Some advice for prospective graduate students
It’s that time of year. Hundreds of universities have sifted through thousands of applicants, deciding who will be admitted to the 2024-2025 cohorts of new graduate students. In my home department within the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University, admit and deny letters have been sent out for next year’s PhD and Masters cohorts. Prospective students are either reeling with the disappointment of rejection or basking in the excitement of their accomplishments. Of being granted entry into the hallowed halls of academia. As the iron gates of higher learning are coldly and dispassionately slammed shut for the vast majority of aspirants, for some..for the privileged few, the gates squeak open, slowly, dramatically...
For those who didn't receive the desired news, I feel for you. That pain is real. Especially for people who may be the first in their families to pursue grad school, or to international students out there whose pursuit of advanced education is rarely solely about intellectual curiosity but is usually tied up with varying sociopolitical exigencies of their home countries. That wasn't my story, but it was my parents. Coming to the US from Iran to pursue grad school in the 1980s for them meant what it means for everybody in some sense, the beginnings of a promising career. My mom is now a doctor in Chicago, and my dad is a math professor at a small state school in Minnesota. But for my parents, and so many others, getting admitted to grad school also meant they could escape a ravaging war and the increasingly repressive political atmosphere of Iran in the years immediately after the 1979 revolution. Of getting the hell out of a country that has been nothing but oppressive and chaotic for its citizens. Especially for children, women, and ethnic minorities. If it wasn't for their ability to gain acceptance to graduate school (shout out University of Wisconson, Milwaukee), I would have spent the remainder of my childhood amid a devastating war (a war backed by the US during the Reagan years when Saddam Hussein was considered an American ally...but I digress). That’s all a very long way of saying that I understand on a deep level the significance of gaining access to graduate school. I've done it twice myself. First for my M.S. in engineering from UCLA where I also did my bachelor’s in engineering, followed several years later when I started a doctoral program in education from Berkeley. And despite all the conservative reactionary bullshit about higher ed these days, there are myriad excellent reasons why people from all over the world are seduced by the opportunities that higher ed offers, especially in the US. For many, it’s about gaining knowledge and self-awareness. For others, career advancement. And for thousands of people every year from places all around the world, it’s fundamentally about overcoming undesirable life circumstances.
To the lucky few who did get accepted, maybe even into a couple of different universities....whether it’s for STEM or non-STEM majors, I want to humbly share a few words of wisdom I've culled from my own experiences in graduate school. First, congratulations. Enjoy the moment, and bask in the excitement of what’s hopefully the beginning of a beautiful, rich life-long pursuit of knowledge and learning. But after you revel in the moment - and you should - you need to quickly pivot to the work of careful reflection on the decision that’s before you. There are the obvious perils to consider...the economic precarity that comes along with being a graduate student in the neoliberal university. Unless you have other sources of income, the financial hardships of being in grad school are very real. The structural inequities of higher education have been thoroughly documented. Then you have to consider the chilly and downright hostile cultural climate that many face. For different reasons, and in different ways, but it is there. Just as a contemporary example, as I write this, both antisemitism and anti-Muslim racism are part of the fabric of higher ed. And that’s to say nothing of the other forms of racism and harm that Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and other groups have historically faced in higher education. I'm not trying to be overly negative, but these are just the harsh realities that prospective students have to consider, especially people from marginalized groups, LGBTQ+ and students with disabilities, international students, and so forth. None of that is to be taken lightly. And finally, at the risk of stating the obvious, there is just the inevitable competitiveness and intensity that comes with the territory of grad school. Both times for me the grind was relentless. Long days, late nights. Slow progress. Many setbacks and rejections along the way. Weeks going down this or that rabbit hole for nothing to show. You sort of take all that on and absorb it in a sense when you embark on this path. The only way it is all worth it is if you are on some deep level just obsessed with learning and with the ideas and questions of your chosen discipline. On some level, you need to be unabashedly nerdy and excited, and I mean like annoyingly excited and geeked about whatever your field is. And your friends and family all know this about you. And this is all especially true for those of you contemplating the long haul of a Ph.D. program. If you don't have that level of commitment and passion, stop now and run for the hills...seriously.
After you've done that math for yourself, if it still adds up as a good decision, and if you have a few options your next step is to figure out where you are going to spend the next half decade of your life. At least, many PhD programs can be closer to 6 or 7 years in duration. This is not just the next chapter of life, but the next ERA of your life. You need to collect as much data and perspective as you can at this point about the next step in your life’s journey. Specifically, you need rich, qualitative data. This is not the time to be shy...reach out to graduate students to ask about their experiences. Ask about the power dynamics, how they feel about the culture more broadly, and their thoughts on the faculty. You might ask about the social and party scene, if that’s where you're at in life. Ask about the nature and quality of mentorship. One of the schools I was strongly considering for my PhD was NYU. I applied to work with Pedro Noguera (arguably one the most well-known public intellectuals in the field of education, currently a dean at USC). And I had always wanted to live in New York City. It was all but a done deal for me. Then, somehow I got in touch with a graduate student there. I wish I remembered her name so I could thank her. She said something like "look Pedro is amazing, but he’s a superstar." And superstars have less capacity for mentorship. Not because they're above it or anything like that, but because they're always traveling, giving talks and keynotes around the world, and so forth. And second, she described an on-campus community culture at NYU that wasn't what I was looking for. Crucial data points for me in making my ultimate decision. My next shout-out goes to an odd pairing. Stanford Professor Bryan Brown, a national and international leader in the field of STEM education at Stanford University. And my mother. I accredit them for my decision to eventually decide on UC Berkeley. At the time, I was strongly leaning toward UCLA, and they had given me a decent funding offer. I was living in Oakland, had just gone through a bad breakup, and was attracted back to UCLA's sunny campus. A fresh start somewhere familiar and comfortable. But leave it to an immigrant mom to scold you for this kind of sentimental decision-making. For my mom the calculus was easy: "UC Berkeley is more prestigious, go there." Simple, clear, and whether you like it or not, classically recognizable immigrant parent advice. Similarly, my conversation with Dr. Brown pointed me toward Berkeley. Now as a professor myself, I have an even deeper appreciation to him for making the time. I was a nobody random grad applicant, who hadn't even been admitted to Stanford, and yet he took the time to have a phone conversation. I described my options, and after asking me who I'd be potentially working with if I went to Berkeley he said my decision was already made. I needed to go to Berkeley to work with Dr. Marcia Linn and Dr. Na'ilah Nasir whom he described as "two of the best in the business." And he was right. So that was that. And of course, you need to understand the details of the funding packages you are offered. Some provide great freedom and agency to freely explore your intellectual curiosities, others may be tied to a particular professor’s existing projects, and others may require you to teach or perform other kinds of labor in exchange for funding. It is critically important to dig into all those details and understand how the funding scenario will shape your learning experience. The moral of the story...even though we are notoriously bad at responding to emails, and many won't be as generous as Dr. Brown, now is the time to be bold and reach out to as many faculty and grad students as you can. Ask many questions. Real questions..not the boilerplate questions everyone asks...like about the possibilities for interdisciplinary study or whatever, but the real ones. Will adviser so and so help me get published and get a job? What networks will I gain access to? Are the other graduate students supportive, do they like each other? Do people go to happy hours and hang out? Is there a healthy, pleasant, and lively intellectual environment, and so on.
