Philip
E. Agre
Graduate School of Education and Information
Studies
University of California, Los Angeles Los
Angeles, California
90095-1520 USA
Version of October 1996.
Copyright 1996 by the author. Feel free to
forward these notes electronically to anyone for
any non-commercial purpose. Please send me any
comments that might help to improve future
versions.
Contents
This document contains informal advice for
undergraduates who are thinking about graduate
school. Graduate school comes in three varieties:
professional schools (law, medicine, education,
etc), master's programs, and doctoral programs. I
know little about either professional schools or
master's programs, so I will concentrate on
doctoral programs. In particular, I will use the
term "graduate school" to refer to
doctoral programs. Much of my advice, though,
probably applies to the other options as well.
Please note, too, that I originally wrote this
document for students in my own field and
department. Things might work differently where
you are, particularly if you are not currently in
college, or if the faculty in your college do not
do much research in the area that most interests
you. As with all advice, only trust these notes
to the extent they correspond to your own
experience.
You might also be interested in Robert L.
Peters' book "Getting What You Came
For" (Noonday Press, 1992), about the
process of applying to and attending graduate
school. You might also consider reading books
about job-hunting, since that's often a good way
to look at the process of applying to graduate
school. I recommend Tom Jackson's "Guerrilla
Tactics in the New Job Market" (second
edition, New York: Bantam, 1991). You are also
welcome to a copy of an annotated bibliography
that I have prepared that describes some books
about working in industry.
Graduate 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. And it is
definitely not for people who want to get rich.
(The really famous professors, however, make tons
of money. They just don't want you to know about
it.) The eventual goal of many doctoral students
is to get a job as a college professor, or
perhaps in industrial or government research. But
many just do it because they like it.
More specifically, graduate school is
typically a five to eight year program (in the US
anyway; fewer years in most other countries) of
study and research organized by a single
department or interdisciplinary program of some
university, culminating in a doctoral degree
(usually a PhD). In the United States, as a
general rule, the term "university"
refers to a college that grants doctoral degrees.
Some individual departments in a university may
not have graduate programs. But a
research-oriented university will normally grant
doctorates in dozens of different fields.
Graduate school, as I mentioned, generally
takes five to eight years. That's a long time.
The first year is often the worst. It usually
consists of an overwhelming amount of structured
reading, designed to give you a generalized
background in the basic texts of the particular
field. But the exact format of the first few
years of graduate school varies widely. Typically
one must pass a set of "comprehensive
exams" (often called "comps") to
continue in the program past a certain point.
People do fail these exams. And the workload and
the possibility of failure often cause a great
deal of anxiety. I have elaborate ideas about the
causes and cures of this situation, but I'll
reserve them for another occasion. My point here
is simply that this unhappy period passes, to be
followed by more interesting periods. The next
few years of graduate school are usually focused
on finding a topic and advisor for one's
dissertation, along with additional coursework
and teaching assistantships. 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 a document, similar to this one, about
the role of electronic mail in professional
networking. If you're interested I can send you a
copy. It's also on the Web)
Graduate school, then, is quite different from
undergraduate school. It takes longer, it
requires much more focused and sustained work, it
involves much more intensive relationships with
faculty and other students, and it makes
considerably greater demands on your personal
identity. You can get through your undergraduate
education, if you care to, without ever really
thinking about who you are or what you want to
accomplish in the world. 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 definitely
not for everyone.
Your basic undergraduate education will not
enable you to decide whether to go to graduate
school. You will need to ask for advice. You
should figure that the decision will take about a
year to make, so ask for a lot of advice over a
long period. Start toward the middle of your
junior year, if not before. You should get advice
from everyone you consider either knowledgeable
or wise, but particularly from professors.
Actively explore the possibility of graduate
school even if you think your odds of actually
going are relatively low; many people have
discovered that they had had misconceptions about
graduate school and that it is much more
interesting than you thought.
Many people have difficulty asking for advice
about such things, especially from professors,
because they are embarrassed at not already
knowing all the answers. But you should
understand that a large part of what professors
do all day is to give people advice. And
professors know a great deal about graduate
school. In particular, a professor who does
research in a given area will probably know a
large proportion of the other people who do
research in that area. Indeed, he or she will
probably have visited most of the departments
that have good graduate programs in the area. On
the other hand, professors (like everyone else)
see things from their own personal angle, so you
should expect to get different advice from
different people. That's life.
The first step is the hardest. Start by making
a guess at the field or topic that you might want
to study in graduate school. Then pick a
professor who seems approachable and might know
something about that topic, perhaps because he or
she teaches a course in that area. Show up in
that person's office during scheduled office
hours and say, "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:
- "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.
- "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.
- 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.
