17: ABCs of Grad School – Part 1

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

Hi everyone. Happy Sunday. Today's episode is titled "The ABCs of grad school." I'm going to be going over some terms that you may want to know and understand that are relevant to graduate school. This is part one. I am not sure how many parts it's going to take, but there are several terms that I'm going to review. So there will at least be a part two to this episode. Since there are a lot of terms, I'm just gonna go ahead and get started. It's called the ABCs, because I am going to go in alphabetical order. Let's just do it.

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The first term is a ABD. Sometimes you may have a TA, or you may know a grad student, and they say, oh, you know, I'm your instructor for the class, or I'm your TA for the class and I'm ABD. What does that mean? ABD stands for all but dissertation. That means that this graduate student has completed all of the requirements to earn their PhD in their field, except for completing the dissertation. This means they've completed their coursework, all of the classes required. They've taken their comprehensive exams. They may have completed language requirements. Anything else that's a requirement before they write the dissertation, they've done it. So they are ABD: all but dissertation. Some doctoral students also referred- well actually, in this case, if they're ABD, they are also a doctoral candidate. That means- it's the same. It's essentially the same thing. In some programs, they actually provide candidacy degrees. You'll actually get a certificate showing that you earned in this degree of doctoral candidacy, which again, means you've completed everything except for the dissertation.

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Alright, the next word is abstract. A lot of you likely already know what an abstract means. But some of you may be brand new to the idea of grad school or even research. If you're a freshman and you're very new to campus, new to the institution of higher ed, maybe you've never heard the word abstract before. An abstract is a self contained, a short, strong statement that describes a larger research project. Usually, it's about one paragraph, it can be two paragraphs. It describes the scope, the purpose of the project, the results, conclusions. It describes what your topic is, how you're researching it, and is there an argument or a finding from the project. Usually, what people do with abstracts is, you can refer to abstracts when you're looking for academic articles to try to see if it's a good fit for something that you want to read. A lot of times, abstracts are so self contained, that they allow us to kind of do a shortcut as figuring out whether or not we want to continue reading the work further.

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All right next term, another one for for those of you that are new to academia- academic year. A lot of times I'll say that we're doing this during this academic year versus say, calendar year. Academic year means anything that's happening during the two semesters or three quarters, plus the summer for that university. So they'll say like, oh, yeah, we're providing you funding for this academic year. That means that you're getting funding fall, winter, spring or fall and spring. If someone says, oh, we're just doing that for this calendar year. We have a grant where I work where we only provide funding during the calendar year. That means it's January to December, that's the calendar year. We don't provide funding after that time. We have to renew our funding at the end of the calendar year. So just FYI, academic year versus calendar year, they're not the same thing.

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All right, next word is advisor. This refers to the primary person, advisor, faculty mentor, often assigned to graduate student in any given program. This is the primary faculty contact for questions regarding the completion of the PhD. Every graduate student has an advisor. They also have a committee, and that committee is composed of other professors, anywhere from three to five people that are part of the committee that includes the advisor. Sometimes people have co-advisors, that means they have two people who are the chairs of their dissertation. They're the two people that they go to for support and for primary kind of guidance.

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Alright, the next one is an application fee. That's next term. Very straightforward. It's just to remind you that if you choose to apply to graduate school, there are fees involved. You want to plan for that. It's at least $100 per institution. That is in addition to paying to send GRE scores and paying to send new transcripts, so please plan for that. I know it's really hard if you're low income to even think of the idea of saving up for applying to grad school, which is why I encourage you to apply to programs like Mellon Mays or McNair that provide fee waivers for this. It makes a huge difference. It'll go from a student only applying to three to four schools, because that's all they can afford, versus applying to 8 to 12 schools, because that's the realistic number of schools that they could potentially apply for without having to worry about money.

