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Graduate Placement
Procedures
Preliminaries
Each
May those who have been through placement during the preceding academic year
meet with the Placement Committee, along with graduate students who are
contemplating becoming candidates for placement the coming fall; in order to
give them as much advance information as possible, post-generals students not
yet contemplating becoming candidates are also strongly urged to attend.
The purpose of the meeting is
to review the previous year, to discuss possible improvements of procedures, and
generally to exchange impressions on interviews, APA conventions, etc., as well
as lay out clearly to prospective candidates the stages, etc., of the process.
- The
Placement Committee will strongly urge job candidates to make progress on their
dissertations throughout the summer.
In general, the more in command you are of your dissertation, and the further
along on it you are when you make applications and have interviews, the
stronger your candidacy will be.
- About
this time, the Placement Assistant will give you information about becoming a
member of the American Philosophical Association.
This is important for two reasons: (1)
you will then receive Jobs for
Philosophers (and have access to it on-line) and (2) membership enables you
to use the placement services of the APA at convention time.
- The
procedure of assembling dossiers
begins at this time. At the meeting
you will begiven questionnaires to complete which will form the basis of you CV and in which
you indicate whether you will waive access to your placement
files, and suggest a list of referees. It
is imperative that at least one referee be someone you taught for: this can be a
separate "teaching letter," or form a distinctive part of a more
general letter of recommendation. Candidates
should ask the faculty members they plan to list if they would be willing to
write on their behalf before listing them, and are urged to discuss the list
with their advisers or anyone else who might prove helpful (for example, the
Placement Committee). Normally,
your dossier should contain letters of recommendation from your principal dissertation
adviser and at least three others with whom you have worked, chosen so as to
indicate the range as well as the strength of your competence.
Students
who will be seeking jobs in the coming academic year should so indicate at this
time or, at the latest, by the beginning of the fall term.
Placement Schedule for 2005 - 2006
September
- In
December 1997, the department voted to abandon its former practice of
selectively recommending candidates for jobs for which they wished to be
considered. Candidates now make
their own application decisions; the Placement Committee gives advice and
information, but plays no role in selecting or recommending individual Princeton
candidates for any position for which they may apply.
- Placement dossiers consist of the following items: (1) a curriculum
vitae, which includes a brief (one paragraph) description of the
dissertation, (2) a separate, longer dissertation description (up to about
three single-spaced pages), (3) a record of Work Done at Princeton, (4) letters
of recommendation (at least four). Following guidelines provided by the
Committee, you prepare items (1) and (2) (with the advice and assistance as
to (2) of your advisers). They
also prepare item (3), with the assistance of the Graduate Assistant and the
Placement Assistant, in accordance with strict guidelines. The Committee is responsible for requesting (4) from faculty
members, on the basis of the list you will provide.
- As
letters of recommendation are received, and once the dossiers are completed, the
Placement Committee and the candidate's adviser review the letters to see if any
can be improved or might be omitted from the dossier.
(A letter of recommendation will be dropped from a dossier if, and only
if, (1) the writer of the letter so requests, or (2) the candidate so requests,
or (3) the Placement committee obtains the permission of the writer to have
the dropped from their dossier).
In the course of this review, the committee should see to
it that the dossier contains some information about the candidate's teaching
abilities.
The
target date for the completion of the
dossier is October 1. This means that students must submit first drafts of items
(1) (2) and (3) well before October 1.
The dissertation summary must be written under the adviser’s
supervision and a first draft approved by the adviser before it is
submitted to the Placement Assistant for the committee to see. The process of
revision in light of Committee suggestions can be lengthy.
In order to have complete dossiers ready to be sent out shortly after the
first Jobs for Philosophers arrives in late October; dossiers must
be complete by October 10.
October
The
first issue of Jobs for Philosophers
arrives the third week of October; it is issued four other times throughout the
year (November, January, March, May). Every
opening that comes to the department's attention (except through Jobs for Philosophers) will be posted as soon as possible in the
lounge in a folder labeled "Job Openings." Many times these announcements precede the announcement in Jobs
for Philosophers and give more information about the opening than is
reported in JFP. When you
submit the list of places you intend to apply to, be sure to include any that
are listed in the folder but not also in JFP.
- You
will be asked for the list of places you are applying to a few days before
submitting them finally to the
Placement Assistant act upon. This
will give the Committee a few days in which to review these and offer advice,
e.g., about jobs for which you qualify but have not listed.After receiving the Committee’s comments and suggestions, you should
then have your final lists in to the Placement Assistant.
The Placement Assistant will then mail off in a single package to each
institution all the dossiers of those applying to its job(s), with a cover
letter signed by the Placement Committee presenting them for consideration.
-
Each candidate who applies for a position must write a
letter officially applying for that position.
This should include a statement of your
academic interests and your particular reasons for wanting that job
(optional); offering to send samples of your written work, or enclosing a
sample if it is explicitly requested; and stating your availability for
interviews at the APA convention. (You are urged to submit a sample letter of application to
the Placement Committee for possible suggestions as to how it might be
improved.) It is advisable also to prepare
a "teaching dossier," consisting of computerized course
evaluations, student hand-written comments, and a statement of teaching
interests, which you will send out along with your letter of application .
November
and later
-
Candidates
should immediately inform the Placement Assistant (by letter, phone, e-mail)
when they hear from places where they have applied, whether the response is
positive or negative, perfunctory, or a request for an interview or paper.
This is important: the
Placement Assistant acts as the central repository of up-to-date information
on all aspects of the progress of a student's candidacy for jobs.
Inform the Assistant immediately of all changes in your status at
any place where you have applied.Members of the faculty receive
periodic summaries listing current prospects, areas of competence, and thesis
topics for each candidate. This is
to allow faculty members to make better use of personal contacts and to respond
more adequately to inquiries.
-
You
should plan to give a dissertation talk
prior to the December APA meeting. Commitment as to a date for this will be made
in September, at the time when you
formally enroll as a placement candidate. In late November arrangements will be made for a mock
interview with departmental faculty, to take place in December shortly
before the APA convention.
December
Before
the December APA convention the committee meets with candidates to review
placement procedures at the convention.
The
department will fund the expenses of any person whose candidacy is under the
oversight of the Placement Committee, to the following extent:
- The department will make available a lifetime allowance of up to $1200
for travel to APA conventions. The
amount granted for a given trip shall be based on University standards (i.e.,
airline fare plus whatever extras the University allows) but may not exceed
$400 per trip: this amount is applicable not only to travel costs but also to
all legitimate expenses.
- Duplication of papers to be submitted to prospective employers, by
Xeroxing or some less expensive method, may also be charged to the department
while a student is enrolled, or if no advantage of this is taken during
enrollment, then for at most one year. The
department will NOT pay for copy services done by outside sources.
Except
if they are currently appointed as lecturers or AIs at Princeton, job applicants
are responsible for securing their own stationery, envelopes, etc. and paying
for the postage to send their application letters and samples of written work.
The department covers the cost of sending confidential dossiers.
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