Questions to Ask Graduate Students
Questions to ask graduate students when you are choosing a program, visiting or interviewing at a department, or starting out as a graduate student yourself. Applicants are often told to talk to current graduate students in a program of interest before accepting an offer, and seldom told what to ask. These run from easy openers through advisors, money, workload and department culture to careers, interview days and what grad students would do differently. They are written with PhD students in mind, and most of them work for masters students too.
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The questions
Each question, and why to ask it
Start here
What are you working on, in the version you would give someone outside your field?
Why ask it
The outsider's version saves you from nodding through five minutes of jargon, and most students enjoy giving it. Notice whether they describe the project as their own or as a job they were given, before you ask anything about the advisor.
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. You also hear which rival programs people here seriously weighed, which is a useful check on your own list.
What does a typical week look like for you this term?
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.
What is the best thing about this program, and what is the one thing you would change?
Why ask it
Pairing the two makes the criticism feel fair to give, so you actually get one. Notice whether the best thing is a person, who could leave, or something built into the department, which will still be there in your fourth year.
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.
Is the stipend enough to live on in this city, and what does your rent take out of it?
Why ask it
Get the two figures and do the division yourself. 'It's fine' from someone with a working partner means something different from the same words said by a student living on the stipend alone. With a masters student who pays tuition, ask instead what a term costs and how people cover it.
How long do people here really take to finish, compared with what the handbook says?
Why ask it
Students count in names: who is in their seventh year, who defended last spring. If the real figure runs well past the official one, find out what holds people up. The usual culprits are one exam, data collection or a slow committee, and each is something you can then raise with the faculty.
What do you wish you had known before you started here?
Why ask it
Expect the unwritten rules: which requirement bites late, which lab holds the equipment everyone needs, how early you have to claim an advisor. If the first answer is polite and general, ask what they only found out in their second year.
Advisor
How did you and your advisor get matched, and how much say did you have?
Why ask it
Programs mostly do this one of three ways: they admit you straight into one person's group, run rotations, or leave you to knock on doors during the first year. Where the match is settled at admission, the professors you speak to before accepting matter far more than the program's name.
Is your advisor hands-on or hands-off, and which did you need?
Why ask it
Neither style is a fault. The trouble is a mismatch: a student who wanted weekly direction and got freedom, or one who wanted freedom and got daily messages. Ask which they would have chosen in their first year and which they would choose now, because the two answers often differ.
How quickly does feedback on your writing come back, and how detailed is it?
Why ask it
A thesis moves at the speed of its feedback. Two weeks with line edits and three months with 'looks fine' both happen, sometimes in the same corridor. The last thing they handed in, and the date it came back, is the figure to get.
How big is your advisor's group, and do you notice it when you need their time?
Why ask it
The second half is the real question. A group of twelve can work well when postdocs carry the daily supervision, and a group of three can still leave you waiting if the advisor also chairs the department. Find out who this student talks to about their work on an ordinary Tuesday.
Who do you go to for help with your research besides your advisor?
Why ask it
A second reader, a postdoc, a committee member who answers email. Students with someone like that are far less exposed when the advisor travels or goes quiet. An answer of 'nobody, really' means the whole degree rests on one relationship.
Does your advisor back things outside the thesis, like an internship, teaching or a side project?
Why ask it
An advisor can treat a summer internship as time taken from the grant, or can write the reference letter for it. Students know which kind they have because somebody in the group has already asked. It matters most if you are not sure you want an academic job.
Who decides whose name goes where on a paper in your group, and has it ever caused friction?
Why ask it
Conventions differ by field: alphabetical in some, strictly ordered in others, single author in much of the humanities. What you are listening for is whether the rule was explained before the work started or discovered when the paper went out.
What happens here when a student and an advisor stop getting along, and has anyone switched?
Why ask it
The reassuring answer is a story about someone who changed advisors and kept their funding. If nobody can think of a case, either every match is a happy one or switching costs so much that people leave instead. Asking who has left recently tells you which.
Which professors here are good to work with that an applicant might not have heard of?
Why ask it
Applicants fix on the well-known name, while students know who reads drafts and turns up to meetings. A second and third option matter in case your first choice is not taking students, or moves. Don't press for the opposite list. If they trust you they will offer it.
