Canonical question on how admissions works in different countries

Question

By far our most useful canonical question is: How does the admissions process work for Ph.D. programs in the US, particularly for weak or borderline students?

Recently, Buffy drafted a new canonical question for countries other than the US. In addition to being a good "duplicate target" for questions that would otherwise be completely rejected as a "bad" question, this is also a useful reference for all those who might not be familiar with grad school systems in other parts of the world. In some sense, this is a follow up to this meta question from three years ago.

So, two asks:

1. If anyone has suggestions for this canonical question (or thinks that it shouldn't exist at all), let's have that discussion here.
2. Right now we only have an answer for the US (which people should feel free to edit); if you are familiar with the grad school system in other parts of the world, please consider drafting an answer. Even a short answer will do; others can expand or revise it later.

Answer 1

What should be done if a new duplicate question gets asked, but there is no answer for that specific country in this canonical target?

I see several reasonable options:

1. Immediately close the question as a duplicate, and leave a comment asking readers to provide an answer to the canonical question. This has the advantage of avoiding answer duplication, but would probably prevent the new question from getting sufficient visibility, and it seems wrong to close a question as a duplicate when the target doesn't answer it.
2. Leave the question open initially, and if it gets good answers, write a new answer to the canonical question and then close the new question as a duplicate of the canonical question.
3. Leave the question open. Write an answer aggregating information from the new question and link back to the original.

My preference is option 2.

Answer 2

Should the answer be only concerned with the international students seeking to apply/wondering what is it like?

I have started putting something together about Russia where I work and in the process of doing so two things have became apparent:

1. No one in their right mind would apply unless either:
   • Coming from some neighboring countries and speaking Russian freely (and being rich!)
   • Escaping some truly terrible living conditions
   • Being fully state-funded
2. For those falling under state-backed exchange programs, it varies wildly case-by-case and does not make a whole lot of sense as a general answer. It also has little to do with the rest of academia here. Exchange students coming in as opposed to "our" students going abroad is a fairly alien concept to Russian academia still despite their numbers growing in the past years as a part of 5-100 program.

Is there even a point in the answer, given the circumstances? If yes, should it be focused on "cold" applications outside of these specifically created positions or try to describe what being a 5-100 student would be like?

Answer 3

One thing we should discuss is: Are there any places where it makes sense to have one answer that covers multiple countries? Perhaps countries where grad schools are very very similar? Or countries where our user base is so sparse that a "regional" answer is the best that we can probably do?

For example: maybe Eastern Europe should be carved into two or three blocks, rather than trying to write 30+ answers? Or maybe even larger countries, like AU/NZ, have very similar grad school systems? I am an ignorant American, so these examples could be totally off.

At this point, I am reasonably certain that we should have individual posts for the following countries:

• US
• Canada
• UK
• France
• India
• Japan
• China

And that the following countries should be merged:

• Germany / Austria

Wondering about:

• Australia / New Zealand / Oceania
• Eastern Europe
• South America

Answer 4

There seems to be a potential for a lot of duplication in content between the existing canonical question for the US and the new canonical question. Even though the original focuses on "weak or borderline students", good answers for the new one should ideally include that aspect as well.

Since the original has multiple good answers, my suggestion is:

1. Include important points from the old question in the answer to the new question.
2. Close the old question as a duplicate to the new question.
3. Prominently link back to the old question from the answer to the new question, so that the old answers are still easily accessible.
4. Close all future duplicates as duplicates of the new question instead of the old question.

Answer 5

GoodDeeds pointed out that the old canonical question and this one overlap a bit in the case of the US. I agree this is an issue.

My preferred solution is the following:

• Use the new question to explain how the admissions process for grad school works. That you have to apply to a committee and find an advisor afterwords, take the GRE, write a statement of purpose, etc. A lot of this could be migrated from the old canonical answer.
• Edit the old question to focus only on Will my application to a US grad school be competitive, and how can I improve it? This one will have the advice for writing strong essays, compensating for weak grades, etc. This will also explain why we can't answer the question "can [my stats] get me into [my dream school]?"

I think this would be a lot better, because when someone posts "I have a 3.5, can I get into Harvard", the current duplicate target "How does grad school work" seems like it doesn't really answer my question, but the new proposed title seems like a perfect fit.

Update: On closer examination, there was less overlap than I expected; the old question was already tightly focused on "advice" rather than "process." For now, I updated the title to reflect this; so, perhaps, problem solved. We can discuss further if others see the need for more drastic disambiguation.

Answer 6

We should also broaden the title question to include a brief description of what happens after you get admitted. For example: how long does a PhD usually take in country X? Is it all research, or classes too? Do most students who start end up finishing? Do you have to pay, or do you get paid? Etc.