Questions to Ask About Grad School
Questions for current students in a graduate program: funding, advising, workload, and how people actually finish. Useful on a visit day, at a recruitment dinner, or on a call after an offer arrives.
The questions
Open any question for the note
How did you end up choosing this program over the others you got into?
Why ask it
Their reasoning tells you what this program was competing against and what tipped the decision. An answer that stops at rank or a good feeling usually means nobody gave them better information either.
What does a normal week look like for you right now?
Why ask it
Hours in lab, teaching, seminars, and reading are easier to compare across programs than a curriculum page. A student who cannot describe a normal week often does not have one.
How much of your funding is guaranteed, and for how many years?
Why ask it
Guaranteed years is the number that decides whether people finish. Listen for answers that quietly blend guaranteed support with fellowships you would have to win yourself.
What does your stipend actually cover once rent is paid?
Why ask it
Two stipends that look alike mean different lives in different cities. Asked this way, students will usually admit to side work, partner income, or loans filling the gap.
How often do you meet with your advisor, and who set that pace?
Why ask it
Whether advising is scheduled or improvised matters more than the advisor's publication record. If they had to fight for meetings, expect the same fight.
How did people in your cohort pick advisors, and has anyone had to switch?
Why ask it
Advisor fit shapes the degree more than the coursework does. The switching half is the real question: a department where switching is impossible traps whoever guesses wrong.
Who reads your writing before it reaches your committee?
Why ask it
Feedback that only arrives at the committee stage arrives too late to be useful. Strong programs have earlier readers: peers, postdocs, a writing group, a second faculty member.
How long are people here actually taking to finish?
Why ask it
Advertised medians tend to be optimistic and exclude the people still going. Students will give you the real range and, more usefully, the reasons people stall.
What is the teaching load, and does it change from year to year?
Why ask it
Teaching decides how much of your week belongs to your own work. A heavy first year then relief is a very different degree from teaching every term until you defend.
How did your qualifying exams go, and what do people wish they had done differently?
Why ask it
Exam stories show what the milestone really is: a genuine filter, a formality, or a badly specified ordeal that eats a year.
Has anyone in your cohort left, and do you know why?
Why ask it
Attrition is the thing departments least like to discuss and the thing you most need. If the first answer is that nobody leaves, ask again: someone did.
What happens here when a grant runs out partway through someone's degree?
Why ask it
Funding gaps are common enough that a good department has a practiced response. You want a specific case and what was done, not a reassurance that it never happens.
How much do people in your year talk to each other about their work?
Why ask it
Peer talk is what makes the middle years survivable. Silence usually means internal competition for the same funding, or a cohort admitted into unrelated silos.
How does the department treat students who need extra time for illness or family reasons?
Why ask it
Something will happen over five or six years. The answer tells you whether extensions here are routine paperwork or a negotiation you fight while unwell.
Where did the last few people from your lab or research group go?
Why ask it
Placement from one specific group beats department-wide numbers, which are propped up by two strong groups and hide the rest.
What does this department do badly that nobody mentions on the visit?
Why ask it
Visit days are curated. This gives a student permission to be candid, and how specific they get is itself the answer.
If you needed mental health support, would you know where to go, and would you use it?
Why ask it
Knowing and being willing are separate. Hesitation on the second half says more about the department's culture than any wellness page.
How do conference travel and research costs get paid for?
Why ask it
Unfunded travel quietly excludes students without family money. Ask for the per-student amount, who approves it, and how slow reimbursement is.
Knowing what you know now, would you start this program again?
Why ask it
The most compressed question on the list. The pause before the answer is as informative as the answer.
What should I ask the faculty that they will not bring up themselves?
Why ask it
Students know which topics professors steer around. This hands you a list to use in the afternoon meetings, while you still have access.
Getting Honest Answers From Current Students
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Who to ask, and when
Third and fourth years, not first years
First-year students are still enthusiastic and have not hit exams, advisor friction, or the funding cliff. Students past the midpoint know how the program behaves under pressure.
Away from faculty
Ask the hard questions in a hallway, a bar, or over email after the visit. The same student gives a different answer with their advisor in the room, and both answers are honest in their own way.
People who left, if you can find them
Departments rarely offer these names. Public lab pages, old cohort photos, and LinkedIn will surface someone who started and did not finish. A short polite email often gets a frank reply.
What to listen for in the answers
- Numbers instead of adjectives: years of guaranteed funding, courses taught per term, months to a first paper.
- Whether good outcomes are attributed to the department or to one heroic advisor. The second does not transfer if that person moves.
- Consistency across students. Three people describing advising differently means advising here depends entirely on who you get.
- How people talk about the ones who struggled. Contempt in that answer tells you what happens if you struggle.
- Unprompted mentions of money. When several students raise it without being asked, the stipend is not enough.
Where visit days mislead
The students you meet are selected
Recruitment volunteers skew toward the happy and well-funded. Ask how they were picked, then find someone who was not.
Rank is not fit
A highly ranked department with nobody working on your problem is worse for you than a mid-ranked one with two people who do. Placement follows advisors more than institutional prestige.
Fully funded has fine print
Ask whether the funding is tied to teaching, whether summer is included, whether fees and health insurance come out of the stipend, and what happens in year six.