<p>Okay, I'm operating under a virtual non-disclosure agreement, but I've got to say that Smith can prepare you really really well for grad school applications, in multiple dimensions: academics, experience, recs, quality of application essays.</p>
<p>Note to parents: you're much more a bystander the second time around but the degree of interest is no less, even if you have to bit your lip more often.</p>
<p>Does this mean that your D already has an acceptance?</p>
<p>And I’ll go you one further: Smith prepares students well for graduate school. My favorite comment that has been passed along to me (since most haven’t been!), from my D’s current lab adviser, with genuine excitement, “You can actually write! And you’re the first student I’ve had who knows how to use a semi-colon!” As many have said here, it’s difficult to get through Smith without being able to write well and often. That pays off in huge dividends in graduate school.</p>
<p>No, no acceptances. No decisions for a couple of months, most of the apps are due this week, a couple due earlier, a couple not until later in the month and one in February. Have no idea how they will fall, hence a revisit of the old application anxiety in attenuated form…it helps having been through it before. But I’ve read some of the essays and…they work. At least for me. And I’m not known for being a particularly soft critic.</p>
<p>One of them, the first three paragraphs could have been the text for a recruiting poster for Smith, talking about how Smith prepared her for grad school.</p>
<p>MWFN, your semicolon comment made me chuckle; imagine that–Smith creates scientists who know how to write! TD, as parents of twins, we most likely will be in the same position as you in two years–law school and grad school. Time will tell.</p>
<p>You could also say that Smith prepares you very well for NOT going to grad school. D’s thesis adviser told her flat out that she was not emotionally ready for grad and would not write her recommendation. D’s total lack of fighting back spirit proves she was right.
When my professor told me I had to choose between pregnancy and Ph.D, I changed university, did both and sent him a picture of my grinning two-year old D1 holding the thesis!</p>
<p>LiT, that reminds me of an apocryphal story wherein a student asked a master violinist if he/she had what it took to be a professional violinist. The master said, “No.” The student then took another course in life but encountered the master years later and asked, “Why did you tell me ‘No’?”</p>
<p>The master replied, “If you had what it took, you would not have let my opinion dissuade you.”</p>
<p>=======</p>
<p>MWFN, funny you should say that: I silently noted in two different essays where D made good use of a semi-colon. Not only was it used correctly, it was the best option for dealing with the material.</p>
<p>Now she actually asked me for my opinion on some thing (falls away into dead faint) and we did discuss the flavor of “paucity” vs. “dearth” vs. “lack” and came down in favor of the middle option. (TheMom favored “lack” but I was almost Jesuitical in approaching what D was trying to do with the sentence and in this case the more elaborate word was correct in my eyes. Interesting discussion on connotation vs. denotation.)</p>
<p>========</p>
<p>LiT again, that photo would have been even more appropriate if you had been going for a PhD in Reproductive Biology, neh?</p>
<p>Separate post: the difference, at least with D, between parental involvement in undergrad and grad applications. Now she upon occasion asks for my opinion instead of suffering it; otoh, I don’t offer one unless asked. I have been amused at how, in eight years, she has developed a solid “project management” skill set that was largely lacking as a high school senior…she appreciates more now of what I did then than she did at the time.</p>
<p>You and Smith did a great job, TheDad. They still have a lot of growing up to do at 18. It seems to me, and I am speaking as a teacher, that today adolescence starts at 8 and ends somewhere between 22 and 40. Btw, your music analogy was spot on!</p>
<p>LiT, I was once standing, chatting with two women I knew, when one of them made the familiar observation that men trail women in maturity. The second said that men catch up…around age 40. The first then said, yes, but then they enter their second childhood.</p>
<p>I hadn’t said a word and suddenly was just standing there, bleeding…</p>
<p>LiT, what would make a student ready for graduate school in the humanities? In the sciences, the answer is easy: more research. But humanities majors can’t easily get that kind of experience once undergraduate ends. Is it maturity that the adviser wanted? </p>
<p>I bristle at the thought of a professor discouraging a student from applying to graduate school, particularly when the student is near the top of her class.</p>
<p>Just my two cents . . . .</p>
<p>Just to add to the above post of mine: it does take a lot of maturity and determination to do well in graduate school. Many students need that break from academics before they dive headfirst into the intensity of a graduate program.</p>
<p>I think this is a little cliche, but I would say that professional life prepares you for grad school in the humanities. And I think it’s completely fair for a professor to discourage a student from applying to graduate school. I think the idea you should go there right away is almost always a bad one, particular for humanities students.</p>
<p>A lot of grad school is, from what I understand as an outside observer, what you bring to the table from your experiences. It’s not just being able to write and reason, but also being able to extrapolate from practical experinece and real world example. Having a really strong grasp of the subject and where its strengths and failings are. I think you can’t really get all of that from just going to undergrad. There isn’t time, you have too many other subjects you have to study, and all the other things that go along with college. You have a broad knowledge base but it’s not specific and it’s not backed up by a well of experience. </p>
<p>A lot of students think they want to go on to grad school because it’s difficult for them to identify themselves as something other than students. And because deciding where to work is hard and finding a job is hard and grad school by comparison is pretty simple. I think it’s good for professors to discourage students when they think appropriate from jumping into something because its comfortable, versus waiting a few years so they can get enough life experience to a) be sure they’re making the right decision that’s going to positively enhance their careers and their study and b) be sure they have something to actually contribute to the group so that they won’t feel impoverished among grad students who have taken time out of academia and are coming back with practical, applicable experience.</p>
<p>Thanks for the comments and support. I basically agree with most of what you all say. For many young people, staying in school is a comfort zone, especially nowadays with the job market as it is. To answer SaP, I’d like to add however that for me, the whole point of an undergrad thesis is to measure how much one can relate to pure academia and I regret the US system which forces people to apply before the end of the senior year and so before having truly experienced how truly fitted a student in the humanities is for long-term research (as opposed to short papers). I do not think that experiencing the reality of the working world is an adequate preparation for grad school per se. Maturity (intellectual or otherwise) is, of course, and thus I can appreciate the idea of delaying the process, but the skills are not at all the same ones.
Mwfn, I never would have been as harsh as this professor, but I can understand the underlying motives. My sister, who is a university professor in the US told me that grad school in the humanities is extremely cut-throat and demands great self-confidence. My only regret is that Smith hasn’t managed to give this to my daughter despite her brillant results.</p>
<p>We had the opposite experience. My d. is now a third-year grad student at Princeton, having passed her generals last spring, and is coordinating the graduate Italian Studies Program, teaching (she is a head preceptor), and presenting papers at conferences, etc. in preparation for publication. The Kahn Institute in the Liberal Arts (she was a Kahn fellow) provided extraordinary experience for graduate school (in fact, her dissertation really is a follow-up to her Kahn work.) When she got to Princeton, when they saw she was a joint Italian Studies major, after a short conversation, they waived the language exam; her one year of German at Smith turned out to be the equivalent of two years at Princeton (which is what they base the exam on), and she received a high pass. (Strangely enough, her first academic paper is on a French subject, something she hadn’t pursued at all at Smith.)</p>
<p>And, yes, competition for top graduate school places in the liberal arts is really cutthroat; in four years, in her department, Princeton hasn’t accepted a single applicant from the Ivy League (even from Princeton).</p>