> We already interview faculty hires; we must now do the same for graduate admissions
They hire PhD students without hearing them give a talk and then doing interviews? In Germany, the applicant gives a talk (30-40 min) to the research group they want to join, usually presenting their master's thesis, engage in discussion, often share lunch with the group, then do 1 on 1s with individual members of the group and a longer one with the PI. Obviously this can vary within Germany too, but I couldn't imagine hiring someone without something like this.
1. US a lot of international PhD applicants, so traveling before even being accepted is difficult, and 2. lots of people don't do a masters.
when I applied to PhD programs (not in math) it was basically CV + personal statement + recommendation letters + short chats with interested faculty :shrug: Maybe it was because my CV was "strong" but the chats were more see if interests were aligned, rather than actually interviewing me.
Remote talks are also a common alternative in such cases. Zoom etc.
I also know that another major difference is that American universities tend to hire without a professors involvement, into a generic "program", then the PhD student seeks an advisor after being accepted, so applicants have to woo some unconnected committee pursuing various goals misaligned from the PIs instead of convincing the PI. In much of Europe a professor basically "owns" a chair and really is boss and decides hiring pretty much alone.
Anyways, if they don't have a masters' yet, they could present their bachelor thesis. But I already think it's a bad model to combine the masters (courses) and the phd (research) into this American hybrid that's the direct-bachelor-to-PhD jump, but that is somewhat unrelated.
I agree the combined masters + phd is weird tbh. I think almost everyone treats it like "just focus on research and spend as little time on course work as possible." I would prefer it if courses were more flexible.
I'm not a big fan of the US application setup. IDK how it is in Europe, but in the US, it feels like there's a lot of not-very-meritocratic "secret" stuff you need to know to up your chances.
> I'm not a big fan of the US application setup. IDK how it is in Europe, but in the US, it feels like there's a lot of not-very-meritocratic "secret" stuff you need to know to up your chances.
In Germany (countries differ quite a bit on these details) a significant chunk (though not necessarily majority) is directly hiring a master's student who worked at the same chair on a part-time student research assistant job and/or a master's thesis and did a good job and typically turned the thesis into a paper submission. In other cases it's still somewhat inside baseball like getting recommendations from other scientists that the PI knows, or coming from a university that the professor knows well. It can also be from an impressive email, from a chat at a conference poster, etc. There is much less of this global casting that committees do, like "we need this and this type of character now" to have a vibrant student body composition, since each PI makes a decision just about their lab, without having a global view, and their goals are basically to get research out of that person, papers, results useful for funding applications etc. So they want to see aptitude in that. Through talk quality, communication efficiency when talking with existing team member one on one, recommendations, sometimes even phone calls with the PI with whom the student worked (these are small worlds). I think it's more organic and natural, though still prone to exclusionary gatekeeping, than the HR-style narrative essay-and-extracurriculars-based admissions though maybe that's more prominent for undergrad admissions even in the US.
Unlike Europe, in the US, most PhD applicants do not have a masters. 10 years ago, most had not even conducted substantial senior projects (e.g a semester or year). Though increasingly senior projects / undergraduate "theses" have become more common.
In my opinion, that's not a good time to really know you want to pursue academic research. A masters gives you a little taste at least and allows to show aptitude. Doing a student research assistant job, working on a thesis, maybe even a paper submission, diving deep into specialized courses. Then you can know if it's for you as well as the PI can know if it's for you. Straight from a bachelor and them interleaving the phd with coursework is a bad model I think, but of course I'm from Europe so it's what I'm used to.
In the US, usually you do a summer research program if you want to be a PhD student, so you can get a taste of research.
At most universities as well, if you decide the PhD isn't for you, there is always the option of leaving with a Master's. Because you get free tuition and a stipend, you also come out ahead of if you had gone straight for the MS (which you generally would pay for).
In the UK I had a panel interview with 4 people, in person. But for international students who often brought their own funding sponsored by their government that didn’t happen.
That's an interesting wrinkle. If anything, externally funded international students seem like exactly the case where you'd still want the interview, since the funding answers "who pays for this?" but not "does this person have the background and understanding to do the work?"
They hire PhD students without hearing them give a talk and then doing interviews? In Germany, the applicant gives a talk (30-40 min) to the research group they want to join, usually presenting their master's thesis, engage in discussion, often share lunch with the group, then do 1 on 1s with individual members of the group and a longer one with the PI. Obviously this can vary within Germany too, but I couldn't imagine hiring someone without something like this.