Graduate school, as I said, is training in
research. When a graduate school looks at your
application, their principal question is,
"Is this person going to be good at
research?" Indeed, that should be one of
your own principal questions as well. How can you
tell if you're going to be good at 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. This
fact is usually kept secret, but it's true. And
in retrospect it's obvious why. Graduate school
is a big commitment, both for you and for the
department that accepts you into its graduate
program. You should try your hand at research
first so that everyone can make a well-informed
decision. (On the other hand, if you don't manage
to get involved in research as an undergraduate,
you should go ahead and apply to graduate school
anyway, and consider including your very best
undergraduate term paper with your application.)
How can an undergraduate get involved in
research? This question has two answers, the
official answer and the real answer. The official
answer will take the form of administrative
mechanisms (independent study courses, faculty
mentor programs, and so forth) that provide
formal structures around a project that you might
be involved in. Go talk to your department's
undergraduate coordinator, find out what these
mechanisms are, and read the necessary paperwork.
Then forget about them for a while, because the
real answer to the question lies in your
professional relationship to the faculty member
who will supervise your research. But who will
this person be? That's the hard part.
As with all professional relationships, you're
looking for a match between your interests and
abilities and those of a faculty member. Finding
this match will take a little time, but like all
hard projects it starts with asking advice. One
way to start is by finding out which faculty
members have supervised undergraduate research in
the past. Teaching assistants are often a good
source for this sort of information (and much
other information as well, though you should
realize that TA's, like everyone else, see the
world from a particular angle and often have
differing opinions). You can also start with
someone whose course you liked and did well in.
This approach has the advantage that the
professor in question already knows you. Show up
in that person's office hours and say, "I'd
like to ask your advice. I really liked your
course on such-and-such and I'm thinking I might
want to go to graduate school in that area. In
particular I'd like to see if I can get involved
in a research project in the area starting maybe
next term. But I haven't got a precise idea of
how to go about it, or about how to define a good
project. What do you think I should do?"
Maybe they'll just send you to someone else, but
then maybe they won't.
The ensuing conversation will be complicated
but probably less painful than you think. Keep in
mind that it is basically a negotiation. It is
your first chance to practice a skill that you
will need for the rest of your career as a
scholar: formulating and reformulating your
research interests in language that particular
people can understand. Listen to their language.
What do they think a research topic is like? How
do they think a research project should be
conducted? Do they see research as an individual
activity or as a collective one? How enthusiastic
do they really seem about the idea of supervising
undergraduate research? Are you comfortable with
the answers to these questions? No need to make a
quick decision, though. Most likely your
conversation will be inconclusive. That's normal.
Sleep on it. Ask for things to read and then read
them -- and then ask yourself if you want to
learn to write things like that. Have the same
sort of conversation with other professors (don't
forget other departments and even other
universities in the same geographic area). Then
compare and contrast the results.
Undergraduate research projects can take a
wide variety of forms. Sometimes a professor will
have a large research project that involves
dozens of people. Such projects frequently have
niches for undergraduates. This can be the best
kind of undergraduate research experience because
it will give you the opportunity to work with a
group, observe the whole process of research, and
feel like you're contributing to something. But
maybe nobody has project of this type in your
area.
Another possibility is simply to set up a
project of your own, with regular meetings with a
professor to discuss its progress. Projects like
this work best if you have a good relationship
with the professor and a strong feeling for the
topic. Try to get to know other people with
interests in that area, both because it's
interesting and to keep from getting isolated or
dependent on a particular professor. Your project
will make a good conversation topic.
Yet another possibility is to become a
professor's assistant on some project. This might
involve anything: library work, data collection,
putting together complex research papers, etc.
The work might be tedious (or it might not), but
it can be a good way to learn about research
through apprenticeship. All such deals are unique
and should be weighed on their particular merits
(e.g., whether you feel that you can work for
this person), but you should always give them
serious consideration because they don't happen
every day.
And the world is full of other possibilities.
Maybe you will become involved with an off-campus
project of some sort -- a company, a community
group, an alternative media project -- that you
can integrate with a university research project.
Maybe you can get a summer job in a research
group. Maybe you will have an outside job that
you want to use as a site for field research. Who
knows. Few research opportunities are advertised
(though many universities have offices that find
undergraduates for research projects), so you'll
have to ask around. Most likely you'll have to
make the opportunity yourself by exploring
options with various professors.
Once you have defined a project and found a
supervisor, go ahead and figure out the
paperwork. Maybe you'll arrange for independent
study credit. Maybe you'll sign up for some
official program in the university. Maybe you'll
even get a research grant. (If you need some
money for your research, perhaps to take a trip
or operate a photocopier, ask. It may exist.
