How much does your cohort matter?

[jujubea]

I ask this because the current students and incoming students at each of my three choices are very, very different.

 

At one school, I am basically friends with several of the existing students because my visit went so well, and we got along so well. The incoming cohort sounds on par with what I've already seen - diverse in age, ethnic backgrounds, life experiences, nationalities, and very collegial.

 

At another school, I did not "click" as well with the existing students, and did not keep in touch with them after the visit. They were all much younger, most had not been outside of school (jumped straight from ugrad to grad), and were not apparently diverse in the ways mentioned above. On top of that, I emailed the other people who have been accepted to this program for the Fall, just to strike up a conversation and share some insights or ideas. .....Not a single person replied, even after a follow up email. 

 

At the third school, I also clicked with a couple of the students, and am in touch with an incoming student. While I wouldn't say the relationships are as great as the first school, they're lightyears better than the second.

 

Obviously my decision-making isn't entirely based on this, but I'm wondering how much weight I should be giving these differences.

 

I'm entering at the MA level but will be continuing to the PhD (most likely) wherever I go.

 

Thanks for your opinions and advice!!!

[GeoDUDE!]

I think cohort matters a lot for a masters student, but less for a PhD. You think it would be the opposite, but the personalities of cohorts change from year to year, so its inevitable that you won't get a long with some people as a PhD student since there are 5-7 cycles of students while you are there. But with a masters, there are only 2 cycles, so there are less chances of meeting people you get a long with. I think its hard to tell the nature of who you will be friends with at departmental visits. The guy who was super quiet there during visits is super goofy here now, and is one of my better friends. People change/nervous in those situations. But also trust your gut. Social life in graduate school is important. 

[fuzzylogician]

I chose to attend the school where I felt like my connection with the current students was the worst. It had great advisors and location and other advantages that outweighed my concerns about the social aspects, though I certainly did go in somewhat concerned. The people who ended up becoming my friends were actually students who didn't go to the social events I participated in as a prospie, and we didn't really become close until my second year. Most of us have now graduated and have moved away to pretty much every place you could think of, but we're still in touch and it's really great to have them, even if they're far away. Conferences and trips are like reunions now. I'm less close with most of my own cohort, but I ended up having friends from pretty much all the cohorts above and below me. Sometimes it just takes time; I don't think it's something you can tell from a two-day visit or follow-up email. I do agree that your social life is important, though. I went against my gut in the friends department but with my gut in the advisors department and it worked out great, but YMMV. I don't know how to give general advice in this case. 

[rising_star]

I don't know that it matters. I loved my master's cohort, but I hadn't met any of them before I began, and we were a mixed cohort of incoming MA and PhD students. I actually got along better with the PhD students, some of whom I still talk to. The year I started my PhD, I was in a cohort of 16. I became friends with... 4 of those people, and then made friends from a few other cohorts. I actively disliked being around about half of my cohort, even when we were all in the coursework phase. We just did not get along inside or outside the classroom but that doesn't mean they're terrible people. At the PhD level, I tended to stick with friends who did research in similar areas and/or were on my approximate timeline (seriously, all my PhD friends and I graduated within the same 9 month period, though we began at different times). 

 

All that said, I don't know how much value I'd put in to getting along with the potential cohort. It is definitely less important than the advisor, funding, available committee members, opportunities to publish, etc. 

[Eigen]

I think your peer group is extremely important, but not necessarily your cohort- and the ways in which they're important aren't easily visible from the outset.

 

The people I rely most on for research advice, for working through projects, for mock interviews, for honest advice, and for future research collaborations are my cohort, and those a few years ahead and behind me. I spend as much time talking my research through with my peers as my PI and committee.

 

I think I would have done fine without a strong cohort, but with the cohort I had I'm coming out with very strong collaborative research ties to a couple of other students who stand a very good chance of landing R1 jobs, and that research network already being in place has been a huge boost to my research in general. None of us work in the same area, but we're all tangentially connected that collaborations are extremely fruitful.

 

That said, the people I'm closest to now, I would have really disliked had I met them at visiting weekends- we had no interests in common, we were all in pretty different places in life, and, to be honest, we were all pretty damn abrasive. I don't think we gelled until we'd been working together late nights/early mornings for a few months.

 

Some of the other peers I'm close to and rely on, aren't in my department- they're scattered around the University in similar research fields, with similar areas of interest to mine. Again, I wouldn't have met them interviewing, some of them I didn't really get to know until I started to branch out with my research a bit, several years in.

 

So your cohort matters, but how much you get along with them at this stage? I'd consider not particularly informative, sadly. You really have to trust that the faculty are hiring/admitting students with good backgrounds, solid personalities, and knowledge bases you can use.

