McGill

[belleprovince]

Rejection e-mails just went out from McGill saying that both offers were accepted.  Who are the lucky two?

[I know one]

Poulami Roychowdhury, NYU ABD

[brrrrrrr]

I have friends at McGill. It is cold as a mo-fo up there. Nice department though.

[not really related]

When I was applying to grad programs, I received an email from my first choice that I had been rejected. I cried about it and went to sleep. I checked my email the following day and found a profusely apologetic email from the chair saying there had been a mix-up and they were offering me a fellowship. That sort of made it unhurt :-)

[The other one]

is Thomas Soehl (ABD UCLA). McGill punching above its weight.

[numbers]

Jan 11, 2014 17:42:29 GMT -5 The other one said:

McGill punching above its weight.

True, but that's just the reality of the job market in 2013. The top programs are producing hundreds of new PhDs each year, not to mention those being cranked out by mid and lower tier programs. There are only so many jobs to go around. Twenty years from now, I imagine even community colleges will be filled with PhDs from the top 20 to 30 programs.

In looking around recently, I've noticed people with degrees from programs like Madison and Princeton taking jobs at "no name" schools with few resources and heavy teaching and service loads. That is in no way meant to disparage the candidates or these schools, just pointing to the larger realities of the market today. I'm coming out of a top ten program, have several pubs, and a book contract. The top programs hiring this year didn't give me a second look. I did manage to land a TT job and feel very lucky to have done so. But it was not the type of place I assumed I'd end up when I was first recruited by the top ten program. So congrats to the candidates who landed at McGill and everyone else who manages to land a job - any job - in this terrible market. 

[market's fool]

I started a new thread on market saturation under Misc Job Market Discussions, FYI.

[Just wow]

I was also surprised when I saw this person's cv. I'm sure a top 40 dept like McGil couldn't have hired somebody with this profile before the 2008 recession.

At the same time, I am at a top dept conducting multilple hires and only about half of candidates have this kind of resume. There were actually some candidates that had no pubs at all but that were invited because their dissertations seemed interesting. So the level of competition has certainly increased but there's still some variance even at the top.

[wait..]

Are you saying that half of the job candidates had this kind of a resume? Or, are you saying that half of the people who you actually invited had this many pubs? I hope it's the latter. If half of the people on the market look like this guy, I might as well not even try..

[two things]

1) I have a suspicion that hiring preferences at all types of institutions are more heterogeneous than we know. Total publications, prestige of publication outlets, quality of the individual articles, total first authored publications, total solo authored publications, book contract, department prestige, letters of reference, likelihood that the person will be a good coworker, departmental needs, likelihood the person will stick around for a while...I can imagine that these all get different weights at research-oriented institutions. And it probably gets even more complicated at institutions that place an emphasis on teaching.
<br>2) I have a suspicion that the preferences of candidates are more heterogeneous than we know. Departmental prestige, departmental resources, intellectual life, collegiality, pay, teaching load, teaching class size, expectations, metro area (Hello Montreal!), weather (Hello Montreal?), family needs, etc.
<br>
<br>Job matching=complicated.

[The latter]

I was referring to folks who got invites, but even among them, this guy has a lot of pubs...

[more or less]

Jan 12, 2014 10:33:28 GMT -5 two things said:

1) I have a suspicion that hiring preferences at all types of institutions are more heterogeneous than we know. Total publications, prestige of publication outlets, quality of the individual articles, total first authored publications, total solo authored publications, book contract, department prestige, letters of reference, likelihood that the person will be a good coworker, departmental needs, likelihood the person will stick around for a while...I can imagine that these all get different weights at research-oriented institutions. And it probably gets even more complicated at institutions that place an emphasis on teaching.
<br>2) I have a suspicion that the preferences of candidates are more heterogeneous than we know. Departmental prestige, departmental resources, intellectual life, collegiality, pay, teaching load, teaching class size, expectations, metro area (Hello Montreal!), weather (Hello Montreal?), family needs, etc.
<br>
<br>Job matching=complicated.

This is true to some extent, but you often observe a small number of candidates getting multiple interviews (just like when applying to grad school) suggesting that some departments are looking for similar signals...

[No doubt]

At my top 5 program only two of the four candidates had comparable records (for a targeted subfield search). So the point about heterogenous preferences is a good one. Still, it's not much more comforting to think that you can do everything right, get four or five (!!!) good to great publications and still land outside the top 20 because departments aren't hiring in your area (granted we don't know about the candidates' preferences).

[Same as above^]

PS. we ended up offering the ABD from a top 5 with three or so of the following: ASR, AJS, ASR R&R, AJS R&R.

[two things again]

Having top level publications is a good thing if you're applying to a top research institution. Having lots of publications is a good thing if you're applying to a top research institution. But if that were the only criteria, we wouldn't need search committees. I'm sure some programs just figure out how long the CV is, but you're evaluating whether the scholar shows future promise. There's a lot of qualitative assumptions that go into that, among other things.

By the way, let's not forget that McGill isn't in any US-based ranking systems. So saying that they're "punching above their weight" assumes that we know how they compare to programs in the US. And Montreal is an awfully nice place, especially if you like Europe but want to stay on this side of the ocean.

Generally speaking, I just think there are many, many more factors on both sides of the equation we'd need to know before we feel comfortable making commentary like this.