In which I summarize my experience of getting into grad school, and sign off

This is planned to be my last post in this space.

I have decided which school I will be attending this fall, and couldn’t be more excited about beginning my new life as a graduate student. For those interested in the process, I summarize it here.

I decided to go back to school in July of last year, only several weeks before the start of fall classes. I assumed that I’d have to go to Colorado, Colorado State, or Denver University, since those are the only anthropology programs nearby and I didn’t think that moving was an option. It turned out that Denver University doesn’t have a biological sub-department so that reduced my options to two. CSU only offers a master’s degree, but I figured that could have been a sufficient jumping-off point if necessary. I emailed professors at CU and CSU for advice, and they recommended that I enroll in some graduate-level classes that Fall.

This made sense to me, since even if these classes don’t end up being transferable to my program (not sure about that yet), they would allow me to get to know some professors well enough that I might be able to solicit some letters of recommendation from them, and it might compensate for my mostly irrelevant undergrad work. It would also give me another opportunity to decide if this is really what I want to do before I dedicate a large portion of my life to it.

I ended up taking two classes at CU last semester from two different professors. I was lucky in that both classes included a great deal of group discussion and teacher-student interaction. Professors generally prefer to get to know a student over the course of a few classes before writing a recommendation, but both professors felt comfortable enough after only one semester because of the great deal of discussion and interaction that they had with me. I also made sure to produce the best work possible, and with both classes requiring a lot of writing, I had ample opportunity to impress. I also went in during both professors’ office hours in order to discuss various concepts introduced in the material, as well as my situation as a potential grad student. I didn’t want to be a bother, so I avoided showing up too often, but I wanted to make sure they had a chance to get to know me pretty well.

In the course of these discussions, I decided that I would really like to apply to a few schools outside of Colorado. The competition for spots seemed fairly fierce, and the one professor at CU that would have been an adequate advisor for me had just published some revolutionary research that led to him receiving dozens of applications, all competing for perhaps a single spot -- I got the impression that he’d prefer to not take anyone this year.

I took the GRE in November after studying off and on all semester, and ended up doing a bit better than I expected. I took several practice tests beforehand, and my actual score ended up being only slightly below my best practice score. By this time my relationship with my professors and my grades in the classes were good enough that I began to gain some confidence. About this time I also worked out with the wife that moving might even be an option, so I decided to just apply to a whole bunch of programs and see what happens.

Selecting the schools was a difficult process. It basically involved a list of all of the best working scientists that share my interests. These people came from a diverse range of schools, so it worked out well. I decided on 14 different programs. This is a number more fitting of a medical or clinical psychology applicant, but between my less-than-germane undergrad degree and not knowing exactly what schools are looking for, I cast a wide net. I wasn’t sure how well the best schools would like me, so I applied to several of those, with enough lower-ranking schools to give me a good chance to at least get in somewhere. At one point I had decided to pare the list down a bit, but I was ultimately unable to do so. One of the professors I’m now in contact with and whose work interests me greatly is from a department that at one point I had cut from the list.

Knowing which schools are the best is more difficult that I thought. The anthropology program rankings are fairly out-of-date, and rankings are so subjective that one wonders how much any of them really mean. Because biological anthropology is so very different from socio-cultural anthropology, archeology, and linguistics, the rankings of overall anthropology programs become even less reliable. My concept of which schools are the best was informed by these rankings, but input of various professors working in the field and their opinions on which programs were the most prestigious and offered the best chance of a quality education and future employment were my main source. I eventually decided on a list of 14 schools, 7 of which were “top 5” according to some reasonable measure or another, a couple others which are top 15 or 20, and 5 more that were not highly ranked but that employed professors that were doing interesting and important work in my chosen areas of study.

I started working on applications the third week of November, and finished up in January. The main thing that took so long was hounding my three referees to get their letters submitted.

I got rejected quickly from one of the top schools, as their combination of early application deadline and impatience made me an easy elimination when they hadn’t received my 3^rd recommendation yet.

The next thing that happened was that I started hearing from individual professors. This was unexpected, as in my reading about what to expect I had not encountered this phenomenon. The first one I heard from wanted to get to know me better, but the next one I heard from actually announced that he wanted to work with me and began trying to sell me on his school and research program. A third did likewise.

