Questions to Ask in Grad School Interview
For interviews and open days for a taught or professional master's, where the questions that matter are not the ones doctoral applicants ask. There is usually no guaranteed stipend, the program runs one or two years rather than six, and what you are buying is a route to a job or to further study. This covers the total cost, assistantships, who actually teaches, placements, completion, and what last year's graduates are doing now.
The questions
Open any question for the note
Is this program course-based, thesis-based, or a mix, and can I change track after starting?
Why ask it
The two versions are different degrees with the same name. A thesis track needs a supervisor and usually an extra term; a taught track is closer to structured teaching. Ask how many people switch and at what point it becomes too late.
How many people are in a cohort, and how many are studying part time?
Why ask it
Cohort size and shape decide the experience. A group that is mostly part time and working means evening classes and few daytime study partners, which suits some people and isolates others.
What is the total cost including fees, and what am I expected to pay for on top?
Why ask it
Tuition is the headline. Ask about mandatory fees, software, fieldwork, travel to a placement, and health cover, then ask what a student spent last year in total. The gap between the two figures is usually significant.
What funding is available to master's students: assistantships, scholarships, or fee waivers?
Why ask it
Master's funding is far thinner than doctoral funding and is often awarded after admission rather than with it. Ask what proportion of last year's cohort received anything, and when decisions are made relative to the deposit deadline.
How many master's students hold assistantships, and how many hours a week do they work?
Why ask it
An assistantship that covers fees for twenty hours of teaching a week is a job, not a discount. Ask what the work actually is, whether it is guaranteed for the second year, and who allocates it.
How long does the program take for someone working alongside it?
Why ask it
Advertised as one year, completed in two by anyone with a job. Ask what proportion finish on the advertised timetable and what happens to fees if you extend.
What are last year's graduates doing now?
Why ask it
The whole point of a professional master's. Ask for the destinations of the most recent cohort rather than notable alumni, and ask how many are working in the field the program is named after.
How many students go on to a doctorate from here, and does the department fund its own?
Why ask it
If this degree is a route to a PhD, that route should be visible. Ask whether master's students are admitted to the doctoral program at the same institution and whether they are funded when they are.
Is there a placement, internship or practicum, and who arranges it?
Why ask it
There is a large difference between a department that places you and one that requires you to find your own. Ask how many students last year were still looking a month before the deadline.
Who teaches the core courses: permanent faculty, adjuncts, or doctoral students?
Why ask it
It is a fair question and the answer varies widely. Adjuncts working in the field can be the best teachers on a professional program, but a core taught entirely by people with no office hours is a different purchase.
How much contact would I have with faculty outside class?
Why ask it
On a one-year program you have very little time to build relationships, and you may need a reference at the end of it. Ask what office hours look like and how supervision for a project is assigned.
If I wanted to write a thesis, how would I find a supervisor?
Why ask it
Ask about the mechanism and the timing. Programs where you approach people yourself in the second term leave latecomers with whoever is left, which shapes the piece of work you will be judged on.
What is the schedule: weekday, evening, in person or online?
Why ask it
Decides whether you can hold a job, and whether you will meet anybody. Ask how many contact hours a week and whether recorded lectures are the norm or the exception.
How many of last year's cohort did not complete, and what happened?
Why ask it
Master's attrition is usually financial or personal rather than academic. A program that knows its number and the reasons is paying attention to its students.
What careers support is there, and how many students use it?
Why ask it
Every institution has a careers service. What matters is whether this department runs something specific to the field: employer events, an alumni list, a person who knows the hiring cycle.
Which employers hire from this program regularly?
Why ask it
Names are checkable and vague claims about reputation are not. If two or three organisations recruit here every year, the department will say so immediately.
Can I take courses from other departments, and do they count toward the degree?
Why ask it
Interdisciplinary flexibility is easy to endorse and often hard to arrange. Ask who approves it and whether anyone in the current cohort has done it.
What would you expect me to have read or covered before the first term?
Why ask it
A concrete answer tells you the level assumed and where you would be starting from behind. It is a particularly useful question if you are moving into the field from a different background.
What do students on this program find hardest?
Why ask it
Ask it of a member of faculty and then of a current student. Common answers are the pace of a one-year timetable, the group project, and holding a job alongside it.
If I were choosing between this and a similar program elsewhere, what should I compare?
Why ask it
Asking for the comparison rather than the pitch tends to produce a more honest answer, and the criteria they name tell you what this program believes it is good at.
Getting Real Answers in a Grad School Interview
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Ask the right person each question
Faculty answer structure questions
Funding models, exam formats, time to degree, and what a project needs are things faculty can answer precisely. Push for numbers rather than reassurance.
Current students answer cost-of-living and culture questions
Stipend adequacy, advisor availability, and what people quietly resent are only reliably answered by students, ideally when no faculty member is in the room.
Recent graduates answer outcome questions
If you can reach anyone who finished in the last three years, ask how long the write-up took and how much help they got on the job search.
What answers to take seriously
- A guaranteed funding term stated in years, in writing, beats any verbal assurance about students always finding support.
- A department that can name its median time to degree tracks its students. One that cannot, does not.
- When you ask about advisor conflicts, note whether they describe a process or a personality. A process means the department has handled it before.
- Placements from the last two cohorts are evidence. Alumni from a decade ago are decoration.
- If two students independently mention the same frustration, treat it as a real feature of the program.
Common mistakes
Asking what you could have read
Course lists, application deadlines, and general research areas are on the website. Spending interview time on them wastes the one chance to ask what is not published.
Treating the interview as one-directional
For funded programs the interview is largely a recruiting visit. Faculty expect scrutiny, and candidates who ask nothing about funding or advising read as unprepared for the commitment.
Only talking to your prospective advisor
One enthusiastic professor is not a program. If the lab shrinks or the advisor moves, everything else in the department is what you are left with.
Before you decide
Write it down while it is fresh
- 1Note the funding term and what it is contingent on, in the program's own words.
- 2Note who you would be advised by and whether that was presented as fixed or open.
- 3Note the time to degree number you were given and who gave it.
- 4Note anything two or more people mentioned as a frustration.
- 5Ask by email for anything you were told verbally about money or guarantees.