My research statements are starting to fall into place, which means I'm getting closer to having the whole application package put together. Good.
Anyway, my office mates and I were talking over the lunch table about something I've mentioned before--schools that want transcripts with our applications. There's even (at least) one department in the JFP that's asking for undergrad transcripts. Sweet Jesus, that's idiotic. Some people in this Chronicle thread say we should suck it up and send official transcripts.
But fuck that. In philosophy we apply to a fuck of a lot of jobs. Ethics and social/political people have over 100 jobs to apply for in this year's JFP. But official transcipts cost money. Sending them to every school that asks for them would mean spending hundreds and hundreds of dollars. And that's not going to happen. Crappily printed copies of the webpage that lists my grades are going to have to do.
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I hear ya...I've been griping about this to my SO today (who has probably had enough of that). I accept the nature of institutional bureaucracies, but it is goofy. I hope they are satisfied with knowledge of how I did in my first ever philosophy class (critical thinking). Like anyone will even read it...
An easy way around this at the application stage is to order one official one and send the copy, with a note saying an "official" one is available on request.
Usually the official one is only necessary if you are hired and the photocopy is easier to decipher for a committee than the abstract printouts.
First of all, as an aside, I must say that I truly appreciate the amount and creativity of the profanity on these posts --- it really gets at my experience w. the job market.
Second, does anyone actually look at the transcripts other than the human resources robots? Cause my grad classes are all listed by number rather than course title, so no one's gonna have a fuck of an idea what "235" is and how it was different the zillion different times I took it.
I like ITPF's suggestion of a photocopy with a note.
I've always assumed they want to verify whether a given candidate actually has the degree in hand. I do see a lot of CVs where people appear to say they have a degree, when really they're a candidate for the degree or they haven't updated the date of the expected degree. This is even true when the degree is clearly not in hand, as in "Ph.D. 2013".
Nobody cares about grad student grades anyway: if they're bad, you aren't asked to continue in the program. Otherwise, they're As and Bs.
Rumor has it from my department's student rep, who was involved in our open search last year, that our faculty did look at overall GPA. Not sure why. Seems like they figure if grades are inflated across the board, someone getting a few too many Bs must not be very good. Ummm, right.
I'm applying to 65-70 jobs, and only a handful of those asked for official transcripts. It's not all that much money. A few said finalists need to send official ones, but most of them just said "transcripts" or "graduate transcripts". There were four that needed official ones, and one of those also wanted undergraduate transcripts, so I have to pay for five + the one copy of each undergrad and grad that I'll use to make photocopies. Altogether that's less money than it takes to send one application for college. I don't think it's that outrageous.
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