Questions to Ask Graduate Programs
A standard set of questions to put to every program on your shortlist so the answers can be compared. These focus on the things that differ between institutions rather than within them: who could supervise you, departmental stability, local cost of living, work rights, and honest weaknesses.
The questions
Open any question for the note
Which two or three people here could supervise my work?
Why ask it
Asking for more than one name is the point. A program where only a single person fits your interests is a program with one point of failure, and that person may be on leave, oversubscribed, or leaving. Compare the depth of this answer across your list.
How many students in the department work in my subfield?
Why ask it
A subfield with six students has a reading group, shared methods knowledge, and people to read your drafts. A subfield with one has none of that, whatever the faculty roster suggests. This is the loneliness question, asked in a way that gets a number.
Has anyone in that area left recently, or is anyone close to retiring?
Why ask it
Departments rarely volunteer this and it changes the value of an offer completely. A retirement two years into your degree means losing your supervisor mid project, and hiring to replace a specialism can take years or never happen.
Is the department growing or shrinking?
Why ask it
Cohort sizes, teaching loads, course availability, and morale all follow this. A shrinking department may still be excellent while offering fewer courses, larger teaching assignments, and a thinner peer group than the website implies.
How much of the program's strength in my area rests on one person?
Why ask it
Some programs are genuinely deep in a field and some are one prominent researcher with a good publication record. Both can work, but only one survives that person moving institutions, and you should know which you are choosing.
What happens if my interests shift after the first year?
Why ask it
Most students' interests do shift, so this is a practical question rather than a hypothetical one. Programs with breadth can absorb it; narrow programs mean a change of direction becomes a change of institution.
What does a one bedroom flat within a reasonable commute cost here?
Why ask it
The most underweighted variable in comparing offers. Two programs with similar stipends in different cities are not similar offers, and this figure is easily checked against listings afterward to see whether the answer was optimistic.
How many months of local rent does the stipend cover?
Why ask it
Converting money into months makes offers in different cities directly comparable in a way that raw stipend figures never are. Do the arithmetic yourself rather than accepting a description of the stipend as competitive.
What work rights do international students have during the program and afterward?
Why ask it
Visa categories, on campus hour limits, and post study work periods vary by country and change frequently. These rules can matter more to your eventual career than any difference in program quality, and they belong on the comparison sheet.
Could a partner work in this city, and on the visa attached to my status?
Why ask it
Dependant work rights differ sharply between countries and are a common reason people leave programs they otherwise liked. Ask whether other students here have partners who found work, since that is the answer with evidence behind it.
If I intend to work in another country afterward, is this qualification recognised there?
Why ask it
Critical for regulated fields, where a degree accredited in one country may require additional examination or supervised practice in another. Confirm this with the regulator in your destination country rather than with the program.
What is the local market like if I want to stay in this area after finishing?
Why ask it
Many graduates stay where they studied, for reasons of partners, children, and networks. A program in a city with a thick relevant industry offers something durable that a stronger program in an isolated town does not.
How does this department connect to the rest of the university?
Why ask it
Joint appointments, cross registration, and shared centres decide whether you can take a statistics or law course when your work needs it. Isolated departments are common and the isolation only becomes visible once you need something from outside.
Day to day, how would my first year here differ from the same year at a comparable program?
Why ask it
Puts the comparison directly to someone who knows the field and usually knows the competition. A specific answer about coursework load, rotations, or teaching in year one is far more useful than a claim about culture.
Which programs do you most often lose applicants to?
Why ask it
This gives you an honest peer group, which is often not the one in the rankings, and it may add a program to your list you had not considered. Most faculty answer readily because they discuss it among themselves anyway.
Which programs do applicants choose you over, and what reason do they give?
Why ask it
The stated reason is the interesting half: funding, a specific advisor, location, or the structure of the first year. It also tells you what this program believes its own advantage is, which you can then verify with students.
What are the honest weaknesses of this program?
Why ask it
Everyone has an answer and the quality of it is diagnostic. A specific weakness, thin coverage in a subfield, a heavy teaching year, an aging building, indicates candour. A weakness framed as a strength indicates you are being sold to.
Who here would tell me something you would not?
Why ask it
An unusual question that works, because it is asked with a smile and almost always produces a name: a senior student, a recently graduated postdoc, the administrator who knows everything. That name is worth more than the rest of the visit.
What would you want to know about me before advising me on where to go?
Why ask it
Turns the conversation into advice rather than recruitment, and the questions they ask reveal how they think about matching students to programs. Someone who asks nothing about your circumstances is not in a position to advise you at all.
If I turned this down, what would you want me to have understood before deciding?
Why ask it
A closing question that gives them one honest attempt without pressure, and the answer is often the most substantive thing said all day. Compare these answers across programs: they distil what each place thinks it is genuinely offering.
Comparing Programs Against Each Other
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Making the Answers Comparable
Ask Identical Questions Everywhere
Comparison only works if the inputs match. Fix a list of eight questions and put them to the same category of person at every program: one faculty member, one current student, one administrator. Improvising a different conversation at each place produces impressions rather than a decision.
Build One Table, Not Six Sets of Notes
Columns for programs, rows for the facts: funded years, stipend, local rent, median time to degree, potential advisors, attrition, placement. Most people find the decision becomes obvious once the table is full, and that the program they liked best on the visit is not the one the table favours.
Convert Money Into Months
Divide each stipend by local rent to get months of rent covered. This single number does more to separate offers in different cities than any other calculation, and it exposes the offer that looked generous in absolute terms.
Separate the Reversible From the Irreversible
Coursework, advisors, and even institutions can sometimes be changed. Five years of a city your partner cannot work in, or a qualification not recognised where you intend to practise, cannot. Weight the irreversible items much more heavily.
What Actually Differs Between Programs
- Depth of potential supervisors in your subfield: two or three names, or one.
- Cost of living relative to the stipend, which can differ by a factor of two between cities.
- Whether funding is guaranteed by the department or attached to a single grant.
- Subfield peer group size, which determines whether you have anyone to talk to about your work.
- Departmental trajectory: hiring, retiring, merging, or losing lines.
- Visa and work rights, for you and for a partner, which no amount of program quality compensates for.
- Structure of the first year, particularly whether teaching starts immediately or is deferred.
How Comparisons Go Wrong
Comparing Institutions Instead of Programs
A university's overall reputation says little about a specific department, and within a field the ordering is often quite different from the general rankings. Ask people working in your subfield which departments they watch, and expect surprises.
Letting the Visit Decide
Visits are designed to persuade, and weather, a good lunch, and one charismatic faculty member move people more than they realise. Write everything down the same evening, then decide from the table a week later.
Ignoring the Person You Live With
Partner employment, schools, childcare, and distance from family end more graduate degrees than academic difficulty does. These belong in the comparison as line items, not as considerations to be sorted out afterward.
Discounting a Program for Having Answered Honestly
The program that names its weaknesses will look worse on paper than the one that names none, which is exactly backwards. Note who was candid, because that is the best available prediction of how you will be treated once enrolled.