Pathways to Research and Doctoral Careers

Pathways to Research and Doctoral Careers (PREDOC) is a consortium of universities and research institutions that aims to foster a talented, diverse, and inclusive population in the quantitative social sciences.

Consortium members collaborate to prepare Bachelor's and Master's degree students for a potential academic career. We do this in particular through predoctoral research programs: paid, full-time, post-baccalaureate research positions working directly for faculty, where recent graduates are mentored and prepared for careers in the academy, institutes of policy research, and industry.

Here's who we are and what we do at a glance.

Our Impact

40

Members

400+

Open pre-doc positions in academic year 2021

4600

Average visitors each month

90K+

Visits since October 2020

Overview of the Consortium

Each consortium institution is committed to cultivating research environments and workplaces that are diverse and inclusive. We actively recruit and mentor post-baccalaureate researchers who bring new perspectives to our academic disciplines and strengthen our ideas. Our practices include:

Proactively reaching out to, mentoring, and recruiting individuals who are underrepresented in our fields.
Expanding our engagement with diverse populations to increase and diversify the pool of predoctoral candidates.
Establish academic and professional development opportunities, including mentorship programs.
Minimizing the onus of data tasks in the hiring process, which can create barriers to those who are time, resource, or otherwise constrained.
Providing trainings on best hiring practices to hiring managers and post-baccalaureate researchers.
Establishing program-wide mentoring, as well as academic and professional development opportunities.

While consortium institutions are primarily business schools and economics departments, we welcome interest from individuals with a wide range academic backgrounds. The faculties at PREDOC institutions include economists, computer scientists, statisticians, psychologists, engineers, and sociologists, to name only a few fields. We are eager to engage with anyone interested in quantitative research in the social sciences.