A few random questions

[Peralta]

So it seems like the average time it takes to complete a PhD is 5 years, but what is the quickest you could complete it if you worked your *** off? Is it humanly possible to complete your PhD in, let's say, 3 years?

 

Also, after the first 2 or 3 years is it necessary to stay on campus or could you do your dissertation from afar if your adviser is willing to work with you?

 

I assume this question might depend on the school, but I'm just curious in general. Does anyone know anyone who has done this?

[Peralta]

Well evidently I should have put "worked your butt off", unless the word butt is censored too...

[Tikal]

I know people who from some less prestigious program and/or who had a master degree done it in 4 years. They may go work in the private sector, or take a visiting professor position while keep publishing in prepare for job market again.

[tm_member]

Not possible to get done in three years. Everyone works their butt off just to get done in five because lots of places will have you still working on field classes well into year three then you have one year to get a JMP written so that they'll let you on the job market which is what takes up most of the fifth year.

 

Is it possible to work from off campus in years four and five? This is impractical. How could you participate in the academic community, do your TA duties, and meet with advisors formally and informally on a regular basis? Fortunately colleges are only in term for 30 weeks per year if you needed to be somewhere else the other 5 months (summer and winter breaks) then that's very doable but you would need to be around during fall and spring terms.

[to2012]

My understanding is that the best students often take 5 or 6 years to complete their Ph.D. while the marginal ones may complete it in four.

[chateauheart]

Why would you want to complete a PhD early anyway?

 

There are people from top programs who have done it in four years or fewer, but they've usually finished a substantial amount of the coursework as undergraduates.

[Humanomics]

Completing a PhD early does not benefit you, even if you do have a solid JMP early. As soon as you have a job, your tenure clock starts -- and you are now teaching and have other professional responsibilities, potentially administrative. Unless you're a prestigious fellow whose patron can buy out your teaching responsibilities or in some other such top-tier position, it is to your benefit to produce as much as possible while funded in graduate school.

 

The only people I've met who are completing dissertations remotely are disgruntled, teaching community college, and probably going no where. Part of getting a job involves creating some momentum around your work, shopping your paper(s) around at conferences, chatting up a network of interested scholars, and so on. It's not a Burger King application with an essay attached that you can email as an attachment.

[applicant12]

Ok if the average is 5yrs, why do some schools only fund you for 4?

[Humanomics]

Because graduate students are an expendable commodity in large part. There are many people who want to be and are capable (at some level) of being graduate students. There are very few slots in graduate programs.

[applicant12]

But the average is 5 though. If you're well on your way to finishing and all of a sudden you're no longer being funded then what's up with that? Just sad day for you?

[chateauheart]

Some schools fund you for four years plus your last year, if you're on the job market.

[Peralta]

Thanks everyone, I was just curious.

[Humanomics]

But the average is 5 though. If you're well on your way to finishing and all of a sudden you're no longer being funded then what's up with that? Just sad day for you?

 

Schools have a variance of cooky situations, so there may be a variety of fellowships to apply for in the fifth year, or you may just be worst case scenario expected to take loans for your (super cheap) tuition and teach to feed yourself. I think that's a suicidal policy, because it cuts people right when they need incentives and encouragement to finish. But then again graduate programs are not altogether known for providing incentives and encouragement to finish.

[Integral]

Can it be done? Yes, you can write three papers in two or three years, staple them with the Dissertator (what, they don't have a Dissertator at your school?), defend, and walk out in short order.

 

It's almost never a good idea, though.

 

--

 

Remember, what is a PhD? It's usually some number of cousework hours + a disseration, which in reality means some number of coursework + three papers that you've convinced faculty are publishable. I see no reason why you couldn't pull it off early, and equally see no reason why you would want to.

[Tikal]

Remember, what is a PhD? It's usually some number of cousework hours + a disseration, which in reality means some number of coursework + three papers that you've convinced faculty are publishable. I see no reason why you couldn't pull it off early, and equally see no reason why you would want to.

 

What about for people who want to be placed into the private sector? If they already attained the skills and the research ability which would lead to a decent job offer, what would be the marginal benefit of one extra year?

