Questions to ask for people considering different graduate schools:
These are questions I have compiled in looking at grad schools and hope that would help people when you consider graduate school. Most of the questions are things to generally consider, and I would strongly encourage you to ask them to people there when applicable. A number of the questions may be more helpful after you are admitted, especially the questions to advisors. This list is totally open for further edits, and I’ll gladly explain the philosophy behind the various questions.
Graduate Students:
- How would you describe the culture among the graduate students?
- How much competition is there among students?
- To what extent do people work together/support each other on projects and publications?
- Are there study/reading/writing groups?
- How possible is it to live off of the stipend alone?
- Is there a Union? Or Anti-union rules?
- How is funding doled out? Do you compete for funding?
- What’s the administration like?
- What is internal funding like? How easy is it to apply for and get?
- What are classes like with Professor X?
- When you have a disagreement with your advisor (if you’re sharing an advisor), how do you figure it out? Can you make decisions that your advisor does not necessarily think are the best?
- How do the professors treat the students?
- How free are you to come up with your own projects?
- What support is there for alt-ac or for preparing for careers outside of the academy?
- Can you make your own courses and teach them at any point?
- What importance does the program place on teaching?
- To what extent are you supported to do whatever you are passionate about, even if it means changing focuses, etc.?
- If applicable:
- How does the teaching workload feel?
- How invested are typical undergrads?
- Describe the typical undergrad.
Graduate advisors (generally after getting admitted):
- How many students do you take on?
- Can you describe the undergraduates?
- Do you drop graduate students?
- How do you feel about students switching projects/regions?
- What is your philosophy on breadth and depth of dissertations?
- Is it possible to hold a job outside of the PhD program, or are there specific rules against that?
- What is your philosophy on teaching? Would you support your advisees in taking education courses? Language courses?
- Do you support your advisees in doing sports/just doing what’s fun?
- How do you choose your advisees?
- How available are you?
- How many advisees do you take on?
- How do you resolve problems with advisees?
- If applicable:
- (If you’re a storyteller and going for history) How do you feel about Hayden White (or, you know, a radical thinker with whom you agree)?
- How do you feel about interdisciplinary research?
- What is your philosophy on the role of language and translation?
Graduate Program:
- How many required courses are there?
- Will I care about the required courses?
- What does a typical syllabus look like in my field?
- What is the policy on conference travel? International travel? Is there a limit on conference funding?
- How much support is there for research travel?
- What is the policy on summer funding?
- Are there different tiers of funding for different students?
- Are there limits on the number of courses you can take? (Graduate, undergraduate, languages, etc.)
- What is the teaching requirement?
- What do the course listings look like?
- How many people would there be in my field?
- How common is it to do internships and work in organizations in the area? How much support is there for it?
- Is there graduate housing? Is there any support for graduate student housing?
- Is the University in a consortium?
- If so, how easy is it to cross-enroll? How supportive are the people across the consortium of this? How is transportation across the consortium?