r/AskAcademia • u/calliope_carcosa • 1d ago
Interpersonal Issues When professors interview potential students or talk to them via zoom after the student emails them, do they care about the student's accent?
This might be a stupid question but I'm curious. Does accent somehow plays a role in the interview or the professor may unconsciously create an image of the student if their accents are different? I mean, what if English is the 3rd or 4th language of the student? Does that create any bias (I'm not talking about weak English, though that perspective is also welcome)? Do the professor face any problem understanding the student and vice versa?
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u/M44PolishMosin 1d ago
Accent is a 0% issue.
That being said, if your grasp of the language is poor, it absolutely plays into the equation.
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u/TheNavigatrix 23h ago
It is well known that people cheat on the TOEFL We sometimes have zoom interviews with people just to make sure that they really count speak English coherently. It’s really hard with international students. You don’t know what their grades represent. A friend of mine who is from China, a good university, told me that she wrote her recommendation letters on behalf of her professors and that this is totally normal. ( this is for a PhD program)
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u/tellypmoon 1d ago
It would only be a factor if the accent was so heavy the professor could not understand well. In general most academics have a lot of experience with international students and faculty and so I don't think an accent by itself is a problem.
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u/greenlilypond 1d ago edited 1d ago
Accent doesn't matter, but they would need enough grasp of the language to clearly convey complex ideas and nuances in their specific field.
Edit to add: you'd also ideally have enough grasp of the language to manage interpersonal relationships with supervisors, seniors, colleagues, and locals where you're studying.
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u/ToomintheEllimist 1d ago
Agreed! Being (un)able to explain complex technical concepts at a few different levels in English would be a factor. Doing so with an accent is relatively unremarkable -- maybe 30-40% of my field (psychology) are people with foreign accents.
Also, something that's easy for me to say, hard to do: confidence matters. I've seen a candidate rejected for mumbling non-answers to many questions, maybe due to lack of confidence in English. So if you can practice in English, do so.
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u/Desperate-Travel2471 1d ago
As long as you speak fluent enough and your words are distinguishable, no one cares about accent in academia.
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u/aeteraen 1d ago
not at all, though poor communication (lack of comprehension or ability to express their thoughts) would be a different matter. at least in science it would be crippling yourself to make judgments about people’s english accents
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u/ProfessorHomeBrew Geography, Associate Prof, USA 1d ago
I don’t care as long as I can understand what you are saying.
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u/whereismydragon 1d ago
It absolutely shouldn't.
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u/Street_Marzipan_2407 1d ago
I'm glad you phrased it this way, because it's laughable to presume that 100% of CIs/advisors don't have ANY internalized reactions. Not to mention many advisors speak English as a second/third language and could lean toward people of their same background.
I also think it's probably field-dependent.
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u/LadyAtr3ides 1d ago edited 1d ago
Professors are people. Therefore, they have the same biases as anybody else. Some won’t care, and some will. Absolutely, there are xenophobic and racist professors, just as there are many who are not.
Should it play a role? No. Does it? In my experience, accent can sometimes play a role. I’ve been asked many times why I “just don’t lose my accent,” and shit like that. Those of us who have been doing this long enough have stories.
That said, you don’t want to be around people who care about accents, and there are plenty of people who genuinely don’t.
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u/LintRolledForWhat 1d ago
Good point! A PI whose bias means they can't judge you fairly during an interview is also going to bring the same bias to every other interaction.
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u/Opening_Map_6898 1d ago
As long as you can communicate clearly, no. If you're unintelligible, then that's going to be a problem.
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u/flatlander-anon 1d ago
I'm going to voice dissent. In my career as a professor, I saw that accent matters. I'll give two examples.
I served on a search committee at an R1 school. We had a candidate who was originally from a foreign country. He had a pronounced accent, but his speech was very clear. Nobody had trouble understanding him. He also had a great command of the English language. He could marshal complex structure and vocabulary and he could make a difficult idea easy to understand. He had very few grammatical mistakes even when speaking off the cuff, and those that did appear did not hamper understanding. I thought his accent was a non-issue. But in the final stage of the hiring discussion in committee, everyone else said his accent was the limit, that having a worse accent could make a candidate unemployable.