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All right, the next term is assistant professor, and also after that associate professor. You will see when you go to college that all of your professors have a different title. Some of them are assistant, some are associate, some more full professors. There are even- there's a title called Emeritus Professor. What does this mean? Oh and there's also adjunct professors. So I should add that one to the list too. An assistant professor is someone who is junior faculty. They're in the early stages of their career, and they have not yet gained tenure. A lot of times, they're fresh out of grad school too. An Associate Professor, however, is someone who has achieved tenure, but has not yet earned the rank or title of full professors. They're kind of like mid career professors. Adjunct professors are professors who are employed on a contingent basis, so they may only be employed for one quarter or one semester at a time. They don't necessarily have security of employment. In some cases, some adjunct professors are able to become lecturers with security of employment. If that's the case, then that's a separate title. They're a lecturer. They've got security of employment. They are working full time. They're guaranteed a full year of work and benefits. Adjunct professors, unfortunately, often times don't have benefits, often times don't know if they're going to be employed the following term, which is very hard. And the university relies a lot on adjunct professors to get the work done. It's unfortunate, but that's just a matter of fact of how things are in academia at this point. So that's assistant, associate, and adjunct professors. When you're thinking about who you want to work with if you're doing research, you're trying to find someone who is assistant, associate or full professor because they are there full time. It does guarantee you that they're going to stay after a year.

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All right, next word. I don't have any b words. If you can think of B words in academia, feel free to share with me but I'm jumping to the letter C. Colloquium is the next word. You'll hear this all the time. In fact, I know I mention it in passing as if everybody knows what I'm talking about and I forget that sometimes that's a new word for students. Colloquium is essentially just an academic gathering on a topic. It usually consists of a lecture by a scholar with discussion afterwards. We often have colloquiums in departments to share the recent research that folks are working on.

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All right, next C word is committee. Just like I mentioned earlier, when you work on a dissertation in graduate school, you will have a group of three or more professors of your choice who supervise your work for your exams for your MA research and your PhD dissertation. This committee includes one person who is your dissertation chair, your advisor. In other words, you can have an advisor who is also your committee chair- those two interchangeable words, advisor-chair. That's the main person that you go to in graduate school who's like heading your dissertation committee.

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All right. Next term is comprehensive exams or comps. Some folks will say this quarter, I'm taking my comps. That means they're taking exams where they're getting tested on their knowledge of one or more sub fields for their discipline. Some are more intense than others. A lot of them vary in terms of what's required to complete the exams. I know in my program, for instance, we had written exams, so we had to write three essays on three different areas of expertise. Then we had to write a prospectus, which is a summary of- a very long summary of your dissertation, a 25 to 30 page summary of what your dissertation is going to be on. Then we had an oral exam where we defended our written exams, and we defended our perspectives. It was a time for us to justify our work, and we did that in front of our committee. Okay, so those are your comps.

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Next is CV. Again, this is another term that I know I use a lot. I'll mention you can add this to your CV or resume. And I haven't stopped to say, hold up, hold up. CV refers to a curriculum vita, which is an academic resume that includes your education, publications, fellowship, awards, teaching, experience, service, and more. It can be as long as you want. It doesn't have the same type of restrictions that resumes have. Resumes tend to be one to two pages. CV's can be- I've seen 50 Page CV's. For folks who are emeriti professors, who have retired, who continue to be active in their work, can easily have 50 plus page CV's.

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All right, next word is- now we're going into D's- defense. What is a defense? When grad students say, oh, yeah, I'm about to graduate. I just need to work on my defense. What does that mean? That is a formal meeting between you and your committee in which you're required to defend a completed research project, resulting in awarding you with the either MA or the PhD. A lot of times, you're giving a public presentation, either just to your committee or to the whole community. Sometimes folks are invited- additional people are invited. And you're essentially presenting on your dissertation to a crowd.

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All right, I've been using this word a lot. The next word is dissertation. I'm using it without introducing it and telling you what it is. In short, the dissertation is a very long written piece of original research required to complete a PhD. The number of pages ranges, it can be as short as I don't know, 80, 90 pages, as long as 500 pages. It just depends on your discipline. Mine was closer to 250 pages. It just depends on again, like I said, your discipline.

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Next word is diversity statement. This is actually often an optional component of a grad school application, where you're required to write about any obstacles that you've had to overcome to complete your academic goals, any life experiences that you've had that contributes to diversity, research interests that affect underserved areas or folks, and your intent to use your graduate degree to serve disadvantaged groups. That's a diversity statement. It's becoming more and more common to write one. And a lot of times you're required to write one to qualify for certain diversity fellowships.

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All right, doctoral degree/PhD is the next word. That's a degree that goes beyond a master's with an emphasis on developing, creating new knowledge and providing new theoretical perspectives. The doctorate, the PhD, you know, a lot of times people have this assumption that you have to get a master's to get a PhD. That's not necessarily true. Some programs allow you to apply right out of undergrad to PhD programs with or without getting a master's along the way. In fact, in my case, I got into my PhD program right out of undergrad and my PhD granting institution and program did not provide master's. I literally just went, got my candidacy degree and my PhD and I don't have a master's degree to this day, just a PhD. So that's just a myth, that you have to get a master's to get a PhD. That's not always true.

