Hi, I'm Casey. I'm a professor, and this is my third in a series of
videos about applying for PhD programs. I've been running phd admissions in my
department for a number of years and I think that I've learned a lot of
things about what might help students during this process.
So once you've made the decision that you want to apply
to pursue a PhD, your next question is: where do I apply to? First of all, if
you're not sure yet about the answer to that first question,
should you get a PhD at all, then you might want to check out my other
video on this topic.
But once you're settled ,once you've made that decision
you need to find PhD programs to apply for. So this video
is tips for trying to find programs that are appropriate for you
and also the types of things that you should take
into account or maybe not when you're making a list of places to apply to.
So I'm going to give my usual disclaimer which is that I am
in a STEM field, a lab-based discipline where PhD students work very closely
with advisors. Some of the advice that I'm going to
give is a bit specific to that though i think that some of it is
also broadly applicable. All right, first thing,
do you even know what your discipline is? So for some of you this is going to be
really easy, like you are a chemistry major in undergrad
and you want to get a chemistry PhD, but what if your
interests don't align so clearly into a very specific
rigid discipline? What if your interests are kind of
interdisciplinary? What if they have something to do
with computing and art and humanities and other kinds of things?
What if you want to get your PhD in something like studying video games.
Is that in a computer science department? Is it in a digital media department?
Is it something completely separate that you don't even know about yet?
So you might want to do some research to figure out where your specific
interests fit into different disciplines, and then what getting a PhD in those
different disciplines look like. So I'll use my own as an example. I am a
professor in an information science department, which is a
huge example of this interdisciplinary mashup.
Even just in my own lab, my current PhD students
have a background with majors like computer science,
english, education, media studies, and in the broader department we have
people with backgrounds in anthropology and journalism and data science.
It's really just kind of all over the map, and there are a lot of
interdisciplinary disciplines out there, especially when it comes to tech.
Digital humanities, bioinformatics, really a lot more out there than just those
rigid disciplinary boxes like, I do math, I do chemistry, I do computer science.
Like those might not be your only choices and so
it's worth looking into. Now the next thing is, once you think you
know what discipline, what do you want to do inside that
discipline? And this is important because you want
to apply to programs where that department and those faculty
do that thing well. So for example as I said in my last
video, if you are a computer scientist and you
want to get a PhD, you can't just apply to every computer
science PhD program that you can find, first of
all because you'd go broke in application fees, but also
computer science is huge. And this isn't like being an undergrad
where you just learn everything. Being a PhD student means
that you are specializing down into something very
tiny. Now you don't have to know what the tiny
thing is yet but you need to be able to get up to about right here.
So you need to figure out what your sub field is
and find faculty who do that or find departments who
have specializations in that, and look most closely at those.
In fact you might even need to be thinking about a sub
subfield. For example if you want to do human computer interaction, that is huge.
There's a big difference between studying
accessibility versus social computing versus
user interface design versus tons of other things that you could think of.
So that's the first place to start narrowing in. But then it becomes even
more important because if you are in one of these
lab-based disciplines where you know that you're going to be working very
closely with a faculty advisor, you need to think about who that advisor
should be. And that is actually a more important
question than what program or what institution.
That said, this isn't a decision that you need to make right now but it should be
a decision that you are using to influence what
programs you apply to. So again if you are not in one of these
lab-based disciplines, if maybe you're in a humanities-style
discipline where you're not going to be working as closely with your advisor, in
fact in some places you might not even have an advisor for a couple of years,
you don't need to be looking as closely at individual faculty but you should be
looking at the specialization and the overall
research areas that that department is good at. So like
if you're trying to find a communication department
and you know that you definitely want to do organizational communication make
sure that you're picking programs where there are a
number of faculty who do that thing. But back to those lab-based, potentially
STEM fields it actually can make sense to
start with thinking about advisors and use
that to identify programs and institutions. What is the
kind of work that you are passionate about? What kind of
research do you want to do, and who is doing that kind of research?