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: brilliant but hard to reach, kind but slow with drafts. Take the yes or the no, and leave the reasons alone unless they offer them.
Money
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 of a degree most people take six years to finish leaves a gap that somebody has to fill. Students know their own cliff date precisely, and they know what the people ahead of them did when they reached it.
Is your pay tied to teaching, a grant or a fellowship, and has that changed from year to year?
Why ask it
Each source has its own strings. Teaching money costs hours, grant money ties you to the grant's project, and a fellowship usually buys the most freedom. A student who has moved between them can tell you how much notice they were given.
Are you paid over the summer, or only during term?
Why ask it
Plenty of offers quote a figure for the teaching months and say little about the rest of the year. What people do in the gap is the thing to find out: paid research, summer teaching you have to apply for, or living on what they saved.
If you came in without funding, did any turn up later?
Why ask it
Mainly for masters students. Departments often say an assistantship 'may become available', and current students know how many of them got one, in which semester, and whether it went to the people who asked early.
Do people here take extra work, and are they allowed to?
Why ask it
Tutoring, consulting and second jobs are a sign the stipend does not stretch. Whether outside work is allowed depends on the funding contract and, for international students, on the visa, so ask how it works there and what people in a tight spot end up doing.
What fees or costs surprised you after you arrived?
Why ask it
Student fees taken out of the stipend, a parking permit, a first paycheck that lands six weeks into term, a laptop or software you are expected to own. Offer letters leave these out, and every one of them is easier to plan for in advance.
What is the health insurance like when you actually have to use it?
Why ask it
Cover depends on the country, the university and sometimes the funding source, so ask how it works there. A student can give you the practical side: whether the campus clinic is any good, what a prescription cost, whether dental care or a partner is included.
Is there money for conferences and research costs, and how hard is it to get?
Why ask it
A travel fund on the website and a travel fund students have drawn on are not the same thing. Ask whether they had to pay first and wait to be reimbursed. On a stipend that can mean carrying a flight on a credit card for months.
Where do graduate students live, and how do you get to campus?
Why ask it
This gets you neighborhoods, rents and commute times from someone on the budget you would have. Whether people share or live alone, and whether a car is a necessity or a luxury, shows what the stipend really buys.
Is there a graduate student union or association, and has it changed anything for you?
Why ask it
Whether graduate workers can unionize depends on the country and the kind of university, so the answer may simply be no. Where a contract exists, students can name what it changed: a raise, a cap on teaching hours, a complaint route that does not run through their own advisor.
Workload
How heavy is the coursework, and which classes were worth taking?
Why ask it
First-year courses can fill more of the week than applicants expect, especially alongside teaching. The second half is the useful part: one course that gave them a method they still use, and one that everybody sits through only because it is required.
What were the qualifying exams like, and does anyone fail them?
Why ask it
The name varies: quals, comps, a prospectus defense, a first-year paper. Ask what happened to the last person who did not pass. A retake six months later describes one kind of program, and a quiet exit with a masters describes another.
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.
How did you land on your thesis topic: was it handed to you, or did you find it yourself?
Why ask it
In lab sciences the topic often comes out of the advisor's grant, and in the humanities you may be expected to arrive with one. Both routes work. How long it took is worth knowing, since two years of searching and a project assigned in the first month make for very different degrees.
Do you have what you need to do the work: a desk, equipment, data, library access?
Why ask it
Small things decide whether a day is productive. A shared instrument booked three weeks out, an archive that needs a travel grant, or no desk until second year will each slow you down, and students list them readily.
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.
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.
When do people start publishing or presenting, and is there pressure to?
Why ask it
Fields differ too much for a general rule, so ask what is normal in theirs. The telling detail is whether a first-year gets sent to a conference with help on the talk, or whether nobody mentions publishing until the job market is a year away.
Are you expected to be in the lab or office at set hours, or can you work where you like?
Why ask it
Some groups keep core hours like any workplace, and others never ask where you are. Bench and field work settle it for you. For everyone else it comes down to what the advisor prefers, which matters if you commute, have children or write best at home.
