Choosing the Right Grad School

So, you've gotten this far and still want to get a PhD. Kudos to you and may your suffering not be too intense.

Last Updated: November 6, 2024

Choosing the Right Grad School

Why are YOU Going to Graduate School?

Start by taking some serious time and reflect on why you want to get your PhD. Yes, more school is fun. But you’re basically going to spend 5-8 years being paid peanuts to become the world’s expert on a niche topic. At the end, you’ll get a lollypop and a piece of paper. And if you’re lucky, you’ll get an academic job that will force you to move somewhere new and develop entirely new skills while racing a punishing clock and still being paid poorly. It’s really rather masochistic.

Personally, I started my first PhD program because I had finished a computer science degree (where I could easily get a job) but I had just started to get interested in how social worlds work. Having taken no social science classes in undergrad, I decided to pursue graduate school with the thinking that I could always drop out and work as a code monkey. And I did drop out of my first PhD program but I spent my time unemployed continuing to conduct research and write research papers. I woke up every morning with new research questions. And so my ugrad advisor scolded me and told me to finish my bloody PhD; he then introduced me to my PhD advisor.

Your story will be unique to you. But no matter what, spend some serious time knowing WHY you are pursuing your PhD in order to help determine WHAT you want to study.

What Research Questions Animate you?

One assignment I give to my students (and to myself) is to devote 15 minutes a week to writing a new research question. Unless you’re focused on a specific research project right now, do it every week. Look to find the patterns in the questions you’re asking. What really gets you excited? What theories and methods do you need to answer that RQ?

One mistake that potential graduate students make is that they focus too much on the subject of their research. Unless you timed it perfectly, you’re not going to do a PhD focused on understanding the latest social media trend. Instead, you should be asking higher order questions that are more timeless. How do sociotechnical innovations reinforce or disrupt structural inequities? That latest social media trend can be your site of interrogating that question. But you want to find in yourself the bigger trends that matter to you. The ones that do not require chasing trends. If you want to chase trends, marketing or management consulting might be more your jam.

It's ALL about your Advisor and Committee!!

Choosing where to get your PhD is not the same as choosing where to get your undergrad (or even your master’s!). The reputation of the school matters and the awesome-ness of your peers matters, but the MOST significant factor in your sanity and success is your relationship with your advisor and other committee members. I cannot say this loudly enough. In grad school, you’re going to be in a fraught power-laden relationship with an eccentric academic over an extended period of time. No matter how awesome that person is, no matter how cool their ideas are, if you and your advisor don’t click, watch out. (And may I strongly encourage pre-emptive therapy?)

Do NOT choose a program based solely on it being “the best.” What’s best in rankings may not be best for you and the last thing you want is to come out of grad school depressed, miserable, and bitter (although many scholars do). You need to find a place that will allow you to explore the questions you’re interested in in a way that works best for you. Success is about taking the available resources and finding the way to make a meaningful intervention while staying sane. Success is about finding the right committee to help get you through.

Do NOT choose a program based solely on ONE potential advisor. At the very least, you should be comfortable with at least two of the faculty as potential advisors because if the first one doesn’t work out, you’re going to need a backup. Three is much more ideal. You also need to know that you could build a committee. Committees range depending on the school, but assume you will need 4 people to sit on your committee. Does that department/school have at least four people that you could work with?

Personal note: My beloved PhD advisor died while I was working on my PhD. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. Two of my committee members also took different positions before I graduated. I was so so so so lucky that there were others in the department who supported me or I would have been in serious trouble.

Real Talk about Relationship Work

Academics are not known for their management skills. And even social science and humanities types who pride themselves on their ability to observe others and deconstruct the craziest texts may not actually be equipped to engage in productive communication when it comes to negotiating power in their own lives. Thus, you should take it as a given that all academics are at some level dysfunctional. This does not mean that they’re unlovable. Just be prepared for it. And be prepared for working with someone who is not prepared to ever articulate what they need or want from you while they simultaneously need it and want it.

There’s huge variety in professor types. Some professors are micromanagers and are going to want to know everything you’re doing at every moment in time. Others are going to ignore your emails, sweep in every 6 months, and want to see what you’ve done. There are advisors who are good at mentoring you through the thinking to choose your project and there are others who expect you to come to them with fully formed ideas. There are those who are going to want you to follow every rule in the book and make conservative steps; there are also those who are hoping you will find a new way around every wall out there. There are professors who are trying to build their dominion and you will be tasked to do work on their projects; others are curious to see which crazy direction you’ll take. For each possible mentor and student, there are styles that work and styles that don’t. The key is to find compatibility. And that’s damn hard given that you can’t really do a trial run so easily. (Although it’s totally OK to drop out of a PhD program and start anew. I did.)

The problem with choosing an advisor is that it’s basically a blind date. On paper, the compatibility seems obvious. But reality is often much more complex. And that relationship is going to take serious work. The problem is that your advisor is going to be far less committed to working at the relationship than you as a student are going to want them to be. So there’s going to be a lot of accommodation on your part. Again, not always a bad thing. Lots to learn, lots to learn. But you have to really reflect on your own needs and learn to articulate them and make certain that you and your advisor can see eye-to-eye on how to best proceed. If you expect them to understand you and love you unconditionally, you will fail. You seriously will need to do work. And I don’t just mean academic work. PhDs require a shitload of self-reflection, something that no wannabe grad student ever imagines as part of the process.

