Jump to content
Urch Forums

Questions to ask current Graduate Students at Prospective Schools


RonnieT1283

Recommended Posts

This question is particularly meant for current graduate students out there. With admissions decisions starting to trickle in, I thought it would in everyones best interest to start a discussion about what are some important questions to ask current graduate students of the schools that people are considering. In particular, what are some questions you asked or wished you had asked graduate students are your current institution before you had accepted your offer?

 

So far I have come up with the following:

 

1) How long does it typically take to complete a Ph.D. at Random University?

 

2) Do many people drop out of the program? If so for what reason (failed comps, job offers etc.)?

 

3) What are some of the better placements that graduates have received recently (academic, gov., private)?

 

4) Do you feel the department is above or below average in helping its graduates find placement?

 

5) If you were an RA, who would you recommend working with, not working with?

 

6) If you were a TA, what were your teaching responsibilities like? Do you feel the teaching load was too much?

 

7) What is your general opinion of how the department treats its PhD students on a scale of (worst: teaching work horse --to--best: up and comming academic who co-author's many papers)?

  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

In no particular order, here are some things I'd ask:

 

How easy or hard is it for you to get face time with your advisor?

 

Is it difficult to get funding for research needs, like data, software, travel?

 

Do you have opportunities to present your research? How often? Who gives you feedback?

 

Do faculty members co-author with students? Which faculty members?

 

How well are first and second year students integrated into the department? How/by who are they advised before they have committees?

 

How are you expected to learn the "tools" of research like STATA, MATLAB, and other programs if you don't know them already?

 

Are there any fields where the professors are really helpful to grad students? Where the professors are particularly bad about helping grad students? What fields are perceived as "strong" or "weak" within the department? Are any faculty members planning to leave soon? (Also -- if you know you want to work with one specific person, it is ok to ask about that person, how he is with grad students, etc.)

 

How often are classes canceled/not offered for lack of enrollment or lack of faculty?

 

What resources/opportunities outside of the econ department do students take advantage of?

 

What are some examples of research that current students are working on? Do students talk to each other about research?

 

Are students competitive with each other? Do grades matter? Are students ever required to repeat core classes?

 

What are the requirements for reaching candidacy?

 

What did you do the summer after first year/second year? When do most students start working seriously on research?

 

What is your usual schedule? How many hours a day do you spend at school? Weekends? How social is the department? Do people hang out together outside of school?

 

Where do first year students study? Do they have offices? What are the first year classes like? Are they well taught? Do they turn out to be useful?

 

Basically, you want to get a sense of what your life would be like if you were a grad student at _____ University. And remember that while placement is very important, it's also a long ways off. When comparing similar schools, think about the quality of the experience in the first couple of years. Even when the ends justify the means, you might as well pick the best "means" possible. Try to get a sense of the department as a community, and figure out where you'd fit in to that community.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

In no particular order, here are some things I'd ask:

 

...

Try to get a sense of the department as a community, and figure out where you'd fit in to that community.

 

One of the most useful posts I've read here. I am going to write some of these questions down (some didn't occur to me like software/travel funding).

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I agree it's a great list.

 

Three questions that stood out in my mind:

How are you expected to learn the "tools" of research like STATA, MATLAB, and other programs if you don't know them already?

Where do first year students study? Do they have offices?

 

How well are first and second year students integrated into the department? How/by who are they advised before they have committees?

Are there any graduate programs out there that do a good job with any of these three things? They all seem like a lot to ask for. The last one in particular, formal faculty advising for first or second-years would be especially desirable.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

EconScribe, I do think there's between school and within school variation in each of those things. At U-Mich, you learn MATLAB in stats -- there's some formal teaching, problem sets structured to teach you MATLAB and statistics, and a lot of learning from classmates or TAs. But it's more formal than the "teaching" of STATA, which is basically assigning a problem set and telling you to use STATA to solve it.

 

U-Mich makes a really big effort to integrate students into the department. There are special seminars for first year students, a little bit of funding to do research with a professor after first year, a "buddy" program that pairs first years with upper year buddies (I think most schools do this) and first years are also assigned faculty mentors. But how well these things work for you depends on how much you pursue the opportunities. I guess that's why I think they are worth asking about, because the last one in particular is a really big part of how successful your experience is.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I agree it's a great list.

 

Three questions that stood out in my mind:

 

Are there any graduate programs out there that do a good job with any of these three things? They all seem like a lot to ask for. The last one in particular, formal faculty advising for first or second-years would be especially desirable.

 

UCLA does very well on the second question. They have an awesome "grad. lab" for first and second years where you can keep all your books and stuff and study (socialize).

 

MIT does quite well on the third point, since the university has a policy that every student has to have an advisor. Glenn Ellison is the advisor for all the first years, and he actually sits down with each of us and discusses what classes we should take, and if we ever have questions about anything, he's always available to answer them. Plus he's awesome.

 

I doubt there are very many places that handle the first point very well. The best way to learn MATLAB/STATA is to be a graduate research assistant for an applied professor. You will learn more in a couple days than you would otherwise learn in a couple years of doing problem sets.

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I doubt there are very many places that handle the first point very well. The best way to learn MATLAB/STATA is to be a graduate research assistant for an applied professor. You will learn more in a couple days than you would otherwise learn in a couple years of doing problem sets.

