<p>Hi, Im from Sydney, Australia and am 22 years old. I would like to do a year long graduate course in the states and stay in college on campus. generally speaking, do grad students and international students in particular have good party colleges and a party life in general? Do many younger graduate students still go and get invited to the undergraduate college parties? I would like to know because I have this image in my head that if I go as a graduate student, the party scene will be very small! thanks for your help...</p>
<p>[Piled</a> Higher and Deeper](<a href=“http://phdcomics.com%5DPiled”>http://phdcomics.com)
^ Life of graduate students, everywhere. Word. Even Australia…</p>
<p>It will certainly be more difficult to merge into the undergrad scene–you won’t be taking the same classes, going through orientation, perhaps you will live in another building altogether.</p>
<p>But it depends hugely from school to school (Caltech and UC Santa Barbara are sooo different in atmosphere) and you can certainly find a good time if you look hard enough</p>
<p>^</p>
<p>nothing personal, but i doubt your set of life experiences in anyway prepares you to answer this question. which is a general problem in this forum.</p>
<p>serf - who are you to know about her life experience ?</p>
<p>Point taken. My impressions from friends/other sources are not first-hand; please correct me as you see fit. I know I totally exaggerated on the PhDcomics bit, it’s definitely more true for science PhDs as compared to humanities PhDs.</p>
<p>I frequently hear graduate students complain about too much academic work and a lack of money/funding, though I am obviously not a graduate student myself. (But when I compare the lunch of graduate students to the lunch of undergraduates, I fully believe the financial concerns.) And half of the graduate students in my department are married, some of them with kids. If I had to guess, I would say that most of our graduate students do not party.</p>
<p>based on her posts on the forums? i.e.</p>
<ul>
<li>she’s 18</li>
<li>she hasn’t STARTED college</li>
<li>she’s located in singapore</li>
<li>she probably hasn’t thought about grad school</li>
<li>she’s enrolled at HMC, a very unconventional school</li>
</ul>
<p>-rollseyes-</p>
<p>… i can’t believe i took the time to respond to that</p>
<p>Fiona_ may be on the younger side, but as a former graduate student myself, I can assure you that her assessment of the situation is quite accurate.</p>
<p>Graduate school is all about studying. Yes, there is time for relaxation, and milder forms of partying. However the notion that a graduate student would have enough time and energy left over at the end of the day to “party hard” is, simply put, laughable.</p>
<p>Doesn’t it depend on what you are studying? A chem eng phd will really differ from a sociology masters.</p>
<p>In general, people in graduate school are serious students. There is time for kicking back but I didn’t know anyone who was into going to parties. The further they are in their program the more they can relax but many of them are married so their free time is spent at home.</p>