Our first installment of unsolicited advice concerned the difficult question of how to get into graduate school; this one presumes that one has successfully leapt the hurdles of GRE’s and ornery admissions committees, and is faced with the perilous decision of which offer to accept. (If one has either one or zero offers, presumably the decision-making process is somewhat easier.) We will not, at the moment, be addressing whether you should be going to graduate school in the first place, or how to succeed once you get there. [Update: see also How to Be a Good Graduate Student.]
This is a much more difficult task than the first installment. Not that it’s more difficult to decide where to go than to get into grad school in the first place; just that it’s much more difficult to give sensible advice about how to do it. When it comes to getting into grad schools, everyone agrees on the basic notions: good grades, test scores, letters, research experience. Choosing where to go, in contrast, is a highly personal decision, and what works for one person might be utterly irrelevant to someone else. Rather than being overly prescriptive, then, I thought it might be useful just to chat about some of the issues that come up. Ultimately, you’ll have to decide for yourself how to weigh the various factors.
- Why do you want to go to grad school in the first place? Sure, maybe you should have already given some thought to this question — but now is the time to get serious. Is your goal to become a professor or other professional researcher (which is typically assumed)? Or is it just to get a Ph.D., and then see what happens? Or is it simply to learn some science?
As a general principle, the purpose of grad school is very different from that of your undergraduate college education. At least in the U.S., college serves multiple purposes: training in some concentration, to be sure, but also a broadly-based liberal education, as well as more general exposure to critical thinking, and crucially important social and personal aspects. Grad school is much more focused: it serves to train you how to be a working research scientist (or whatever, although I’ll be speaking as if it is science you’ll be studying, as that’s what I know best). In college it’s good to be a broad person and cast your net widely in the oceans of learning and experience. In grad school, however, there is a lot to be said for focusing as much as you can on the specific discipline in which you are specializing. Not that you should stop having broad interests, but it might make sense to sacrifice some of them temporarily to the goal of becoming an expert researcher.
The reason for this is that, like it or not, you are entering a competition. Not necessarily grad school itself (where grading and suchlike are notoriously relaxed, although there may be competition for advisors and fellowships and such), but the ultimate job market. Most people who go to grad school want to get jobs as scientists, probably in academia. There are far fewer such jobs than there are grad students, so most people who get a Ph.D. will ultimately not succeed in becoming professors. And the other people who want those jobs are also very smart and dedicated. So, if you are serious about choosing this as your life’s path, it makes sense to really devote yourself to your craft during your grad school years, and give it your best shot. I personally think that the rigorous training provided by a Ph.D. is extremely useful and rewarding even if you don’t become a professor, but you should certainly enter the fray with open eyes.
If becoming a professor is what you want to do, you should choose your school accordingly. At the same time, I’m a firm believer that your life doesn’t completely end just because you’re in grad school, nor that the process itself should be unpleasant. It should be extremely challenging, taking you to the limits of what you are capable of doing — but the days you spend in school are also days that you are alive, and you shouldn’t completely shut yourself away. That’s the difficult balance to strike. (Told you this wouldn’t be very helpful.)
- How prestigious is the school and the department? Prestige is something that is much more relevant (to the extent is is relevant at all) to your undergraduate school than your grad school. Not that it’s completely irrelevant, but the prestige of your advisor is more relevant than that of your department, which is much more relevant than that of the university as a whole. Of course, there are tight correlations between these different kinds of prestige, but they are not perfect.
Although we had a debate about this in comments to the previous advice post, I still think that the identity of the school/department from which you get your Ph.D. is essentially irrelevant to ultimately getting hired as a faculty member. This is not some utopian perspective that we live in a perfect meritocracy in which where you come from doesn’t matter; rather, what matters is where you are doing your postdoc(s), not where you went to grad school. Of course, where you do your postdoc might be affected by where you go to grad school! But more important is who your advisor is.
