<p>Is Grad School cut-throat in the sense of Undergrad. where people might sabotage others and whatnot?</p>
<p>In the humanities, absolutely not. The overarching purpose of graduate school in most fields is to create new researchers/colleagues. Do students compete for resources, better stipends, the time and support of professors? Of course. But in my limited experience, they also form study groups, develop teams to attack interesting problems, proof read each other’s papers and are generally a mutually supportive bunch.</p>
<p>It may be different with “vocational” graduate fields such as law, business, and to a lesser degree medicine where one’s class standing can have a significant impact on your starting salary.</p>
<p>In the sciences it depends on the school. Some of the top schools are well known for a cut throat environment, and I know people at these schools that will confirm it. The environment at Duke (around top 10) is not very cut throat. But there is intense compition between a few of the labs. We also get a 1-2 bad people each year that will try to make it cut throat. Fortunately we dont have tons of bad apples here, so grad school has been fairly collegial so far.</p>
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<p>Haven’t had this experience in either undergrad or grad.</p>
<p>Me either. Even if I was at the top of the class other students would help me (and I would help them)</p>
<p>I had this experience as an undergrad. Many of our early courses were graded on bell curves so snotty premed students would intentionally drop exams from the piles that were being handed down the rows. Pretty crappy eh?</p>
<p>I have personally witnessed graduate students spitting in other labs incubators but I have only seen that once and that was in response to shady scooping. Overall, I think scientists tend to have high morals and observe ethical guidelines. I know my current program requires us to take ethics training before we even start in the program.</p>
<p>“Some of the top schools are well known for a cut throat environment.” What programs are known to be cut-throat?</p>
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<p>Many of the top law schools - notably Harvard - are rather cutthroat as not only is the grading is determined by curves, but the grading also matters greatly in terms of getting a top law firm or clerkship placement.</p>
<p>I think it depends more on the lab/field. I’ve heard some horror stories from postdocs in my lab about the craziness in other labs. Things like where to grad students are given the same project and whoever finished first gets the paper… etc. I think it depends on the field, it depends on your PI, etc. I’ve heard stories of people stealing data from other people in the lab, but this I think is more true in huge mega-labs that are like gigantic in size and the PI is a huge big-shot. That’s my take. I don’t know. I’ve known of instances of people trying to screw up other people’s work even in the lab I’ve worked at, but on the whole, everyone else is very, very, very helpful. Also of course depends on the people. </p>
<p>My undergrad is pretty competitive I guess but I think it is very, very different. It is one thing to have grades curved (I’ve had marks taken away because the average was “too high”, so it was dropped to a C+, for a 3rd year class!), and another to have your experiments ****ed up or have to compete within the lab… now THAT is stressful. I would never want to be in an environment like that. I think competition is healthy, but sabotaging each other, especially within the lab, is awful.</p>
<p>All one has to do is read the CC threads about high school cheating to know that a segment of the high-achieving population believes that it’s okay to do whatever it takes to get ahead. A friend of mine switch from neuroscience to biology because she said neuroscience was “too cutthroat” and that students were sabotaging each other; she couldn’t deal with that environment. But that was a specific school. Not all neuroscience programs are like that.</p>
<p>I suspect that the larger the program, the greater the chance of a cutthroat environment. Smaller programs tend to be more close-knit, thus making sabotage a betrayal of the “family.” That doesn’t mean, of course, that large programs are necessarily cutthroat. </p>
<p>As safetypin mentions, the lab culture is dependent in part on the PI and the tone he/she sets. And how much he cares about or knows what goes on. That’s what interviews are for – to determine whether you would be comfortable in a specific program, with specific labs. And your rotations will help decide as well. </p>
<p>Some scientists believe that a cutthroat environment works against scientific progress, both by rewarding a lack of integrity and by breaking down collaborative work, while others believe it weeds out those who don’t have a real hunger for the field.</p>