Rant: Applying to Grad School Is the Most Stressful Thing Ever

[Dr. DTVT]

Med school and law school are much more expensive.  Both of them are learning what's already known, so the research aspect is basicly nil, so I would argue that grad school is more difficult because in grad school you are actually trying to contribute to global knowledge and working to make the unknown known and doing problem solving, opposed to memorizing a ton material - particularly law school.  Not saying the others are easy, each require a different set of skills.  A doctor has to be able to deal with blood - I can't.  Lawyers have to be convincing, not only to a judge and jury but to their own clients.

[Ħ]

Do law school students come that way, or is it a skill that is learned at law school?

[antigoon]

come what way?

[73109]

Let me put grad school in this perspective:

mega-post

And to be honest dude, despite sounding mentally and emotionally draining, it sounds absolutely amazing.

[Dr. DTVT]

Do law school students come that way, or is it a skill that is learned at law school?

If you're talking about being convincing, I'm of the opinion its more of an inherant trait than something you learned.  Some people just know how to work and own a room, some people just look more trusting and sincere.  They might teach you some public speaking or something similar, but most charisma is natural.  My best friend went to law school.  He's a nice guy, but he's not a commanding presense or a terribly convincing person, mostly due to the natural tone of his voice, and ended up doing law work that keeps him out of the courtroom and away from clients - i.e. away from the money.  One of the trappings of law school is that as long as you keep cutting checks, they'll keep you around unless you totally bomb out.  As far as I know, they don't have a weeding out process like Ph.D. programs have.  I have no clue about med school.

[antigoon]

The stress in law school comes from the immense pressure to stay at the tip-top of your class. Final exams (your entire semester grade) are graded on a strict curve so only a small percentage of students are able to receive top grades -- and it goes much deeper than memorization. We are told constantly that, especially in this economy, only the top 10-15% are getting those great job offers.

Yeah, you can stay in school with a B- average, but unless you went to the cream-of-the-crop school, good luck finding a job you can pay off your debt with.

edit: a lawyer could explain this better than I can; I'm new at this and I'm just going by what I've heard from 2Ls, 3Ls, and graduates.

[jfwund]

Grad school can be rewarding, but you HAVE to love what you do.


If you think applying is stressful, wait until you get in your first class and realize that while you were the smartest guy/girl at your college, you're now the student who has to read and re-read and re-re-read in order to figure out what's going on. That will be unbelievably stressful until you have to teach your first class (most grad programs in my discipline have students teaching from their first semester). You're 22 years old teaching a class full of people that are your age or older (because no one is going to give a grad student a primo class, so you get the remedial or introductory-level classes) and who don't want to be taking the class you're teaching.


But that's not stressful compared to comps, which are some combination of oral and written exams, upon which you are told your future in the profession depends. Fail, and there's no Ph.D. for you. Pass, and you get the stress of writing the dissertation proposal, and being grilled in front of a room full of professors who are looking to make sure that you are actually competent to do what you say you want to do. Once you're through that, the dissertation is actually great. People leave you the f@$! alone and you get to write. But the dissertation defense sucks. Your advisor won't let you defend if they don't intend to pass you, but they will go out of their way to make the defense 2 1/2 hours of living hell.


Then you get to go on the job market. You haven't know stress until you're on the job market. Unless of course you get a job, and then it's the tenure track, and people have written books on the peculiar hell that is the tenure track. These days, though, it seems like American universities are trying their best to get rid of tenure and are certainly not hiring much, so odds are astronomically good that if you're getting a Ph.D. in a humanities or social science discipline,  you won't be getting the job that you've spent the last 6-10 years training for, but will be cobbling together a series of part-time jobs in order to make a subsistence wage.


I'm speaking as someone who's been extraordinarily fortunate, and who has just gotten tenure at a mid-sized American University: DON'T GO TO GRAD SCHOOL FOR A PH.D. IN HUMANITIES OR SOCIAL SCIENCE UNLESS YOU ARE INDEPENDENTLY WEALTHY, YOU DO NOT NEED A JOB AFTER SCHOOL, AND YOU ARE PASSIONATE ABOUT THE FIELD OF STUDY. Otherwise you're setting yourself up for an incredibly stressful life with limited earning potential and even less job mobility.