My confidence increased immensely at this point, as by mid-February 5 of the 6 schools I’d heard from had accepted me. However, there followed a long lull ending about mid-march, when the rejection letters began to roll in. This makes sense now, but at the time it was a bit disappointing. Ultimately, I got into 5 of the 14 schools, so there were 8 rejections in a row after the initial outpouring of interest. This makes me even more grateful that I chose to apply to so many different schools, as it is very clear that different schools are looking for completely different things. I was accepted by the school that the most cited ranking lists as #1 in the nation, but was rejected by a couple schools that barely rank in the top 100. This could be attributed to how well the potential student fits with available advisors, but near as I can tell, I would have fit in just fine. I certainly can’t blame them, as a kid with a lifetime total of two relevant classes and an irrelevant undergrad career wouldn’t knock my socks off either.

Of the five schools that accepted me, one offered no funding so they were quickly eliminated from consideration. Another offered enough to cover tuition plus a little more and was local (I actually did get into Colorado), and the other three promised a full tuition waiver, a nice stipend, and healthcare. They all wanted me to come visit their campuses, and I wish I had more time and money to do so. I did visit the only one that had an actual recruiting event, which I thoroughly enjoyed. While there, the person in charge of funding informed me that the situation wasn’t quite as rosy as I’d been led to believe, due to last year’s large cohort and the departure of a lecturer (and his accompanying TA slots).

This was a source of much grief for me, as the visit to their campus convinced me that this was the school I must attend. When I confronted my potential advisor with this, she told me to remain optimistic and that they would try to get something together for me.

Three weeks later, and my funding just came through in the form of a teaching assignment. I’ll be teaching a 300-level class, so it’ll be mostly junior and senior anthropology majors. I should remind you at this point that the average junior or senior anthropology major has taken many more relevant classes than I have, and is likely to know quite a bit more about the subject than me. I can’t wait.

It still seems possible that I will not have to teach, as there’s a fellowship that could pass to me if a specific person gets an NSF grant (They have one fellowship to offer per cohort, and I'm second in line), but I’m not counting on that. The other two schools offered me fellowships that would allow me to not work my first year, but funding becomes a secondary consideration once it’s available.

I must recap how unpredictable this process is. Not only did I get accepted to arguably the most prestigious anthropology department in the nation during a year when they were accepting far fewer students than they normally do, but they even fought to create a funding package for me to ensure that I would be willing to give them full consideration as I made my decision. All this, while being rejected by a bunch of schools that, had they accepted me, I wouldn’t have even considered. Maybe some day I’ll gain a better understanding of all the ins and outs of this crazy process.

Before anyone gets the impression that it’s all “happily ever after,” it is very much up in the air whether my wife will be making the move with me. This fact may, in some ways, be considered a continuation of my deconversion saga, although that is certainly not the only issue at play.

Writing this blog was instrumental in my decision to go back to school, and I thank the readers who submitted encouraging emails and comments. I hope that my little experiment in the blogosphere has encouraged or informed someone in some meaningful way, but even if not, it has inspired me to begin a new life that I hope will lead to furthering our understanding of nature and our place in it. Thanks for reading.

Go look at the moon!

The lunar eclipse is in progress, will reach totality in a little over an hour (8:26 Mountain time), and will remain in totality for 51 minutes. Unfortunately, it's very cloudy here. Perhaps even more unfortunate is that Phil Plait lives down the road from me and I don't imagine his viewing conditions will be much better than mine. Hopefully things clear up in the next hour or so.

Charles Darwin and Racism

Ken Ham is well known as a "liar for Jesus." He's been among the worst for some time now. He's got a new book out, in which he attempts to smear evolution as being racist. Such an assertion is absurd on its face (Plate tectonics is also racist, and I heard the germ theory of disease hates the Dutch!), but it's typical of the creationist crowd. Despite the long existence of this sort of thinking, they have yet to come up with any actual argument (other than "God did it!"), so they invariably resort to bashing evolution.

Ken Ham's argument seems to boil down to two things: Evolution itself is racist, as judged by the title of Darwin's book, and Darwin himself was a racist.

