Four Common Misconceptions of Graduate School
Last Friday I participated in CMU's Fusion Forum, a really fun program designed to improve recruitment of minority students into graduate school. In the panel session, a bunch of faculty discussed their thoughts on what it was like in graduate school. I framed my thoughts in the form of four common misconceptions of PhD level work. They are: 1. Grades still matter in PhD programs. Grades matter a lot in undergraduate programs, because you need a high enough GPA to be a plausible candidate to be admitted. However, once you are in a PhD program, grades matter only insofar as you need a good enough grade to pass required courses, and a high enough grade not to antagonize the instructor (who may be on your dissertation committee one day). Nobody really cares about your grades when you do the job search. What they care about is whether you can do original and insightful research. 2. In computer science, a lot of students think that the majority of their time will be spent programming. ...