Advice for Undergraduates Considering Graduate School Phil Agre
http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/grad-school.htmlGraduate school is training in research. It is for people who love research, scholarship, and teaching for their own sake and for the difference they can sometimes make in the world. It is not for people who simply want more undergraduate courses. It is not for people who are in a hurry to get a real job. The eventual goal of many doctoral students is to get a job as a college professor, or perhaps in industrial or government research. Some in technical subjects go on to start companies. But many just do it because they like it.
The best part of graduate school, the part that makes it worthwhile, comes toward the end, when you begin to present your research in public. Suddenly you will begin to join the community of scholars who work in your chosen area; they will take you seriously and you will begin to make numerous professional acquaintances, some of whom you will probably keep for the rest of your life. (I've written another article, similar to this one, about this process of professional networking. It's online at http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/network.html .)
In graduate school, though, your personal identity will almost certainly undergo great change. In particular, you will acquire a particular sort of professional identity: you will become known as the person who wrote such-and-such a paper, who did such-and-such research, who refuted such-and-such theory, or who initiated such-and-such line of inquiry. This process can be tremendously satisfying. But it's not for everyone.
"Hello. I'd like to ask your advice. I am thinking I might want to go to graduate school, but I'm still uncertain about where I would go or what exactly I would study. I do know that I'm pretty interested in such-and-such. How would I find out about graduate schools in that area?" Some common responses to this are as follows:
(1) "I don't actually know much about that area, but you should talk to so-and-so who is really the expert on that." Go talk to so-and-so.
(2) "I think you're going to have to define your interests a little better before I can help you." Ask for help in defining your interests better.
(3) The response you're looking for, namely a list of all the good graduate programs in that area, with as much detailed description of them as you can possibly digest.
What next? Well, let's back up and talk about research.
Getting good grades in your undergraduate classes is important, but it's not really the main thing. The main thing is this: if you want to go to graduate school, you should start getting involved in research as an undergraduate.
Writing a grant proposal may be the single most valuable experience of your project.
Your statement should demonstrate that you know what research is, that you have had at least one idea in your life, and that you have an interesting and tractable idea about your research for the future. The problem, of course, is that you probably have only the sketchiest idea of what your research in graduate school will be about. That doesn't matter. You are not promising to do the research you describe in your statement (although I am told that this is changing in some areas of the hard sciences); you are only spelling out a single plausible scenario, one that fairly reflects your interests. Try to be concrete, but also include a few hedges such as "perhaps" and "these possibilities include". Good writing counts. Project sobriety and maturity. Avoid frivolity, boasting, and self-deprecation. Show that you've read the research literature, but go easy on academic jargon. Minimize adverbs. Eschew the words "interesting" and "important", which say little. Many people start their statements with a paragraph or two of commonplaces; cut this material until you reach a statement that says something non-obvious about the world and your research involvements. Don't talk about your family, your feelings, or your non-professional interests. Don't say anything bad about anyone, including yourself. And make sure that you are not simply describing the year's most fashionable cliche of a research project -- ask for advice about this issue specifically. Put yourself in the shoes of the graduate admissions committee: they're looking at hundreds of applications and they're only going to take a second look at the ones that stand out. If you follow the above advice then your application will make the first cut and receive the serious consideration it deserves.
Meanwhile, apply for fellowships, that is, grants from foundations and other sources that pay your tuition and a small salary so that you can commit yourself full-time to studying. Don't wait until you're accepted somewhere to apply for outside funding! Deadlines typically fall between November and January in the United States and a few months later in many other countries. Ask someone in your department which are the major fellowships in your area and apply for them all. Also, at each university it is usually somebody's job to keep a list, maybe on the Web, of obscure graduate fellowships. It might be called the office of research development. You might also look in the acknowledgements sections of papers written by younger researchers in your field. Find such lists and write away for applications forms for all of the fellowships that seem relevant. Get advice about which ones are worth applying for. When in doubt, apply. Fellowships are good because they give you much more freedom to choose your own research topics. Without a fellowship, you will have to work for someone else as a teaching assistant or research assistant. Assistantships are often perfectly fine, but a fellowship is always better.
One issue that you should definitely be aware of is that people are going to really want to see you have a definite course of research in your statement of purpose. Unless you know what you want to do, pick two or three different topics that you're interested in and write up something short about each of them. Then let them sit for a day or two and see which one you feel best about. Definitely ask a professor to read over them for you if you have someone who would be willing to do so. If you don't feel comfortable asking a professor, ask other people to read them for you. Graduate students you know are a good choice; all of them have been through this process, and they remember how difficult it was.
It almost never hurts to have extra letters, and don't feel bad about asking people for letters; it's part of their job.
http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~rap/crossroads.html
- how they like the department
- can they live on their stipend
- what is the worst thing about the department
- how are the resources (building, computers, etc)
- if there is a specific professor who you'd like to work with, find some of her students and ask them how they like working with the faculty member, how many students the professor has, how much interaction they have with her, etc.
- how many people who enter the program finish with a Ph.D.
- why did the people who don't finish leave
- what happens if you decide to leave the program (some places are considering making you pay back all of the tuition if you leave)
- are they happy there
- how many hours a week they spend at work
- what the classes are like
- how many classes they have to take, and can you place out of them
- if there are no classes, what do you have to do instead
- what hurdles (like preliminary exams) do you have to take, and what type are they (oral, written, etc)
- anything else that's important to you; for example, if you are female ask the female students how they are treated as females. This is important; don't feel silly for asking.
2. No decision that you make will make everyone happy. Someone will think that you've made the wrong decision no matter where you decide to go. Accept that and when the first person expresses that you've made the wrong choice, try not to let it bother you.
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