Rejoice! It’s grad student recruitment weekend!

From ScienceMag:

View more

Some college students know exactly where they’d like to go to graduate school. These students have done, what’s the word, research, so that they can be, what’s the word, prepared. I was not one of these students.

My time in college was mainly spent obsessing over difficult questions, such as how we could recruit more people into the marching band, or whether I could beat the high score on the Attack from Mars pinball machine in the basement of the student center. I knew I wanted to go to grad school, but I had no way to distinguish one program from another, so I applied to nine schools and relied on that faithful “you’ll know it when you see it” backstop: grad student recruitment weekends.

I’m never one to turn down a free trip, especially one with free food, and even more especially one with free food that might devolve into a professor handing a bartender the department credit card and telling us to go nuts. Unlike med schools, which seemed motivated to “weed out” all but the highest achievers, it felt like grad schools knew how niche they were—and they desperately wanted to please anyone considering spending the next 5 to 7 years there, earning just barely enough to not qualify for food stamps.

At grad student recruitment visits, I sat through lectures in Missouri, played shuffleboard with other recruits in a bar in Michigan, toured a lab in upstate New York, and—right after our hosts finished convincing us how safe their city was—watched a full-on street battle erupt in the middle of the night outside my hotel room window in New Haven, Connecticut. With a 2-day visit to each of the schools that accepted me (curse you, unnamed schools in Boston), I learned about the department’s culture, met current grad students, and really got a sense of what the next chapter in my life would feel like.

And then I chose to go to Johns Hopkins University anyway, because it was near my girlfriend.

I didn’t think much more about grad student recruitment weekends until my first year in grad school, when we were all asked to help welcome the next crop of recruits. We planned parties, handed out nametags, and descended like vultures on their leftover lunches. After that, I joined the effort every year, driving college seniors around the city and showing them a good time at places that really had nothing to do with grad school, like the aquarium. (“Your principal investigator may or may not respect you,” I probably said. “But look! Fish!”)

One year, a couple of us were asked to take recruits to lunch. The department told us to submit the receipt afterward, but they gave no guardrails about how much to spend. Knowing this was our only chance every year to do so, we took the recruits to a superfancy seafood restaurant, where I ate crab legs the size of broomsticks, not to mention downing a fleet of frozen alcoholic drinks in souvenir glasses. I submitted that receipt with a pang of guilt, knowing I had perhaps abused the generosity of my department, but the only feedback I got was a heartfelt thanks for hanging out with the recruits. I assured the department that it was my pleasure.

Now that it’s late winter, grad student recruitment season is once more upon us. If you’re traveling to a campus to consider it as your potential new home, please bear in mind the following recommendations.

Don’t fall for advertising tricks.

Every school will try to dazzle you with their coolest tourist itinerary, their most important research presentations, their least crusty professors. These things are not completely unimportant, but they also don’t matter as much as some of the basics. Sure, your potential new department can throw one crazy shindig, but is that really going to be part of your graduate education? The more important criteria are often more boring and fundamental: Where will you probably live: a graduate dorm, or an apartment? How affordable is housing? What’s the weather like most of the time? Will you need a car? What does the city feel like? How happy are the students? You may recognize these as the same questions you asked about your college, and they’re good questions for a reason: They will impact your quality of life every day.

Behave.

You probably haven’t received an admission offer yet, but it’s my understanding that grad student recruitment visits are primarily for the students whom the department already plans to admit. So, congratulations! But more importantly, behave! In addition to helping you choose a school, these visits are also a great chance for the department to find and eliminate the small percentage of students who look good on paper, but in person, absolutely creep everyone the heck out. The bar is already fairly low for scientists to behave in a broadly socially acceptable way. Do not get drunk and limbo under that bar.

Stay awake in the seminars.

Look, I know that even if you like science (and hopefully you do, or you’ve chosen the wrong career path), you’re staying up late partying and then sitting in seminars given by people who may be awful at presenting in an engaging way—also called, what’s the word, scientists. Do your best to look attentive, even if you have to prop up your limp body in ways that are less like a weekend at a prospective grad school and more like a Weekend at Bernie’s.

Socialize with the other recruits.

You will never see some of these people again, because they’ll choose a different school, or you will. But it’s statistically likely that some of them will become your classmates for the next several years, or maybe even your lab mates, or maybe even your friends. Be a good future colleague.

But more importantly, socialize with the current grad students.

The department will try to sell itself to you as a cutting-edge powerhouse with amazing opportunities and guaranteed funding. Nod and smile. Then wait until you’re alone with the current grad students, and ask them to tell it like it really is. This is not like a company where the workers have all signed nondisclosure agreements and promised not to publicly disparage their employer. These are grad students. Give them a chance to complain, and then stand back and listen. They will be your greatest source of unfiltered information about the life you’re about to choose.

Though my memories of grad school are a fairly mixed bag, new student recruitment always stands out as a positive memory. It’s a fun time to bond with a bunch of like-minded colleagues. But more importantly, it’s a great chance to learn what your future may hold.

And then decide to do something else entirely because of who you’re dating.

Read More