How To Choose The Right Doctoral Program

Being Choosy Is Not A Bad Thing…

There is no better feeling (up to that point, anyway) than graduating from a Master’s program, but the prospect can leave one with a bit of an empty feeling, or a sentiment such as “ok, so what’s next?”  Well, depending on what one wants to do with the rest of one’s life, one can apply to a doctorate program.  A Ph.D. is almost universally required if one wishes to teach at a university, perform any sort of further academic research, or get into a think-tank type opportunity.  If you feel that a doctorate fits your aspirations (academic, not financial) then it’s time to figure out where to study.  There are certain opportunities available only to people who hold a Ph.D., however, these are very few and far between and should not be relied upon.  The best reason to apply for a doctorate degree is to become an expert in your particular field…for the love of the subject and the accomplishment.

Topics: Before you try to decide where to attend school, you really need to do some serious soul-searching about what research you wish to do.  For example, if you are a physics type and you already know that you want to research gravitational singularities, then you can make a written case for that.  However, some people do not specifically know down to the detailed level what they wish to study in a doctoral program.  Take a few weeks and talk to some of your professors to really figure out what it is that gets your academic juices flowing or questions about your subject which keep you up at night.  These are the types of topics that will sustain you through a 3-year to 7-year Ph.D. endeavour.  In my case, I knew from the beginning of my degree program that I wanted to teach Philosophy and Religion at the university level, so I have always known I would need a Ph.D. to get the job I wanted.  During the last year of my undergraduate degree, I decided on a dissertation topic.  I am not a typical case, though, and many do not figure out what they want to research until they are in the throes of writing a Master’s thesis.  Some even continue to drill down their Master’s thesis topics as a Ph.D. dissertation topic.

Is it Unique?: Once you have narrowed down your focus area, you need to figure out if it’s been studied before and where, as you need to be able to make a case for why your topic is of any real consequence in your field or in the grand scheme of things.  Find out through your advisors and professors if your field has a rating system for programs around your country or internationally.  Some fields, like Philosophy, have a sort of peer review system for various programs around the US, UK, and Canada.  Professors from various universities rate the universities, teaching staff, strength in each subfield, and overall worth of each program, and they are then listed in rank format.   Even websites which purport to have ranking systems in place for various fields may shed some light on how a particular university is viewed.  The best information on what counts as a top university in a particular field, though, is going to be the academic staff at your disposal.  They will know which programs are viewed as prestigious or worth-while and which are not.  Make sure to look deeply and critically at each of the department websites for your field.  While a professor who works there may have a background in your chosen topic, the department may not offer it as a specialty.

Potential Supervisors: Based on the list of universities you will have garnered from your discussions with faculty and internet research, you should now be going to each school’s website to look at the research interests and areas of expertise of each of the faculty members in the department within which you would be working.  You will need to find someone with similar interests or at least who has a background in the research topic of your choice.  You may also look to see if any of them have supervised this or similar topics for students before you.  Some professors have photos on their faculty page and some have links to their external website or bio containing additional information and videos.  Do some deep diving here, because this may be the person with whom you work for the next several years of your life.  He or she may be the person responsible for training you going forward and who will be there at the end, deciding whether you have earned your degree.  It needs to be a proper fit.

Introductions: Once you have chosen one or two people from each university, email them!  Introduce yourself to the person as a prospective Ph.D. applicant and tell them a little about why you want to work with them and about your topic.  Ask if they are open to supervising you and what information they would need to make the decision.  Many times, the supervisor will need to send a note of support to the admissions board, or you may have to list the supervisor by name on your application, but you have to get their permission first.  Most potential supervisors will want to see a CV and a research proposal (at least a draft, if not the final version), so you want to make sure you have these items fleshed out before emailing them.  Be open to submitting other documents to them as well, and to having detailed conversations with them about your topic and timeline.  They were once in your shoes, and chances are, they did not have the benefit of email to make the process so smooth.  Make sure to send out all of your emails to prospective supervisors at about the same time, so that while you are having these discussions, you can apply anything learned to all of the discussions.

