<p>OK, just wondering where S should start his application process to go to grad school in engineering. I told him his school of engineering should be helping him but also was wondering about resources anyone else can direct him to. I told him that this website is a great resource but I don’t know what section talks about grad schools.</p>
<p>Thanks! He hopes to get his EE degree this May. We welcome all suggestions and thoughts.</p>
<p>Have him schedule his GRE’s immediately. He should be fine in math and may want to do some quick vocab refresher. He should make an appt with his advisor now to help him get started.</p>
<p>Himom. The graduate forum has great info. Go to discussion home and then to graduate school.
[Graduate</a> School - College Confidential](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/graduate-school/]Graduate”>Graduate School - College Confidential Forums)</p>
<p>all the info he needs to get started is there</p>
<p>Second the grad school forum, very valuable advice there. Is your S looking for Fall 2010 admissions for Masters? D started submitting apps in Oct. for PhD and was finished by Thanksgiving (field of chemistry) . It was rigorous between the GRE’s, letters of ref. and personal statements. She was in total command this time around, we cheered her on and of course paid application fees. The early submission paid off as she had two acceptances by the end of Dec. Her advisor was invaluable in road-mapping the process, time line and list of schools (and yes, she had her reaches and her matches list for grad school too–though he called them maybe and likely admits).</p>
<p>Thanks–yes, S is hoping for Fall 2010 for engineering. He took GRE once but will retake, since he’s not happy with the non-math scores. Not sure what program he wants yet but is exploring options. Told him to chat with his profs as well to see what they suggest.</p>
<p>Sounds like he’s well on his way…best wishes to him. When D finished with the undergrad application process, I thought we were done since she was headed toward a five year BS/MS program. 18 months in— she changed course and decided to head straight for PhD. And so the process began all over again for her.<br>
One note about GRE verbal scores, tell your son to look at the percentile score…what D thought was a mediocre score actually landed her in the 90th percentile and she was advised not to bother re-taking to raise her verbal. There should be some discussion about this at the grad forum too.</p>
<p>He got a 93% for the verbal but lower for the analytical writing. I did forward him your message & will see what he wants to do. He thinks he could have scored perfect (or nearly so) on the verbal, but misread one question early on the computer test (can’t go backwards).</p>
<p>Himom. Retaking that GRE might make him look like a perfectionist…not always the best quality to have in a graduate student.</p>
<p>Does anyone know if there is another on-line forum about graduate school besides what is on College Confidential? I love CC but I find the grad school area is not nearly as robust as the rest of CC. Especially since people getting ready to apply to grad school are so specialized – consider the differences between applying for a PhD in theoretical physics versus one in Modern European History versus electrical engineering!! DS is applying for clinical psych, and we’re not finding a lot of info on-line. (Luckily he is getting good advice from former profs and colleagues, but still . . . An on-line forum is always nice for random tips.)</p>
<p>clinical psych [Clinical</a> Psychology [Psy.D. / Ph.D.] | Student Doctor Network](<a href=“Psychology [Psy.D. / Ph.D.] | Student Doctor Network”>Psychology [Psy.D. / Ph.D.] | Student Doctor Network)</p>
<p>Thank you, sax. I’ll check it out.</p>
<p>Just one thing I want to mention: when you search a website pops up frequently that seems to let you select on grad schools on the basis of different criteria. PHds.org or something like that.</p>
<p>I played around with it for my field (this is a field I’ve been in 20 years, have won every major award available, and I’m currently serving as head of the professional association of academics in our field for 5 years now…so I know a bit). Needless to say, I found it extremely - I mean extremely- inaccurate about the reputation of schools in my field, the % of people who have jobs at graduation, and so forth. Some schools that came up well ranked I have honest never, ever heard of them in my life. I am not sure where they get their data, but it could be horribly misleading.</p>
<p>So starbright, would there be a better website that you might be able to recommend, re: ranking of grad schools? Would be great to know…! :-)</p>
<p>^I haven’t studied them to know…I had just happened upon this one and went to it on a lark, given it seemed pretty comprehensive. I’ve since written to ask them about why their formula is producing such bad results, but never heard back.</p>
<p>What I would do however is not worry about online ranking machines, which often can be very broad brush and produced by outsiders, and instead do one’s own investigative work that will yield results very specific to one’s field and area of interest. Its at that level that it matters. </p>
<p>To do so, here are some ideas: </p>
<p>a) talk to faculty at one’s current school (faculty who publish a lot in the field one is interested in going into). Strong graduate school candidates are those who have already been doing research with faculty, so those are perfect people to talk to. They will know exactly where the hot spots are for research in their area and will and should mentor you through the process. If possible, talk to several, as you will get some varying opinion since its not entirely cut in stone but some very common patterns will emerge about the best schools.</p>
<p>b) identify the top journals in one’s field, through asking well published faculty or by looking at journal impact factors in Web of Science (ISI) (available in any online university library). </p>
<p>c) identify where those publishing in those top journals are currently working and check out their websites. </p>
<p>d) also using Web of science, one can identify researchers with the highest citation rates in their field…and see where they are working, who their colleagues are and what their citation rates are. </p>
<p>d) even better, if one has a particular passion about a particular topic within one’s field of interest, identify the topic researchers publishing on that topic in leading journals, and where they are located. You can also write to them directly to consider joining their research team. </p>
<p>e) Finally, only go to a school that can provide you with decent financial support, and that doesn’t just use up its graduate students as cheap labor to teach a ton during their PhD studies. It varies by field, but the best programs will protect PhD students from teaching as much as possible (relative to other schools in that field), and some of the worse programs will have their students teaching so much for so little than they aren’t able to get on with their own education. (as but one example, our students only teach in their 4th year one course or two; I know some schools in our same field- schools whose name you would recognize as ‘well known’, that have their students teaching 4 courses a year from the get go…that to me is just exploitation). </p>
<p>IMHO, the ranking of undergraduate schools and differential quality between them is wayyyy overrated. But when it comes to one’s PhD, its a whole different story. Reputation and the quality of faculty in terms of their research within a field matters a ton. In a given field, there will be huge variation across schools in terms of the amount and quality of research produced, the amount and quality of research that graduate students will be able to produce, and most importantly, the training and job outcomes its graduates will receive.</p>
<p>starbright, would you be willing to share with us what field you’re in?</p>
<p>^I’m in a business school, but as with many in b-school faculty, I publish and work in a primary discipline as well (sort of one foot in each of two different academic worlds). I’ll limit it at that because the world of academics is extremely small. </p>
<p>I think my advice can be most generalized to PhD programs where one is seeking to be an academic (and still relevant but less so for those seeking a PhD for the purposes of other employment, such as clinical psych). Also the criteria may vary in different disciplines. Thus for example in some humanities, citation is less relevant, and the focus is on books not peer reviewed journals. </p>
<p>Still, in all fields, it helps hugely to work with faculty in their respective discipline doing “research” as they define it, and seeking their guidance on schools for graduate work. A school that is famous in A field will be non-existent in B field. Some of THE best places you can do a PhD in my field now are not HYPS and company, but actually several publics. It very much depends on the field.</p>
<p>I did tell S that his time would probably be better spent chatting with his prof/mentors rather than retaking the GREs–he says advisor told him the same thing :). His scores are really “good enough” and really guidance from his mentors would seem to be the key factor at this juncture.</p>
<p>He is supposed to be on several published research papers for the work he’s done over summers & during the year. It looks like he’s also supposed to be working on a capstone project, but he’s never spoken about it to me yet.</p>