Faculty Expectations of Graduate Students

Abstract

When looking for a new student a few years ago, I considered an international student who wasn’t available for me to interview personally—something I’ve come to require before I accept a student into my research group. After some preliminary discussion, I asked her my “behavioral” questions by email to give her an opportunity to provide me with some insight into her qualifications and character. I asked her to describe experiences where she had to resolve a conflict with someone else, where she had faced and overcome a hurdle, and to describe her motivation for graduate school. In her response, which started by noting a particular interaction she had had with her father, she presented me with a well-written documentary of her skills, into which her responses to my three questions were woven. Being the sort of person myself who would have bullet-pointed a response and detailed specific activities to document those skills, I was greatly impressed with her ability to think more broadly than my specific request, yet get at the heart of my questions in a creative approach. I accepted her as a student immediately because those are the attributes in a graduate student I value most highly.