Sorry to piss in your cheerios, but you need to know what you're signing on for. If you're aware of this and you still want to do it, at least that's an informed choice, you know?

[j]

Both of them are learning what's already known, so the research aspect is basicly nil, so I would argue that grad school is more difficult because in grad school you are actually trying to contribute to global knowledge and working to make the unknown known and doing problem solving, opposed to memorizing a ton material

Can't speak for law school, but with regard to med school, this isn't really true.  Lots of medical schools have research tracks or MD/PhD programs for people who are into research.  The focus is just different, because most medical students have decided they'd rather not spend their career sitting in a lab all day.  And while I'm sure there are graduate programs that are "more difficult" than medical professional programs, it's pretty ignorant to try to make a claim either way.  I certainly wouldn't have expected a research professional to try and do so!

There are a hell of a lot more graduate programs period, and there's just way too much variation; they aren't really comparable at all.  And there aren't very many people who have done both, including you (I presume) and I.  Although I would hope that someone with a research career would have such a lofty view of their chosen profession, and I definitely agree about the immense value of a lot of research, particularly in certain fields.

From my own experience, I got a Master's degree (granted, hardly the same amount of research required for a PhD) before I started medical school, and I've since done a hell of a lot more problem solving learning diagnostic medicine alone.  Sure there's plenty of memorization involved; just like in research, you're primarily building on what is "already known," as you put it, only there's a much greater volume that you're responsible for as a medical student.

But I'd estimate that you do a lot more *application* of knowledge in medical school and throughout a career in medicine, where you see a broad range of things you have to evaluate and investigate, collaborate with other specialists, stay current on pertinent research, and are often even involved in research at some point as well.  Whether that's "harder" depends on the person I guess.  Mostly anecdotal of course, but that's the impression that I've gotten.

-J

[zepp-head]

Grad school can be rewarding, but you HAVE to love what you do.

That sums it up best.  I went into audio engineering, which isn't a field typically get MAs for, but I got an assistantship which paid for my tuition and some money on top as well.  I didn't have any other pressing offers in the field, and I was able to teach advanced audio labs and run a record label, all on top of the already insane grad school work load.  Not to mention, I was doing some film and music projects on the side. 

Even though the actual degree does very little for me, I'm getting a lot out of it because I put a lot into it.  I really stepped outside the boundaries of the classroom and work stuff to push myself farther and it opened a lot of doors.  Plus, I'm much, much better at what I do now, and because of my research and work in areas that aren't specific to production, I have a much better understanding about how the business works and what exactly is expected from everyone. 

The payoff in my case is far from immediate, but I don't regret it for an instant.  In fact, I would say my Master's degree is my proudest achievement so far.  Not necessarily in an educational way, but as a reward for a LOT of hard work. 

[TheOutlawXanadu]

@ jfwund: This semester I am in a graduate school class, and have already had a rude awakening where I realized compared to the other 8 people in my class, I am the worst one. They are all more experienced, sure - but as of right now, I am the least impressive. Stark contrast to my undergraduate classes, where I feel I am doing as well as anybody.

[jfwund]

Good deal. It took me 2 semesters before I realized that everybody in my classes felt like they were the dumbest person in the room. The professors certainly didn't disabuse anyone of the notion, and fostered a sense of competitiveness that from what I understand is pretty common in grad programs in my discipline. At least my colleagues didn't do things like steal each others' notes and sabotage each others' work. That kind of stuff actually went on at other schools where my friends went.



Undergrad is a collaborative learning environment. The professor teaches and you learn. Grad school is a professional environment where the professor does their thing and you go along for the ride, hopefully picking up the information as you work with the professor through their argument/experiment/research. Grad students almost become currency for professors, whose internal reputations rest not only on their research but on who they mentor and the success of their mentees. Not manatees, although that would be cool. Because resources are scarce and because the job market is tight, it can feel like more of a competition than a community at times.


