College Students
Preparing Yourself
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You got into the graduate program of your dreams, and now you're on your way to earning your master's or doctorate degree. You may be thinking that grad school will just be a continuation of your undergrad experience: some work, lots of play, and the usual stress before midterms and finals. Sorry, but you may be in for a nasty shock.
Upon arrival at grad school, many students enter the panic mode when they see the massive course load and independence that they encounter in their programs. It's true that you'll be taking fewer courses, but those classes will be much more intellectually demanding and the material involved can be daunting to say the least. Graduate school will increase your workload exponentially. If you're not fully committed, you run the risk of becoming one of the many who just drop out.
"The first year course load was definitely significantly more than I was accustomed to both in terms of difficulty and volume. I responded to this by becoming extremely stressed out during the beginning of the first semester."
--Ph.D., Brown
Sink or Swim? It's Up To You
It's not only the course load that's problematic for first year students. While most undergraduate courses proceed fairly routinely under the aegis of a professor, graduate students study almost entirely on their own. This dramatic shift can intimidate and overwhelm the unprepared and uninitiated.
"In grad school the key to success is self-motivation. It is not enough to just try to do the work necessary to get by or meet the requirements of the program. It has to be viewed as a career in itself in which the student sees his/her education as something that they must build for themselves."
--Ph.D., NYU
Rising to the Challenge
While this take-it-or-leave-it approach might scare you, the truth is, it tends to separate those who are really dedicated to getting their graduate degrees from those who are merely dilettantes.
"Just trying to get good grades won't cut it. You have to make yourself an academic by being interested in going out and learning the field. My experience in the humanities has been that many students drop out before they complete their Ph.D.'s and many of them seems to be those who decided to go to grad school before they decided what they wanted out of life. Graduate study can be incredibly rewarding, but you need to know why you are doing it."
--Ph.D., NYU
And if you do, you'll be in for the experience of a lifetime...
