Panel member on joining Graduate school for undergraduates

Today I was an invited member of a panel to discuss about joining graduate school with some undergraduates from DePaul University. As an undergrad I remember how myopic my world view was back then. We didn’t have no panel then though I did learn to survive and thrive just fine (a part of it was just good luck

There were 5 of us and gave a bunch of advice. Tried to make it fun and cracked plenty of jokes, so it was all good fun. Some points from that panel:

1. One of the biggest issues amongst undergrads is the lack of options they may see at that point. Now I know about finance, consulting, MBA, entrepreneurship, tech job etc apart from just grad school. Finance is a pretty good field IMO. And I might have actually gone in that direction if I really knew about it that much. I really love the idea of investing and the stock market intrigues me.

2. Grad school is just the means to an end. You really gotta have some idea what you might wanna like doing in life. Lay down all your options you can think of. Then think is grad school gonna help you get there. Teaching, Research Faculty or Research in academia is where PhD can really help you and in fact imperative in 90% of cases. Nowadays companies like Google also value PhDs quite well – that place is full of ‘em. But know your options, thats the main thing. Can a Masters suffice for your goal ? How about working sometime and then doing an MBA ? The MBA world is buzzing with opportunity.

3. Picking an advisor: He/She should be a nice person foremost, not pushy and mind wrecker. This is difficult to judge before hand of course, but here are few metrics:

a. Talk to his/her students and see what their response is. They are rarely gonna criticize in public so look for their tone and enthusiasm and the words they use to describe their adviser.

b. How many years do the students take to graduate in his/her group ? That’s really the bottomline. You don’t want to get stuck for 8 years in a PhD.

c. See the publication list. Is he/she ambitious ? Students are mostly moulded into the aspirations and ability of their advisors. If he/she aims high, you are gonna develop your intellectual muscles accordingly and adapt to it. A nice but ambitious adviser is important !

d. How much time does he/she give to students ? Talk to students and find that out. Meeting at least once a week is a good sign. What kind of help does he/she offer ? Talk about that. Is he very critical or supportive ? Find all this stuff out if you can, from the students.

If you wanna excel in grad school, this is just tip of the iceberg. There are some great online resources for various aspects of grad school. In some ancient time I once made a PPT from a great article for grad school. Some of it has helped me greatly.

Here are the slides in Flash format (courtesy SlideShare):