You’ve done it - you got past the interviews, you chose a school, and now you’re on the way to getting a PhD and getting called “Doctor.” But what should you expect during grad school? How do you navigate through this long, sometimes confusing process?
Note: This post will be heavily influenced by my own experience. UMass has an umbrella program, which means students are accepted to the graduate program, and they pick their department based on which lab they decide to work in. It is possible to generalize my experience to almost all graduate programs in the US, but the details will differ. I invite people who have different grad school experiences to post in the comments, so folks can see the kind of diversity that exists.
Year 2 - Qualifying Examination
In your second year of grad school, you may be taking one or two advanced topics courses, but your main objective will be to prepare and complete your qualifying examination.
What is a qualifying exam? Again, this will differ from school to school, but what I have to say will generally pertain to most programs. Typically, the qualifying exam consists of a written portion and an oral portion. At my school, the written portion takes the form of a grant proposal. The oral portion consists of your committee members (more on this in a sec) and you sitting in a room for two hours while they ask you questions.
Choosing Your Committee
At most schools, you will have the freedom to choose most, if not all, of your committee members. This is a decision you will need to think a lot about. You will need to have between 3-5 members. Your members should be other professors from the school that work in your field, or a closely related one. You want them to understand your project, and you also want them to be able to contribute and enhance it with their knowledge. Your choice of committee may have to be approved by the dean. Make sure you know the specific rules and deadlines set up by your school.
Personal story time! When I had my qualifying exam, I picked the minimum number of committee members: 3. It’s easier to schedule 3 people, and I thought it would be nice to field questions from fewer people. My oral exam was scheduled for 10 am. At 9:30, I got my computer set up (I had a PowerPoint with slides describing my proposed thesis research), got my food ready, and began to wait. Two of my committee members showed up on time, but the third (and my chair!) was not there. We waited for about ten minutes. I went to his office - no one there. I checked in with his secretary, and she told me that he was out of town for a conference. WHAT!?! I couldn't believe it. How could the chair of my committee completely forget about my qualifying exam (which I had been working on for three months)? I felt very upset. Since the school required three members to be present, we abandoned the exam, and I went back to my lab literally shaking with emotion. About ten minutes after that, the missing chair of my committee walked into my lab. He had forgotten the start time, and thought it was eleven instead of ten! I called back the other two members of my committee and we held the exam. I passed. The lesson I want to share is: always have more members than the minimum. Even though it is a pain to schedule everyone, you don’t want to run the risk of having to cancel your exam because a member forgot the start time, or had a personal emergency and couldn't make it.
The Written Exam
Most schools will have a written portion of the qualifying exam. At my school, this takes the form of a grant application. Basically, you write up what you propose to do for your thesis research. To complete this portion takes a couple of months. First, you will have to do a lot of reading. You need to familiarize yourself with your chosen field’s literature. You should start by reading reviews, and continue by reading primary research papers. It’s important to keep these papers organized. I suggest using some sort of annotated bibliography method. I like to summarize the paper on a sticky note and put that on the front page of the paper. Then I file the paper according to subject. Endnote is a popular software for organizing papers, and there is a free Firefox plug-in called Zotero that does a similar job. As you write the exam, get help from fellow students who have passed their qualifying exams. They can give you advice and help you with the layout. At my school, you cannot get help from your PI. You will need to hand in your finalized proposal to your committee before you have your oral exam, so they can read it and prepare questions for you.
The Oral Exam
This exam can also take many different formats. At my school, the oral exam can technically cover any and all course material you learned in year 1, as well as the written research proposal. In reality, most of the questions are about the written proposal. We prepare a PowerPoint presentation that augments the written proposal. The presentation includes figures from published papers that support our hypothesis, experimental procedures and hypothetical results, and possibly preliminary data that you or someone in your lab has already produced for this project. Be prepared for this exam to last a long time. The committee should ask a lot of questions, since they are testing the depth of your knowledge about your chosen research topic. They also want to make sure that your proposal is reasonable and can be completed in 5-6 years. They will offer alternative experiments, and may request that you completely get rid of one of your aims. Basically, you need to be prepared for anything.
Many students provide food for their committee. If the exam is in the morning, coffee and donuts are typical. Some of our students even provide Panera sandwiches if the exam is at lunchtime. Find out what the norm is at your school and follow it. You want your committee to be in a good mood!
