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When I was a grad student at a major university near here, I definitely was not part of the community, but I was not an outcast.
I commuted, so I did not know anything about dorm life or campus life unless I read about it in the student newspaper. But I had classes with lots of undergrads, and we often worked together on projects and went out for a beer after class.
Are grad students considered a part of the college community like undergrads are or are they usually just outcasts?
Where I went for an MS, it was more that they were part of their own community, by choice. 'Outcast' implies you want to be in the undergrad community and just aren't included or welcome. I could not possibly have cared less about some of the things that jazzed up the younger, on-campus students.
If you really wanted to hang out with undergrads socially, you easily could, but there wasn't that much reason to. If you're in your 20s and 30s, sometimes with family, it is unlikely you have the same interests as a young undergrad. If you're single, you might end up being the creepy old guy/girl.
Older or more mature undergrads, easily end up as friends: one of my best friends was a dual BS/MS major, in her mid-20s, but had a husband and life outside of college.
Other way around. At Research-I colleges, grad and doctoral students are who matter, undergrads are just there to pay for the facilities.
I agree.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GeorgiaTransplant
Where I went for an MS, it was more that they were part of theirown community, by choice. 'Outcast' implies you want to be in the undergrad community and just aren't included or welcome. I could not possibly have cared less about some of the things that jazzed up the younger, on-campus students.
If you really wanted to hang out with undergrads socially, you easily could, but there wasn't that much reason to. If you're in your 20s and 30s, sometimes with family, it is unlikely you have the same interests as a young undergrad. If you're single, you might end up being the creepy old guy/girl.
Older or more mature undergrads, easily end up as friends: one of my best friends was a dual BS/MS major, in her mid-20s, but had a husband and life outside of college.
When I was an undergrad at a major University I mainly hung out with undergrads, as a grad student I mainly hung out with other grad students. In our mid-to late 20s my husband and I certainly didn't want to attend frat house keggers or smoke dope with 18 to 20 year olds but had great fun with people closer to our own age also in grad school or law school.
Ones status as a graduate student depends on the Department or subject matter and ones status in the graduate program. In physical science departments the faculty need inexpensive technical labor and in exchange for doing the Group leader or PIs projects you get to do a self initiated original project (usually related to the PIs reserach area) that will become the subject matter of your Ph.D. Disertation. Physical Science Departments often teach a lot of classes that non-majors are required to take and as a consequence need a lot Teaching Assistants, Lab Assistants, and Lecturers. So the physical science grad stuent usually has a part time job as a teaching assistant. If hes is lucky and the faculty member he or she is working for has money you may be able to get off of the TA treadmill and get a research assistantship or RA.
I did my graduate work in the Physics Department at RPI a major and elite Engineering School in upstate New York. When I arrived in 1977 I had a TA and like all incoming grad students at the bottom of the ladder. To be considered a Ph.D. student one had to get a passing grade on the Qualifying Exams given once at the beginning of each semester they consisted of two four hour written exams supervised by the tenured faculty and they could make the exam questions as tedious or difficult if they chose. I was either luck or good because I passed them the first time I sat them even before taking any Ph.D. level courses in Physics or Math. The result was an immediate doubling of the size of my stipend and several faculty members began to court me so I would join their research group. By the end of my second year I leaped that second hurdle called the Candidates Exam where you again face a examing board made up of ones Disertation Professor and half a dozen senior faculty from you Department and at least one from another Department which in my case was a Professor of Materials Engineering. I also had to write a short summary of a scientific paper written in a foreign language and write a 250 word abstract for a fictional paper in a foreign language (In my case French). It had to pass muster with the RPI Faculty member (from Canada) who spoke fluent French. So at that point I was optimistc of getting my Ph. D. degree in 3 or 3 1/2 years which today is almost unheard of because the final step was presenting a written thesis and defending its science and conclusions to a Department examining committee.
Unfortunatly, things didn't turn out that way and it took almost an additional 4 years to get my thesis done. I was a walking example of Murphy's Law (which says if something can go wrong it will). My Thesis advisor got fired and left RPI (In Japan when your Lord dies you either join him (Sepuku) or you become ronin) , my project turned out to be physically impossible to do (I was trying to grow 2D organic magnets using the Langmuir-Blodgett technique and I was working with a quite good scientist at the IBM Research Center in Westchester NY) the problem was we could make the sample magnets but they only lasted a couple of hours at best so we couldn't do the magentic studies planned for them , I then got an opprtunity go down to Brookhaven National Lab on Long Island to work with a scientist (as a young man had worked on the Manhattan Project as a specialist in high explosives) doing studies of radiation damage in materials like rock salt and granite. In 1981 when the Federal Government changed hands the new GOP management at DOE didn't like the science the group I was in was doing and simply cut all the funding so I had to pick up the pieces again and this time it was third time lucky. In less than a year working with another scientist I had been told was tempermental and hard to work with I finally snatched my brass ring doing work in what we now call Nanoscience and Technology but back in the early 1980s the word had yet to be invented!
Last edited by mwruckman; 07-12-2014 at 01:09 PM..
I once saw a comic illustrating the importance of different communities to college administrators. It was structured as a pyramid, with the people that college administrators were most concerned with pleasing at the top, and the least important people at the bottom. Of course, grad students were at the bottom. Professors may have been a level or two above that. A little further up were alumni, and second to the top were undergraduates. At the very top of the pyramid were 'parents of undergraduates'.
I wish I could find that chart now. I think it may have been from Piled Higher and Deeper.
"Outcasts"? No. The grad students tend to socialize with other grad students though. They don't mingle with undergrads much unless they're working as teaching assistants to professors, in which case they'd be grading papers written by undergrads and would have a little bit of interaction with them. They might date an under grad, but the grad students really do tend to socialize primarily with other grad students in most places.
Are grad students considered a part of the college community like undergrads are or are they usually just outcasts?
Outcast is a pretty strong word. At my school I think most of the grad students really weren't too interested in the student life like the undergrads were. It seemed like there were two campuses.
I attended a major research university where there more graduate students than undergrads. Graduate student life was extremely active: we had our own clubs, student government, programs and events (e.g. lots and lots of happy hours). We might have even had more funding for our student activities than the undergrads did; if I remember correctly, our overall graduate student assembly budget the last year I was there was over $1M for a graduate student body of about 11k.
However, with the exception of university-wide initiatives (like student health drives) or classroom responsibilities (like TAing) there was very little interaction between grad students and undergrads. For a grad student, undergrads were just another part of the campus scenery that you walk past but never interact with (like squirrels, statues and flyer-covered bulletin boards). I'm sure the undergrads saw us the same way.
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