- What kind of advisors are available? So now we get to the nitty-gritty. The single most important influence on your graduate career will be who your advisor is. Sometimes you might know precisely who you will be working with before you actually get to the school; this is more common in chemistry and biology than in physics, where the “lab” you will be associated with is all-important. But in physics, it’s more common to first arrive at the school, and only once you are there will you try to hook up with some advisor. (I know that MIT accepts people into different research groups, but most schools simply accept you into the department as a whole, without any hard and fast rule about what group you will be in, much less which advisor you will have.)
Of course, picking an advisor means picking a specialty. Some people know exactly what they want to do before they arrive; that’s not necessary, but it helps. The point is, get some feeling for the faculty members who might realistically become your advisor. Are they active in research? Do they have personalities you could get along with? Do they have sufficient funding? Are they looking for new students, or over-subscribed? Do they let their students freelance, or guide them closely? Do they actively support their students in their later careers, or simply wish them well? Your Ph.D. advisor will very possibly be writing letters about you for decades to come — choose someone with whom you will be proud to be associated with, and who will take some interest in your well-being.
As far as choosing your field of specialty is concerned, many factors come into play. Of course you should do something in which you are interested. But you also want to get a job, and the job market can be different in different fields. (Most notoriously, it’s somewhat better in experiment than in theory.) The point is, what specialties represent the intersection of “things you think are interesting” and “things that might lead to a rewarding career”? If that intersection is empty, you might want to rethink this entire process.
Keep in mind also that some advisors are harder to get than others. They might simply be more popular, or have less funding, or about to switch fields or go on a three-year sabbatical. Find out! There is no rule that says that, simply because you’ve been accepted to a department, the faculty member of your choice must take you on as a student. All else being equal, it’s nice to maximize the number of faculty that you might possibly wind up with as an advisor. Much can happen along the way to your Ph.D., and it’s good to have options.
- What is the scientific environment like? Grad school is a crucially important time of your life, when you make the transition from being a student to being a researcher. You won’t do it alone. Are the other students in your prospective department and group people who you could learn things from? What about the postdocs? Postdocs, who are experts in their fields but were just recently students like yourself, are often the most valuable sources of insight as you are struggling to learn the ropes. What about other professors in the department — could you imagine dropping into their offices to talk about science, or are they overly intimidating (or, much more likely, never around)? Do people have lunch together, and hang out more generally, or does everyone go their own way? A supportive and useful environment goes a long way to molding you as an effective researcher in your own right.
- What are the departmental requirements? A couple of years ago the University of Chicago held a celebration for the centennial birthday of Enrico Fermi, who was a Chicago faculty member. The department brought back a number of people who were graduate students in the 1950’s when Fermi was there. Put them all in a room fifty years later, and do you know what they talked about? The candidacy exam, that hazing ritual by which a young student proves that they are ready to take on research.
Different departments put up different
hurdlesrequirements between you and your Ph.D. What are the required classes? Are there many breadth requirements? Are the courses interesting, and are the faculty good teachers? Is there a general exam? An experimental requirement? How long does it take to get a Ph.D.? (This last question is likely to vary significantly from advisor to advisor — some advisors like to keep their students as worker bees in their vast empires, while others consider students a burden and want to get rid of them as soon as possible.) - How is life as a student? Probably the single most useful way to learn about different schools is to talk to the students who are already there. Email them, or seek them out during visits. They will usually be willing to give you the inside scoop (and will be much more well-informed and honest than faculty members). Is there competition for the best advisors? What is the departmental atmosphere like? Do you get nice offices? The more students you can talk to, the better — people can have wildly different experiences in exactly the same environment, so it’s good to collect a bunch of data.
“Life as a student” includes life outside the lab. What is like to live in the location of this particular university? Is it a big city or a college town? (And which do you prefer?) What is the cost of living? Are there dorms, or do students generally live in apartments? Do you need a car? Details, details. Are the necessities of grad student life — movies, coffee, pizza — within easy reach?