Writing a grant proposal may be the single most
valuable experience of your project. And if
you're being paid for your involvement in the
project, make sure you get a clear understanding
of your responsibilities to avoid
misunderstandings later.) Just keep in mind that
professional relationships are the real substance
of research. Administrative details are
secondary. Maybe you won't even formalize the
arrangement at all. The important things, after
all, are the experience you'll get, the
relationships you'll develop, and the research
paper that you can include in graduate school
applications.
In particular, it is not crucially important
how well your research project turns out. It will
be okay in any event; and everyone understands
that research is hard and that undergraduate
projects regularly fail to work out completely
for reasons that are not your fault. (The main
pitfall for undergraduates and graduate students
alike is attempting a project that's too big.
Keep asking wise people to help you narrow your
project.) On the other hand, if your project
works out well enough to produce a publishable
paper, by all means go for it. But this is not
necessary.
If you have been getting advice and doing
research then you will have figured out where the
good graduate programs for your interests are.
You might even have an idea of which professors
you want to study with. (If you really liked
someone's book, maybe you should become that
person's student. It's worth a try. Ask for good
books to read with this in mind, and get advice
about the potential advisability of writing this
person a letter.) Apply to as many good graduate
programs in your area as you can. When in doubt,
apply. You can always turn down offers you don't
want later on.
Applications for graduate school, at least in
the United States, are typically due in December
or January. You should start writing away for the
application forms in September -- that is,
September of your senior year, unless you are
planning to take a year off (often a good idea).
I want to make a special point of this because it
is common to forget about next year until the
spring, when it is too late. Getting the
application forms is easy. Write a letter to
"Graduate Program / Department of Whatever /
University of Whatever / City, State, ZIP"
(you can get the addresses from reference books;
ask at the library reference desk) and say
"I am interested in applying to graduate
school in your department. Please send me some
detailed information on the department, the
necessary application forms, and information
about financial aid. Thank you very much."
You should expect to apply to five or six
schools and maybe more, depending on the level of
competition in your area. Filling out the
application forms is tedious, but it will get
easier once you've done a couple. The most
important part of the application form will be a
blank page headed something like "Statement
of Purpose". On this page you will be asked
to explain why you want to go to graduate school,
including some idea about what sort of research
you would like to conduct. You need to take this
seriously. Write about a page and a half on the
subject, single-spaced, and take it to the
professors you've been getting advice from. They
will almost certainly tell you to rewrite it, and
you should definitely do so. Don't be surprised
if it takes three or four tries to get it right.
If they just make a few suggestions around the
edges, ask them specifically what the best
approach would be in rewriting it from scratch.
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
definitely 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.
Go easy on academic jargon. Minimize adverbs.
Eschew the words "interesting" and
"important", which say little. 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
literally 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.
It is also a good idea, if you have the
energy, to tailor your statement to fit the
particular departments you're applying to. You
might write a generic statement and then edit in
some passages that fit each department, for
example mentioning one of the professors there
whose work is relevant to your interests, just to
show that you know what you're doing. If you have
your heart set on a particular department (say
because you want to work with a particular
professor whose work you admire) then write a
customized statement for that department. Find
people who are well acquainted with that
department and ask their guidance. In short, show
the admissions committee that you've done your
homework. It makes a difference.
Make sure your graduate application includes
the research papers you wrote as an
undergraduate, and be sure that your statement
explains the connection between these papers and
the graduate research you are envisioning.
Meanwhile, apply for fellowships. Don't wait
till 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 of obscure graduate
fellowships. 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.
About grade point averages. Many people worry
that their GPA will prevent them from getting
into graduate school. Good grades are important,
but they can be measured in different ways. For
example, you might recompute your GPA without
your freshman classes (many universities do this
routinely), or your GPA for upper-division
courses only, or only for courses in your major.
If any of these numbers is significantly more
impressive than your official GPA, you should
mention it somewhere in your application.
About exams. Certain exams (eg. GRE, GMAT
etc.) are necessary for many programs, and you
often need to apply to take these over a year
before you apply, particularly if you don't want
to take a general and a subject GRE on the same
day. You can get details of what exams are needed
from the course catalog or brochure from the
graduate programs you might be interested in;
this is one more reason to get the brochure well
ahead of time, whether you're serious yet about
applying or not.
You are probably appalled at how many
applications you are filling out. Rest assured,
though, that filling out applications is a major
part of a career in research. Look on the bright
side: applying for things is an opportunity to
assess your career and to articulate it in the
best and most sincere light for other people. You
will be doing a great deal of this in the future.
