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"How do I select my Grad School?" The agony of choice
Tony Martin eases the pain for would-be international graduate students by offering some practical advice about finding the right place to study a Masters or PhD.
More and more universities worldwide are bidding for the business of good graduate students and global travel gets easier by the air-mile. So making the choice gets tougher. Tony Martin eases the pain for would-be international graduate students by offering some practical advice about finding the right place to do a masters or PhD.
‘When I choose a graduate school, will it choose me?’ – that's the first question in most people’s minds when they've decided they want to advance their education with a masters or a PhD. Indeed, how to match a candidate's aspirations with those of an institution is the subject of considerable debate – worthy of a PhD in itself.
Choosing a graduate program at home can be tough enough. Choosing one overseas opens a whole new dimension as the options are immeasurable – and getting greater all the time as the popularity of advanced study increases throughout the world.
So where do you start? First, perhaps, by putting the meaning of the words ‘graduate school’ into an international perspective as it is different from one country to another. ‘Gradschool’ is US jargon for ‘graduate school’ and is common parlance that has extended to countries where the USA has had a strong influence on the education system. Many US universities are very large and the individual graduate schools are physically and administratively autonomous. They are usually subject specific and the major schools even have a different name to that of the main university, such as the Heinz School of Public Policy of Carnegie Mellon University, or Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, usually named after a major benefactor.
In the UK, Australia and other English-speaking countries, graduate schools are usually integrated within the university and are more of a notional entity. For example, this is how University College London describes its graduate school: “The UCL Graduate School is important in providing both intellectual and social contact between graduates of different disciplines and from different backgrounds and countries. The Graduate School is here to help make rewarding contacts outside the close confines of the laboratory or the library, whether within UCL or outside in the wider world.”
The exception to this rule is the business schools, whether graduate only or offering study at all levels, which world-wide tend to enjoy considerable – even complete – autonomy from their parent university. Erasmus University in the Netherlands has its Rotterdam School of Management, Oxford University has the Saïd School of Business, named after its founder,Wafic Saïd. This pattern may be found in most countries as business schools tend to be the most dynamic and best-resourced parts of the universities.
In non-English-speaking countries graduate schools on the US model are being used more and more as universities increasingly offer masters courses taught in English. Ruhr- Universität Bochum, early pioneer of masters degrees in Germany, has a number of ‘Graduierten-kollege’ for its German language postgraduate programs and three ‘Graduate Schools’ for its programs taught in English. This trend is accelerating fast, not only in Europe, where the Bologna process is being implemented rapidly, but also in Asian countries where universities are also internationalising. Korea University’s website lists no less than seventeen graduate schools, each with its own subject speciality.
Understanding this structure is an important step in making your selection because you need to decide whether you wish to study in an environment of major specialisation, or whether you prefer the wider context of a ‘broad church’ university where you will rub shoulders with students of many disciplines.
Once clear on this point, the next task is not so much to choose the school or university, but to choose the course that is best for you. If you are a typical graduate looking for advanced study, you will be driven by enthusiasm for your chosen subject and, unless you have overriding personal reasons for selecting a study location, you will choose the course first, then worry about where you study it, how competitive it is to get admitted, how you are going to pay for it – and what the weather is going to be like!