The former is a very old chestnut that has no basis in reality. The name of Darwin's book, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life, seems to many to refer to some sort of argument for racial superiority. Someone who has actually read the book will know that Origin does not contain discussion about human evolution. Darwin was very concerned about the reception his ideas would receive in the scientific community and in the public forum, and wanted to make sure that he published them in an expansive text so that he could explain his ideas carefully and add preemptive defenses for the criticisms he knew he would receive. He decided therefore to discuss only the principles of and arguments for natural selection in a general sense, not as it applies to humans. Therefore, Darwin could not have been referring to "races" in the way many refer to them today.

In biology, the term "race" refers to a subspecies. "Race" in the colloquial sense is wholly without biological foundation and is useful for convenience only. When Darwin talked about race, he was referring to differential sizes and shapes of bills among otherwise similar finches, subtle differences within species of coral, etc.

So clearly, the idea that the title of Darwin's book has any relevance in a modern discussion of race is completely unfounded. Darwin did eventually publish a lengthy volume dealing with human evolution. It was published in 1871 and is called The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. From that title we learn that Darwin must have been a sexist. Just kidding.

In reality, Darwin was actually quite enlightened for his day. He did suffer from a very mild form of racism, but compared to the writings of many of his famous and much-beloved contemporaries, he was well ahead of his time. I assume that if he were alive today he'd be just as racially tolerant as anyone. It wasn't until well into the 20th century that Biblically-justified racism began to decrease substantially, so we should be careful judging historical figures according to contemporary morality.

It should also be emphasized that Darwin was absolutely not a "social Darwinist." That certain evil men chose to take Darwin's brilliant observations of nature and artificially apply them to society does not speak to the character or credibility of Darwin.

On a related note, I consider "Darwinism" to be an outdated and somewhat silly term. Many Britons still refer to natural selection in this manner, perhaps because they are proud to have produced such a great thinker, but I think it does a disservice to the field. It causes creationists to think that evolution is all about Darwin, when that is clearly not the case. Referring to natural selection as "Darwinism" is like referring to gravity as "Newtonism." The theory of gravitation, like the theory of evolution, has become much more refined in the last few centuries, and is a far cry from what it was in Newton's day, but we certainly are in debt to Newton for laying the foundation. The character of Newton, at least according to modern standards, was far more suspect than the character of Darwin, but that does not change the contributions Newton made. If a principle is correct, it stands on its own merits, regardless of who discovered it. Newton is considered by many to be the greatest "scientist" who ever lived, and his various contributions remain important today.

Darwin was reluctant to publish his findings for many reasons, including the religious furor he knew they would cause, and uncertainty of how it would affect his relationship with his devoutly Christian wife. He was finally forced to publish Origin because Alfred Russell Wallace had independently conceived the theory of natural selection and had written up a very concise summary. He contacted Darwin to get his thoughts on the matter, and Darwin knew he would have to publish or risk wasting his life's work. While Darwin's idea may have been the single greatest idea ever conceived, had he decided to enter the ministry or become a doctor as his father hoped he would, evolution and natural selection would likely be just as universally accepted today. To assume that impugning the character of Darwin is somehow evidence against evolution is supremely ignorant.

We are pleased to inform you...

...that you have been admitted to the PHD program in the Department of Anthropology for the Fall semester 2008.

Woot!

It's from one of the 3 schools I'd already been talking with through email/phone so it wasn't a big surprise but it's quite a relief.

Of the 14 schools I applied to, I considered 7 of them to be tier 1, 5 to be tier 2, and the remaining 2 to be tier 1.5ish. My first acceptance is from one of the 1.5s.

I'll be writing up a summary of the whole process before too long, as I wasn't sure how it would really go and someone else might find it useful to have an idea of how the process works.

OMG he knows my name!

Phil Plait from Badastronomy.com linked to my last post and I had a bit of a teenage schoolgirl moment. He is a warrior for truth and whacker of anti-science moles wherever they pop up. He has a mancrush that I share. He also has quite a large telescope. Just sayin'.

I'm over it now and am totally manly again.

ID Beatdown

So I realize that claims of "[the guy I support] totally laid the smackdown on that [guy I don't support]!!" are all too common and often exaggerated, but PZ Myers debated a senior fellow from the Discovery Institute this afternoon and it really was a gory display. Dr. Simmons, the Intelligent Design advocate, really did come off as being completely clueless, and PZ was quite masterful indeed. Even the folks at Uncommon Descent (link removed due to the page being taken down, see update below) were lamenting the beating that their guy took. The hour-long (minus commercials) show should be up shortly on the radio station's website.

