The Interviews: Preliminary Expectations

There seems to be a consistent belief among PhD students that the campus visit season is the best part of the PhD as a whole. While that doesn't bode all too well for the PhD experience itself, it has made me very excited and expectant for the next couple months. Some of my campus visits are interviews, and some are accepted student days, and we'll see if that affects the format and atmosphere.

I sat down with Jacob for a few minutes before my first interview in New York, and he gave me two general pieces of advice:

1. Don't be nervous or intimidated. Have conversations with everyone you meet -- students, faculty, administrators, and other interviewees. These are going to be the people you'll be surrounded with if you choose this school, and how you interact with them now may inform how you would act with them in the future. Even with the interviews, you're choosing them as much as they're choosing you.

2. When the visit's over, reflect on how you felt. Write down some quick notes as soon as the interviews done, and focus more on your comfort level than details about funding and teaching. At a certain point, you're choosing a place based on fit. Yes, that includes your relationship with your PI, but it also includes how you feel in the city, on the campus, with your peers -- the whole wider environment. You need to make sure that this is a place you can see yourself for an extended period of time.

I've heard some other bits and pieces from other people, and I think the overwhelming responses I've heard actually go back to these two points anyway. There is a distilled third point that seems to be coming through, though, and it's...

3. Enjoy yourself. These visits are designed to be fun, and with work taking up so much of your time in the next few years, there's no shame in letting your jimmies out. That's not to say that you should get hammered and start yelling at faculty (if you want to flunk the Scripps interview, that's apparently one of the few ways you can pull it off), but don't be afraid to take advantage of the wining and dining.

So that's it. The advice that I've heard pre-interview season. I'll come back at the end and see if there's any more stuff I wished I had thought of earlier, but for now these are the bits and pieces I've armed myself with beforehand. And yes, I'm excited.