Understanding Graduate School Admissions, The Graduate Student Experience and Post-PhD Trajectories: Bowdoin College 2016

Introduction<br> This STEM advising outreach program was developed for undergraduate students who are contemplating future applications to PhD programs in the life sciences. The audience of ~20 students ranged in academic stage, and was composed mostly of life sciences undergraduates enrolled at Bowdoin College. We have previously described two similar outreach events (ref. 1,2); this 90-minute combination of seminar and discussion built on that pilot program. This session at Bowdoin College was intended to complement the advising that students receive from their primary research mentors on campus. Although undergraduates at many excellent institutions have access to extensive pre-professional advising for careers in medicine, law and some other directions, the structure of advising for scientific research and the many career options that rely on PhD training is less consistent. Independent study or thesis research mentors are often a student’s primary source of advice. Career advisors have confirmed that reiteration and reinforcement of advising principles by professionals external to the school environment is helpful. Therefore, this outreach program’s content was developed with a goal of demystifying PhD programs and the benefits that they provide. The topics covered included (a) determining the key differences between programs, (b) understanding how PhD admissions works, (c) preparing an effective application, (d) proactive planning to strengthen one’s professional portfolio (internships, independent research, cultivating mentors), (e) key transferable skills that most students learn in graduate school, (f) what career streams are open to life science PhDs, and, (g) some national and institutional data on student career aspirations and outcomes (ref. 3). <br><br>Methods<br> The approach of bringing a faculty member and an administrative staff member who both have life science PhD training backgrounds was intentional. This allowed the program to portray different perspectives and experience to guide student career development, while offering credible witnesses to the types of experiences, skills and knowledge gained through PhD training. Central to the method of this outreach program is the willingness of graduate educators to meet the students on their own ground. The speakers guided students through a process of identifying national graduate programs that might best serve their individual interests and preferences. In addition to recruiting prospective applicants to Harvard Medical School (HMS) summer internships and PhD programs, the speakers made an explicit appeal to students to hone their professional portfolio proactively by discussing important skills that undergraduates need to be competitive in admissions and the career workplace including acquiring training in statistics and programming, soliciting diverse mentorship, acquiring authentic research experiences/internships, conducting thesis research, and obtaining fellowships). By reinforcing much of the anecdotal and formal advising content that is made available by faculty mentors and career counselors, our host saw the value of external experts to validate guidance. This event built off our most recent event (ref. 2); we delivered a presentation covering the relevant topics and transitioned into an open discussion featuring a third visitor in our team. In contrast to the aforementioned previous event, the time constraint at lunch time prevented us from doing a formal panel. Our third speaker was a HMS Curriculum Fellow (ref. 4) whose career goals included teaching at a comparable institution (primarily undergraduate institution, PUI). Students were encouraged to have lunch during the session, as the program was held at midday to avoid conflicts with other academic or extracurricular events. <br><br>Results<br>As the principal goal of the session was to encourage and engage students, not to evaluate them, and the students ranged widely in stage and long-term career objectives, there were no assessment surveys of learning gains. Informally, student engagement was excellent as judged by the frequency and thoughtful nature of questions asked during the discussion phase of the session. Ad hoc student feedback directly following the event was extremely positive, as was our host’s follow up by email after the event. The success of the program was also evident by an invitation for a repeat of the program or other forms of collaboration in the future, including the possibility of reciprocal visits to HMS.<br><br>Discussion<br>This advising session was a continued refinement of our prototype, and thus served to prepare us for a series of similar events across a larger network of colleges. Our decision to incorporate a HMS Curriculum Fellow served three purposes: (1) to engage speaker who pursued doctoral training at three different institutions (UCLA, Tufts University, Harvard University), (2) to broaden the range of career trajectories presented as outcomes from doctoral programs, and (3) to provide networking and career development opportunities for the Curriculum Fellow.<br><br>