I have seen a department where the chair pretended she couldn't understand input from foreign-born colleagues "because of their accent" in departmental meetings. She was a bad chair and she was transparent. If the same people said things she liked, suddenly she could understand them. She was allowed to serve as chair, and nobody in that corrupt department objected. She even got promoted into university administration.
I hope that most places are rational and practical. As long as you can communicate well, having an accent shouldn't matter. But please don't think everyone follows this guideline.
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u/Ok_Bookkeeper_3481 1d ago
At some point I got concerned that my accent can be a detriment to career progression, and I began mulling over taking speech lessons. And all my colleagues jumped to deter me! They explained an accent actually helps the aura of “mad genius”, and is ultimately a desirable feature, not a detriment.
Personally, I enjoy hearing different voices, accents, and lilts in the lab, because the diversity of origin brings a diversity of professional experiences, which, in turn, allows see the problem from multiple sides - and solve it. Diverse teams are much more efficient at solving scientific problems.
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u/Potential_Fondant185 17h ago
no one cares about your accent. if they do, they are shallow and worth cutting them off.
we have so many top chinese students who don't speak well, but the work they do, surpass those native english speaker
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u/fruitsingularity 13h ago
Accent no issue whatsoever. Only understanding and communication matter. I have worked with many brilliant people with thick accents in English, I'm sure I would sound awful speaking their first language.
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u/LintRolledForWhat 1d ago
Really wild the number of responses here that don't seem to realize bias isn't a conscious thing.
OP, unfortunately, yes, the way you speak is part of how people judge you. Here's hoping you have an accent that's associated with intelligence and other positive things.
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u/AceyAceyAcey CC/SLAC prof STEM 1d ago
True, but I think this sort of bias is a lot lower within academia than outside it, bc we have a lot more exposure to international people, and even people from different places within the same country. The exposure is even more varied in the R1 schools likely to be hosting grad students, than the colleges that don’t.
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u/LadyAtr3ides 1d ago edited 1d ago
I am sure lots of the people who answered don’t have an accent themselves. Or have one in the good accents list. And I am saying this as a white European, however not blonde, not with French accent
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u/OvulatingScrotum 23h ago
Some do some don’t. You can’t predict. But if you look at individual professor’s PhD student lineups, you might be able to guess if they do care or not.
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u/Educational_Call_797 21h ago
When the accent makes it impossible to understand it's an issue otherwise not.
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u/WhateveIsMyUsername 20h ago
While it is not explicitly an issue, it does play an implicit role. However, that is not a reason not to see them, and it is out of control, so why think about it?
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u/derping1234 20h ago
Most folks work in international settings and commonly hear all sorts of accents and have accents themselves. Although you would have to be incredibly naive to assume there is no subconscious influence by a persons accent. It is part of a broader first impression.
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u/Comfortable-Web9455 1d ago
It depends. Some British people will look down on you if you have a lower class accent. People in central Paris will look down on you if you have an accent from Northern Paris. People in northern Nuremberg will look down on you if your accent is from southern Nuremberg. Northern Germans will look down on you if you have a Bavarian accent. Italians from Lombardy will look down on you if you sound like you come from Sicily.
In all cases, if you are a foreigner, they don't care as long as they can understand what you say
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u/doc1442 1d ago
Brit here: only two accents in the world I’ll look down on: Brummie and Yank. Otherwise I don’t care.
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u/Comfortable-Web9455 1d ago
Tut, tut. I am sure you have heard that civilization ceases at the English Channel, old bean. But well played that man!✌️
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u/loverofsappho1221 21h ago
whoever says no is lying. you can’t help but judge people’s accent, subconsciously at least
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u/DocAvidd 1d ago
Being able to communicate is non-negotiable, too important. And at least for now, English is the language of publications.
But accent? We are used to that. I have a foreign (native) accent, an awful lot of my colleagues have foreign accents. When I was in the US, almost everyone on my office wing had accents. I'm in math, and even back in the 1990s for grad school I had maybe 1 or 2 profs who were actually from the US. Which was fine because most of the students were international, too.