Wo the obvious place to start here is to start
reading in your research area. Look at papers that are being published
and see who's writing them. Let's say that right now you're an
undergrad and you know that you're really interested in doing research
about say, social media, and you think maybe you want to do something
related to like social media and privacy. So maybe you thought about
already, do iIwant to be in computer science or
information science or maybe even you can do that sort of thing in like a
communications department. If you can narrow it down this is going to be even
easier, but even if you haven't start looking for papers. Go into google
scholar and type in "social media privacy." Skim through them and
look at the titles and think about, what of this kind of thing seems like
what I would want to do? Now in many disciplines you're actually going to
find the faculty member listed as the last
author and students, typically PhD students, are going to be at the front. So
another tip is to look at a bunch of different
papers from the same faculty member. This will show you what
their students are doing, and the constellation of student-led
research will give you a really good sense of what kind of work is happening
broadly in that faculty member's lab. Like let's
say that something that you really want to do
is machine learning related to social media and you see this one paper that
uses a machine learning technique and it's about
social media privacy. If you look at all of the rest of that faculty member's
papers, and all of the rest of them are using
qualitative methods, like interviews or surveys,
and that's literally the only one that uses machine learning,
that's probably not a faculty member whose area is
machine learning. It could be that they have one student who happens to do that
kind of work etc. Now this is just a rule of thumb
in terms of how to start thinking about this. You're not really going to know
just looking at published papers. I also suggest obviously
going to faculty members' websites and seeing how they
explain themselves. Now if you're still not sold in a particular research area,
you might consider thinking about the narrowest you can get it
and then looking at a conference, or maybe a journal,
in that area, and seeing what institutions
are the most represented. So for example if we go back to
human computer interaction, you can skim through the proceedings for the CHI
conference for any particular year and see what universities are mentioned
over and over, and then look into, oh is this a computer
science program that they have here, do they actually have a program in HCI
or etc etc. Of course this comes with a caveat that this also might just
represent the departments that are the biggest, but this might give you
some ideas about where to start in looking. The other thing that you can
consider once you start looking at specific
departments is are there multiple faculty members
who are doing things in the general area that I am interested in?
Now I'm sort of shooting myself in the foot here because I'm actually in a
quite small department and this can be difficult in very small departments, but
it's a really good idea if there is more than one person that you could see
being your advisor in a department. Now there's a lot of practical reasons for
this, everything from faculty sometimes change
institutions to maybe you'll have some kind of
personality conflict. And it also really helps with your
personal statement if you can mention more than one faculty member, but even if
you have a dream advisor, which you very well may, you should still think
about how you can see yourself fitting into working with other faculty in the
department so you can talk about this in your personal statement. For a little
bit more on the nuances around this you'll find some information
in my previous video about applying to PhD programs
where I talk a little bit about why some faculty may not be able to take on more
students and how you might want to think about that.
And finally, if you are lucky enough to be working with faculty already, like
maybe you are an undergrad or a master's student where
you're doing research, absolutely ask for advice from the
faculty member that you're working with. They will almost certainly know people
in the area, and make concrete suggestions for where
you should apply. They may even offer to introduce you to
faculty members. Something else you might be thinking is,
well obviously I should just apply to a lot of places and then go to the "best
school" that I get into. Ido not advise if you
are getting a law degree instead of a PhD,
I might suggest that mentality because people who hire lawyers are incredibly
elitist most of the time. However, for a PhD
there is so much individual work that you do
that influences how marketable you are after you're done
that has zero to do with where you are doing that work.
This isn't like undergrad where everything is like a transcript full of
grades. You're going to have research projects
and published papers, people are going to know who you are
already most likely in your field. Basically the name on your diploma does
not matter as much as the work that you are doing.
And the work that you are doing is not going to be as good if you're not able
to follow your research bliss. This is why there's so much advice about
advisor fit being the most important thing or at least one
of the most important things when you make this decision.
