<p>My son is intent on attending grad school for Biomedical Engineering, and while it's nice he's got high aspirations, I'd like him to apply to some "safety" schools for grad work as well.</p>
<p>He's not likely to get a job upon graduation, as he's been unsuccessful security an internship, despite good grades and research experience, and he's focusing more on going to grad school than actively pursuing employment.</p>
<p>Rather than have him on my couch for the next 20 years, I'd prefer him go to a grad school, any grad school, but preferably one in an area near companies that he can some day gain employment.</p>
<p>He's got a fair GPA, took the GRE once with no prep and did terrible on the analytical writing, did okay on the verbal/quantitative, but has no internship experience to make up for these shortcomings. He's also not one to pursue recommendations, and judging by his analytical writing score, I doubt his statement of purpose will be impressive.</p>
<p>I'm happy to consider a school where we would have to pay full ride for an MS program with loans, as son took a full ride for undergrad. I'm sure there are some disreputable programs out there that will happily charge you a fee for a diploma, but hoping for some guidance on programs that will get you a job, but don't have to be big names.</p>
<p>No grad school will care much about internships and in terms of the GRE, as long as he is “good enough” then that’s fine.</p>
<p>Safety school in the context of graduate school is kind of silly. For one, the admissions process is a lot less standard and for two, when looking for schools, the number one consideration should be research interests. The best thing would be to look for schools doing research that interests him and then apply to as many as necessary including a few that seem relatively safe. Which schools those are is something he really has to explore on his own.</p>
<p>Thanks for the advice. But seriously, if MIT is doing research he is interested in, he would want to apply there, but I wouldn’t consider that a safety. I am worried he will limit himself to schools that are doing research he’s interested in, without concern if they are reaches or not, and then come up empty with grad school admits. With no job prospects because of no internships, he’ll have to wait another year, or at least a semester, to reapply for grad school. With regard to internships and GRE, are you saying that grad schools don’t weight GRE scores and internships as major factors in admittance, and will overlook poor GRE scores and lack of internships if the student has research experience similar to what’s going on at their school?</p>
<p>I think, from what I have gathered on this forum, is that people with more research don’t necessarily need to have the best grades or GRE to get into grad school. However, someone with good grades and GRE and plenty of research will definitely stand out more. </p>
<p>Also, you should get your kid to have others review his statement of purpose, particularly professors he might know. They know how to write something that will sound good. Hopefully he takes the initiative he needs to!</p>
<p>This is exactly what he should be doing. If he goes to a graduate program without research that interests him, he will be miserable.</p>
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<p>GRE scores are the only quasi-standardized measure of prospective students that exists, so it is still used, but only insofar as making sure students are at least above some minimum standard. Beyond that, the GRE (or any standardized test, really) is such a flawed measure of ability that most graduate schools don’t care so much. Most really don’t care one bit about the verbal score. They care mostly about quantitative and somewhat about the analytical writing (after all, graduate students produce research papers that reflect on the program).</p>
<p>As for internships, they are usually so far removed from what the student will be doing in graduate school that it really doesn’t matter to graduate schools if they have had them. It is far better in their eyes to have research experience, which is much more applicable to what they will be doing when seeking a graduate degree even if the topics differ from their eventual thesis. Sufficient research experience (and in some cases letters of recommendation) can absolutely outweigh pedestrian GRE scores and even to some degree the GPA.</p>
<p>Of course, there are always the ultra-selective schools like MIT or Caltech where you basically have to have all of the above, but for most programs there is some sort of trade off.</p>
<p>Very good point about only applying to schools doing research he’s interested in. I just worry that he may not find a broad enough range of schools in terms of selectivity to choose from by limiting himself in this way. Hopefully, he will take the time to look at programs at schools that are not as well known to have some safety nets there.</p>
<p>I’m not sure that I agree with this statement:</p>
<p>“This is exactly what he should be doing. If he goes to a graduate program without research that interests him, he will be miserable.”</p>
<p>When I was in (STEM) graduate school, I figured out that by far the best research project is one run by a professor who is reasonable and good at running projects. I worked on ‘interesting’ projects with a professor who was not reasonable (and, really, you’ll probably be tired of the project you are working on by the time you graduate, no matter how interesting it sounded at the start. Heh.) and finally switched to a better professor and basically said “you tell me what to do, I’ll do it”. That worked out much better.</p>
<p>When a graduate student is miserable, it is almost never because they didn’t (originally) think their project was interesting. They are miserable because (among other things) they have to work with touchy equipment, their professor is flaky and loses his/her grant, their co-workers are annoying, the experiment fails to give consistent results, the professor departs to industry… What you really want is a school with good funding and lots of researchers to choose from - this is way more important than the topics.</p>
<p>(I’m reminded of my wife’s engineering grad school project. She was generally happy with her professor and liked her topic, but the main “automated” instrument she worked with was really flaky and ended up really annoying her. For instance she would have to head back to work late at night to restart the danged thing. Another pair of friends in the engineering graduate program had a worse fate - their professor was infamous for keeping students in the program for a couple of extra years (!), we all guessed that this was because once he trained a good student he didn’t want to let them go. Of course he developed a reputation and we all steered potential students to other profs - no matter how ‘interesting’ his research area sounded.)