How to Identify a Potential Advisor

When you’re looking for a potential advisor, start with some basics. Is that advisor engaged in work that interests you? That’s not the same question as: does that advisor work on the topic that you want to work on. Students often think that they need to find an advisor who shares their interest in the same TOPIC as they do. Topic is the least important factor in choosing an advisor, at least in the social sciences. What you really need in terms of scholarly compatibility is METHOD and THEORY. You need someone who can help you hone your methodological skills and can help you make sense of a theoretical frame in which to ground your work. And you need an advisor who gets you on at least one of those levels. If someone shares your topic but not your method or theory, it’s gonna be disastrous. So choose people based on method and theory, assess compatibility based on method and theory, choose classes based on method and theory.

Next, try to get some sense of signal of what that professor needs and is looking for. If that professor is pre-tenure, they’re going to need to be prioritizing writing papers over mentoring you. Can you imagine writing papers with them and helping support their research agenda more generally? Or do you want to do your own thing first and foremost? If you’re in the latter camp, you probably want someone that is at least tenured, if not a full professor. Senior academics are more likely to be interested in following the passions of their students (although there are plenty of empire builders out there).

If you are planning on taking the academic route, your advisor’s (and committee’s) letters of recommendation will matter significantly to your future career. Are they well positioned to help grease the path for you? This is where departments start to matter. If you get a PhD in an iSchool, you will always be seen as a weirdo to sociologists and anthropologists. (I’ve been told that my letters can hurt students applying to more traditional programs, sadly.) You will need to build relationships throughout your PhD, but these key relationships are indeed the most important. And it also affects your choice in what department you want to be in.

Academia is the Making of Status

Mimi Ito – my advisor after Peter Lyman lost his battle with cancer – used to always tell me that “academia is the making of status.” It was like a mantra that she pounded in my head, and for good reason. As a student, you’re used to seeing academia as a place where you learn. But when you embark on a PhD route, you’re getting closer to the machine.

The university machine has many component pieces to it, but a lot of them boil down to the financial arrangements that can keep the machine running. Student tuition is rarely enough to keep the machine alive. All schools seek to get donations, ideally from alums. Some schools fill in the gaps through sports (which often pleases alums). Many elite schools fill in somes gaps through grants, patents, and other intellectual property arrangements.

Professors are simply pawns in this equation. The more successful they are, the more they can get grants or build IP portfolios. High status professors can attract donors.

Professors want PhD students for a bunch of different reasons. They relish the intellectual interactions. They need extra labor for grants. Departments with PhD programs are viewed as higher status and attract more interesting faculty as peers. There are empire builders and there are those who love having progeny regardless of how much they look like their advisors. And departments need PhD students to teach or at least TA.

If you pursue your PhD, you are not simply getting an education. You are being enrolled into the making of status like a scallop. Be aware of these arrangements and participate strategically. Every sector has its own “game” – and success is all about learning to play that particular game. If you haven’t read Sharon Traweek’s “Beamtimes and Lifetimes,” I strongly recommend that you do (especially if you are not going into high end particle physics). You have to “learn” a world, its “games,” and its logics. If you expect academia to not have games, you will be sorely disappointed. If you expect academia to allow you to escape capitalism, you’re in for a rude awakening. There is no such thing as meritocracy.

I should probably note that academia’s game has been changing as of late. While neoliberalism has taken hold in many sectors, it is flourishing in academia. I was socialized into an academic world that was all about a Maussian logic of social exchange that centered relationships with “volunteering”/”service” functioning at the center of academic capital. Our “crisis in expertise” is challenging the academic status game, which is putting academia in a precarious financial position. Given the financial declines, younger scholars are reasonably seeking compensation for their “unpaid labor” (aka service) because the relationship-centered economy is no longer serving people well. I suspect we’ll see the academic game change significantly in my lifetime.

Be Clear about "Success" for YOU

Be clear about what success will look like at the end of your PhD. Do you want to become a professor? (?Why?) If so, you need to make very different strategic choices than if you want to go into industry or government. But please please please don’t go into a PhD program because you feel stuck or are hoping that going back to school will make the future clearer for you. A PhD program won’t offer that and it’s a classic path towards bitterness.

Choosing a program with an awesome stipend certainly makes economic sense. But you should also know that success in academia is about learning how to identify, negotiate, and leverage resources. A professorship might seem like a “hard money” job, but it also involves a hamster wheel of fundraising. So you might be better off trying to get a NSF grant and then going to a place with a lower stipend.

Sanity and academia are not exactly known to go together. But success in this journey is about navigating the crazy and staying sane in the process. So the more you know yourself and know what you want, the better poised you will be to succeed in academia. And, as with anything, it’s not always just about you. Support those around you, build academic relationships, and nurture community. Both you and those around you will benefit – and we will all be better off in the long run for that.

