Collins Lab Blog

Graduate recruiting

Graduate recruiting season is upon us again. A huge part of the process is the recruitment visit. This is where a discussion between the prospective graduate student and the program begins.

On the one hand the candidate has an opportunity to gather information to assess if the program and Cornell is the “right fit”. On the other, faculty are assessing the skills and abilities of the candidate to determine the person’s potential as a graduate student above and beyond the grades and GRE scores.

As with all interviews, faculty can come away with wildly different impressions of the same candidate. So I was intrigued recently to receive a note from the Office of Graduate Education containing a suggested interview structure and questions, with the goal of providing consistency to the evaluation process. This is the list of suggested questions:

1)    Tell us a little bit about yourself.

2)    Summarize your previous research experience.  What were the most important things you learned?

3)    What is your motivation for graduate study?  Why a PhD degree program?

4)    Why did you apply to Cornell University?

5)    What do you see as your strengths that you bring to Cornell as a graduate student?

6)    What do you see as your weaknesses that will need to be improved upon at Cornell?

7)    What do your future plans include?  What are your professional goals?

8)    What questions do you have for the various faculty in the program?

One thing about this list that surprised me was my realization that I tend not to ask these types of questions when interviewing a graduate candidate. I typically spend the time outlining the research goals of the lab and all the different exciting projects that a student could be studying in the lab.

What about you? What kind of conversation would be most helpful to you as a potential graduate student? From the perspective of the faculty member, what kind of questions help to elicit the candidates aptitude for research? Is this different to the skill set that a professional educator would be looking for to assess how a student will fare in graduate school? Please leave a comment and share your thoughts.

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