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<p>Note: I never said that going to a school that has research topics that interest a student guarantees happiness or success, but one of the fastest ways to burn out is to work on something that your heart isn’t actually into. I also never said that the OP’s son should be basing his decision solely on the research topic.</p>
<p>That is, however, the best way to sift through the massive pile of schools to choose from and narrow it down to the ones you actually have interest in. At that point, you go and try and figure out which professor you want to work with. This of course has a few important considerations: your interest in the research, the personality of the professor, location of the school, funding situation at the school, etc.</p>
<p>No matter where you go to graduate school, you will have some flaky equipment, at least one bad coworker, long hours with some unreasonable demands from your professor and many other “injustices” that can really frustrate you. That is just graduate school. It is a whole lot easier to endure those, however, when you are enjoying what you are doing and get along reasonably with with your professor.</p>
<p>Perhaps one other bit I will throw in is that when looking at graduate schools, you have to do it through an entirely different lens that you did for your undergraduate degree. You aren’t just looking at them as a prospective student, but as a prospective employee. The work is going to be long and hard and a dominating factor in your life over the next 2 years (MS) to 5 or 7 years (PhD) and you need to make sure it is the right fit. This is not the same as looking at undergraduate schools.</p>
<p>As son is at a large state university, heavy into Greek and college sports, I worry he will not consider a similar institution, even though that institution may have the research he’s interested in and the location/employment opportunities as well.</p>
<p>Since you liken grad school to employment, should a student not consider housing options/campus demographics in their decision?</p>
<p>Do many grad students live as far away as 30 minutes from campus and only see undergrads when walking across campus, or in a classroom/lab setting? In other words, do many grad students actually live in off campus housing with other students, even undergrads, or do they tend to live in housing with people out in the work force?</p>
<p>It is very common for graduate students to live off-campus. Some universities have on-campus housing specifically intended for graduate students, although graduate students often may live in on- or off-campus housing where there are also undergraduate students. In any case, graduate students who live in near-off-campus housing will likely find many undergraduate students also living in the area, if the school tends to have a lot of undergraduates living off-campus (as is common with big state universities).</p>
<p>Obviously, he may want to compare the cost of living in the area with the stipend usually offered by the school for funded PhD students.</p>
<p>The housing situation is also likely to be very dependent on the school. At some places it is much more common for undergraduates to be spread out around town versus living on campus and vice versa.</p>
<p>I’ve only known a handful of students who live greater than 30 min away from campus, but all of my schooling has been done in college towns where 30 min away is in the middle of nowhere, so it isn’t really fair for me to comment on other, more urban schools. I know that if I personally went to school somewhere in a larger city, I would absolutely consider living wherever I want in the city (be it the suburbs or downtown or whatnot) rather than just right next to the school (though I certainly wouldn’t rule out near the school).</p>
<p>Most people I know went into graduate school treating it essentially the same as they treated undergraduate school. Most of the people who stopped at an MS that I know basically carried that to completion since they are only there for two-ish years. Most PhD students eventually realize that they are there for a while and want to start living a more normal, adult-style life than most who live on or immediately surrounding campus, so you tend to see them branching out more and living a more “normal” life (insofar as that is possible while a PhD student). I know that for the first two years of graduate school I willingly lived alone in a single-bedroom apartment relatively close to campus. After that I moved in with my now wife to a house that is a bit farther away (takes me maybe 10 to 15 min to get to campus). The moral of the story is that for most graduate students, the longer they are in graduate school, the more they want to move on with their life and have some kind of sense of normal adult living.</p>
<p>You can take into account whatever you wish when deciding on the graduate school, including on-campus housing and demographics. Ultimately, though, you aren’t going to have a whole lot of interaction with the undergraduates most likely unless you TA or mentor one in the lab. The number of graduate students who interact with many undergraduates outside of those sorts of settings are relatively few. Ultimately though, it is a personal situation and you have to weigh the factors based on your own personality and desires.</p>