Talk:Graduate school

message: Why is Canada and the UK above the United States? Most readers of this page numerically will be Americans, and the smallest number of readers will be Canadian. I would be more convienient to put the United States first, the UK second, and Canada last...But perhaps that's just me?  george_gordon
:Alphabetical order by country name. Perhaps the US should rename itself "Aaamerica" to get to the top of that list! ;-) Timrollpickering 04:19, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Technically, its not even America, its United States of America, I live in America too, and I've never even been to the US, thankgod.
The phrase "Many UK graduate students do not like "Bloody Yanks" who apply to English graduate schools and receive coveted research assistant positions." is a point of view and should be removed from this article. 84.9.153.106 17:32, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Order of countries

message: What is the definition of a good honours requirement at the UK universities? I find the term too ambiguous as some actually require a second-upper and above, while others a second-lower and above. 60.50.240.108 11:05, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The other problem is that the honours system is almost obsolete for referring to degrees from English universities, not least because from recollection a degree without honours is usually one that's been specifically denied them for one reason (failing and having to repeat a year is one reason), rather than a "standard" degree with the honours being an additional. (There are a few exceptions - the Open University has a 300 CATS point "ordinary" degree and a 360 CATS point honours deree - but these are very rare.) It's more common to talk about "firsts", "seconds", "two-ones" and so forth, rather than "good honours". In terms of what's needed to get onto a postgraduate course, the requirements are normally set down - a 2:1 minimum is common, but a 2:2 minimum is far from unknown, and in some fields even a 3rd is acceptable. Entry to a PhD is more complex - many applicants will have Master's degrees which often supersede whatever Bachelor's result they got, but for those without it's nearly always at least a 2:1. Timrollpickering 18:45, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  UK Good Honours? 

message: I've never heard of this bizzare foreign language requirement, except for the obvious cases of degrees in a foreign language. It doesn't seem to be a feature of Canadian grad school in general, so I removed it (but I left the later mention that specifically talks about a language program). 142.89.2.21 22:12, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Links please? Badgerpatrol 17:19, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Canadian Foreign Language Req? 

message: This whole section seem to be editoral comment. --Charlesknight 12:21, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed.  I deleted it.  --ElKevbo 12:43, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  life after graduate school 

message: Too often, graduate students find themselves in academic departments that could be described as dysfunctional "snakepits", or tormented by dysfunctional and abusive individual faculty and advisors.  This article sugarcoats the graduate school experience, leaving prospective students vulnerable to stumbling into these situations when they could have been foreseen and perhaps sidestepped, or at least managed with better outcomes. LADave 18:41, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  GS horror stories 

message: The most notorious example is Imperial College London, which has recently reorganized its postgraduate courses in the Faculties of Engineering, Natural Sciences, Life Sciences and Medicine  under the umbrella of two new Graduate Schools: the Graduate School of Engineering & Physical Sciences (GSEPS) and the Graduate School of Life Sciences and Medicine (GSLSM), see . 200.177.3.169 11:17, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: But is this a "graduate school" by the traditional US use of the term? Queen Mary, University of London has used the term "graduate school" for at least as long as I've been there - see http://www.qmul.ac.uk/postgraduate/graduate/index.html - and it's far from unique in this regard, but it doesn't feel like the US use of the term as I understand it. Certainly I would never say "I went to graduate school with so and so" but rather say "I went to university with them" (and I find the Facebook proforma very awkward in this regard). Also "school" is a very confused term in UK education - at university level it's never used for the institution as a whole (with the exception of some of the constituent colleges of federal universities e.g. SOAS) and generally within the internal structure of a university a "school" is a more subject specific division within a "faculty". Timrollpickering 20:55, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: The term "Graduate School" IS now used in the UK 

message: I believe the article should provide more detailed information on the origin of the term "Graduate School" as used in the US university system. As I understand it, the historical universities in the US (i.e. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc.) started out as "colleges", patterned after their Oxbridge counterparts and offering bachelor's degrees only. By the end of the 19th century, most of them had added a "graduate school" which, unlike the college properly, would offer advanced degrees, especially the new research doctorate (Ph.D) imported from Germany. 
As of today, that is still how most older universities in the US are organized. Undergraduate students are usually enrolled in the university's "college" where they study for a 4-year bachelor's degree. Students who already hold a bachelor's degree are enrolled instead either in a so-called "professional school"(which offers degrees in medicine, business, or law for example) or in a "graduate school" that offers master's and PhD degrees. 
200.177.3.169 11:40, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Origin of the term "Graduate School" in the United States 

message: I believe the Wikipedia article exaggerates the difficulty of getting funding for Graduate School in the US. Generally speaking, at least in some areas like engineering, virtually all incoming PhD students in top US universities are guaranteed funding and tuition exemption for the duration of the program, conditioned of course on continuing good performance (funding may be discontinued for underperforming students, but that's no different from the possibility of being fired for example from a job in industry). As for international students, some of them actually have funding from their own home country. 
In my case for example, I had a 4-year scholarship including tuition and stipend from my own government. When that scholarship expired, I had no problem getting US-based funding from my advisor, which covered me during my final 6 to 8 months in the States before graduation. Just in case that information is relevant, I was enrolled in a PhD program in electrical and computer engineering in a top 10 school according to the USN&WR rankings.200.177.16.241 17:54, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree completely. Also, this section is poorly cited or completely uncited, and suffers from POV issues. This should be cleaned up, with neutral POV, and with sourced statements. I intend to start cleaning it up, time permitting; I would love to get comments. --chodges 03:19, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Funding in Graduate School

message: The paragraphs on big exams in graduate school in the U.S. seems to make hopelessly general claims.  For example, whether these exams are called "comps," "generals," "quals," or something else depends on the university and often even the department.  Nor does it seem justified to say that "comps" are taken in the first year (or immediately after), while "generals" and "quals" are later events in a graduate program... again, the usage varies greatly from school to school and department to department.  I have friends in the hard sciences and engineering who took "comps" as their big general exam in their 2nd or 3rd year, but I have other friends who called these "quals."  I have other friends who have two sets of tests (as mentioned in the article), with various names for each.  I am myself in the humanities, and I can say that among the major doctoral programs in my field, the structure varies significantly.  Some have one set of exams, some have two... and the terms used for them vary (the structure and purpose of such exams also varies considerably).  Generalizations like the one that comprehensive examinations after the first year are unheard of in the humanities are simply misinformed.  Programs in my discipline that lack an early set of formal exams tend to have other hurdles (which sometimes involve smaller examinations, papers, or other evaluations) that need to be completed after the first year... and there are some that have an early set of formal exams as well.
Even looking at the individual Wiki articles on these examinations, one can see that the usage is simply not standardized.  The paragraphs on these exams would be better replaced with the simple facts that (1) some programs require an early set of exams (usually to determine suitability for admission or continuing onto the Ph.D. program if the student doesn't enter with a master's and/or to verify sufficient knowledge of the typical undergraduate curriculum in the area), (2) most programs require a later set of exams that determine eligibility to proceed to researching and writing the dissertation.  Some examples of the kind of structures these exams follow are fine, but blanket claims about what disciplines do what, what the exams cover, and what terms are appropriate shouldn't be allowed... unless these claims can be backed up by a general survey of a large number of graduate programs. 76.118.181.158 17:33, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I also agree here. This section also needs some cleaning up. --chodges 03:21, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Comps, Generals, and Quals

message: All i'm sure of is that one of these Rdrs is wrong:
# Postgraduate degree --> Graduate school (which is limited to 4 English-speaking countries)
# Graduate degree --> Academic degree (which is organized by countries, mostly or all spanning the whole of higher education)
I wonder if the discordant Dabs aren't a symptom of failure to build a workable structure for covering higher ed.--Jerzy•t 02:17, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I've sent Postgraduate degree to Postgraduate education. Not sure if graduate degree should go there or not. Timrollpickering (talk) 11:26, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Redirects & overlap 

message: I'm not even in University yet (dropped out of highschool, I found my own books (Plato, Tale of Genji, Dostoevsky) more interesting that school and such, slowly catching up), so I just don't get it. Whats the point of a Masters? Of a PhD? Of studying even more after you've gone through years of university? If I wanted to study for a few extra years, I'd just sit in my room with a pile of books, which is what I do. The comic PHD further makes me question the purpose, not that I'm gonna formulate an opinion based on a comic, unless its written by Neil Gaiman.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.112.16.133 (talk) 03:38, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Coursework is useful because people will tell you to learn things you don't think are interesting on the surface of it, but in reality are. Research degrees are useful because you learn how to research under people who aren't charicatures, but are actually good. —Felix the Cassowary 11:54, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Whats the point 

message: I've done what I hope constitutes starting a discussion there. —Felix the Cassowary 11:54, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge with postgraduate education =

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Hi all, I have taken it upon myself to proceed in merging the article with "Postgraduate education". I have made an effort to retain content from both articles as much as I could (using a tool called Mergely for the US and Canada sections). Please feel free to closely examine the changes. Further copy-editing may be necessary. Edit submission pending. Caelum123 (talk) 02:26, 12 November 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proceeding to merge