This is absolutely true!!

 

I think of every program I know about, MIT probably has the best reputation overall in terms of advising and moving students through the writing process. Antichron's comments echo what I've been told by many others and speak well for the program.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks. I didn't mean to imply there wasn't heterogeneity in the three areas I mentioned, I was more saying that the three areas I listed are valuable yet probably are not most schools' top priority, and I was interested in what schools were successful and how they pull it off (and whether the manner they do it can be feasibly imitated :) )

 

I agree entirely with the comments made regarding MATLAB, work etc. though I think having more transparency with RA job availability would be really helpful. I felt that way at my undergraduate institution as well. It does not seem like efficient labor matching to just keep emailing professors and taking the first that replies to you, which is what I've known people to do.

 

Regarding the MIT advising system, what are the incentives for professors to be advisors? For instance, is Ellison's role one that he maintains every year, and that he has fewer obligations elsewhere because of it?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've been told that Stanford GSB is very good at advising, and making sure students stay on track. They get almost all of their students in and out in four years, according to one of my advisers and their job market candidates' CVs. Probably helps that they have you doing research every summer.

 

Stanford (regular) let's you flounder, and I'm told that Harvard can be very bad, since they're all trying to publish like crazy there.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

What is your usual schedule? How many hours a day do you spend at school? Weekends? How social is the department? Do people hang out together outside of school?

 

Where do first year students study? Do they have offices? What are the first year classes like? Are they well taught? Do they turn out to be useful?

My girlfriend and I are in different programs, and the two biggest difference in our chances to succeed are our will to put in the work for Quals, and our wanting to spend four to six years with the people around us and in our departments' offices. In the top schools, getting professors you can work with or whatever is important, but outside of the stratosphere, the department environment is so extremely important.

 

I'd ask how much the first years go out together (it should be fairly common), how many people drop out on their own, how smoothly the printers, copiers, and computers in the graduate student/department lounge run, etc.

 

One way, I think, to gauge how close the department is, is to ask which bars are popular amongst the graduate students (it should be easy to name a couple, and there should be more than one).

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I am not sure if someone has mentioned something alike, but I would like to ask:

 

-Which courses are well prepared and have good lectures and which aren't? (Before someone mentions that you should be mature enough to make the most of even a course that doesn't have such a good lecturer, Mankiw made that point in his blog. I agree with him that presentation is important).

-Which advisors have a good placement history?

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Stanford (regular) let's you flounder, and I'm told that Harvard can be very bad, since they're all trying to publish like crazy there.

 

Is this really the case with Stanford? On their website they claim that people complete their PhD in 4 years...does anyone have any info to enlighten this claim?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Victor Chernozhukov finished his PhD from Stanford econ. in 3 years. (Though his advisor told him that he could go on the job market in his second year if he wanted to.) I was under the impression that the average time to degree at Stanford is between five and six years like most other departments, though.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Victor Chernozhukov finished his PhD from Stanford econ. in 3 years. (Though his advisor told him that he could go on the job market in his second year if he wanted to.) I was under the impression that the average time to degree at Stanford is between five and six years like most other departments, though.

 

I guess it should also depend on whether one wants to use the PhD on the academic job market, or to get a place in an international organisation (the latter requiring, I would imagine, less time to complete).

 

On a totally unrelated question: If funding claims $X for the first 2 years, subsequent TA/RA positions, does this mean that for a given amount of TA/RA work, we still get the same X funding?

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I guess it should also depend on whether one wants to use the PhD on the academic job market, or to get a place in an international organisation (the latter requiring, I would imagine, less time to complete).

 

On a totally unrelated question: If funding claims $X for the first 2 years, subsequent TA/RA positions, does this mean that for a given amount of TA/RA work, we still get the same X funding?

 

Victor Chernozhukov is an MIT professor now. I think he was just awesome in graduate school.

 

Regarding the funding issue, the amount of funding in later years usually goes down significantly. You should ask the departments what funding is like in the third year and beyond.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Regarding the funding issue, the amount of funding in later years usually goes down significantly. You should ask the departments what funding is like in the third year and beyond.

 

Thanks a lot for the info - it's really helpful.

 

Could you give me any indication (maybe from your MIT experience) as to the income/funding in later years as supposed to the first two years?

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

At MIT, the difference (for me at least) was only $1500. At Stanford, the stipend for the first two years was 30,000 (including summer support), and the stipend for TA-ing was 19,500, I believe. At Harvard, the difference was about $5000. I don't really remember the rest of the schools' offers...
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Is this really the case with Stanford? On their website they claim that people complete their PhD in 4 years...does anyone have any info to enlighten this claim?

 

I was told this by my professor, who went to Stanford. She's been out about six years now, though, so maybe it's changed.

 

(Still, I'd be willing to flounder at Stanford, if they'd let me)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

At MIT, the difference (for me at least) was only $1500. At Stanford, the stipend for the first two years was 30,000 (including summer support), and the stipend for TA-ing was 19,500, I believe. At Harvard, the difference was about $5000. I don't really remember the rest of the schools' offers...

 

I have now heard things to that avail from my offers.

 

Seems to make no sense to pay you less once you actually start contributing to the school....or is there an expectation for all students to receive additional funding for the time when they do their thesis, such as thesis stipends...?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 10 months later...

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...