Graduate Student Roundtable Part 1

Halloween and Graduate School (courtesy www.phdcomics.com)

Ed Note: I originally posted this on my blog Mr Epidemiology, but given that we’re in the midst of grad school application season, I thought it would be relevant to our readers. I’ve included the first part of the roundtable below, and the rest will be up next week. Original post available here.

As a graduate student, you get a lot of people asking you about what graduate school is, and what it entails. Is it worth it? How difficult is it? And once you’re in, the questions don’t stop – if anything, they multiply! How do you pick a supervisor? How do you deal with rejection? What do you do next?

I crowdsourced the internet for questions – among Twitter followers, other blogs and forums and came up with a list of questions. I also invited several prominent bloggers to participate. They have all graciously agreed to donate their time and effort to this piece.

Note that these are the opinions of those involved, and do not reflect our institutions or departments in any way. I’m trying to get a range of viewpoints here, and many different perspectives. If you disagree or have something you’d like to add, please feel free to comment either here or when we answer a question you’re particularly passionate about!

An introduction to the panel is available here.

Question 1: Why did you go to graduate school?

Question 2: What are the things that are important when picking your adviser/PI? What about your committee?

Question 3: How have you/do you deal with criticism and rejection; be it from advisers, professors, peers or funding committees? How did you deal with rejection when you were applying to schools?

Question 4: Are there tips for fighting impostor syndrome? (Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome)