sometimes life is pretty cool

Questions for Prospective Grad Applicants

You want to go to grad school! Congratulations! What a wild decision. It’s one I made. It’s one I made after thinking about it on and off for 13 years before I finally applied. I have lots of thoughts about why you should apply to grad school and why you shouldn’t. I have a friend who recently asked to talk with me about applying, so I decided to write up this list of questions to think about. I suggest writing these out for reasons noted at the end of the list.

  1. Why do you want to go to grad school?
  2. What are your life goals? It’ll help you if you’re specific — e.g. don’t write “I want to be a professor” write “I want to do research in an institution where I have access to the best resources” or “I want to mentor first generation college students and help them achieve their goals.” (Or both! Or more!)
  3. How will going to graduate school help you achieve your goals?
  4. How will graduating from graduate school help you achieve your goals?
  5. Are there ways to achieve your goals without going to and/or graduating from grad school?
  6. Why are you the kind of person who would succeed in grad school?
  7. How do you think you might struggle in grad school?
  8. Imagine yourself ten years from now in a world where you do not go to grad school. How do you feel about that life and your decisions?
  9. Why do you want to go to grad school?
  10. Did you enjoy writing out your answers to these questions? Do you enjoy writing?

I suggest starting with these questions before thinking about the binary kinds of questions you should also ask yourself. I suggest writing these out because grad school is a lot of writing. Like a whole lot. Some of it is writing 500 word summaries of papers you’ve read. Some of it is writing 5,000 word research papers. You don’t have to like writing, but you have to be okay doing it.

When I was in undergrad, there was a more advanced student who studied astrophysics. She told my friends that she hated doing, but she loves astrophysics, so she learned a lot of maths and got really good at doing them. One of the ways I think about things is whether they are worth doing the math for. Do I want to do it enough that I will be okay with becoming really good at doing something I hate in order to do the thing I like?

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