Interviews: questions to ask

[miky]

For those who have been around the block and are now in grad school: what questions do you wish you would had asked at the interviews, either of your faculty interviewers or the grad students? Or alternatively, what were questions/answers that helped you make your decisions? 

I have a few questions pertinent to each of the program I'm visiting, but I think it would be really informative to get input from those who have successfully maneuvered the entire application process. 

 

[TakeruK]

I'm not in biology, but these are some example questions that I asked when I visited schools:

To individual professors:
1. General questions about the research that the lab performs. I'd ask about what the current projects are.
2. I would also ask them about future directions for the lab? What projects are they thinking about in the future? 
3. Are you thinking of growing the lab or keeping it the same size?
     3a. If growing the lab, are there plans to go in new directions for research, or increase work on current paths?
4. How often do you send students to conferences?
5. (for lab fields where there are rotations): How many students rotate in your lab? How many stay?
6. Is [the project you want to work on with this professor] funded? For how long?
7. What are your expectations for a graduate student in your lab/group? (I'd keep it general at first to see what they say, but if they ask for more specific, I usually ask to find out if they would be okay with people working from home, or would they want you in the lab from certain hours etc.)
8. What is the typical time to graduation for your students?
9. What do your students do after graduation?
10. Specific questions about success rate of their students in your chosen post-graduate career path

To department heads or other administrator: (most of my visits involved at least 1 meeting with someone from "departmental administration")
(Although you can ask some of these Qs to faculty as well)
1. How many students join the department each year?
2. What is the typical graduation rate / how many finish? (Also ask: how many pass quals? candidacy? etc.)
3. Ask about the funding structure---if it's TA based then how are they assigned? Does everyone who wants one gets one?
4. What are the department's future hiring plans? Are you planning to grow? What subfields will you be hiring in?
5. Ask about course requirements and other degree requirements (especially if you have prior coursework or a Masters, find out what changes, if any)
6. Ask what happens if you win external fellowships---does your TA requirement go down? do you get more money?
7. Ask about things you're interested in pursuing while you're in grad school, for example: elective courses outside of department? extra opportunities to teach? outreach opportunities? varsity sports (in Canada, grad students are part of varsity athletics too)

To current graduate students:
1. Pretty much all of the same questions as above---you want to see the student's point of view of things and see how they line up with the faculty's point of view.
2. Ask about the quality of classes
3. Ask about the workload of a TAship---how many hours do you really work?
4. Ask about the typical work expectations of the department and especially of the professors you want to work with
5. Ask about where people live
6. Is the stipend enough? 
7. Ask about programs in the department and on campus that support you and whatever you need (e.g. diversity center, parents, cultural clubs, international student office, etc.)

[abbythespoon]

To prof of interest: 

How many graduate students do you have?

What is the biggest strength of the program?

Where do you see your work heading in the next ~years?

Hands-on or hand-off mentor? Relationship with students?

How is your lab organized?

How are students funded?

Academic community/faculty collaboration

Mentoring style/advising philosophy/teaching

How do students develop their research projects? How does your research relate to your 

students’?

Lab organization—how does everyone’s research connect?

Field/lab work balance?

What do students do after graduating?

Where do you see your research interests going in the next 5 years?

What does the 1st year look like?

[HopefulPHD14]

These are all great answers!  Thanks so much!

I will add one more question that is important to ask grad students.  My friend in grad school said that this question was the one that helped her actually pick her program last year.  

Make sure to ask the grad students what they like to do for fun when they are not in the lab (or classes or whatever).

She said she asked this at some schools and the students would not be able to answer right away.  They would actually have to think about it and they wouldn't come up with good answers.  She said that at other schools it would be an easy answer for the students.  They already knew what they liked to do once they left the lab.  And, there was a sense of community in doing those activities together.

The program is great and important and everything, but if you end up at a school where the grad students cannot enjoy themselves outside of the lab and classes, it may not be the best program.  Ultimately she picked a program that she knew she would like both in and out of the lab.

[KaffeeCafe]

Thank you for these answers! I was going to post a similar question for my visitation weekends coming up, but these all seem like great ideas.

[ballwera]

Not the most popular opinion, but make sure to ask about stipends and benefits (health insurance etc.). Also make sure to ask grad students how far their stipends go. 

[miky]

23 hours ago, TakeruK said:

 

 

22 hours ago, abbythespoon said:

 

Y'all went above and beyond what I was asking, but it's definitely appreciated. I'm sure this will be a great resource for other interviewees. 

[Fallen]

To piggyback - it is okay to write down notes while people answer these questions? I just figure that the interview day(s) will be somewhat intense and I may have trouble keeping track of who said what when it comes down to making a decision. 

[TakeruK]

I wouldn't take notes during these sessions. Honestly, you don't really need to know exactly which words were said by whom at what time etc. I think taking notes would make people uncomfortable and much less likely to answer truthfully.