What about people who are not research star and who will end up in teaching schools? Some teaching schools even hire ABD(all but dissertation). Teaching is a much more important skill for them, and what would be the marginal benefit of one extra year at grad school? Of course you still get some training from doing TA, teaching classes, attending seminars,talking with people, etc. But why not get paid at a teaching school while you hone those skills?

 

*Another example would be Glen Weyl type of person. But we don't really need to consider this type of outliers in our discussion.

 

I agree that for people whose goal is research university would prefer to stay for longer years. But we also know that research university jobs are only within achievable distance to only a small portion of Econ grad students at a mediocre program, right? So it might make sense to some students to shorten the duration of their studies. Just my 2 cents.

[kipfilet]

I often talk with JM candidates in my department about this, here is some of the stuff that they have told me:

1) As said above, your JMP must be excellent if you are to do well. References, networking and selling effort by senior faculty do matter - but the market is, in the end, relatively efficient and if you have a very good JMP you won't go unnoticed (that is why you always have the odd type from some European university who becomes a star in the market - this year it was a theory guy from UBonn, who got flyouts at Harvard, NYU, Berkeley, etc.).

2) Publishing in economics is a very slow process. If you want to be published in a top journal by your fifth year, you should be submitting your papers in the third year. Save for a few determined people who know very well what they want to do, it is not common to have a solid (publishable in a good journal) piece of research in the third year. Some people stay an additional year to resolve any pending publishing processes they might be involved in.

3) I had never thought of this, but it comes up quite often: the vast majority of the JM candidates will be invariably placed in an institution which is of a lower rank than the one they are currently pursuing their studies in. A longer PhD means a longer period of interaction-time with faculty that is, on average, of higher quality. This is especially true at my school, which is very specialized in a couple of areas.

 

From what I see at my dept., the people who tend to do very well in the JM take around 6 years to conclude. Some people take 4 or 5, but they expressly want a non-academic job, therefore the quality of the JMP/publications record does not matter that much. To be honest, I never met anyone who did her PhD "remotely" (i.e. away from the department). Sometimes students go visit some other department, but that's usually for a semester in the third or fourth year - one year at most. For the record, I would say that my dept. is representative of a top10/non-top-3 institution. I think the situation is very different once one goes to MIT, Harvard and Stanford

[Humanomics]

Here's what I'm failing to understand about placement, and is at the top of my concerns for ranking my acceptances -- everyone will highlight, as kipfilet just has, that The Work is what really matters in the end, and that upward mobility is possible, if outlying. Is it the case that when you have produced middling work, your connections and so forth start to take heavier weight? And wouldn't this thus be the mechanism by which the majority of the market gets allocated, considering the majority of the supply side work is middling?

 

The advice I continually get is to look at average placements, in which two of my acceptances overwhelmingly dominate the other two. However the other two departments offer a research environment that at least right now seem more conducive to me producing truly noticeable work in my subfield. So my decision has started to feel like, "Well kid - if you think you can be a star, take the lower ranked program -- otherwise go tough it out at a higher ranked program and cross your fingers."

[Walras]

Others have already commented on some these indirectly but I'll take a stab at them because some I feel really do have sensible answers:

 

My understanding is that the best students often take 5 or 6 years to complete their Ph.D. while the marginal ones may complete it in four.

 

Not true. At the top you'll see awesome people come out in 4 years. Lower down it'll still happen occasionally, especially with people who did a masters with thesis. Also, theory people can potentially finish faster than empirical people because they don't have to spend time gathering data.

 

Ok if the average is 5yrs, why do some schools only fund you for 4.

 

I think the norm is 5 years of funding. Offer letters sometimes talk about funding through year 4, at which point you should be talking to grad students about funding in upper years. I think in general departments won't give you any guarantees but there is funding. Interestingly at my current school there seems to be some lemon TAships floating around no one wants (grading tons of essays). Ultimately it may be to your long-term benefit to not take such an opening your final year, and just borrow. Your income, after all, will at least triple the following year.

 

 

What about people who are not research star and who will end up in teaching schools? Some teaching schools even hire ABD(all but dissertation). Teaching is a much more important skill for them, and what would be the marginal benefit of one extra year at grad school? Of course you still get some training from doing TA, teaching classes, attending seminars,talking with people, etc. But why not get paid at a teaching school while you hone those skills?