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All right, now we're gonna go to E. For that letter, the first one is Ed.D. That is a Doctorate of Education. So Ph. D stands for Doctorate of Philosophy, Ed.D. Doctorate of Education. There are also a PsyD's- Doctorate of Psychology, MD's -medical degree, Doctorate of Medicine and JD's- juris doctorate. That's for law school. Just know, there's a lot of doctorate programs. I usually recommend PhDs because that's where my expertise lies. And that's what I got, is a PhD.

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All right, next E word is extramural funding. Extramural, you'll hear that term a lot in academic spaces. That refers to funding for a graduate degree that's awarded by agencies that are outside of the university that are not affiliated with particular universities. Excuse me. That includes places like the National Science Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Jacob Javits fellowship, etc. They typically cover tuition and fees and provide stipends.

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All right, now I'm gonna go to F. Let's see. I'm gonna go on up to the letter I, and I think that's where I'm going to take a break, end the episode, and we can continue J through Z in the next episode. So that way, this is not too long for us. Especially because now I'm getting a bit of a cough attack. All right, so F, fees. What are fees? These are charges that cover costs not associated with a student's course load. Oh, I think I'm gonna have to take a little bit of a break. I'll be back because this lingering cough is not going away. So give me a second, and I'll be right back. Alright, I'm back. Thank you for bearing with me. I've got a cough drop in my mouth. Drank some water. I think we're good, so I'm going to keep going.

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So I was referring to fees last time. These are costs- it's charges that are related to costs not associated with a student's course load. This includes things like athletic activities, clubs, special events. Believe it or not, you're paying for them as a student. So those are fees. Along with fees, come fee waivers and fee waiver requests. Again, applying to college, applying to grad school gets expensive. You can request a fee waiver so that you don't have to pay for the admission. You don't have to pay for any entrance exam or registration fees. If you're a low income student, be mindful of that and ask around. Anytime there's a fee, ask if there's a fee waiver for that.

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Next word is fellowship. That's another one that I use a lot in passing without ever defining it for you. I just make this assumption that you know what I mean. Fellowship is actually a financial award for graduate school, and also can be for undergrad too. In graduate school, it typically covers tuition and fees. It provides a stipend. It can range. It can be often as much as $30,000 a year for one to five years. Some fellowships have work requirements. For instance, they may require you to TA or to be a research assistant for one or more years during the tenure of the award. Fellowships are often awarded centrally through graduate division. So find out where the graduate division is for your institution to find out about their central fellowships. And so they're usually through graduate division, and they're provided to a student after they're admitted to that department.

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Next word is financial aid. A lot of us have heard this, but just to make sure you know, that refers to money available from various sources to help us students pay for college. Unlike in undergrad where you have financial aid, you'll get a financial aid package, and it may include loans or not. In graduate school, you'll get a funding package that doesn't necessarily rely on financial aid. If you apply for FAFSA - it's a really good idea to apply for FAFSA the same year that you're applying to graduate school, so you continue to do that. Then what it does, it allows the department that you're applying to for graduate school to know that you have financial need, and to know your income status. It's helpful in that way, but you're not going to get much if any funding for FAFSA. You'll get loans for graduate school, but I am not a fan of advocating for loans. So therefore, go ahead apply for FAFSA for graduate school, but don't expect to be getting any kind of financial aid in the way that you did in undergrad.

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Alright, financial need is the next word. Financial need is equal to the cost of education minus the expected financial contribution. What does that mean? That means that you're estimating how much it's going to cost for you to attend college, along with your basic living expenses. Then you're going to minus that, reduce whatever you think your family is expected to pay- that depends on your family's income- and that determines your financial need. So if the cost of going to school is high, and maybe your parents don't make as much money, your financial need is gonna be higher. And hopefully, you'll get more financial aid because of that.

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All right, next word is full professor. Again, earlier I mentioned adjunct professor, assistant professor, associate professor, but then there are some folks who just put professor in their signature, or full professor on their signature. Those are folks who definitely have tenure, have met the requirements for teaching, research and service for an extended period of time. They have risen up the ranks to gain that title. So they're pretty accomplished in their field, and they've been around for a while often times.

