side-comment but as someone who is defending in 3 weeks and has upcoming TT job inked, i hope this bodes well for how my committee will handle me. i mean not that i'm terribly scared that i'll fail, but one guy does make me a little nervous for how i might get grilled.

i wouldn't say that i'm "chillin" right now tho, lol.

Your committee's job is to get you out the door with some job prospect in hand. Sounds like they did their job. Why wouldn't they sign the paper?

Not saying there won't be a bad cop in your post-defense meeting, though.

Defenses are damn near a rubber stamp, but no one tells you that.

Anecdotal evidence I've heard is that we had like:
[ ] pass
[ ] pass with revisions
[ ] fail

And iirc if you fail, you are pretty much done. Like someone failed someone once, and the grad school called them up like "uhh, you can't really do that. Change it to pass with revisions please."

You still have to revise your thesis if not everyone is happy with it, but this is not really a trial by fire here. It's just a formality. Relax, and have a beer.

And if you're chapters are already published, they're really gonna make you revise? Nah I don't think so.

A word to the wise: in this situation, take your introduction (and, if relevant, conclusion) very seriously. Even if previous members of your lab have defended with 3 published papers and 3-5 page intros, it doesn't mean they don't want you to write an intro that's 10 times as long.

haha, thanks guys. and yeah, what i was thinking is that it could be likely that they have every intention of passing me but will put me through the ringer while doing so. that's what i'm hoping against i met with the guy i'm most afraid of yesterday, and while he was definitely tough, he didn't totally thrash me so i guess that's good.

also, i think our department might be a little different from most in that our chapters don't have to be published at the time of defense. i have a friend from another department who had to wait a long-ass time to defend because she was waiting for reviews from her last paper submission, which sounds awful. i've actually only even submitted one of my chapters and it's still under review... the 2nd should be out the door soon, and the 3rd will have to wait until after i'm done. so... there's plenty of space for my committee to want revisions, but hopefully that type of thing can be geared towards the "for-publication" version of things rather than my actual dissertation...

This depends on the school and the program. In my grad school, about 5% failed. Most were allowed to redo. Where i'm faculty now, 20% are failing. I blame both the students and advisers for not being properly prepared. I've sat on defenses where the adviser had not even read the final draft.

Fair enough, but it's really bad if 1 in 20 are failing, let alone 1 in 5.

And really, no one should make it to the defense if it's not an auto-pass. Your thesis can have enormous mistakes in it, and you should still pass. The defense is more like: are you mature enough to talk about academic work that you've done. If it comes up that something is wrong, or was known previously, or whatever, you just remain academically honest, and you pass, even if this requires massive revisions to your thesis.

yeah 1 in 5 or 1 in 20 failing sounds really bad. in my department, pretty much 99% passes with revisions and 1% passes with no revisions (I've known of one guy to get through with no revisions in the whole time I've been here).

so the game for us really is how polished can you get it pre-defense to minimize your post-defense revisions. one of my friends got through with like 2 hours of revisions, another guy had months (but in part because he slacked-off post-defense). but yeah, no one fails... and i hope not to be the first...

I agree with your opinion, but it's hard to implement when all the power lies with the committees, which have more variance in philosophies than LHE.

How are 20% even getting to the point where they are even able to submit something that can fail? That sounds to me like the professors aren't doing their job concerning preparing students.

As far as advisors and committee members not even reading theses or dissertations, I wouldn't be surprised if someone who flunks out doesn't end up suing.

Possibly, but this is seriously field dependent. There is ~0% chance that anyone but my advisor actually read my whole thesis.

So I just received a somewhat bizarre email from a school I applied to. Has anyone received something like this before?

lol, no, but it's a good sign that you got this, and you should take it seriously, but not too seriously. Be honest. Pretend it's an online dating profile.

It's under 1k words in total, so it shouldn't be too bad.

Question 3 is by far my favorite. I've had open-ended app questions before, but that takes the cake...

I like #1 & 2 way better.

I think a slideshow with pictures and captions would be stellar for 1, and 2 gives you so much opportunity to go off the rails while the 25 word requirement keeps you from hanging yourself.

Make all three about sex, imo.

Those kinds of essay questions are stupid because:

1) Everyone writes (or gets someone else to write) pretty much the same form responses.

2) I/O psychology has shown time and again that they have zero predictive value of success in grad school or professional careers.


That's what i would respond with.

Interview #2 just finished, I was really skeptical about whether or not I'd fit the department but was totally blown away. Really bizarre, but apparently the whole department switched gears in the last ~5 years to exactly the stuff I want to do. Flying out for #3 tomorrow.

gonna be a host for recruiting weekend, what type of questions should i except to be asked?

I just asked that question a few posts up. Check out those responses.

As someone on the interviewee side of things, one important point is getting a sense of the student culture/work-life balance. Most other things you get from the professors etc., but that was one thing I found really only the students could comment on.

Since we only get this brief idea of how the school works, it helps a lot to get an honest and straightforward idea of what day to day life is like at a given school. I think it is easy to forget because you live in it so it seems obvious to you, but for prospectives it can vary a huge amount from school to school.

Edit: on an unrelated note, got my first two offers this week!

Congrats on your offers! I remember getting my first offer was a huge weight off my shoulders.

I guess they just wanted diversity on the panel... because an average day for me is going to class and coming straight home to spend time with my fiancee who works nights, then sleep and do my research and coursework from home in the evenings. My office desk has been empty for over a year. . It probably wouldn't work for a lot of people but I do my best work from home, in the silence of my room. Just have to be disciplined. It's helpful for me because I go on spurts of working/not working so when I'm home I can take breaks to play a video game or something and then bust out long spans of work.

Anyone else do this?

Edit: major congrats on your offers!

Thanks! And while that might seem totally run of the mill for you, there are other advisors/programs where you get the sense that people are expected to be in lab all the time. Every school/lab/advisor has different expectations, and obviously they all think they are in the best interest of the students, so talking to students is the best way to get a more accurate view of how things actually work out (as opposed to the idealistic sales-pitch version you get during the recruitment events).

One example is that every program I've visited likes to talk about how everyone says that they are interdisciplinary, but University of ________ is really interdisciplinary, so you should go there. That is the sort of thing where students can tell you if they are actually interacting with people in other fields regularly or if the idea of interdisciplinary means that professors just trade off putting each others' names on papers because they have lunch together once a month (obviously an extreme exaggeration, but you get the idea).