Applicant Credentials

Yesterday, I discovered yet another grad school application forum, and I've been looking through the posts for anything relevant to my situation. (This has distracted me from other things I planned to do today, but oh well.)

One thing I have come away with from looking at these various discussions over the past 2 years is that applicant credentials are more impressive today than when I graduated from college, and was first contemplating grad school, in 1996. (We've already seen evidence that successful business PhD applicants today have higher GMAT scores than those of only a couple years ago.)

Overall, GPA's of 3.5 are discussed as though they are merely OK but not very good. In the humanities, GPA of 3.8 or higher is considered solid. But this is consistent with what we've already heard about grade inflation from various sources, including the TAMU data that showed significant grade inflation for humanities subjects as well as moderate inflation among the social sciences. So it's unclear whether today's grad school applicants have "better" grades when adjusting for this inflation problem.

In the research sciences (including fields such as biology, chemistry, psychology, and sociology), there is an increasing expectation that applicants will already have extensive research experience. For example, psychology students with "merely" a couple of years experience working in a professor's lab are considered borderline for application. Science students are counseled to do a couple years post-bach lab work to be competitive for PhD programs, as are clinical psychology hopefuls. Publications by undergrads are much more common than they were in 1996; while some of these are in undergraduate journals or student conferences, others are in "real" journals.

Comparing current advice to psychology applicants (such as these forums but also on university web pages) to that from the 1990's and early 2000's shows a much greater emphasis on the amount and quality of research experience. It used to be that letters of recommendation noting a student's "aptitude" for research was sufficient, but today, those letters need to demonstrate that the student has already undertaken research and excelled at it.

Successful economics grad applicants are, to a greater extent than ever, those with the highest level of math ability and background (though this is a valid criterion, given that the discipline has been moving in a consistently mathier direction, perhaps for lack of other ideas, I cannot help but snarkily observe).

And while it isn't true, it seems that every serious grad school hopeful and their dog (or cat or both) has done at least one undergraduate thesis.

I can't speak to what applicants to math PhD programs used to look like, but I've been sort of blown away by how precocious many of today's students are. Many people seem to be on extremely accelerated tracks. One student made me laugh when she said she took Calc 2 as a sophomore...in high school. I was amazed to read threads on topics such as "Is it OK that I continue taking undergrad math courses through my sophomore year and only start graduate classes as a junior? I know this puts me behind, but I think I would benefit from it" in which nobody accuses the original poster of being a troll - rather, they discuss this as though it's a serious issue. Who are these people? Where do they come from? Are they the forerunners of Uber-Geek Wesley Crusher?

Obviously, the people who post to these sites are not representative of all applicants. I'm sure these forums attract a lot of highly qualified people, some of whom may post questions about their stats as a form of bragging or because they are afraid that they will not reach the goal they've had since they were 6 of getting into the #1 PhD program in their field. The more clueless applicants may not even be on top of things enough to be reading the boards, let alone posting on them. Also, foreign students seem over-represented on some forums (as many people have observed), and the common wisdom I have heard is that they tend to have slightly better stats on paper (e.g. GRE scores) than American students (but may have weaker statements, recommendations, and other "soft" stuff) - I have no idea whether this is accurate or not.

But it sort of makes sense that today's PhD applicants (or at least, the top X% of today's applicants, who are the serious contenders) would have more impressive qualifications than those of years past. Just as parents appear to start grooming their children for successful undergraduate acceptance to Harvard at the age of 4 with placement in a "good" pre-school and keep up the focus on impressive achievement through high school, there's been an arms race in graduate admissions as well. More people are applying for the same number of (or in some cases, like business PhD, fewer) slots and more is known about what are the characteristics of a successful applicant in a given field. Who knows - maybe 10 years from now, humanities students will be expected to speak 6 languages prior to their acceptance to PhD programs.

I have heard (personally) and read many times current grad students or professors comment that they believe they themselves (or various of their colleagues, usually left un-named) would have a much harder time being competitive against today's applicants. I know I wouldn't particularly like to move my 1996 self up to fight for a spot in a social psychology PhD program today (2nd only to clinical in competitiveness among psych programs).

Of course, many of us oldsters would probably have the honors thesis, the publications, the grades, etc., if we were actually part of today's cohort because those things would be expected and encouraged by our undergrad advisors; it's not that I think that these young kids are necessarily actually smarter or more talented, but that they have certain kinds of experiences at an earlier point and may be better prepared for grad school.

Sadly, despite this superior preparation, it doesn't seem to be taking any less time for people to get their PhD, and even at the conference I attended a couple weeks ago, current professors were talking about how the expectations have changed in terms of having publications during one's doctoral program (something that used to be rare in the field of academic marketing) in order to be a serious job applicant.

High school juniors - I hope you are spending this summer working your way through a real analysis textbook if you want to have any chance of ever getting a PhD in a quantitative field.