 

This is also, like anything else, going to be field dependent. I spent a lot of hours a week in pretty close proximity to a large bulk of my peers. We share instruments, we share space, we eat a sizeable number of meals together. If I was not in a lab science, I think the situation might very well be different.

[shadowclaw]

I can't say that I am very close with my masters cohort. There were 5 of us at the beginning, and two dropped out before our first year was done for various reasons. Of the other two left, one does research that bores me to tears and she constantly talks about it. She's really nice and I like hanging out with her now and then, but I wouldn't say that we're really good friends. The other is much more aligned with my own research interests, but he's kind of annoying and tells lots of stories that you know are really exaggerated, if not complete b.s. 

 

I am pretty good friends with someone from this year's cohort (which is made up of 7 students), and I kind of wish she had been around last year. I'm also friends with an undergrad who has been accepted to the masters program, and I'm really bummed that I won't be around to see in person how his masters research goes. It's probably not a surprise that both of these people are in the lab of a professor I really like and have worked with, and are also doing research that really interests me. I've spent more time with them than any of the other grad students due to research, so we really had the opportunity to get to know each other well.

 

So I don't think your cohort is really that important. Sure, you'll see them in classes and seminars, but you probably don't have to interact with them all that much. What's more important is that you get along with people you definitely will be working with on a regular basis, which can easily be people outside of your cohort.

[have2thinkboutit]

I agree with everything that has been said so far - the most important thing is that there is SOMEBODY there that you click with and that person doesn't necessarily have to be in your cohort. Having said that, I would still be reluctant to go with this school:

 

At another school, I did not "click" as well with the existing students, and did not keep in touch with them after the visit. They were all much younger, most had not been outside of school (jumped straight from ugrad to grad), and were not apparently diverse in the ways mentioned above. On top of that, I emailed the other people who have been accepted to this program for the Fall, just to strike up a conversation and share some insights or ideas. .....Not a single person replied, even after a follow up email. 

 

It just doesn't sound comfortable... and while doing my MA my cohort was very diverse and I was grateful for that because I felt that this difference in experience and also our age difference (between 20 and early 30s) really benefited our work in terms of knowledge, experience and perspectives. So just like you I do value variety...

 

In the end, however, I do agree with others who have spoken up in that it is difficult to know others from meeting up just once so there may some very pleasant surprises there. As you can see - it's all relative and you probably wont know until you're there.

[rising_star]

That said, the people I'm closest to now, I would have really disliked had I met them at visiting weekends- we had no interests in common, we were all in pretty different places in life, and, to be honest, we were all pretty damn abrasive. I don't think we gelled until we'd been working together late nights/early mornings for a few months.

 

OMGosh yes! My two closest friends from my PhD program are people that, at first glance, I never would've liked. In fact, I found one of them rather annoying for the first couple of weeks in the program but then we had a cohort dinner, I got to know them, and we just clicked. So much so that that person is someone I exchange emails with regularly now, years after we first met. But initially? I found them kinda annoying and abrasive, including at our departmental orientation events. At the same time, people I got along with at the orientation became those cohort members I never talked to even though initially it seemed like we had a lot in common (research interests, age, personal background).

[jujubea]

You guys have so much helpful knowledge and wisdom. Thank you for sharing!

[TakeruK]

I agree that it's really hard to truly know someone in just a couple of days (or less) and that there are plenty of people whom you might not get along with on the first few days but can really gel with later on! Also, sometimes people are just really stressed out, preoccupied or just tired after visiting X schools in a row and they just aren't feeling super social and friendly.

 

I do think your cohort matters though, but I don't really mean that you need to be BFFs right away. What I mean when I say "cohort matters" is the environment/climate of the graduate student community that you think might form. Also, in my field, cohorts tend to be on the order of 4-5 people, so I think it might matter a little more than other fields with cohorts of 30-50 people.

 

All of these examples are going to be personal though since it depends on what you find important. For me, one of the personalities I do not enjoy being around is that confrontational person that will challenge everything you say / debate every issue academically even if we are just discussing something like what pizza toppings to get. And if I feel that the current graduate student environment encourages this type of person to continue this, I would probably not want to go to that school as much. Another reason cohort could matter is if you find yourself a minority in the group. If you are the only minority (whether it's race, gender, socioeconomic class etc.) in a large group (let's say 20 for sake of saying a number), the experience can be less than ideal. 

 

That is, when I think about the importance of your cohort, I'm really thinking about red flags that would warn you away from the school, not necessarily looking for people you can instantly be friends with. But whether or not these red flags would "trump" other factors like advisor fit etc. would really depend on the situation!