As undergraduates buckle down to write their papers for Dean's Date, many graduate students are wrapped up in far more extensive writing projects: their dissertations.
Though grad students at the University complete their dissertations more quickly than average, according to recent findings by the Council of Graduate Schools, Princeton's ethos of speedily finished degrees can be a mixed blessing, grad students and alumni said. They praised the monetary and academic support they said make it possible to finish their degrees efficiently, but they also spoke of financial and other pressures to obtain their doctorates quickly that can make grad school at Princeton a high-stress environment.
"The main reason [that Princeton students finish their dissertations relatively quickly] is that Princeton students are more pressured, so they end up doing the same amount of work faster," Amit Agarwal GS said. The pressure, he said, is "not necessarily a negative," but he noted that "not everyone is a fan of such an approach."
Overall, Princeton grad students tend to finish their dissertations in five or six years, compared to averages at other institutions that range from around six to eight years.
For example, Princeton engineering students take a median of 5.35 years to complete their degrees, compared to between six and seven years at other schools. The median amount of time Princeton students in the social sciences and humanities take to earn their doctorates — 5.4 and 6.35 years, respectively — was also lower than the average for the schools surveyed by the Council, which was eight or more years for both subject areas.
The Council's data, released last month, was compiled from surveys of graduate students from more than 20 public and private universities in the United States, Canada and Australia. The data apply to students who entered doctoral programs between 1992-93 and 1994-95 and examined institutions including Princeton, Yale, Cornell, Duke, New York University, George Washington University and Rutgers.
Financial support and limitations
One factor contributing to Princeton graduate students' relatively short completion times for their dissertations is the five years of financial support the University guarantees all Ph.D. students. This generally includes fellowships for all doctoral candidates during their first year of study, which let students focus on their dissertations instead of teaching or conducting research during their first year.
Students who are invited to present scholarly research papers at conferences or meetings may also receive additional support, and some departments award money for research.
But the support the administration offers to help keep students on track comes with a caveat: Students who do go over the limit often find themselves in limbo, with a sudden dearth of financial resources and a degree of ambiguity regarding their status at the University.
Edwin Gerber GS '06 said that during his time at the University, "one ceased to 'officially' be a student after four or five years ... even though you were still doing the same thing." After he had finished his fifth year, he recalled, "I had to go through all the paperwork, change health plans, everything, as if I was starting over at Princeton."
The University changed its policy after 2006, and graduate students who spend more than four or five years on their dissertations are now allowed to maintain student status for up to two more years while they finish. Though they are no longer guaranteed full financial support, they can remain on their student health plans, defer their student loans, extend their student visas and hold on-campus jobs such as assistantships in research and instruction.
Nevertheless, these changes may not have been enough to dispel some students' impressions that they are being hurried out of their programs. "What Princeton has that is ... quite unique is the notion of a 'program length' for the Ph.D. which limits the time you have for your degree," Chris DeCoro GS, a doctoral candidate in the computer science department, said in an email. "After a certain amount of time they simply kick you out."
"The school advertises the claim that '100 percent of the fully enrolled Ph.D. students receive complete support.' The catch is the term 'fully enrolled,' " DeCoro added. "After your program length is over, you are 'post-enrolled,' and therefore not guaranteed any support." He noted, though, that he thinks financial support for post-enrolled students "has gotten better in the last several years."
DeCoro said he sees the lengths of many programs as "unreasonably low." For example, in the computer science department, though "the program length is five years, the average true length is closer to six, although some do complete within the five," he said.
"This poses a burden in your last year, especially as you should be spending the time writing your thesis, as opposed to carrying a large teaching load or writing grant proposals," DeCoro explained. "The end result is that frequently students are forced to cut short the research goals that they would like to achieve, and write a 'good-enough' thesis in the time they have."
A push from departments
Recent alumni of the Graduate School cited the University's advising resources as another reason students are able to finish relatively quickly.
"Many departments have seminars, which bring grad students in contact with older grad students ... and these interactions can be crucial in getting a thesis started and keep[ing] it going," Agissilaos Athanassoulis GS '07, who finished his dissertation in the Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics (PACM) in four years, said in an email.
Athanassoulis also cited the small size of the grad school, which he said allows "super-busy faculty" to be more available to doctoral candidates than might be the case at other top schools.
In some departments, such as the math department and PACM, students' time to finish their dissertations may be further shortened by the relative lack of course requirements that must be completed before students can start their independent research. "This makes it much easier to focus on the thesis earlier," Athanassoulis said.
Additionally, some departments and programs actively strive to keep students on track toward their degrees. The English department, for instance, assigns each incoming graduate student a mentor and a separate faculty adviser to ensure "that we have as intensive and vigilant an advising process as possible," D. Vance Smith, the department's director of graduate studies (DGS), said in an email.
Similarly, the Slavic languages and literatures department offers dissertation-in-progress workshops run by its DGS.
Students said academic advising plays key a role in helping them complete their dissertations speedily. Gerber said that support from his adviser was "critical," noting that he "helped me out when one of my projects stalled, and helped me chart a research course that could be completed in five years."
Some departments also require students to give annual updates to a committee on their research — a policy, Gerber said, that "force[s] one to stay on top of things, and gives you enough warning if things aren't going so well!"
Hitting the job market
Some doctoral students and alumni said the push to finish their degrees early has been a boon to them when they start looking for work. "Finishing the dissertation early is actually a positive," Agarwal said. "People respect you for that."
Athanassoulis said he did not think spending an extra year on his dissertation would have negatively impacted his job search but agreed that taking three or four more years to complete a dissertation "should come with a very convincing explanation, or they do act against you in the job market."
"The rapidity of my graduate career was a definite plus in accelerating my career path and in the position that I hold with my current employer," said Jedrzej Biesiada GS '07, who is currently working as a fellow at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California.
For some students, the experience they have with assistantships during their time at the University can prove helpful in the job search. "A lack of teaching can hurt some students seeking faculty positions, especially if English is not their native language," Gerber said.
Michael Taylor GS '07, who taught for four years while he was working on his German dissertation, also said that teaching helped him find a job. But he added that he chose to teach and that he "was not overloaded with teaching responsibilities," allowing him to finish his dissertation in seven-and-a-half years. "Friends I know at other schools, state schools especially, often take eight or nine years, in part because they have to teach so much," he said.
Pablo Debenedetti, the DGS for the chemical engineering department, said Princeton students with doctorates enjoy a high success rate in finding jobs, estimating that it's "very close to 100 percent." Hans Halvorson, the DGS for the philosophy department, offered a slightly more conservative estimate, guessing that "probably nine out of 10 of our Ph.D.s gets an academic job."
"The national average is probably more like three out of 10," he said. "We have one of the best placement records in the world."
Athanassoulis said the push to complete doctorates quickly has less tangible benefits as well. "Finishing 'early' has a very simple advantage: [Being a] post-doc is much more fun than [being a] grad student," he said. "In terms of work, you don't have the relatively rigid 'finishing the thesis' phase, but a more open-ended and often more collaborative research experience. Moreover, as a post-doc you typically travel more and do the first step of your career, so it's a lot more like 'real life.' "
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