The point of asking these questions is not to get exact answers that you can then put into a spreadsheet and compare exactly what each school said. That is, you're not going to use these responses by comparing things like at school A, the grad students said "I am happy with our stipend" vs. at school B the grad students said "I am really happy with our stipend". After all, it's not like anything people say at this point is binding. If a prof says "oh I like my students to work 40 hours per week" and then you get there and they lay out a schedule that puts you in the lab 50 hours per week....well, it's not like you are going to say "But you promised 40 hours per week!" etc. 

Instead, the point of asking these questions is not to get specific responses but to get a general overall feeling/sense of what life is like at the school. What I did was at the end of each visit day, I wrote a half-page to one-page "reflection" on my thoughts/impressions on everything I experienced that day. If you prefer more frequent note taking, then I would maybe take some time at lunch or a coffee break to jot a few quick thoughts/impressions during the day and then combine it all at the end of the day.

[Fallen]

10 minutes ago, TakeruK said:

I wouldn't take notes during these sessions. Honestly, you don't really need to know exactly which words were said by whom at what time etc. I think taking notes would make people uncomfortable and much less likely to answer truthfully.

The point of asking these questions is not to get exact answers that you can then put into a spreadsheet and compare exactly what each school said. That is, you're not going to use these responses by comparing things like at school A, the grad students said "I am happy with our stipend" vs. at school B the grad students said "I am really happy with our stipend". After all, it's not like anything people say at this point is binding. If a prof says "oh I like my students to work 40 hours per week" and then you get there and they lay out a schedule that puts you in the lab 50 hours per week....well, it's not like you are going to say "But you promised 40 hours per week!" etc. 

Instead, the point of asking these questions is not to get specific responses but to get a general overall feeling/sense of what life is like at the school. What I did was at the end of each visit day, I wrote a half-page to one-page "reflection" on my thoughts/impressions on everything I experienced that day. If you prefer more frequent note taking, then I would maybe take some time at lunch or a coffee break to jot a few quick thoughts/impressions during the day and then combine it all at the end of the day.

That makes sense - thank you for the response. 

[ctenophora]

46 minutes ago, Fallen said:

To piggyback - it is okay to write down notes while people answer these questions? I just figure that the interview day(s) will be somewhat intense and I may have trouble keeping track of who said what when it comes down to making a decision. 

I took notes at all of my previous interviews & I plan to on my future ones.  One faculty teased me, but I don't think this affected me negatively b/c I think we had a nice chat.  Taking notes helps me remember what I talked to everyone about, which is nice when sending thank you emails out or just generally reflecting on my visit.  Plus, some faculty have made some suggestions on additional papers/ faculty to check out... some have talked about ideas, methods, etc., that I didn't recognize & I liked their explanations... others have suggested additional analyses to run in my research... & these are all things that I want to remember to look into.  Other people have warned me about such & such class or so & so professor... some grad students have told me where the cool & cheap places to live are... all info that I would want to know should I matriculate into that program.  So, even if I look silly with my tiny notebook, I'm glad I have it.  

[TakeruK]

Just now, ctenophora said:

I took notes at all of my previous interviews & I plan to on my future ones.  One faculty teased me, but I don't think this affected me negatively b/c I think we had a nice chat.  Taking notes helps me remember what I talked to everyone about, which is nice when sending thank you emails out or just generally reflecting on my visit.  Plus, some faculty have made some suggestions on additional papers/ faculty to check out... some have talked about ideas, methods, etc., that I didn't recognize & I liked their explanations... others have suggested additional analyses to run in my research... & these are all things that I want to remember to look into.  Other people have warned me about such & such class or so & so professor... some grad students have told me where the cool & cheap places to live are... all info that I would want to know should I matriculate into that program.  So, even if I look silly with my tiny notebook, I'm glad I have it.  

I think I might have misunderstood Fallen's original question, so I want to clarify:

Yes, for the formal one-on-one faculty interviews, you should have a notebook, or a pad and pen/pencil handy. It's okay to jot down the occasional thing they say, especially when it relates to research. For example, they might tell you about 2 or 3 potential projects in their lab for a new student and you should absolutely write these things down. Also, if they give you some references for some of the methods or current research for these projects, you should definitely write them down. No one likes it when they make a suggested action item and the other person doesn't seem to make any attempt to actually record it to do later.

When I wrote my above response, I was thinking about the "hard questions" like the ones I listed above and others have also listed. Also, I was thinking about the less informal conversations with grad students (in my field, on the interview days, prospective students are scheduled to meet with faculty as well as graduate students in their offices). When you ask questions to the grad students like "What is Prof X like to work with?" or "Are you happy with the department?" etc. then you should not be jotting things down! I think you might want to avoid doing the same thing when asking the "hard" questions to faculty and department chairs etc. as well. 

If there is something that you just learned that you feel like you absolutely have to record because it's so important, I would excuse myself at the end of the meeting and take some time to write it down before going to the next meeting. I did this for a couple of meetings where I received some important info with specific numerical details for things like how much monetary support the school provides for childcare etc. 

Finally, I do think it's professional for you to have a notepad/clipboard/scrap paper etc handy when you do these interviews. It shows that you are prepared. And jotting down an occasional note is a good idea. But don't go the other way and be constantly writing/note taking/taking a transcript!

[Fallen]

Thanks for the clarification. I wanted to record the types of things both of you said I should record.