Informational Interview Graduate School Style

[Christina Brown]

Hi everyone. (I'm so happy today). I need advise on how to construct general questions to ask program/department directors, current students, and alumni of the programs that I am interested in going in applying soon. What questions would you ask these type of people to get a well-rounded approach to how each program works. I hope to email everyone no later than Thursday. I need all the help I can get. This is the 2nd stage of my plan for graduate school domination hehe. Thanks!

Edited April 19, 2011 by Christina Brown

[latte thunder]

What field?

[starmaker]

Why not talk to professors with whom you're interested in working, rather than program directors? Usually, people applying for grad school contact potential advisors and ask them about the direction of their lab, whether they plan to take new students in the next couple of years, and so on. Here is an excellent post about dos and don'ts for such an email: http://science-professor.blogspot.com/2007/12/writing-to-me.html

In the case of students and alumni, you want to know about the political climate of the department (not "are people liberal/conservative" but things like "do the people from different subfields get along? Are there lots of turf wars?"), how far the financial support really goes, whether any training is provided for TAs, how formal the department is, how difficult quals and other exams are, whether there is adequate preparation for quals, why people don't finish the program. Things like that. With alumni, you also want to know how they fared in the post-degree world and (if they used it) how the university's careers office was.

And why Thursday? It's great that you want to get a quick start, but you have some time...you'll probably write better emails if you stop and take a breath.

[Christina Brown]

Why not talk to professors with whom you're interested in working, rather than program directors? Usually, people applying for grad school contact potential advisors and ask them about the direction of their lab, whether they plan to take new students in the next couple of years, and so on. Here is an excellent post about dos and don'ts for such an email: http://science-profe...ting-to-me.html

In the case of students and alumni, you want to know about the political climate of the department (not "are people liberal/conservative" but things like "do the people from different subfields get along? Are there lots of turf wars?"), how far the financial support really goes, whether any training is provided for TAs, how formal the department is, how difficult quals and other exams are, whether there is adequate preparation for quals, why people don't finish the program. Things like that. With alumni, you also want to know how they fared in the post-degree world and (if they used it) how the university's careers office was.

And why Thursday? It's great that you want to get a quick start, but you have some time...you'll probably write better emails if you stop and take a breath.

I'm interested in HCI. I said by Thursday because I created a rough deadline to talk to people about each program, but I may extend it til next week. I want to make my decisions before I take the GRE test (June 10th is the day I plan to take it).