- How would you be supported? Another crucial issue. At some point you may have had the happy realization that most grad students in the natural sciences don’t actually pay those exorbitant tuition bills — in fact, you typically get paid to be a grad student, either through teaching assistantships, research assistantships, or fellowships (in roughly ascending order of desirability). So, is there enough support to go around? Is the stipend enough to actually live on? What are the chances of getting RA’s or fellowships, so that you don’t have to teach all the time? Getting some teaching experience is extremely valuable and rewarding, and you shouldn’t avoid it entirely. But it’s not the reason you are in grad school. Research is hard, and takes a lot of time — if you have to teach a huge amount, it can slow down your progress towards a thesis.
- What should you do about your significant other? Now we’re getting serious. So you want to go to MIT, but your sweetie has the job of his/her dreams in Seattle. Should you suck it up and accept the offer from UW, or try to make a long-distance relationship work? Or forgo the temptations of romance, since your career is more important and love never lasts anyway?
Look, I can’t help you here. All I can do is sympathize and recognize that these are real issues, not trivia. Like I said, your years in grad school are years of your lives, and shouldn’t be sacrificed utterly to your work. But sometimes a long-term plan involves temporary steps backwards to achieve a better ultimate goal. You have to decide for yourself, keeping in mind that there are no objectively right answers.
That last little motto applies not only to romantic entanglements, but to choosing a grad school more generally. It’s really hard to know ahead of time what place will be right for you. Different people will have very different ideas from mine, and you should listen to all sorts of perspectives (which will hopefully emerge in the comments). Think about it carefully, but don’t be afraid to trust your instincts as well. Your comfort level is important. If, after making your decision, you feel as if a great burden has been lifted and you’re happy inside, you’ve probably done the right thing. Good luck!
I agree that the prestige of one’s grad school may be very important in some research circles, but one has to pick a grad school with which one can imagine spending the better part of 6 years. It is important that the student is happy with the chosen grad school; prestigious doesn’t always mean that the student will be happy and, as “Ponderer of Things” said, it could be a recipe for post-Ph.D. suicide.
There are many wonderful grad programs out there that, though they’re not ranked as highly as Caltech or MIT, are just as hard-core as them. And, no matter what grad school a students decides to attend, grad school is what the student makes of it, no matter the prestige of the school itself.
To Rob (and others);
Yes the job market is (can be) tough. I don’t know physics situations, I’m in Biology. Like Chad, I’ve been on search committees (2 of them), and what I’ve found is that institutional prestige was more relevant at the post-doc level than at the grad school level. As someone who went to a very good R-1 level school for grad school, and a top of the line post doc, I can vouch for the efficacy of this route in my field, but it’s not the only way. As a member of the committee, we looked at 1) Teaching experience, 2) Pubs, 3) Post-doc, 4) Recommendations. Other things played roles as well. As Chad and Sean have said, we didn’t care at all about the grad school. Although the plural of anecdote can never be data, we are certainly piling up the anecdotes.
As Chad said, and I think Sean as well, grad school is a significant portion of your life ( 6 yrs plus in the sciences at most places), so it calls for some serious thought.
A point not touched on by most, and that I mentioned, is the cutthroat atmosphere of grad programs at Stanford, MIT, Harvard, etc. I recall as an aspiring grad student that several of these programs admit students, and then weed out 1/3 of them in competitive ways. This is NOT typical of R-1 level institutions (I think of the Big 10 schools) as a whole. In Microbiology at least, you can have wonderful mentors and institutional environments at large state universities, with research groups publishing in top journals, without the level of animus that may develop at the Ivies.
Of course, everyone who reads this and sees the above will think “Yes, but I’m not going to be in the failure 1/3”. Just like all the children in Lake Wobegon are above average.
In the real world, in the end most people will not care about what degrees you have nor where you went for school, whether undergraduate or graduate school. In practice, the “education” almost everybody will learn (whether they like it or not) is better known as “The School Of Hard Knocks”. If you go into areas like business and/or politics, you’ll learn very quickly what “The School Of Hard Knocks” really means in practice. In other areas such as the life of being a spoiled rich kid or the idle rich, the lessons of “The School Of Hard Knocks” may come a lot slower.
