You may well ask – who are you to give advice? Fair question. There are lots of good bits of advice out there, and a few great ones (e.g. Greg Mankiw and his suggestions, Avinash Dixit, Kwan Choi, and Chris Blattman), which cover lots of different topics from writing theory, to writing well, to picking topic ideas, to planning a career. I am young, so why on earth do I feel the need to add to this? One reason is that I get asked for advice from time to time, and writing it down once is more efficient than having the same conversation several times. Another reason is that I want to remember what I found helpful at the time of doing a PhD. The main reason is this though: most of the advice out there is for students in American universities. My credentials for this are rather slim: I am not Daron Acemoglu, but then neither are you (probably). However, I finished a PhD within three years, and within the following year all three main chapters have led to publications. My advice:
- Read the advice I’ve linked to above. It is productive time-wasting to reflect.
- Read lots (and lots) of articles. This shows you what you are expected to compete with. Read some slowly and some quickly. This enables you to get a feel of the different journals and types of articles that exist. Read inside and outside your immediate subject area, and read things you do and don’t agree with.
- Read CVs of people who have the type of job you want. This helps you work out what CV you need to have the kind of job you want. This is only a rough guide – but it helps.
- Know that if you want a job in academia, you will be judged mainly on your ability to publish. If you are a nice person and teach well, that is a bonus.
- Know that publishing an article takes far longer than you think it will. Having something published as you look for a job after the PhD is a great signal that the WPs you have are also of publishable quality. This might mean co-authoring and/or aiming lower than you’d ideally like, in order to quickly send the signal that you can publish (this is easier to evaluate than potential to publish, which includes reading your WPs).
- Choi (see above) says put one idea in a paper. That means a (3 chapter) PhD has three ideas. Learn to focus.
- Enjoy your PhD. Treat it like a job where you get paid to think about interesting things. This means you get to try out the life of an academic before committing.
There are many differences with the American system, so take advice number 1 with a pinch of salt. You can come out of a UK PhD with a masters at 25. The 3 year PhD is very possible. It becomes more likely if you focus, know what you want to do before you start, are lucky and stay away from theory. If you want to take the opportunity to learn new things, teach a lot, do theory and/or do field work then it is no bad thing to take 4 years: it might be to your advantage. In the American system you leave a PhD much older than in the UK system, and have spent several years being prepared for the job market. That just doesn’t really exist in Europe in the same way. The best ‘job market advice’ that most people get in Europe is to be nice to people at conferences and write good papers, which is probably the best advice anyway.
