Hello. I’m Emi, and I’m going to be sharing my graduate school know-how with you. I’ll be posting a series of blogs covering the different aspects of graduate school. Although this blog series will contain mostly my experiences, I’ll also talk about some experiences of my fellow students. The series will consist of the following topics: Preparing for Grad School, Applying for Grad School, Interviewing for Grad School, Surviving Grad School, and After Grad School.
Why go to grad school? The point of graduate school is accurately protrayed here: http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/ You’re going to learn a lot about something very specific. You will expand knowledge, but no one else will understand what you are saying. In fact, you might spend five or six years doing research on a topic that only a handful of people really understand or care about. You’ll belong to a select group of individuals. Once you've obtained those three letters after your name, there are a lot of options. The most popular ones include continuing on in academics or getting a job in industry. Staying in academics means you will have to do at least one post-doctorate stint (another 3-4 years) before you can think about applying for a faculty position at a university. Please consider this - if you’re graduating college now, and you’re 23, that means by the time you can get your first faculty position you’ll be 32 or 33 years old. If you go into industry, you’ll be placed in a higher position, probably like a manager, and get a better salary than you would without a PhD. There are many other avenues to follow after getting a PhD, but those are the main two. I want to point out that it is a very competitive market out there for PhDs. There is actually a glut of us graduating and looking for jobs, and there are not enough (this is not entirely due to the current state of the economy, by the way). Think about that when making your decision - how many years are you willing to put into this career choice, and how hard are you willing to work to get a job when it’s all over?
What Grad School Is:
Hard work
High highs and low lows
Flexible (usually)
self-motivated
For some humorous looks at grad school life (we laugh because of the truth in each of these):
What Grad School Isn’t:
Easy
Impossible
Feeling successful on a daily/weekly basis
Mixing colored liquids together to make more colored liquids that create smoke (although it should be more like this … much more fun that way)
I’d also like to note that this blog pertains mostly to those looking for a PhD in biology in the United States. I’m not sure how the processes work for the other science disciplines (chemistry, physics, etc), though I would think they are pretty similar. I have no idea what the process is like for liberal arts majors.
I hope you enjoy, and I look forward to feedback and questions! Thanks!
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