Apparently what counts for most people in the real world is how much money is being made for them. For people who already have a lot of money, what counts for them will be other things such as how much “power” they have. Even in the academic world, people eventually figure out that money and power ends up running everything in the system.
It is human to want to blame other people, places, and things for one’s own shortcomings and failures. The harsh reality is that nobody else will care about your problems and personal issues. Most people will eventually figure out that whining and complaining will get them nowhere, for the most part. In the real world, people will be judged by their actions. Talk is cheap.
lambda T:
With regards to the self-made physicist route, let’s not forget that Albert Einstein earned a Ph.D. from a reputable institution while becoming a patent clerk. There are few examples of physicists making notable contributions without at least earning a Ph.D. (Dyson is a famous exception), and even fewer examples of them without earning a Ph.D. or working in an academic research environment (I can’t think of any off the top of my head). I’m sorry, I have to agree that forgoing an advanced degree and going into academic seclusion without regular contact with one’s peers is a route to crankdom.
Another interesting anecdote is from the an unnamed FFRDC on the East Coast. Watching the careers and hires of PhD-level people, what was notable was that there was little or no correlation between top people and school of origin. What *was* well known around the water cooler, howevver, was a ‘competitiveness’ factor in the initial salary offer- it was pretty clear that new hires with a better school-of-origin got significantly better offers.
On a separate note, there is also very little correlation between ‘top-school’ness, and rigor of the first 1-2 years of grad school. Caltech requires (at minimum) 6 quarter-length courses, that can be taken P/F, and 2 written qualifying exams at the end of the first year that, while difficult, have a very high pass rate (and you can take them up to three times.) Princeton, frex, is insane, and I’m glad I didn’t have to deal with a bar set that high. An odd example I’ve seen is UC Irvine- they have a quite draconian and extensive qual policy, more so than several top-tier schools.
while I agree that students can be equally successful or unsuccessful regardless of school prestige, and maybe in idealistic world we all want people to be judged based on the work they did, rather than prestige of their schools or advisors, the reality is different.
If someone I knew well personally came to me asking if they should pick a top place, say, Berkeley, or Podunk State, I would have to hear some really compelling evidence in order to recommend Podunk State.
Yes, you could thrive in Podunk, but then the same person could thrive at Berkeley too. Grad School is tough no matter what – and chances of having bad advisor are about the same at any school, and couldn’t be predicted so far ahead.
Yes, there are many other careers in physics that are still possible with low-ranked PhD or no PhD at all, but why limit yourself so early, especially if there are other options that may lead to broader choice of employment?
The question of whether to go into Physics PhD at all is a good one – with current overproduction of PhDs and oversaturation of job market, perhaps degrees in engineering or business are better option. However, if you decide to roll the dice and go for physics PhD, my advice is to go for the well-respected school, rather than the school nobody heard of, and thus keep your options wide open.
A classic article by David Goodstein that everyone should read, especially when thinking of a career in science (particularly physics). It’s a little cynical, and makes assumptions that might piss some people off…
link.
Off-topic, and unsolicited advice – the responsible member of the group blog sepiamutiny.com was not responsible, and forgot to pay the domain name registration fees on time. Some cyber-squatter has taken the name and wants a exorbitant fee to give the name back.
I’d hate to see this happen to cosmicvariance.com, so please please please be careful!
Why do interesting comment threads always crop up when I’m really busy at work?
As I said, I can only speak to the searches I’ve been involved in. I’m a little surprised that anybody went to the trouble of tracking down the PhD institutions of my colleagues and I, but that list was fairly accurate as far as it goes. Two of the visitors I was involved in hiring have since left (getting tenure-track jobs elsewhere), and for the life of me, I can’t remember where one of them got his Ph.D.– the fact that I can’t think of it tells you everything you need to know about how important I think that is.
