Student Handbook

Job Hunting

Most students undertake doctoral study in music with the hope (even absolute expectation) of making a career in academia, that is, teaching at the college-university-conservatory level. Unfortunately, neither we at the CUNY Graduate Center nor anyone else at any other graduate school can "guarantee" that there will be a teaching position waiting for everyone who completes the degree.

Students can do a few things upon reaching the job-entry stage to improve their chances:

(1) keep up with the monthly list of job vacancies issued by the College Music Society; the music program keeps a "jobs file" in which these and any other notices of job opportunities that it receives are kept;

(2) keep an eye on the bulletin boards, where we post notices for jobs;

(3) browse through the "News of the Week in Review" section of The New York Times each Sunday, where there is almost always a list of openings at universities throughout the country;

(4) have an up-to-date curriculum vitae ready to go;

(5) if you keep a dossier on file in the Office of the Vice President for Student Affairs, that's all well and good; however, it's better not to send letters addressed "To whom it may concern" or "Dear Sir" to a search committee. When you need letters of recommendation, ask those who are writing for you to send a freshly printed one each time (with PCs, that's an easy enough thing to do); most faculty members will, if they know someone personally at the department to which a student is applying, back up the letter of recommendation with a phone call;

(6) on those occasions when you ask someone to send out a slew of letters of recommendation at once (it is not at all unusual for a student to ask someone to send out fifteen or twenty letters of recommendation in one shot), you might keep two things in mind: (a) give the letter-writer more than one evening's notice, and (b) consider providing him/her with envelopes that are already addressed (and perhaps with stamps already affixed);

(7) since you will probably be nearing completion of the dissertation when you start applying for jobs, consider submitting a proposal to read a paper at the national meeting of your favorite society during the year in which you're hunting for a job; since some interviewing is generally done at those national meetings, it's nice to be able to invite the interview team to hear your paper the following day.