Do people work evenings and weekends, and is that expected or just common?
Why ask it
The difference is who chose it. Running an experiment on a Saturday because it suits you is not the same as a message at eleven at night that wants an answer. The follow-up is what happens when someone does not reply until Monday.
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.
Culture
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.
Would you say most students here are happy, and how can you tell?
Why ask it
Asking about 'most students' lets someone describe their own mood at one remove. Pay attention to the evidence they reach for: people who stay on after seminars and eat lunch together, or a floor that empties at five and a group chat full of complaints.
Do students in different years and groups mix, or does everyone keep to their own lab or office?
Why ask it
Senior students hold the practical knowledge: which forms matter, which committee members read closely, how to book the good room. Where the years mix you inherit all of it. Where they don't, each cohort has to work it out again.
What do you do when you are not working, and is this a good place for it?
Why ask it
You would be living in this town for years, not only working in this building. A student who lights up about the climbing gym or the food has a life here. 'I mostly go home at weekends' is an answer too.
What is it like here for students who are international, older, parents, or the first in their family to do this?
Why ask it
Ask about whichever of these is you. A useful answer has specifics in it: a visa office that replies quickly, childcare with a waiting list, seminars that assume everyone already knows the unwritten rules. If this student is not in that group, see whether they can introduce you to someone who is.
Does anyone here do the degree part time, or around a job or children?
Why ask it
You want a named person and not 'some people do'. Evening classes, a compulsory daytime seminar or a lab that needs you at fixed hours decide whether it is possible at all. If the student in front of you is that person, ask what they had to give up.
Who do students go to when something goes wrong?
Why ask it
Where things work, students give you a name without thinking, usually a graduate director or one senior professor with a reputation for fixing things. A long pause suggests that people with a problem either put up with it or leave.
When students raise a problem with the department, does anything change?
Why ask it
One example is enough. A department that moved an exam date or fixed late stipend payments after students complained is one that listens. 'There is a committee', with no story attached, usually means the committee meets and that is all.
Is there mental health support here that people actually use?
Why ask it
Most universities list a counseling service. Students know how long the wait is, whether sessions are capped, and whether anyone in the department speaks openly about having gone. Keep the question general, and do not ask what anyone went for.
Careers and advice
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. Ask about the most recent few to finish, not the one success everybody mentions.
What do you want to do after you finish, and is the program preparing you for it?
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. If the plan has changed since they started, ask who they felt able to tell. Hesitation there often means teaching or industry interests are kept quiet.
What help have you had with what comes next: a careers office, alumni, your advisor's contacts?
Why ask it
Look for something that happened, such as an alumni panel, an introduction or a mock interview. Masters students on a one or two year clock should push hardest on this, because job applications can begin in the first term.
What made you decide to do a graduate degree, and has that reason held up?
Why ask it
One for anyone still deciding whether to apply at all. Love of the subject, a job that requires the degree and not knowing what else to do are all common starting points, and they wear very differently. A student three years in can say which one they would trust now.
Did you come straight from undergrad, or work for a while first?
Why ask it
Follow up with what the other route would have cost them. People who worked first tend to talk about savings and being sure why they came. People who came straight through talk about momentum and still remembering the coursework. Set either story against your own circumstances before you copy it.
What do you think made your application work?
Why ask it
Students often learn afterwards why they got in: a professor wanted their particular skill, or the writing sample reached the right reader. It is one person's story. Use it to decide what to emphasize in your own application, not as a formula.
Is the interview here a real cut, or mostly the program trying to win people over?
Why ask it
It differs by field and by department. In some the invitation is close to an offer and the weekend is recruitment, and in others the interview decides. Students know how their own year went, so ask how it works there before you decide how nervous to be.
What did the faculty ask you at your own interview that you were not ready for?
Why ask it
People remember the one that caught them out: explain an old project to a non-specialist, say where else you applied, name the person you would work with. It is a sample of one, from a year that may have run differently, but it shows whether the faculty here probe your research or mostly your fit.
Which of the professors on my schedule are taking students next year?
Why ask it
A schedule can include someone on sabbatical, someone between grants, or someone about to move. Students usually know, because a group talks about whether a new person is coming. Confirm it with the professor as well, since what students hear is second hand.