I would also agree with Paul Orwin’s comment that academia is much broader than some people in this thread are making out. Defining “faculty job” as “faculty job at a top-ranked research university” is about as accurate as subdividing physics into “string theory” and “stamp collecting,” and every bit as insulting to those of us who have deliberately chosen a different path.
One distinction that was mentioned and deserves repeating is that you are often only as good as your last job/institution. So those that say the grad school doesn’t matter, the post-doc institution does are correct to a large extent. BUT — the great post doc often is dependent upon the top-tier grad school. Which often depends upon the undergrad…. No one is saying that the choice of grad school should depend ONLY upon “prestige” — but that it is an important factor in the future, along with many othr things (like finding humane advisors and opportunity for development).
p.s. I can attest to the draconian UC Irvine qual policy.
This isn’t a given — each student is different. Some will thrive on cutthroat competition, some will flourish only in a more supportive environment. I maintain that the former students are not inherently more deserving than the latter, nor better at physics, nor even necessarily more likely to produce worthy research. (Let’s remember that research comes in all flavors too, and what’s flashy and sexy now may not hold up five or ten years down the line.) Sure, some students will do well anywhere, and in those cases I agree: if you can handle Berkeley, you might as well go there. But in most cases, I think more of an effort is warranted to make a good match between student and program.
One aspect of choosing a graduate school that has not been mentioned is extremely important for female physicists. At some institutions, the climate for women is atrocious (google “louts in the lab” for a 3 year old example), and at some it is very supportive. As a member of the Committee on the Status of Women in Physics, I set up (with APS assistance) a website in which institutions can discuss the climate for women in the graduate programs. The site is at “http://cswp.catlla.com/results.php”. With only two emails to department chairs, we got over 115 institutions to respond. Some of you may find it useful.
Ambitwistor:
Good point; the cases in which a physicist makes a significant contribution ARE quite rare and I agree that one shouldn’t forego an advanced degree and go into seclusion. Our knowledge of physics has become much more advanced than in “the good ‘ol days”, so I also feel that physicists need more education (ie: a Ph.D.) in order to make any significant contributions to the physics community.
Marc Sher:
You bring up a VERY important point for all female physicists out there (myself included)!!! As much as there is a movement to make academic climates more welcoming to women, there are still many places out there that are not woman-friendly and it would only add to the stress and challenge of grad school.
I got to meet Dr. Katherine Gebbie (the director of the physics laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology) this past summer and she is an amazing person. She was the only woman in her graduate program at MIT and I believe that she was one of the first women to receive her Ph.D. from MIT (but don’t quote me on that…I can’t recall…). It was quite difficult for her to break into the realm of physics graduate school, since it is historically male-dominated. And now, she’s the director of a lab in a huge research facility.
The website that you gave is a wonderful resource and I encourage anyone, male or female, to take a look.
the cut-throat climate at top schools is very hard to define properly. First, it really depends on the group you are working on. Perhaps the advisor is more likely to be a jerk in top institution where stakes are high, or maybe it’s just another stereotype. Very often funding is tighter at second tier and lower, so stress on advisor to produce results may be even higher than in top places. Of course top places often don’t give out tenure, while it’s more or less done deal at tier 2 places (provided you do good science). So perhaps that puts some stress on people.
In my experience however, the stress is more often than not is self-imposed. In other words, your advisor may not care if you are in the lab on Sunday, but students themselves think that this is neccessary for getting the results they want. Students at top places tend to be over-achievers, to the point of being overly ambitious, almost OCD-like. This is where a lot of impression of cut-throatness comes from, in my opinion.
I wonder if someone could comment on what qualities make the department “female friendly” or “unfriendly”. My feelings is that once you join a research group, the friendliness or lack thereof is a function of the group members and advisor.
also – ditto on qualifiers. Some places have tough qualifiers – like MIT, Berkeley (where I hear some students are expected to be weeded out). But there are other top places where qualifiers are almost not an issue. At Harvard for example, there’s no written qualifier – just a rather informal oral presentation on topic of your choosing. Everyone accepted into PhD program is expected to graduate – at least that’s what I told the unwritten policy of the department is.