A final word for students who are coming to grad school to change the world. To the dreamers and do-gooders, agitators, and rebels. I was you. I am you. We come to the academy to produce knowledge that will challenge and unsettle power, to celebrate and uplift the marginalized communities we come from, and to ultimately work towards freedom. In Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, bell hooks says, "The classroom remains the most radical space of possibility in the academy." My message to all the prospective grad students who identify with hooks as I do: Part of your fight for the rest of your career will be to protect these commitments as the valuable moral and political jewels that they are. They'll try to strip that from you. They'll tell you the lie that knowledge is neutral and pursuit of social change is antithetical to the scientific method and so on. Absolute poppycock and historically inaccurate, but you'll have to defend it and learn how to defend it in sophisticated ways using the language of power. As my mentor and renowned scholar of culture and education Kris Gutierrez wisely advised, critical work in the academy is most impactful when it is theoretically rigorous and methodologically sound. So while the road ahead for you will be fraught, finding “your people” is one of the most important objectives in the first couple of years. People who share your values and deeper ethical commitments, who you can be honest and vulnerable around, and importantly, who will also constantly challenge your thinking, writing, and arguments towards greater clarity and impact.
While we’re on the topic of activism in academia and the such, there’s another dimension I need to touch on. To be blunt, for those coming to graduate school primarily to foment the revolution, graduate school may be a disappointment. And there’s a bit of irony in me saying this, given that I'm finishing up my first book about leftist engineering students in Iran who quite literally helped foment and enact the 1979 revolution. But at least in the context of US higher education, despite what the conservative media wants everyone to believe, there is no revolution being actively plotted. Unless you consider reading PDF documents and commenting on shared Google Docs revolutionary. At best you will ignite your own mind, and the dream is to eventually ignite the minds of others. But that will take lots of time. Social change-making in the academy is a slow, slow burn, and as a mentor who will go unnamed likes to say "Aint nobody livin’ or dyin’ by what we publish or don't." I can already hear some of my academic friends and colleagues annoyed at me for being a bit reductive here. And you are all correct. But I'm also correct, and there’s some truth to the lack of immediacy of our societal impact that I think is important for our prospective grad students to know and sit with. As a professor, I feel a moral duty to be upfront about what folks are signing up for. Graduate school, at least in the social sciences and humanities, is fundamentally about reading and writing. Your struggle against the system will take place in quiet moments of deep thinking, reflection, and writing. Lots and lots of writing. That is not to say you need to be or should be, disconnected from social movements. During my time at Berkeley, the Occupy Wall Street and BLM protests stretched from UC Berkeley's campus to downtown Oakland. After the police murders of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, I remember participating in rallies alongside fellow grad students. Then, we'd go back to class. Or hit a cafe to work on a conference proposal. That’s what it looks like folks! Now, some scholars and grad students do roll up their sleeves and get more substantively involved with movement work. That’s absolutely true as well. Union organizing. Deep work with grassroots organizations, political advocacy, and so forth. Shoutout to all the faculty and grad students out there putting it all out on the line for Palestine, for Black liberation, for Indigenous sovereignty. But if we’re being honest, most of us are not on the front lines like that. And I’ll venture to say that the very nature of our work as academics and scholars is comparatively less directly and immediately impactful to the communities we care about. Compared to say, social workers, emergency room doctors, nurses, teachers, school counselors, firefighters, community organizers, and so many others. We’re not better or worse than these professions, but there is a distinction to be made. That’s the choice I've made in my career and coming to graduate school is a particular choice you are about to make with very particular sets of affordances and constraints. Be clear about those. So if you are coming to graduate school ready to knock some heads, I love and respect that righteous energy. There is room for you. We need you. Don't let the system dim your light. But know that at its best graduate school will help cultivate and refine your light to best illuminate ideas, texts, and analytic frameworks, not to light up the streets. It is fundamentally a life of the mind, a privileged path that comes with great moral responsibility. As Nelson Mandela has been quoted as saying, "Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world." Congratulations again to those who are getting ready to embark on this incredible journey. Hopefully I’ve provided a bit of clarity as to the challenges, opportunities, and realities of this next era in your life. While flawed, it’s an amazing path.