Funding: The last item to consider is whether you are eligible for funding at the particular schools you wish to attend.  Sometimes, this can make all the difference in deciding where to go.  If you are planning to attend university overseas, you will need to secure funding in an irregular way, and many of the awards and scholarships that are available to most students are not available to international students.  Many schools have awards and scholarship programs that are specific to international student, so just make sure that the schools you email are at least able to accommodate you.  Be mindful of any time differences when you are emailing overseas, as it may delay your emails and replies by a day or more.  The United States partners with many overseas institutions through the FAFSA program, so if all else fails, you may still be eligible for a student loan.  Your prospective supervisor or the department head can often point you in the right direction, if you are at a loss and the school is overseas…another reason to get to know them as soon as possible.

Happy hunting and feel free to ask questions, leave comments, or both, below!

-Christine Ratzlaff © May 6, 2018

Circular Soul-Making: Which Came First...

...the Virtue or the Suffering?

The concept that the soul-making theodicy (SMT) in the Philosophy of Religion is circular has recently been brought to my attention as a question.  There will be a forthcoming paper on this, but I want to work out some thoughts on paper here first.  A theodicy is an approach to reasoning the problem of evil in the world.  Soul-making simply means that the approach in the theodicy is for the purpose of creating the soul into something.  I have written on this topic in the past and my dissertation will offer a full explanation of the SMT as well as how to overcome the idea that gratuitous, or excessive and needless, suffering exists in the world.

The soul-making theodicy was first brought to the attention of the philosophical and theological communities in-part by church father St. Irenaeus (c. 120-c. 203 apx), then again in part by classical philosopher and theologian Origen (c. 185-c. 253), and finally in full by philosopher and theologian John Hick (1922-2012) in his book called Evil and the God of Love (1966).  The tenets of the full version of the SMT are that God exists, that humans were born imperfect (not perfect followed by a fall from grace, as the Church claims), that there is evil in the world, and that the reason for the evil in the world is that it is a tool for the creation of our souls into something divine and perfect.  The circular reasoning, which was claimed to me by a professor friend of mine, comes into play when taking into account that, while suffering assists in developing virtuous character, we need a virtuous character to help us overcome suffering.  We still do not have an explanation as to why there is suffering in the first place or what the highest goal of society or mankind really is.

There is no specific philosophical data to come to the aid of anyone claiming that people are basically good, as no one keeps track of the levels of virtue within each of us.  We could speculate about the level of virtue in the world using social or crime statistics, or even diving into psychological data with respect to violence or kindness, but not everyone sees a psychiatric practitioner or even tells the truth to the practitioner he or she sees.  In lieu of statistics I submit that we can use the idea that there are those people in the world who are simply born psychologically broken, who will never be capable of seeing the good or participating in a worldview which supports or strives for the good.  These are the people who do not possess a virtuous character at all.  There are also those who are born without the capacity to participate in society without some aid, due to some mental challenge or delay.  However, nearly all philosophical views (especially this one) pertain only to people of normal mental and psychological capacity, and do not speak to outliers of any sort.  To be sure, the percentage of the world's population which falls into either of the aforementioned categories is small.

My response to the question of circularity is that this is very much a question of which came first; the chicken or the egg, rather the virtue or the soul-making.  The point was made to me that if the purpose of suffering is to build virtuous character, then once one fully attains a virtuous character one no longer has any need of or use for suffering.  Yet, there is still suffering in the world.  Not all sources of suffering effect all people equally, however.  Simply because there are people still suffering in the world does not mean that these are the same people who have already attained a virtuous character.  As well, who should be the judge of the level of virtue within each person?  Surely not you or me!  If the purpose of suffering is to build virtue (to the point of divinity, not just a basic every-day level), then suffering must have come first.  This is made clear when considering Hick's claim that we are born imperfect.  Additionally, Hick claims that soul-making, or virtue building, is not complete at the time at which a person dies.  Hick might have said that we, as human beings on this earth in this life, cannot know what true and full virtuous character actually looks like.

More to come on this topic in the future, but for now I can say that the virtue comes later and the suffering comes first.  The only way to argue that a nugget of virtue is in all of us is if one appeals to mystery, meaning that the argument is based on something divine, previously hidden within all of us, but that contradicts the idea that we were made imperfect.  If we possessed the divine, we would have already been perfect.  A case could be made for this divine nugget within us, but it would not be a strong philosophical argument.

-Christine Ratzlaff © May 6, 2018