Chad – your comparison of string theory/stamp collecting to faculty job at top tier university vs. say liberal arts college is not very good one.
Not all universities are made the same, and in our PC craziness we shouldn’t forget it.
Top universities offer much more than just a letterhead on resume – it’s easier
to get top notch students and postdocs, easier to get funding, establish collaborations.
If you are experimentalist, you will get access to top shared facilities
and better equipment and lab space. Theorists get to interact with other top theorists and attend colloquims.
A lot of these “perks” are not available at lower ranked universities, and it gets increasingly
more difficult to do top, cutting edge science as you go down the list.
Once you get low enough, the emphasis shifts away from research and towards teaching.
Nothing wrong with that, but opportunity to develop a solid research program are getting rather slim.
Ivy Poison,
No kidding. The point of Chad’s statement (and mine, though not as succinctly) is that there are advantages and disadvantages to both environments.
I will use myself as an example. I teach at an MS granting institution, that no one would say is in the top tier of research schools (probably not even in the second or third tier). The school is undoubtedly teaching oriented, and I teach much more than my peers at research schools (however, I teach less than my peers at some undergraduate teaching colleges).
So, as you say, the disadvantages are 1) no Ph.D. students, 2) uncompetitive admissions (so I have to teach to many unqualified as well as many great students) 3) poor funding internally as well as a tough climate for extramural funding. Crappy pay, too, but that’s pretty true for all of us.
However, there are advantages too.
1) I have a lot of freedom to pursue my own research agenda; if I was at a top tier school, I’d be more constrained in what sorts of research activities to pursue, by my ability to get large scale funding. However, it is possible to get some pretty nice funding, and be able to pursue aggressive research at many different types of schools. You can look me up in the NIH CRISP database for an example of this.
2) the faculty; at many top-level schools, the faculty are either doing their own thing, or competing against one another for funding and seniority; I work with a great group of men and women who are interested in science and science education for it’s own sake. We have a good collegial atmosphere and cooperative community attitude. This is not a result of the institution type, but it is a point in favor of this particular department at this school. Given that I may well spend 20-40 years working here, I should probably like the people I work with.
3) the students. This one will surprise you, but I promise it is not an April Fool’s joke! There are naturally some awful students at our school. Anyone with a high school diploma in California is virtually assured an undergraduate spot. However, there are some terrifically smart kids who come here for other reasons. For example, perhaps their parents don’t believe in college, so they were resistant to the idea, and are only allowing them to go if it is geographically close. Or perhaps they support their family by working at the family business, or by financially supporting spouses/children/parents while going to school at the same time. Or maybe they spent twenty years as firefighters and now want to go back to school for a second career. Or maybe, they are poor. Etc, etc, etc. For various reasons, students who maybe could have gotten into a school in the Ivy league end up elsewhere. When we are fortunate enough to get them, we can 1) prepare them for a bright future at a great graduate or professional school, 2) extract some excellent research from them, and 3) lift someone up who might not have gotten it otherwise.
Those kids at Caltech, Harvard, MIT, etc are going to do great with or without my help and advice. These kids don’t know how capable they are. Last year, we had a student from the CSUSB master’s program go to Harvard, another to Oregon State, and we had undergrads go to Yale and Vanderbilt, all entering Biology Ph.D. programs.
There’s more to life than publishing journal articles. (although doing great science is cool too)
Hi,
I want to recommend the following book
My Life as a Quant : Reflections on Physics and Finance , by Emanuel Derman.
It is the best description of life as a graduate student and post doc that I know. This
is a biography of a guy who does not end up becoming a professor, making it a far less biased description of life as a graduate student than what one finds in
biographies of famous physicists
I would drop in to add — when you get to grad school, you will probably at some point get depressed. Don’t be afraid to seek help from the school’s counselors; seek it early. More than 75% of the students I was in grad school with did the same.