 

I understand your point, but my blowback is that the pay differential may not be as large as you expect. I mean other disciplines have a lot of people doing ABD (heck other disciplines have people taking 7 or 8 years to finish), and that pay is not at the assistant professor rate--it's at the part timer rate. It may be better for an economics ABD (I don't know), but lets also consider you're going to spend the rest of your life practicing and honing your teaching skills. One more year of that hardly matters. The signaling values, however, of having an additional year worth of polish under an advisor at a leading academic institution may mean a bit more geographic choices for yourself or a spouse, more job security from a more fiscally sound university/easier tenure review, or slightly better salary track. Even if you don't aspire to being a researcher those seem like decent reasons to stay put unless your discount factor is so high the salary differential dominates all.

[Walras]

The advice I continually get is to look at average placements, in which two of my acceptances overwhelmingly dominate the other two. However the other two departments offer a research environment that at least right now seem more conducive to me producing truly noticeable work in my subfield. So my decision has started to feel like, "Well kid - if you think you can be a star, take the lower ranked program -- otherwise go tough it out at a higher ranked program and cross your fingers."

 

By the way, humanomics, I doubt this will help you make your decision, but one observation I've made is that while you ultimately choose your primary field a part of what you become a secondary expert in will be determined by who becomes your advisor. My department has a couple really strong fields, and some of the awesome work being put out (also by some of the better teachers in the department) are partially impacting my preferences.

 

P.S. Now I know what you feel like after a long double post. I'm going to need some waffles.

[Humanomics]

P.S. Now I know what you feel like after a long double post. I'm going to need some blue waffles.

 

ftfy.

 

And thanks, that's helpful. Unfortunately there aren't a ton of sociology subfields I see myself catching an interest in. That could change as I read more, but I really doubt it. I'm getting pushed pretty hard to go T10 or go home, and think I could maintain a network with these other two departments who have a boutique interest in my project. But I'm frankly too much of a sissy to be confident about going and doing the Chicago trial-by-fire thing. Maybe I can have a bunch of Latin Kings whip my asss and toughen me up to get ready.

[Turgon]

Maybe the unconditional average is 5, but some programs list in their websites that their average is 5.5 years.

 

In addition to the Humanomics comment, which is really good, an important question to make is: Why would you want to complete your PhD from afar?

If you're willing to go to a PhD, I suppose you want to do research. If you want to do research, it's good to be in a top place where people do research. You can get feedbacks (from both professors and colleagues). You can see tons of seminars and stay close to the frontier, and also get some ideas for your own stuff. You can get well connected so that you have better chances to present your work somewhere, and also better chances in the job market. Have you ever wondered why almost all top schools are disproportionally located in the US? It might be evidence of increasing returns -- of the advantage of researchers being close to one another.

 

Also remember that, if your advisors and dissertation committee don't think you're that much commited to research, that might hurt your recommendation letters later. Of course, if you're bright and do an amazing, novel research while working from thousands of miles away, that will be no problem. But you still don't know your type. It's harder to be the bright one among PhD's.

[Turgon]

Also, you should all check this cv here and do the math with the dates: http://economics.mit.edu/faculty/acemoglu/cv

[Walras]

Maybe the unconditional average is 5, but some programs list in their websites that their average is 5.5 years.

 

Ahh good point. 5 is definitely too low. Too lazy to try to look for actual stats, but I think 5.5 sounds more accurate.

[Oikos-nomos]

Also, you should all check this cv here and do the math with the dates: http://economics.mit.edu/faculty/acemoglu/cv

 

Ha, but Acemoglu is certainly one of a kind. The guy is one (or maybe THE one) of the most productive economists around.

[chrishacker]

I would say that the aveage is not 5 but between 5 to 6 and it is nearer to 6. I hear that some big names complete their Econ PhD so quickly that it seems to be impossible. But don't ever have the idea that you can do it, too...Historically in late 19th and early 20th century there is a lot of Math PhD aged about 20. Maybe we are not born in the right time~~

 

From my impression Jean Jacques-Laffont and Joseph Stiglitz completed it in less than 4 years. There is another guy who completed Econ PhD before his completion of Stats MA (These two started in the same time), though I don't know the name. Maybe Humanomics can do it too since he knows about so many discipline, lol.