How competitive is it to land a position as a tenure track professor?
10 Answers
Aj.Raymond James Ritchie, Hons & PhD Uni of Sydney, 12y post doctoral, 105 papers
Perversely competitive but in reality it is so competitive that it becomes a lottery. In my career I applied for 300 academic positions, got interviewed 6 times (some were farcial) and I got one dead end non tenure 3y contract lectureship out of all the time I wasted writing the job applications (normally an academic application is about 10,000 words long).
Usually today you do not get a rejection letter. They could not be bothered. The lowest number of applicants for a job I have seen on a rejection letter was about 100, the median is about 200 and the highest I have seen was 400. When you ...