academic career unless she could overcomesome of her undergraduate habits. "I'm not sure that I want tospend my life writing academic papers," Emily told me. "I want to dosomething more in the real world." Th at is not necessarily the kiss ofdeath, I explained to her, but as our conversation proceeded, I discoveredseveral other counter-indications for Emily's prospects in graduateschool. She had always had trouble finishing her papers, brilliant asthey eventually turned out to be. Although she was capable of workingon her own, she really preferred working with others. In fact, she explainedthat she hated competitive situations and suffered when shefaced deadlines.

Procrastination is a serious problem if you want to be an academic.People who cannot get their work finished in a timely manner tendto face troubles in graduate school, especially in the later stages of aPhD program. Furthermore, in most academic disciplines, the abilityto work independently—oft en in the isolation of the library, lab, or inthe field—is a necessary condition for completing a doctorate. I explainedto Emily that being able to manage your time, complete tasks,and regulate your work life is essential to finishing a graduate programand critical to academic success. If she continued to have trouble onthese fronts, she was going to have problems in graduate school. Despitemy advice that she put off graduate school and work for a while,Emily spent a couple of relatively fruitless years in graduate school beforeshe dropped out to enter a successful career in business. It wasn'ta complete waste of time, she later told me, but she found quickly thatgraduate school was not for her. But for many people who enter graduateprograms without the soft skills to get a degree, it takes more than ayear or two to discover that they are in the wrong place.

We tend to assume that getting a PhD requires a high level of intelligenceor, perhaps I should say, the kind of intelligence that expressesitself in doing well in school. Of course it does, but it takes more thanthat, as Emily's case illustrates. Doing well as an undergraduate is virtuallya necessary condition for entering a PhD program, but it is nota guarantee that you are good material to get a PhD. Students need tohave or acquire in graduate school a set of soft skills that support theirintellectual capacities. These soft skills may vary somewhat dependingon the academic field, but most successful academics must be able towork on their own, take and benefit from critical advice, work simultaneouslyon several tasks at once, manage setbacks in their work, and becapable of resisting outside pressures that tempt one away from workdemands.

My graduate advisor told me many years after I completed my dissertationthat he thought I enjoyed life too much to amount to anythingas an academic. It is true that even as a graduate student and ayoung faculty member, at a time when I worked a lot harder than I dothese days, I always believed it was important to make ample spacefor exercise and entertainment—not to mention a family life. But thesentiment that you need to be able to work hard was on the mark. Academicsuccess requires long hours of study, research activities, andlonely time in front of a computer writing up results. Think about howyou responded to the challenge of taking exams, but think even moreabout whether you enjoyed the process of developing projects, implementingthem, and writing up the results. If you don't relish these activities,then entering a PhD program may not be for you.

To do well in a graduate program, you must also have a high levelof passion, intellectual curiosity, and devotion to a field of study. To besure, going to graduate school can reinforce these essential proclivitiesfor entering academic life. Without them, much of our work can seemempty and pointless. Not everyone has the good fortune to fall in lovewith a subject as I did (much less to stay in love with it). And manywho do could find their love quashed or extinguished during graduateschool or during the early years of an academic career. Still, youreally need to feel the fire in your belly, or at least have a steady flameof desire, that keeps you going when you face the inevitable challenges,disappointments, frustrations, and even rejections during graduateschool and beyond.

Finally, an essential quality for staying the course is an ability tomanage stress. When my non-academic friends tease me about theseemingly idyllic life that I live—teaching a course or two, travelingfor research and conferences, and schmoozing with my graduate students—Isometimes bring them up short by asking them to recall howthey felt during exam week at college. That is a chronic condition whenyou enter academia, I explain. It seems that you are always in debt tosomeone and usually many people at once. A paper or review is pastdue. A graduate student is waiting to hear from you about their thesisproposal or first chapter. You need to get a letter or several lettersof recommendation off. Colleagues are waiting for the portion of thecommittee report that you agreed to write. And so on. Being a professoror a full-time researcher is definitely not a typical nine-to-five job.And lest you have the fantasy of time off in the summers, in my experienceit almost never happens. Most academics are cramming theirsummer months with research, writing, and oft en teaching. While wecarve out time for fun, I dare say that few of us manage to put our workcompletely aside for long periods of time. Many American academicsare oft en amazed when they discover that their European counterpartstypically take off completely for a month in the summer.

Graduate programs are not very adroit in selecting students with thesoft skills required for being an academic. What matters most for admission—andit should come as no surprise—is abundant evidence ofintellectual talent. Programs are looking for people like Emily. It is takenfor granted that brilliant people, like Emily, will possess the needed softskills or, at least, will acquire them along the way. This is a questionableassumption. Work habits, character, personal skills—whateveryou want to call the package of attributes that individuals bring withthem into graduate school—are arguably no less important to successin graduate school and in academic life than the imperative of having agood intellect and, let's say, strong analytic skills and imagination.

It is a tall order to have it all. Most students I see in graduate schoolenter programs possessing only parts of the package of intellectualaptitude, soft skills, ambition, and devotion to learning a discipline.Graduate school provides a space and time for learning how to gainthe missing pieces and for putting them together before going on thejob market. Of course, I am assuming here the most obvious part ofgraduate training: mastering the knowledge and skills to be a biologist,political scientist, classicist, or whatever your chosen field.

Daunting? No doubt, but for those who have the "calling," as thegreat political economist and sociologist Max Weber described thevocation of science (and, I would argue, other academic disciplines)and the life of a researcher, it can be inspiring, gratifying, and intenselyrewarding work. This is not just my biased opinion. A great deal ofevidence shows that professors have among the highest rates of jobsatisfaction of any occupation. Being a professor provides an opportunityto do meaningful work (for those who think of scholarship asmeaningful), teach and mentor, and experience a great deal of personalcontrol over your work. In this particular sense, being a successful academicis almost like getting paid to be a creative artist.

Now, if you are not deterred by the demanding list of job qualifications,read on: the next question is where to go and how to get into theprogram of your choice.

SELECTING A GRADUATE PROGRAM

I've already provided the first rule of thumb for selecting a graduateprogram. Reach as high as you can in the quality of the schoolsto which you apply. The National Academy of Sciences has a rankingof top programs in most disciplines, and there are other ratings availableto you that may be useful in making a list of desirable schools forconsideration. The rating system is far from perfect, and you shouldnot take it as gospel. Ratings of departments are conservative and givehigh weight to past performance, and are therefore somewhat out-of-dateby the time they appear. Talk to people in your chosen field, readthe descriptions of programs, and find a good fit of your interests withthe programs. Overall, the ranking of the program should generallybe among the most decisive considerations of where to apply if youare aiming for an academic job. Rarely is there a "single" best department,but there are usually several or more that should warrant yourinterest.