However, even the reputation of the individual department
or the faculty in the department tend to be
more important than the overall institution that that department is
housed in. And speaking of the institution that the
department is housed in, what about location? How much should you
be taking into account the fact that you hate the heat or hate
the cold or hate college towns or hate big cities or
whatever it is that you hate about different places where you don't want to
live? The first thing i'll say here is that
the odds of the perfect program also being
in the perfect location are pretty low. This means that you're going to have to
make decisions that weigh those two things.
So where do you decide where to apply in the first place? It's a decision that you
will ultimately have to make: let's say that you hate the heat but the
only PhD program that you get into is at Arizona State University.
Now you have a decision. Would you rather go to Arizona State University and
swelter for five years? Or
would you rather not pursue a PhD or wait another year and apply to PhD
programs and try your luck again? If you would rather wait than go to that
place, then you shouldn't apply there in the
first place, there's no point. But if you think
if this was my only option, I really want to start right now,
then you should not take location into account and just apply
based on the programs. This is a personal decision that
that only you can make. And another thing to keep in mind when it comes to
location is that if there is a place that you know you
desperately want to live for the rest of your life,
it is very unlikely that the same institution where you get your PhD would
hire you as faculty. It does happen sometimes but it's very
rare. So this question of would I rather go to this place or not
start a PhD program right away is the question that you should be asking
yourself for a lot of different things that might influence
where you want to apply. So sometimes these are questions that you can decide
later once you've gotten into more than one place.
You still don't want to waste money on applications for places that you
definitely know you don't want to go. In terms of things that might be
breakers, for what it's worth, I recommend that unless it's a standard in your
discipline, you do not go into a PhD program that
does not have funding for students. PhD is hard enough
without going into debt. However, things like how
much is the stipend and what is the cost of
living in the area is something that you might want to consider
after you have choices. So basically you're going to end up with a
list of programs that you might want to consider applying to,
you then decide how many you can reasonably apply to
based on things like application fees and how much time it's going to take you
to write personal statements, etc etc. And then I think you should rank
them, also taking into account perhaps the
odds of your admission into various places. In that way it's a
bit like when you're trying to decide how to apply for colleges. Once you've
decided where you're going to apply, your next step is to write personalized
applications for all of those places. If you're at that step, awesome, make sure
you check out my video about PhD applications.
Then once you've applied the next step is
waiting. So applications for phd programs are usually due
sometime between November and the end of the year, for example
ours our application deadline is December 1st. Then often you start
hearing back from places as early as February. For a lot of
disciplines it is extremely standard for there to be
open house visits where they fly out either accepted students or a short list
of students before they've made decisions.
Which one of those things it is kind of changes whether this feels more like a
courting or an interview. Sometimes it's a bit of both.
And then if you're fortunate enough to have multiple offers of admission,
you get to decide where you want to go out of these choices.
And that's when all of these things that we've been talking about become even
more important. Then you need to be concerned with
things like the culture of the department
and where students get jobs and how good the fit is with the person who would be
your advisor, etc etc. But a lot of these things
are not things you have to think about in as much detail
when you're applying. They become much more important when you have to make a
serious decision. So if you are going to be in that
position in the spring, you might want to subscribe to this
channel because I will be doing some videos about
how open houses work and how to ask questions of advisors and what you
should ask and how to make this decision, etc.
but you're not going to have to worry about that for a while
if you are watching this in September when I'm making this video.
What more questions do you have about how to pick phd programs or anything
else about the application process? Leave comments down below and I will see
if I can answer them. Also feel free to pitch your own PhD
program in the comments if you think it's awesome and that everyone should
apply there. And as always good luck with this
process. I wish you the very best and that you
find the perfect fit for you. I'm Casey, I would love it if
you would subscribe to this channel so more people will see these videos,
and thanks for watching,