Questions to Ask Graduate Students
Questions for prospective applicants, visitors and new colleagues to ask current graduate students about workload, funding, advising and what the program is like from inside it.
The questions
Open any question for the note
What are you working on, in the version you would give someone outside your field?
Why ask it
Students who can do this have usually presented outside the department and had their jargon knocked off. Students who cannot are often early, or working on a piece of someone else's project they do not yet own.
What does a normal week look like for you right now?
Why ask it
Hours in a lab, in a classroom, at a keyboard and in meetings vary enormously between fields and between advisors. A week described in concrete blocks is more reliable than any answer about work-life balance.
How did you choose this program over the others you were admitted to?
Why ask it
The comparison reveals what the department actually competes on: money, one particular professor, geography or a partner's job. It also tells you which nearby programs are worth your own application.
How often do you and your advisor actually meet?
Why ask it
Weekly, monthly and by accident in the corridor describe three different degrees. Ask about the last month rather than the plan, because standing meetings quietly disappear once someone gets busy.
Would you pick your advisor again?
Why ask it
A short pause before a yes is information. Students rarely criticize a supervisor outright, so listen for the qualified version: good scientist, hard to reach, or generous with credit.
What does your funding cover, and does it run out before you are likely to finish?
Why ask it
Support that ends in year five for a program with a six-year median is the single most common cause of unfinished degrees. Students know their own cliff date precisely.
Do people here take extra work, and are they allowed to?
Why ask it
Tutoring, consulting and second jobs indicate the stipend does not stretch. Whether the contract permits it tells you what happens to anyone who needs the money anyway.
What did you not know to ask about before you enrolled?
Why ask it
This is the question that surfaces the department's unwritten rules: who controls authorship, which requirement bites late, which lab holds the equipment everyone needs.
Who do students go to when something goes wrong?
Why ask it
Healthy departments have a name, usually a graduate director or one senior professor with a reputation for fixing things. A blank look means problems get handled by leaving.
What part of your work would you happily never do again?
Why ask it
The complaint tends to be the real job: cleaning data, running undergraduate labs, chasing archive permissions. Whether you would mind doing it for five years is a practical test of fit.
How much do you think you have left, and how has that estimate moved?
Why ask it
An estimate that has slipped twice in one year says more about the program's pacing than any official timeline. Students who cannot answer usually lack a written plan with their committee.
What happened the last time a study or a chapter did not work?
Why ask it
You learn who absorbed the loss: the student's timeline, the advisor's patience, or a shared plan to change direction. The story also shows whether failure is discussed openly here.
How do people in your cohort get on with each other?
Why ask it
Shared funding pools and one prize fellowship can make a cohort competitive in ways nobody advertises. Ask whether they read each other's drafts, which is the practical test of goodwill.
What do you do when you are stuck for weeks at a time?
Why ask it
Long stalls are normal in research, and the answer reveals whether this student has a method, a group to lean on, or nothing but guilt. It is also the most useful advice a visitor can carry away.
Do you feel you are being trained for the work you actually want?
Why ask it
Some students want their advisor's career and some do not, and departments differ sharply in how they treat the second group. Hesitation here often means teaching or industry interests are kept quiet.
What has your teaching load been, and what did you learn from it?
Why ask it
The hours matter, but so does whether anyone observed a class or read the syllabus. A student with three semesters of teaching and no feedback has been used rather than trained.
When did you last take a proper week off?
Why ask it
The date is a cleaner measure of culture than any statement about wellbeing. If the honest answer is a conference trip two years ago, the department norm has answered for itself.
Where do people from your lab or cohort go after they finish?
Why ask it
Current students remember specific names and destinations, including the ones the department leaves off its website because they left academia.
Knowing what you know now, would you still do this?
Why ask it
Most students give a mixed answer, and the shape of the mixture is the point: worth it despite the money, worth it because of one person, not worth it but nearly done.
What should I ask the faculty that they will not bring up themselves?
Why ask it
You are asking a student to hand you the department's blind spot, and they usually will, because they wish someone had told them. Expect funding gaps, one difficult professor, or a requirement that traps people.
Talking with graduate students
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Where these conversations actually work
Not on the official visit panel
Students chosen to meet visitors are chosen for a reason. The useful conversations happen in a corridor, over coffee, or by email with two students whose names you found on recent papers rather than the recruitment page.
Email short, ask narrow
A cold email with three specific questions gets answered; one that asks what the program is like does not. Say who you are, what you are deciding, and what you want to know in two sentences.
Respect the clock
Term-time weeks are full and grading weeks are worse. Offer twenty minutes, and end at twenty minutes even if they are still talking.
An order that gets honest answers
Start factual, end candid
- 1Begin with the work itself, which is the thing they most want to explain.
- 2Move to logistics: the shape of a week, funding, teaching load.
- 3Then the advisor, once they have decided you are not reporting back to anyone.
- 4Finish with the two questions that ask for judgment: would they do it again, and what should you ask the faculty.
Reading between the lines
- Praise for an advisor's intelligence with nothing said about their availability is usually a complaint about availability.
- 'It depends on your advisor' means the department has no consistent policy, so your outcome is a lottery on one person.
- If several students independently mention the same requirement or the same professor, that is the program's actual weak point.
- Anyone within a year of finishing is the best source on how the endgame works and the worst source on what the first year is like now.
Missteps that end the conversation early
Treating the degree as a delay before real work
Asking when they will get a proper job lands badly and closes the conversation. If you want to know about outcomes, ask where their cohort went.
Turning it into your own decision monologue
Students will help you weigh two offers if you ask a question. They will not sit through your pros and cons list, and you learn nothing while talking.
Quoting them without asking
Candid answers about funding or a supervisor can cost a student real standing. If you plan to repeat something to faculty or on a forum, ask first.