Do the students who meet applicants get asked what they thought of them?
Why ask it
Some departments collect impressions from the hosts and the students at dinner, and some never ask, so find out how it works there. Ask it early and lightly. Whatever the answer, treat the student lunch as part of the day and not a break from it.
Which parts of a recruitment weekend are nothing like an ordinary week here?
Why ask it
Visit days are staged: the good seminar room, the catered dinner, faculty who are all in the building at once. A student can say which of it survives into November, and whether the people you sat with at dinner ever eat together otherwise.
What is the hardest stretch of the degree, and when does it come?
Why ask it
Common answers are the first term, the exams, and the long unstructured middle once coursework ends. Knowing which one it is here tells you where to save your energy, and which year of student to find for the fuller account.
What would you do differently in your first year?
Why ask it
The answers are usually small and usable: start writing sooner, take the statistics course earlier, turn down the third side project. If you are a new graduate student yourself, put this to everyone two years ahead of you.
What do you do when you are stuck for weeks at a time?
Why ask it
Long stalls are normal in research. Some students have a method (switch to the second project, write up what failed, book the meeting they have been avoiding) and some have only guilt. Whichever kind of student you turn out to be, the method is worth borrowing.
What habit or tool has saved you the most time?
Why ask it
A reference manager, a fixed writing hour, a lab notebook that really is kept up, a shared folder of old exam papers. Graduate students enjoy being asked this by another student, and you can be using the answer by tomorrow.
How did you choose your committee?
Why ask it
Mostly one for students already in a program. The advice is local: who reads closely, who is slow to schedule, which two members should not be put in the same room. Treat any names as told in confidence.
Which staff member or senior student should a new person get to know first?
Why ask it
The administrator who knows every deadline, a lab manager, a subject librarian, a student two years ahead. New students tend to find these people by accident in their second year unless somebody points them out in the first.
Who thrives in this program, and who has a harder time?
Why ask it
Easier to answer than asking who should stay away, and you get both halves. Typical replies: people who need structure flounder, people set on industry feel sidelined, people who hate the cold count the winters. If the second description fits you, give it more weight than any number of recommendations.
Is there someone further along, or someone who left, that you think I should hear from?
Why ask it
One student is one advisor, one year and one temperament. A referral gets you a second view with an introduction attached, and a person who left can say things that nobody still enrolled can afford to.
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 be asking the professors that they will not raise 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 grad 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 to a current PhD student with three specific questions is far more likely to be answered than one asking what the program is like. 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.
Which questions for which conversation
Ten minutes on a visit day
Use the Start here group and stop there. Eight questions is already more than ten minutes will hold, so pick three and let the student run with whichever one they warm to.
An interview day or weekend
At the student lunch or dinner, find out whether the interview is a real cut, which professors on your schedule are taking students, and which parts of the weekend are staged. Ask early whether students are asked for their impressions of applicants, and pitch the rest accordingly. Keep the stipend and anything about a difficult advisor for a student you have on their own.
Before you have applied anywhere
Ask why they started a graduate degree, whether they came straight from undergrad and what they think made their application work, then the typical week and the money. The advisor questions can wait until you have an offer from a particular department.
A masters program, not a PhD
Skip the questions about committees and qualifying exams, and lean on the ones about cost, funding that turns up later, part-time study and help with what comes next. On a degree of one or two years, the timetable and the bill usually matter more than any one professor.
When you are a graduate student too
With someone in your own program, or someone you meet at a conference, the back half of the Careers and advice group works best: what they would change about first year, what they do when stuck, how they chose a committee. Offer your own answer in return. Between students it is a trade and not an interview.
Interviewing a graduate student for a class or an article
When the interview is the assignment itself (a careers class, a student paper, a podcast), take the outsider's version of their work, the typical week, why they began the degree and what they would change about first year. Leave pay and the advisor alone unless they bring them up. Those are fair to ask when you are about to join and intrusive when you are writing the answers down.
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' usually means the department has no shared rule, so that part of your experience will be decided by one person.
- If several students independently mention the same requirement or the same professor, that is probably the program's real 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.