How do you become a professor?

How does one become a university professor?

• I want to become a professor in something like anthropolgy or history and do research at a university. What path do I take to become that? How long does it take? How much money will I be making? I'm a senior in high school, so I have time, but I was just wondering what I'd be in for. Thanks

• Answer:

  You need a four year degree. You should go to the best undergraduate schools that you can get into (because the quality of your college will be a factor in getting into a good school). Major in the field that interests you. Get great grades (you should have mostly As in your chosen field). You will also need to have a high GRE score (the GRE is like the SAT for grad school). At the beginning of your senior year, apply to graduate schools. You want to go to the best one yo can get into. The schools with top PhD programs usually don't accept terminal Master's students -- and will accept you right out of graduate school. If you can't get ito one of them, you can go to a lower ranked school to get your MA -- then apply again to a top school. Once in the PhD program, you will usually have to do the following: 1. Take about three years of classes 2. Take a written comprehensive exam at the end of your second year (Mine was two days --9:00-5:00) 3. Take an Oral comprehensive exam at the end of your third year (Mine was a presentation of a research paper -- but in other fields, it may be an exam on a list of books that will be used for reseach) 4. You need to write a dissertation. This can take anywhere from one to five years. 5. At most schools you need to defend your dissertation (present it to your committee). I didn't have to do this, because a Berkeley doesn't require this. At this point, you have a PhD. In some fields, you can now be hired as an Assistant Professor. If you do a lot of research and get published in the top journals, then you can get tenure. In other fields, you get hired as a Post-Doc and do research for a few years before getting a job as an Assistant Professor. As for money -- Assistant Professors in the arts don't make all that much. At the top schools, you might start out at $70K -- but would get much less at a lower ranked school. Professional fields (B-School professors, Engineering professors, etc) make about twice as much.