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All right, next word -we're going into G's now- is graduate school. Yes, graduate school. What is graduate school? I'm talking about this. This is a whole podcast on graduate school, and I haven't defined it. It is post undergraduate education that leads to their master's or doctorate degree. Ideally, for me, a PhD. That's graduate school, so anything that goes beyond undergrad. Alright. And also anything that goes beyond undergrad that's specifically for a master's or doctoral degree, because a lot of times students think that graduate school includes an MD, JD, an MBA. Those are more professional type program, and I don't refer to those programs when I'm talking about graduate school.

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Next word is grant. Similar to a fellowship, it's a sum of money that's provided to you. But in this case, it's for the purpose of paying part of the costs of college. And a grant doesn't have to be repaid. Grants are usually not huge. Well, sometimes they are, but more often they're smaller quantities of funding that you get to pay for college or grad school.

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All right, next one is GRE. I've already had an episode on the GRE exam and scores. But I didn't really actually tell you what the GRE is. Maybe I did- I don't remember. Okay, the GRE is the Graduate Record Exam. Similar to the SAT, where you need to take the SAT or ACT to get to college, or at least that was the case for me. It is a standardized test. It's required for admission to most graduate programs. Not all programs are requiring it. Honestly, I have my own thoughts about the GRE. I'm not a huge fan of it. It is a very classist exam, in the sense that you need to have access to resources to test prep, to courses, to learn the strategy to do well. And so thankfully, fewer and fewer universities are requiring it now. But there are still good number of programs that need you to have a score, and so those scores have been used as a determinant for some programs for admission or for financial support. So some programs still do look at the score, require a minimum score for you to get into their program, and depending on how high you score, that might make you eligible for certain financial sources, for certain fellowships. So just a thought. I don't love the GRE, but thankfully, fewer universities and programs are requiring it.

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Similar to the GRE- so there's a General Record Exam. There's also a General Record Exam Subject Test. This is so frustrating to me. This is a test that is required also for admission to graduate programs in specific fields. There may be a subject test in psychology, or chemistry, or literature, or math, or physics. If you know you're going to go to graduate school in those fields, you have to take the two- general GRE and the Subject Test GRE.

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Now we're getting to the I's, and I'm getting closer to wrapping up. The next term is- I guess it's starts with an I, but it's two words- in absentia. What does that mean, in absentia? This is an official leave of absence from a department or a university. It's for a temporary period of time. There's the assumption that you're going to come back. Sometimes people leave for personal reasons, sometimes due to medical concerns, but the hope is for you to return and complete your degree.

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Next "I" word is incoming student. That means you are a student who has been admitted to a college or university, but you haven't yet attended. All my McNair scholars who are getting interviews and acceptances to grad school right now, they are incoming students. They're going to these visitation days as incoming students, and they're excited because they might go here for grad school.

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Alright, the last word for today is interest. And I'm not referring to research interests. I'm referring to financial interest. It's the money, or it refers to the amount that your money earns when it is kept in a savings instrument. Why am I mentioning interest? Because well, in some ways, it's very important for you to start to learn about financial literacy now. I don't want you to be stuck in the shoes that a lot of us are stuck in, especially a lot of us older millennials who didn't know any better, who are also first gen, aka someone like me, who is in her 30s and now stuck being broke. No longer poor, but broke. I have a decent job. I've got a family. I've got a partner. And yet we are drowning in student debt and other things, but especially it's the student debt that is holding us back from really trying to plan for financial independence long term. That's what a lot of us want. You want to go to college, get a good career, help our families. So that's just one term- interest. You want to make sure that your money is working, that it's not just sitting in an account not making any money. So check out- I am not a financial expert, obviously. But you should definitely check out any other podcasts that are trying to teach you about financial literacy. I know I listen to some of them. If you want recommendations, I'll gladly send them to you if you email me. That is the last word I'm going to focus on for today, A's through I. Then next Sunday, I'm going to focus on J through Z. Hopefully that will help you feel at least a little bit more comfortable using this academic, university jargon. So when people say I'm ABD, and I finally got my candidacy degree, and I'm about to work on my defense and my advisor's an associate professor and trying to go up for full, you're gonna know exactly what they're talking about. All right, everyone. Thanks so much for listening, and I will see you next time.