Editing User:Benjamin Mako Hill/Prospective graduate students (section)

== Things you should know about my role in the PhD admissions process ==

About half of my advisees are PhD students in the Department of Communication. The Department of Communication is wide and interdisciplinary and accepts a wide variety of students with interests in doing work that spans the humanities and social sciences.

'''I will serve on the UW Department of Communication graduate admissions committee in 2024.''' It's worth remembering that the committee reviews applications and makes decisions collectively based exclusively on what's in the file. That means that the place and time to impress me is in your written application, as it is only the evidence that can be used to justify a decision to move forward.

'''I do not serve on the graduate admissions committee in any other departments.''' This means that I will not be reading applications from the general pools or making the first cut at the list of applications. As part of the admissions process in other departments, I always give feedback on applicants to the admissions committee.<!-- I also typically have grant funding to fund RAs. So, although I don't ever make admissions decisions independently, my opinion matters, and I can influence the process in some important ways. -->

Once the first cut is over, the committee in every department will reach out to potential advisers and committee members. The admission committee always asks me two questions:

# What I do think about the student relative to other applicants?
# Am I a likely (a) advisor/chair or (b) committee member?

The key thing for students to realize when reaching out to potential faculty like me is that my opinion in terms of the first question only matters if the the answer to questions 2(a), and to a lesser extent, 2(b) is affirmative.

At this stage, I am only asked to weigh in on students the admissions committee has decided will likely work with me. This means my opinion is only valued strongly if the applicant's proposed research agenda involves studies of social media and/or online communities or whose methodological toolbox includes quantitative data science or programming.

Because some of my influence at the admissions stage stems from my ability to fund RAs, being able to work as an RA for one of my funded projects greatly improves your chances of being admitted to our program. But again, you will only be at an advantage if you can convince the committee (and me!) that you would be interested and able to do the kinds of work described in the grants my lab has received or will apply for.