Graduate School Interviews

With interview season around the corner I wanted to put all my thoughts and advice about grad school interviews in one place. I know you’re probably very stressed right now. But stop for a moment, unclench your jaw, and take 3 deeps breathes. You’ve got this, you’re going into the interview because the selection committee thinks you’re impressive. Don’t worry about other people, you are extremely talented and the school recognizes that.

So what are these interviews for anyways? It’s a chance to get to know the faculty, students, and staff (and for them to get to know you), it’s a formal event but it’s also low stakes. The faculty aren’t there to quiz you on everything you know, but more just to see if your vibes and research interest align with their lab. And this is your chance to do the same, so you know sort of know what you’re getting into.

This article will go over what you can expect the interview process to be like and how you can prepare and other helpful tips.

What can you expect? :
If in person, you can expect the interview to basically start the moment you reach campus. If it’s virtual, the interview starts when you first login. The way you interact with other students, faculty, and staff is all part of the interview.

Faculty will ask some questions about you. Your background, what kind of research you’re interested in and if you’ve had prior research experience. If you have prior research experience you can expect questions about some of the finer experimental details. So like why did you do something instead of how? If you could work on the project longer, what would you want to do? Reach out to your current research mentor to practice how to answer these questions. They might be able to give you advice of future goals to think about and why you did some of the experiments. While all the previous questions focused on you, they also expect you to ask a few questions about their research. For this, you don’t need to know the finer details of what they do, focus on the big questions they’re asking. It could also help to read their latest publication or go to their website to know what they’re currently up to.

The conversation won’t entirely be about research, and that’s a good thing, get to know what they’re like as a person, advisor, and colleague. Now it’s your turn to ask the questions. Ask them about the research environment, the graduate program, fun stuff to do in the city. Also to get more a feel of the department ask them about diversity and equity, ask them about mental health and what resources the department has for students. Ask them what their mentoring style is and what their expectations are for students that join their lab. Ask about funding, conferences, work hours, teaching, etc. If you’re nervous about something just ask it, I straight up asked a professor if there’s a lot of bugs in Atlanta and it led to a great conversation and I ended up interacting with that professor when I had questions in my first semester because I realized he’s a cool guy who treats graduate students as colleagues. You want to walk away feeling like this is a department you will be able to thrive in.

The best way to prepare for these interviews is to practice. I know, disappointing having to do actual work. Find a friend you can practice with who can ask you questions about your work and make suggestions on things you should brag about. Now is not your time to be humble, this is your chance to show off how much of a catch you actually are. Talk about your skills, even the ones outside of research. Tell them how you despite taking a full course load you were on the hockey team and always found time to make it to the games. Tell them how you were treasurer of the outdoors club. All of these extracurriculars show off how you’re talented in so many different ways. You want to make sure with your practice partner you come off as confident and bright.

Two “secret” things that no one really talks about is that sending the faculty you’re interested an email way before the interview usually helps out a lot. Sometimes they might not respond, hey we’re on year 3 of a pandemic, they’re as burnt out as you are. If they don’t, send them a hey just checking in email. If they still don’t respond, is this someone you’re going to want to work with when you have a burning issue and they’re unreachable? In future posts I’ll go more in depth on how to structure emails to faculty. The second is to talk to students (both the ones in the program and your future classmates) and ask them similar questions you asked during the interview. What is it like for them in the program? the city? Do they feel like they’re in a supportive program? Anything you want to ask, go for it. There is no question that’s dumb, like actually. And worst case scenario, they’ll forget it by the time your first semester starts.

Now that you know to expect for the weekend, take another deep breath. You’ve got this. You’ve already made it this far and if you don’t get that acceptance, it’s their loss. They lost out on an outstanding and qualified candidate.