Meeting professor or current students

[Kirbyd]

Applied to a program that doesn't do interviews but arranges meetings with a professor on the admissions committee and then a separate meeting with a student (sounds like am interview to me).

What would you ask of each of them during your meeting?

What would you expect they'd ask you?

Will you bring anything?

How would you dress?

[ctcpx084]

Any meeting with someone I don't know, at an institution at which I'm trying to make a favorable impression, I would treat as formal. I would dress accordingly, which for me would be a suit and tie.

 

It's hard to know what they will ask. I met informally with a professor at Wisconsin several years ago, before I applied to graduate school. He seemed mostly interested--if you could say he was interested at all, which is debatable--in what my research interests were. Vague answers were not taken well; he challenged every general statement I made, and at the time I thought he was a horse's ass. Certainly, I had interests, but with the benefit of a few years of graduate school, I can see how someone else would have considered them very poorly defined. 

 

In my own questions/dialogue with them, I would try to ascertain two things:

 

First, are there professors in the department who are researching and/or working on projects that coincide with my research interests? It's hard to make generalizations about admissions across programs and universities, but I don't think I'm going too far out on a limb by saying that programs typically want to bring in doctoral students who have interests in the ballpark of some of the faculty's interests; not to say that they are trying to bring in a homogeneous group of people, but if you want to study specialty X, and the faculty excels in W, Y, and Z, it might be hard for them to advise you at the doctoral level.

 

Second, what is the general orientation of the program? Are they focused on the promotion of social justice (although, I think most programs pursue this one way or the other, even if it is not a stated goal)? Do they have psychological underpinnings (e.g., "process-product") that might influence the approach they take towards learning and schooling, perhaps in a way convergent/divergent with your own beliefs? Are they focused primarily on the production of research, or do they work to serve practitioners in their various programs? If you could elicit answers along these lines, it might help to determine whether the program is a "good fit" with your philosophy or ideas on education. Again, it's not that you want to follow something completely in line with your views and be with a bunch of people who are exactly identical, but if you are going to spend 3-5 years studying at a place you don't want to hate the snot out of it because of their take on the world.

Edited January 7, 2015 by wjdavis

[Kirbyd]

Thank you for the thoughtful response!