In the aftermath, this exchange was solid gold:

Dr. Simmons, presenting evidence of design:

The mouth, vagina (sic, we can only hope he's talking about the uterus here), urethra, and anus are sealed by mucus when not in use and yet can open and close in controlled ways as needs arise.

PZ:

This is a man who thinks the fact that he isn't drooling and feces aren't dribbling down his leg is a miracle from god. After reading his book, I kind of agree.

In addition to all the nonsense PZ shot down, there are various other areas in which Dr. Simmons' ideas were absurd that had relevance to my own field. For instance, he pointed to the existence of menopause in women as being unexplainable by natural means, and that it therefore must have been implemented by an intelligent designer. That's news to me, as in my often vigorous debates with peers, the issue with menopause (what we like to call reproductive senescence) is that there are so many evolutionary hypotheses that fit the evidence it's difficult to determine which among them is most likely to have presented the strongest selective pressure.

On an unrelated note, I got an email from the department chair of a top 5 school wanting me to call and have a chat, as they're strongly considering me and would like to get to know me better. That was stressful to say the least. I think it went pretty well. Even if I don't get into their (outrageously prestigious) program, it's good to know that my application was strong enough to merit some consideration, and that I ought to be able to get in somewhere, which is still my low-bar main concern.

Update: The link to the debate is now available here. The thread I referred to above wherein various ID advocates lament the thrashing their guy received at the hands of science was taken down. This should have been expected, as it's typical behavior from Uncommon Descent, who have long disallowed any rational folk from posting on their site, and apparently have now gone so far as to delete even momentary lapses of unreason from their normally ever-so deluded flock.

New NAS book, and more about secondary altriciality

The new book from the National Academy of Sciences, Science, Evolution, and Creationism, is now available for download here. Click the blue "sign in" link below the book's cover, provide a little bit information (zip code, country, email address, as I recall) and then download the 3.2mb file on the subsequent page.

I haven't read it yet, but a quick skim reveals a great resource. It's 50-60 pages long, and seems like a very good summary. There is one small problem in the book, their shameless nod to the pious, but not a big deal. There's also an 8-page summary available for download for those who don't want to sign in, and it's available in bound form for $11.65 on that same site.

In response to a previous comment, secondary altriciality has its roots in our pelvic adaptations for bipedality, but didn't actually result in any significant altriciality until after the massive acceleration in encephalization that occurred after 2 million years ago.

For those not familiar, altriciality refers to offspring that are helpless at birth and completely dependent on others for their care. This is the rule among animals with large litter sizes, and is generally not found among animals giving birth to only one or two offspring at a time. Humans are "secondarily" altricial because we evolved within a precocial (the opposite of altricial, referring to offspring that can walk, find food, or at least cling to their mothers shortly after birth) phylogeny. Humans are still somewhat precocial, having hair, open eyes, and relatively large body size at birth, but much of that body size is represented by brain tissue and fat, neither of which are terribly helpful when it comes to walking around.

I tried to pin down the general time period in which secondary altriciality emerged, but was unable to do so due to insufficient sample size in the fossil evidence combined with our still as-yet inaccurate methods for determining an fossil individual's age at death. It probably started in Late Homo erectus but may have begun as late as archaic Homo sapiens, so something like 1.5m to 500k years ago.

Our pelvic adaptations require a series of turns by the fetus on its way through the birth canal, which also end up with the baby facing the wrong direction (towards the mother's back), which would have led to the requirement of a midwife during childbirth as early as 3 million years ago. This did not lead to altricial infants on its own, but exacerbated the altriciality of infants after cranial size increased to the point of filling up the entire birth canal. There is significant evidence of coevolution between infant cranial size and female pelvic inlet size since that time, allowing for more in utero brain development without further increasing altriciality.

The immediate cause of secondary altriciality is not so much the brain growth during gestation as it is the continued emphasis on brain growth during the early years of life, at the expense of somatic growth and muscle development. Particularly during the first year, the brain continues to grow at an incredible rate, while the rest of the body keeps up only enough to support that brain growth.

Its quite a bit more complicated than that, but my paper was 23 pages long and could have been much longer so I'll spare you the details. It's certainly an interesting topic.