Your application to graduate school will also
involve some letters of recommendation, usually
three or four. Most of these letters will
probably (but not necessarily) be from professors
in the department where you got your
undergraduate degree. It helps, other things
being equal, if you get letters from famous
professors as opposed to junior ones. But the
important thing is to get letters from people who
know you and who can say things about you that
make you sound like you belong in graduate
school.
But there's a problem. Most letters that
professors write for undergraduates are not very
impressive because most professors do not know
the undergraduates in their department very well.
If you want good letters then you need to do
something about this. The best thing is to get
involved in research, as I've described above.
The person who supervises your research will then
be able to write you a helpful letter that
doesn't sound like a computer wrote it.
The other way to get good letters of
recommendation is to get to know the professors
who teach the classes that you particularly like.
This is a remarkably difficult matter. Doing
really good work in the class definitely helps,
but this in itself needn't entail any actual
acquaintance with the professor who taught it. So
how do you do this?
The wrong way to go about it is to show up in
the professor's office to chat randomly, hoping
that you'll make a good impression along the way.
This strategy almost always makes a dreadful
impression, for the simple reason that professors
are busy people who hate it when you waste their
time.
Think about it like this. Your relationship
with a professor will be defined by a set of
ideas -- the ideas that the professor is trying
to teach in the classes you're taking. Either you
find those ideas compelling and interesting or
you don't. If you don't get a genuine thrill out
of the ideas then you're better off investing
your energies elsewhere in the first place. But
if you actually do find the ideas interesting
then you are going to have questions about them
-- questions that go beyond the course. Maybe
your term papers will address those questions. Or
whatever. In any event, don't keep your questions
a secret. Go ask them. There's no need for
flattery or hints or hidden agendas. Simply ask
the questions because you want to know the
answers. Only a real jerk considers it a waste of
time to answer genuine questions. Letters of
recommendation will take care of themselves when
the time comes.
In March or April you will start getting
letters of acceptance or rejection from graduate
schools. When you are accepted, the main thing
you want to know is how much money they are
offering you. Graduate school is expensive and
you absolutely want to avoid paying the fees
yourself. The most common arrangement is for you
to be offered a teaching assistantship (TA), a
nominally half-time teaching job, or a research
assistantship (RA), which may involve prescribed
work for some professor or may simply be support
for your own work. A better arrangement, though,
is to get a fellowship. Maybe you will win a
fellowship through your own efforts. Another
possibility is that the department that accepts
you can provide its own fellowship money.
Whatever you do, don't accept the department's
offer right away. Reply to the offer with a
polite acknowledgement and then stall them for a
couple of weeks while you wait for other
acceptances to arrive. Meanwhile, think much more
seriously about the offer. Do you really want to
move to that city? What is that university really
like? What is that department really like?
The important thing here is that you are about
to be treated with more respect than you might be
accustomed to. Take advantage of this by getting
more advice. The faculty in your department will
celebrate your acceptance to graduate school, and
unless they are complete jerks they will happily
help you decide what to do. Ask them about
reputations and rumors. Ask them if anybody else
in town graduated from that same department or a
closely related department at the same school.
Find out if the people in that department care
about their graduate students; some don't. Make
lists of questions and then call the department
on the phone and ask them. Try to get a course
catalog (but be sure to ask whether it
corresponds to reality; many don't). If you can
visit the department, definitely do so. Sometimes
you can even get the department (or even your
own) to pay for a trip. The department will be
waiting anxiously for your decision; if you turn
them down they will offer your space to someone
else who seems promising. They may even try to
pressure you into making a decision. If this
happens, get more advice.
Unless the department has offered you a good
fellowship, one of your main goals will be to
extract more money from them. Sound reasonable
about this. Plead poverty. Explain that you find
the offer exciting but that you still need to
eat. If you have kids to feed, tell them that. If
you have a good offer from another school, tell
them that too (but don't tell them the details of
that offer or make it sound like you're just
after the money; just say that the other offer,
taken as a whole, is attractive and more
financially feasible). Your basic stance is that
you simply need enough money to do your graduate
work without having to take outside jobs, at
least for the first few years. Often some
additional money will materialize as other people
turn down offers from the same place. After a
couple of weeks, though, you will have to decide.
No general-purpose advice like this will help you
now. Congratulations and good luck.
Acknowledgements. This essay has been improved
by comments from Steve Bagley, Valerie Crawford,
Brenda Davie, Johan de Kleer, Jonathan Grudin,
Marti Hearst, Rob Kling, Marta Kutas, David
Marwood, Luis Moll, Cynthia Norman, Beth Preston,
and Agustin Schapira.
Philip
E. Agre
Graduate School of Education and Information
Studies
University of California, Los Angeles Los
Angeles, California
90095-1520 USA
pagre@ucla.edu
Please send me any comments that might help
improve the next edition of this document.
Thanks.
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