Does anyone know how UCLA, in general, ranks in physics? Also, what field of physics is UCLA strong at?
Thanks.
Here are some things that can help a place friendly for women in science. Note that not all are required for friendliness, that these tend to be tangible characteristics and not intangibles like colleagues’ attitudes and behaviors toward women, and that there are certainly others I haven’t listed. Also, when I use the term “critical mass,” I’m not talking about a specific number, but only “enough so that women aren’t unusual or rare, and don’t stand out simply by virtue of being female” at a particular rank. Oh, and you may also notice that many of these things also make a place friendly for men. What a coincidence!
For undergraduates:
a critical mass of women in their major courses
female professors who teach courses and advise students
opportunities for interaction with female grad students, postdocs, professors, and visitors
support from the department such as advising, a student lounge, peer study groups, and information or workshops on things like research internships, grad school, and potential career paths
clearly defined campus policies regarding discrimination and sexual harassment, including a well-publicized office where occurrences can be anonymously reported
active mentoring by older students, grad students, postdocs, and/or faculty
a campus group focusing on issues related to women in science
For grad students and postdocs:
a critical mass of women among their peers
female professors who teach courses and advise students
clearly defined guidelines for success in the graduate program, including course grades, prelim/qual exams, and expectations for the dissertation/thesis
departmental willingness to help make arrangements for a trailing spouse or partner
institutional policies for maternity/family leave
affordable campus housing and child care
reasonable salaries and family health insurance for teaching and research assistants and postdocs
clearly defined campus policies regarding discrimination and sexual harassment, including a well-publicized office where occurrences can be anonymously reported
colleagues and admissions committees who are aware of the issues surrounding women’s representation in the sciences and behave accordingly
access to current information regarding the academic job market and non-academic career paths
active mentoring by older students, postdocs, and/or faculty
a campus group focusing on issues related to women in science
For faculty members:
a critical mass of women in their department and among their administrators
clearly defined guidelines for promotion and tenure
clearly defined salary structures
departmental willingness to help make arrangements for a trailing spouse or partner (including spousal-hire or position-sharing policies)
institutional policies for maternity/family leave, part-time work, and temporary stopping or slowing of the tenure clock
home-buying assistance and affordable child care
clearly defined campus policies regarding discrimination and sexual harassment, including a well-publicized office where occurrences can be anonymously reported
colleagues and hiring committees who are aware of the issues surrounding women’s representation in the sciences and behave accordingly
departmental and university officials who conduct periodic assessments of the status and satisfaction of women within their ranks, taking into account salaries, progress toward tenure, lab space, students, and other forms of official support or reward
active mentoring by older colleagues
a university committee or office focusing on issues related to women in science
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Supernova – thanks.
I would like to add that a lot if not most of the things on that list is something that not only makes sense but also that would benefit male scientists as well! Health insurance, good pay, housing, affordable child care. I think we should start ranking departments in terms of human-friendliness! 🙂
I also think that male scientists could benefit from having critical mass of female faculty and students! (As someone who had 73 male and 4 female classmates in narrowly specialized physics/math/engineering college, trust me on this one!).
One thing that I wish departments did more often is to keep an updated registry of their PhD alumni. This would tell a lot of prospective students about how successful (or unsuccessful) former students from the department or particular advisor are, or how many years it took them to complete their PhD’s for example. There’s a lot of wishful thinking that needs to be disillusioned early, even if some dreams (like graduating in 5 years) need to be broken.
Other things – like getting critical mass of faculty, is something that will happen over time, but cannot unfortunately occur overnight. Even if departments stop hiring men altogether, it would take most departments several decades to reach equal ratio. I hope most people realize this simple math…
Ponderer — yes, I commented on the “human-friendly” thing at the top of the post…
And I never claimed that “critical mass” meant a 1:1 ratio. Again, as I noted in my last post, it just means enough women so that being a woman doesn’t seem so strange. 🙂
Oh, and I like your idea of keeping track of the graduates. This could help with educating students about potential career paths other than the traditional academic route.