Research > My Research > Dissertation > Ch 4.7



--- breaking the silence ---

Toward a Theory of Women's Doctoral Persistence

© Roberta-Anne Kerlin, 1997

 

The Admissions Process

For the three women, Camila, Zoe and Tracy, the transition to doctoral programs in the same departments where they earned master's degrees was not experienced as problematic.

>Maggie described her experience during a pre-admission meeting with a faculty member who would later become her advisor. It was only during this meeting that Maggie learned her master's degree was not a terminal degree in her field.

I remember my first meeting with my advisor. The day was sunny and I was a little nervous ... I described my position with work and my subsequent schedule ... I had taken my lunch, peanut butter and jelly. She seemed to disapprove of that. I remember discussing my interests to which she inquired if I was more interested in a MFA. I was not since I felt I had an equivalent of a MFA already, even if it was not considered the terminal degree ... Besides, from her description, the PhD really did not allow for much creative work in the realm of performing. The emphasis was in theory and scholarly inquiry ... I decided since I already had one master's degree, I did not want another ... So, I decided then and there I wanted to do the PhD program.

For Helen, although the admission process itself was not problematic, the preparation and arrangements that were necessary before she actually made a commitment to move to the campus were quite complex. It was an orchestrated move that involved the support and cooperation of the entire family. Despite the fact that Helen was not "invested in finishing" the degree and didn't "depend on this picture" of herself finishing, she and her family, in fact, had laid out careful plans that would allow her to complete her residency requirement. Helen's husband applied for a sabbatical from his university and together they visited the campus, a 16-hour return drive from home to a neighbouring state, put their names on the married students' housing list and met with the chair of one of the departments about the possibility of her husband teaching there for a year while Helen fulfilled her residency requirements. Their older son decided to spend the year studying in England. Their younger son pulled himself out of high school during what would have been his sophomore year and together, the three of them moved to the university. Orchestrating these arrangements, getting someone to house sit and look after their cats while they would be away "was quite an adventure."

we did a lot of preparing before we made a commitment to go -- not before I applied, but before we finally said "we're going" .... Having accomplished that, I figured the degree itself would be easy.

In contrast to the other five women in the study, both Sarah and Denise experienced the admission process as a struggle for survival. Sarah was the only woman in the study who described a personal interview as a requirement of the admission process:

The interview day was all right, except that Ben (who would later turn out to be my advisor) was a real pain in the ass. He tried to pin my ears back about "what I read to keep current" (meaning journals, books, etc.) .... I pointed out that in admissions, you tend to work 60 hour weeks, and outside of [a particular journal], I didn't have time to read much else. I didn't tell him I had never heard of [that particular journal]. Anyway, the more shit he gave me, the more I tried to give back to him. I noticed that the other faculty members seemed to like that about me. After the interview, I met with a group of current students .... Then I also interviewed for a graduate assistant position. I can't really remember much else that happened that day, although I seem to recall being taken to lunch at the Faculty Club by the faculty .... The next day (a Saturday) I took the GRE; I was told it was necessary for admission, even though I had taken it years before (and couldn't locate the score).

Only one day after writing the exam Sarah received a phone call telling her she'd been accepted into the program.

My first thought after hanging up was "So why did I have to take the damned GRE?"

Both the illogic of the admission requirements and Sarah's perception of the admission interview as an adversarial process that faculty were particularly proud of, were memories that stayed with Sarah long after she had completed her degree.

Denise's experience in gaining admission to her doctoral program was "one huge challenge that almost undid" her resolve to continue. More than a year and a half passed from the time Denise first applied until she was formally admitted to the program. During that time she completed a full year of doctoral level course work and wrote the first of two parts of her preliminary qualifying exams. Denise had applied to an interdisciplinary Ph.D. degree program and requested that her master's degree work from the seminary be used to fulfill the master's requirement. She made this request based on a conversation she'd had with a graduate advisor. Denise documented the sequence of events that contributed her delayed admission:

As Denise reflected on these events she realized, in retrospect, that the difficulty and pain she experienced throughout this process was due to her choosing to write in what she described as an "unusual" way - a way that she thinks "was seen as unfocused by those in power." She described the following sequence of events:

Denise took the above chronology to another member of the faculty who eventually would serve as the chair of her committee and she presented Denise's case at a faculty meeting. This resulted in a change of status in a matter of weeks. In the end, Denise was left with the feeling that the department had handled the situation incompetently. The challenge this situation had presented had a bifurcated significance for Denise. On the one hand, it left her questioning her sense of 'place' within the program; on the other, it had a counter-intuitive effect of strengthening her resolve to continue.

I also kept good records of the major scandal as you could probably tell from this chronology. I wasn't going to let them win.