Interviewing for Grad School: What (and what not) to do

You’ve selected your schools. You’ve sent out your applications. And now you’ve gotten that fateful email in your inbox. You’ve been asked to interview for a Ph.D. program. You’re undoubtedly excited and nervous in equal measure, and you’re keen not to blow this. This will be your chance to meet face-to-face with the program faculty, where you’ll potentially be spending the next 5-7 years of your life, a period that will shape the rest of your life. During this time, you will be scrutinized and evaluated against other candidates, each of you narrowed from a larger pool and jockeying for a limited number of spots. So, no pressure.

The main thing your interviewers will be looking for isn’t how smart you are (I mean, don’t get me wrong; they will care about that, but, for the most part, they’ll just be looking at your grades and GRE scores to assess your intelligence). It won’t be how sharply you dress; just come business casual, and you’ll be fine. It won’t be how well-crafted your personal statement was. Your personal statement can only hurt you; a good one won’t set you apart, but a bad one will get your application quickly dismissed. No, the single most important factor in how you interview is whether you already sound like you know how to be a grad student.

Now, I know that must sound absurd. You’re interviewing for grad school - how could you possibly know anything beyond the basics of what it’s like to be a grad student? But here’s the thing. You see, the dirty little secret of any interview process is this: no one likes having to train anyone. This is why every job listing you see today wants you to have 2-3 years of experience doing that exact job. Grad school is no different.

You might think that grad schools are staffed by noble scholars who strive for the pure pursuit of knowledge and delight in passing on their insights and in training the next generation. Yeah, no. Academic institutions are, by and large, staffed by overworked, middle-aged people under constant stress and anxiety, perpetually trying to obtain or maintain funding.

Every new student they take under their wing is a huge risk. Likewise, academic programs are ranked by their graduation rate. Students who wash out hurt their numbers - not to mention the sunken cost of your stipend during your enrollment - while students who succeed and go on to prestigious positions elevate their alma mater’s reputation. Thus, programs have every incentive to choose the surest bets when selecting potential candidates.

So then - how do you convince the admissions committee that you know and have what it takes to succeed in grad school before you’ve even set foot in the door? The answer is that you have to have already started. When you come to your interview, you will need to bring with you a portfolio that demonstrates you have been making a persistent, dedicated, and focused effort to get into grad school throughout your undergrad and possibly even before. You won’t find this in any undergrad course curricula. This is something you will need to actively seek out yourself.

Doing this when you’re still in your late teens and early twenties and still just trying to get the hang of college and adulthood can be overwhelming. To this end, I recommend that, early on in your undergrad, you identify graduate programs to which you’d be interested in applying. Once you’ve done that, make contact with someone in it - preferably someone who works in or with admissions - and get straight from the source what sort of things their program is looking for. Many graduate programs will offer summer internships to undergraduate students. If your undergraduate institution has a graduate program, you can also look for student volunteer opportunities to bolster your track record.

However, participation in these programs, in and of themselves, isn’t always enough. Ultimately, the gold standard, the thing that will set apart your candidacy, is the same thing you’ll be measured by for the rest of your career - your publication record. The easiest way into grad school is already having your name on a peer-reviewed paper - the more, the better. This creates a paper trail that tangibly demonstrates your accomplishments. It shows that you didn’t simply clean test tubes or file papers in a lab. It shows that you already know how to do research. These are the candidates that a graduate program is looking for.

After the interview process, the admissions committee gets together, and they vote on which candidates are the best bets. The offers don’t necessarily go to the strongest candidates, either. Candidates that are perceived to be likely to pursue offers from other institutions may be passed over, as extending an offer to them ties up a potential spot that could be offered to a more likely contender, and, by the time that spot opens up again, the second candidate may have moved on.

So, if you do want to be offered that letter, in addition to the aforementioned publication record, you need to convince the admissions staff that you absolutely positively want to be here, specifically, which, of course, means that you’ll already need to know a fair bit about this school.

I won’t lie - the way things are kind of annoys me. Students, by and large, are expected to always be looking five to ten years ahead. There is never time to just reflect and explore and find out who the hell you even are, let alone what you actually want to do with your life. But that’s the game, and it only gets harder the further along you go. Life has no easy roads through it, unfortunately, and there is seemingly never enough time. So start now. Fortune favors the prepared.