Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

We Need a Yelp for Doctoral Programs

community.chronicle.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 118 posts

Re: We Need a Yelp for Doctoral Programs

#91

Post by physonaught »

A good mental model for graduate school is that it is a feudal system. There is essentially no oversight of professors by a larger executive branch. I mean, they can't literally murder you, but they can drive you to suicide. (Jason Altom)

If you get lucky, you get a professor that believes in you (this can be one of the most rewarding experiences I know of).

If you aren't lucky, then things will get really rough. I've seen professors: - Spike their student's candidicy at the last minute (meaning the student had to switch groups in their last year, essentially having to redo their PhD in another group) - Spike student papers - finding out where their former student was applying for jobs, calling and spiking their job application (talking shit) - various abuses (yelling at student for not working on Christmas, humiliating student for years in public, sexual harassment)

I could go on. If you haven't been through grad school, you might ask "why not leave/vote with your feet?"

But understand the power dynamic: in really broad strokes, the student works towards a reward (being a Dr/PhD) that will take, on average, 5-6 years. Getting that reward is completely up to your supervisor's discretion. It's like if you worked at a startup for six years for minimum wage, but if your boss agrees to it, you will get a million dollar payout (also, your boss can't be fired, ever.) And that's just a minimum-- success in academia is dependent on getting full throated letters of rec from your supervisor, so they also have to really like you.

So your professional success is completely up to one person: if they decide to fuck you over, that can be 4 years of work down the drain.

When I was in graduate school, I never saw the faculty/department intervene in any of the abusive situations. The only thing that protects students are soft processes, like knowing which professors are really bad. The Yelp idea is good, simply because it increases that ability.

And those abuses I talked about? A majority of my cohort dealt with that (at a large, well known University), it's not isolated to a few bad apples.

Re: We Need a Yelp for Doctoral Programs

#92

Post by scott_s »

tharne wrote: post #75
jseliger wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I was at a social event and got to talking with a professor at an Ivy League school. He had a really insightful take on this. He said that the only fair way to present a doctoral program to prospective students is to compare it to trying to become a rockstar. Every day tons of people form garage bands and have dreams of becoming rock stars. But...they do so knowing they almost certainly won't make it. This professor…

That is a good framing. When I explain it to people, I compare it to the NBA. Except it's like trying to get into the NBA when all of your coaches over your entire basketball life up until that point have been in the NBA. Proximity can trick you into thinking you just have to "decide" to pursue such a position, not knowing that such positions are the result of a ruthless tournament system.

Re: We Need a Yelp for Doctoral Programs

#93

Post by tharne »

gowld wrote: post #82
tharne wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was at a social event and got to talking with a professor at an Ivy League school. He had a really insightful take on this. He said that the only fair way to present a doctoral program to prospective students is to compare it to trying to become a rockstar. Every day tons of people form garage bands and have dreams of becoming rock stars. But...they do so knowing they almost certainly won't make it. This professor…

A PhD program is not a trade school. It was originally designed for the intellectually inclined aristocracy to put their minds to good use. If you understand that, you are fine.

That's a really good way of thinking about it.

Re: We Need a Yelp for Doctoral Programs

#94

Post by subrat_rout »

ISL wrote: post #19

Good 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…

To add on top of it, majority of graduate students are from countries like India and China and their life/career is tied to F1 visa status which make students even more vulnerable to disclose any sincere/legit info. about the program they are in.

Re: We Need a Yelp for Doctoral Programs

#95

Post by refurb »

Upvoter33 wrote: post #71

The problem in doing this is that saying "school X is great for getting a Ph.D." will never likely generally be true, because the Ph.D. process is so advisor dependent. However, doing this for each advisor is really hard too, because the sample size is small and it's hard for the reviewer to remain anonymous. All of that said, some set of general statistics (size of program, distribution of research group sizes, perc…

Underrated comment. The “school” rating is meaningless. Even the “department” is meaningless. It all comes down to your advisor.

Our department had amazing advisors and horrible advisors. Two people could be in the same PhD program and have polar opposite experiences.

In fact, if you want reviews it’s not hard - just ask current students about other advisors. Rumors move fast and I’ve found you’ll get an honest opinion.

Re: We Need a Yelp for Doctoral Programs

#96

Post by xhkkffbf »

scott_s wrote: post #92
tharne wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was at a social event and got to talking with a professor at an Ivy League school. He had a really insightful take on this. He said that the only fair way to present a doctoral program to prospective students is to compare it to trying to become a rockstar. Every day tons of people form garage bands and have dreams of becoming rock stars. But...they do so knowing they almost certainly won't make it. This professor…

That is a good framing. When I explain it to people, I compare it to the NBA. Except it's like trying to get into the NBA when all of your coaches over your entire basketball life up until that point have been in the NBA. Proximity can trick you into thinking you just have to "decide" to pursue such a position, not knowing that such positions are the result of a ruthless tournament system.

The thing is that there are more prosport athletes hired each year than there are new professor slots in most disciplines. There are probably 3-5 new players on each NBA team each year which amounts to 75-150 people taken from the draft. Most academic disciplines have only a few dozen slots available each year.

Re: We Need a Yelp for Doctoral Programs

#97

Post by euix »

A PhD is a monastic experience, I remember reading that on a blog somewhere. Couldn't agree more.

It comes with all the same features (it's even baked into the history of education being baked in to the Church).

Re: We Need a Yelp for Doctoral Programs

#99

Post by croissants »

If you're debating whether to go to school x and work with professor y, make sure you get a chance to talk to students who work with professor y, and ideally students who work adjacent to professor y. In my experience, bad advisors usually have students who will tell you that the advisor is bad (especially if you talk to them in person or over the phone, where there's no written record). If the students themselves are too scared, their friends probably aren't.

Any good program will have a built in process, for example an admitted students event, with this kind of interaction. Any good advisor will encourage you to talk to their students. If not, that is already a red flag.

Talk to current and former students! I was fortunate to have a great advisor, and I was always happy to talk to admitted students.

Re: We Need a Yelp for Doctoral Programs

#100

Post by gammarator »

tharne wrote: post #75
jseliger wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I was at a social event and got to talking with a professor at an Ivy League school. He had a really insightful take on this. He said that the only fair way to present a doctoral program to prospective students is to compare it to trying to become a rockstar. Every day tons of people form garage bands and have dreams of becoming rock stars. But...they do so knowing they almost certainly won't make it. This professor…

The problem with this analogy is that rock stars don't depend on the wannabes for their success.

In contrast, universities and their faculty absolutely need a large supply of low-wage teaching and research assistants to function today.

Post reply on HN