Some schools or departments require their students to qualify on a topic that is not related to their thesis research. I think this is a horrible idea, but it’s not in my power to change the system. Be aware that this may be a factor for your own exam. If it is, you will have to do the work twice - once for your qualifying exam, and once for your thesis research.
Years 3,4, and 5
These are the middle years. You should be producing a lot of data. At this point, you’re basically grinding away, trying to get some publications out, and trying to make all your experiments work. There are a few things that I can address during these years.
Career Development
Huh? Why should I be worrying about what I’ll do when I graduate, since graduation is literally 4+ years away? Actually, this is the time you should be thinking about this the most. If you leave it until your 5th or 6th year, it will be too late (trust me on this one, folks). I will be speaking about career options extensively in Post 5, but it’s important to mention here. If you want to go into teaching, begin to search out teaching experience (if it’s not required of you already). If you want to go into business, find someone to shadow. Begin networking. Take extra classes if necessary. Figure out what you want to do when you graduate, and begin getting the experience you need now. Check out a program called myIDP for a great free tool to help you with this.
Going to a Meeting
At some point, your PI will have decided that you've done enough work to present it at a meeting. Scientific meetings can be large or small events, and they can last anywhere from a few days to an entire week. It’s common for students attending a meeting to prepare a poster, and if you’re lucky, you may be asked to give a short talk. You’ll have to submit your poster/talk abstract well in advance of the meeting, so make sure you know the deadline and get your abstract submitted! I think this is a good spot to discuss building a poster.
First, time - you should start working on this poster at least two weeks ahead of the meeting, and you should give yourself one week to get it printed (unless your program has a poster printing machine and can do it for you in an afternoon). Make sure you check the size standards of the meeting. Don’t bring a poster that is too big for your assigned space. Next, you need to think about the layout. There are a lot of details that go into a poster, including color schemes, font and font size, and whitespace. It’s very important to get the design right, otherwise no one will stop at your poster.There’s a website offering free PowerPoint poster layouts here: http://www.posterpresentations.com/html/free_poster_templates.html. Alternatively, your lab may have a template you can, and should, use. Remember to put your school’s logo in the top bar, along with the logos from your funding sources. I’m going to direct your attention to the following websites for detailed information about designing a poster. I think together they cover everything you will want to think about during the poster design. There should also be a department on campus that can help you if you get stuck.
Writing a Paper
Hopefully, you will be in a position to write at least one paper in these few years. Paper-writing should be a collaborative effort between the first author (hopefully, you) and the last author (your PI). Sometimes this is not the case. There are some PIs who will write the entire paper themselves, and others who leave it entirely up to the graduate student. Each paper-writing situation is different. Here’s a nice overview of writing a scientific paper: http://classweb.gmu.edu/biologyresources/writingguide/ScientificPaper.htm
Committee Meetings
Depending on the school, you will have meetings with your thesis committee on a regular basis. At UMass, we are required to meet with our committee at least once every year. Your thesis committee is not necessarily the same as your qualifying exam committee - again this will depend on the school. The job of your thesis committee is to make sure you are producing data and staying on track to graduate on time. For each meeting, you should prepare a presentation detailing the work you've completed, the work you are currently doing, and the work you plan to do in the future. You should also have a few back-up experiments tucked up your sleeve, in case your committee hates what you are currently doing.
Motivation
How do you keep your motivation up when you've been stuck in a rut? What if that critical experiment just doesn't work? What if all you obtain are negative results that cannot be published? What if you wake up one morning and realize that you hate you life and never want to see a Pipetman again? What if someone publishes a paper on exactly what you are working on?
Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. And let me tell you, it sucks. You don’t want to be in lab, and when you are there, you spend all your time browsing the internet. All grad students think that this will never happen to them, and all grad students are wrong. How you respond to this situation depends on your character. For me, I was able to work through the slump. Sure, I was not being very productive, but I got some things done. It helped that I was having weekly meetings with my boss, so he was checking in on my progress regularly. When you hit the wall, you’ll have to do whatever you can to get over it. You may need to take a week off and get away from the lab entirely. You may need to remind yourself why you started grad school in the first place and what you want to accomplish. Get support from fellow students, friends and family. I am lucky to have a very supportive and understanding boss. It’s gonna happen, it’s gonna suck, and you will have to pull yourself out. Consider this fair warning.
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