Next Steps...

So, you’ve gotten this far and still want to get a PhD. Kudos to you and may your suffering not be too intense. So here are some concrete next steps you can take:

Read, read, read! Start reading the literature that inspires you. Keep a list of the authors. See who they cite and follow the bibliography trail to find more interesting people. Use Google Scholar to see who cites them and go the other direction too. Build a list of scholars who you think are cool and interesting and relevant to your interests.
Do a self-assessment. Why are you going to grad school? What do you want in an advisor? What kind of people do you work best with? What kind of project do you want to work on? What theories and methods are driving you? Sit down and be honest with yourself and think about who you are and what you need to succeed.
Research faculty. Take your list of interesting (alive) faculty and find out where they’re located. Read their bios, read their other papers, find out if you think they think like you. Then look at their colleagues and do the same. Does the work of these faculty make you think in particularly interesting ways? Now look at the courses offered. Do the faculty who inspire you teach classes that look intriguing? Find out as much as you can about the attitudes of these faculty. Whittle down your list.
Talk to faculty you know. Take your list of potential faculty to someone you know in the academic field in which you’re applying – your undergrad professor (or TA), a friend in the field, someone. Ask for their opinion. They’ll know a lot about some of these people and nothing about others. Try to get a sense of how different faculty tick and who you might gel with well. There’s always a lot of gossip. Get to know it.
Go to scholarly meetings. Start attending conferences before you go to grad school. Get a sense for the conversations happening at scholarly meetings. Does it inspire you? Get over your fear of humans and start meeting people. Talk to students, talk to faculty. Ask questions. Here is where you can really learn about the flavor of different departments in your field. Here is where you can really learn the back-stories of faculty and their students and the dynamics in different departments. This is an expensive venture but hands-down the best way to really get a sense of the departments. It may not seem worth the time or money, but you’re going to enter into a program for 4-7 years and getting a sense for the dynamics ahead of time is a whole lot cheaper than 40 years of post-grad-school therapy.
Network with current PhD students. Track down PhD students who do work in areas that you’re excited about and schools you want to attend. Conferences are great for this, but so too is the internet. Don’t overwhelm current PhD students – they’re also busy. But see if you can build 3-4 meaningful connections with current PhD students who can be a sounding board for you. And remember: these will be your colleagues for the rest of your life!
Reach out to faculty, sensitively. Carefully and cautiously reach out to students and faculty about your interests. By this point, you should have a damn fine sense of what these people research so make sure your emails are polite and respectful and knowledgeable. (Oh, and btw, use the proper salutation… and know the gender of who you’re talking to.) Begin with a respectful note that you acknowledge that they may be too busy to respond, but in the off chance that they prefer to communicate with applicants early in the process, you’re reaching out. Tell them why you want to potentially work with them (flattery is key here.. as is knowing your stuff) and provide some brief intro about you and your work and directions. This entire thing should be VERY brief (no one wants a 1000 word email). And expect no response. But, at the same time, if they’re the kind of professor who wants to respond, you’ve offered an opening.
Apply with specific people in mind. When you’re applying to a school, target specific people, at least indirectly. Make it clear that you understand what that department does well and why you want to be there in particular. Show that you know the field, know the department’s expertise, and aren’t just applying because everyone applies. And show that you are interested in the department because of MULTIPLE people, not just the one person you most want to work with.
Go to any “weekends” where you’ve been accepted. Many schools have programs for people who’ve been accepted to come and meet the faculty and fellow students. These are quite useful. Try to get current students to give you real talk. Keep your self-assessment in mind and start talking to faculty. Do you gel? Do you think people will support your kind of project? I’ve known many people who thought they wanted to go to a program until that weekend visit.

Applying to PhD programs takes a different kind of work than applying to ugrad or master’s programs. It’s not about the school or the classes or the students. It’s really about the faculty, the community, the intellectual culture. You want to find the right place in which you will thrive, the right mentors who will support you in your endeavors. And this ain’t easy.

Once you’re in a PhD program, make sure that you create a channel of open communication between you and your advisor (and the faculty more generally). Make it clear what you need and want and find out from that person how they work best. Find a way to communicate BEFORE there’s a communication breakdown. Make sure you’re on the same page. And keep that conversation channel flowing over time.

One other thing… don’t feel badly if you need to drop out of your first PhD program. Sometimes it doesn’t work out. There are other programs. But make sure you’re networking in the field starting the first day of your first grad program. Know the people, know the different departments, be attentive to a world beyond your grad school. This will all help you succeed.

Anyhow, hopefully this helps. Grad school can be quite fun and hugely intellectually beneficial. But it’s also exhausting and having the right fit really really matters. Finding that is hard, as is the case in finding any other partner, lover, collaborator. You’ve got to work at it. And you can’t just take it for granted. Good luck!

Comments on a 2009 version of this essay and related advice can be viewed at this blog post. Older comics from PhD Comics are great for a good laugh about academia. And Eszter Hargittai’s Ph.Do column is also great for some sound advice on being a PhD student.