Keep in mind that every grad program will have their "golden boys," their star pupils. In my experience and in the experience of my colleagues and friends, it's usually the star pupils that take 10 years to write a dissertation and who struggle once they're out on their own. I was accepted into grad school off of the waiting list, had to compete for funding every year in order to stay in school, and my dissertation director basically ignored me and certainly didn't give me much of any kind of feedback. As a result I had to work my ass off and struggle to make it through. I got out in 6 years, got a job my first year on the market, and just earned tenure. My classmates with the fellowships who were constantly told they were the best thing since sliced bread? One is still in grad school (going on year 13!), two are out of the profession, and the other has a job but has not gone through the tenure process. I've found that pigheaded stubbornness is about as valuable as raw intelligence. Once you're accepted into grad school, you're smart enough. There will always be someone smarter than you (or at least smarter than me!), but not necessarily anyone as stubborn...


It sounds like you're going into this aware of the situation, and that's what you need to do. I wish you luck--it's not an easy road ahead, but it can be very rewarding.

[millahh]

First off:  Congrats on tenure, jfwund!

Now, a few thoughts on what has been said since my first post on the thread...

-"Stubbornness" has been a recurring theme, and for good reason.  My experience was that "smart" will get you in the door, but being tenacious and hard-headed is what made someone successful.

-"Golden boys" are treated differently in different programs.  In mine, they (we?) tended to make it through "on schedule", where the struggling ones tended to take a bit longer.  Of course, we had a fair number of young professors (including my advisor), so it was to their benefit to get us through.

-Law school and a science graduate program are really apples and oranges, and comparing the difficulty makes no sense (and since my wife went to law school, and I helped her study for the bar, I feel I have a good idea about it).  Law school is about mastering, knowing and being able to instantly apply a huge amount of information, and doing so in a high-pressure environment.  Science grad school is about learning what you don't know, and figuring out how to discover things that no one knows...it's a complete retraining of your brain.  I would think a comparison to med school would similarly make little sense.

-My experience was opposite of normal...I found the classes in grad school to be easier than in college...the mechanistic learning style worked much better for my brain.  I was also in an exceedingly difficult undergrad program, though.

-You do need to love what you do...even at its most difficult, I still wanted to meet the day-to-day challenges.

[Pyroph]

Yeah, I don't think that I'm going to go to grad school. I think that I could manage, but I don't think that I'd want to dedicate that much of my life to it. Nice thing about research grad stuff is that they'll pay for your tuition. The professor in charge of my Psych lab was telling me that all of the grad students here make about $20k/year.

[Jamesman42]

Reading this thread, I am questioning if I have what it takes to go to grad school (for mathematics). I think I do. I love love love math and learning about it and getting stumped to find the answer later. My profs at my current college think of me as some "golden boy," even though I know I have some weaknesses (statistics, 3-D calc is rusty, linear algebra needs a complete refresher). I want to learn the higher level math and get the Master's degree at least. I feel like I was made to go farther than where I am about to end with my B.S. degree.

I'm not going to be starting soon, but I want to start looking into it. I'd be worried about keeping my bills paid, but I've been told I can get an assistanceship to get money for teaching the undergrads and my tuition paid. I have 3 profs ready to write me letters of recommendation at any time. I can be very academically focused if I love the subject (and I usually do).

I think I was picturing grad school as this awesome experience where I was just learning lots of math I didn't know before, and then you maybe write a few papers and you're done. Reading this thread has been informative. My main professor who I talk to semi-regularly thinks I can do it fine...I'll be busy but I will love it, he says.

Hmm, some stuff to think about...

[millahh]

There can be big differences between disciplines, and between schools within a discipline.  For example, my experience, while extremely difficult, sounds somewhat less soul-destroying than DTVT's, despite both being in chem programs.  But DTVT's program is a "top tier" program, while mine was a notch down.

Of course, my view of it may have softened a bit since I'm now about six years out.

I wouldn't get frightened off by anything you've read here.  Talk with your professors, talk with grad students in different programs, get the flavor of the different programs that you might be interested in.

[Jamesman42]

Will do. I think I can do it. I may wait a few years to get myself financially stable, a stable place to live, stable car, etc.