Basic rule: if you're paying for a doctorate (aside from a professional degree, like an MD or JD), it's a bad idea.
We Need a Yelp for Doctoral Programs
31–40 of 118 posts
Re: We Need a Yelp for Doctoral Programs
#32I've done my best to create a ranking of graduate creative writing programs by measuring the appearance of programs' graduates in the top prize anthologies. It's been generally well received although there has been some resistance to the idea of ranking programs like this. There's still a lot of work to be done on it, but the basic structure, at least is in place.
Re: We Need a Yelp for Doctoral Programs
#33The problem isn’t that we’ve locked opinion inside communities. It’s that doctoral programs are so poorly run. That universities are waiting for quantitative data to instill action is more sign of dysfunction.
Here’s yelp for grad programs. Write down the name of the program you’re looking at and make an asterisk. One star — it’s already more accurate than Yelp on restaurants.
Re: We Need a Yelp for Doctoral Programs
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
But it is so hard for people to give reviews. People seem to give good review when are they are very pissed off or very happy. Later seems to be a very rare case.
I couldn’t make sense of your comment.
I think they mean “good” in the sense of being helpful reviews: positive or negative.
Re: We Need a Yelp for Doctoral Programs
#35It would be better to just contact current students at the lab and offer them coffee for a conversation.
While I agree with the sentiment, many potential students are looking overseas.
Is there an Internet equivalent of "coffee and conversation"? Steam game gift and discord maybe...
Re: We Need a Yelp for Doctoral Programs
#36Good luck getting honest reviews. Graduates and recent post-docs are dependent upon good letters of recommendation from their advisors for perhaps a decade after leaving their research groups. The truly disillusioned won't mind complaining, but those with even constructive criticism will feel constrained in their ability to speak out and be specific. The graduate-student experience is deeply advisor-specific. Profess…
Completely agree. I've become increasingly convinced that we'll need a fundamental restructuring of the academy if we want to fix any of these issues. The fact that places like MIT or Stanford will hire professors simply because they output Nature papers every year, regardless of the fact that they are totally abusive to their trainees, is a perfect demonstration of it.
Doesn't this explicitly favor the high-output at any cost professor? A professor who had a high nature output could attract more PhD students and structure their program such that they take more of the credit than you would expect.
This wouldn't work in all fields, but there are quite a few disciplines where the biggest barrier to research is having funding and someone to do the work.
Re: We Need a Yelp for Doctoral Programs
#37We dont need a Yelp for doctoral programs, we need a Yelp for research labs! It's more about the lab you join than the program itself that makes or breaks your life. In fact, I have heard that minimally there's kind of a toxic labs blacklist maintained in some Chinese message boards. At least that's what a fellow postdoc told me when I mused why we suddenly stopped getting applicants from China to our lab!
There are PhD programs not attached to research labs. I would say the majority of doctoral students are not attached to one.
by research lab, he means a research group led by a specific faculty member in an academic department. in other words: he is talking about reviews on specific professors as doctoral degree advisers.
Re: We Need a Yelp for Doctoral Programs
#38This article really rubs me the wrong way. I don't think I would find a Yelp very valuable, and the most important metric for a PhD program isn't job placement numbers. The idea that job placement correlates to PhD quality is just plain wrong. Incredibly intelligent students leave PhD programs through no fault of their own, and people who get nothing out of a PhD program can get a cushy job easily. It's a horrible me…
I agree with you, and further think it would be awesome if each doctoral program offered "user manuals" for each potential advisor in the department. Things like, "Professor X is very hands off, so you'll be able to do a lot on your own, but make sure you get on his calendar to get advice." Or, "Professor Y is a slave-driving task master but very capable; so make sure to stand up for yourself or you'll get crushed."…
there are ways to do this but the market for the manuals would be pretty small.
Re: We Need a Yelp for Doctoral Programs
#39It would be better to just contact current students at the lab and offer them coffee for a conversation.
While I agree with the sentiment, many potential students are looking overseas. Is there an Internet equivalent of "coffee and conversation"? Steam game gift and discord maybe...
You don’t have to bribe them... you can just write to them.
Re: We Need a Yelp for Doctoral Programs
#40Good luck getting honest reviews. Graduates and recent post-docs are dependent upon good letters of recommendation from their advisors for perhaps a decade after leaving their research groups. The truly disillusioned won't mind complaining, but those with even constructive criticism will feel constrained in their ability to speak out and be specific. The graduate-student experience is deeply advisor-specific. Profess…
In many disciplines, too, the answer is "don't go to any program." Most humanities fields, for example, have numerous essays written about why doing grad school in them is a poor life choice, like my contribution: https://jakeseliger.com/2012/05/22/what-you-should-know-befo....
One could say the same of most social sciences.