Understanding Graduate School Admissions, The Graduate Student Experience and Post-PhD Trajectories: Colby 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 ~15 students ranged in academic stage, and was composed of life sciences undergraduates enrolled at Colby College. We have previously described similar outreach events (ref. 1-3); this 90-minute combination of seminar and discussion built on those pilot programs. This session at Colby 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, and often relies on individual mentors whose training backgrounds and career trajectories are quite diverse. 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 (including internships, independent research, and 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. 4). <br><br>Methods<br>The approach of bringing a faculty member and an administrative staff member who both have life science PhD training backgrounds and with program administrative experience was intentional. This allowed the speakers to portray different perspectives and experience to guide student career development, while offering credible reflections on 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. Students were encouraged to seek out opportunities to develop skills that undergraduates need to be competitive in admissions to graduate programs, that trainees need during graduate school, and that doctoral alumni apply in the careers and workplaces that come after. To that end, students were encouraged to pursue training in statistics and programming, develop a mentoring network, acquire authentic research experiences and pursue internships, conduct thesis research, and apply for 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 prior guidance offered on campus. This event built off our most recent event (ref. 3); we delivered a presentation covering the relevant topics and transitioned into an open discussion featuring a third visitor on our team. In contrast to the previous events (ref. 2), we did not use a panel format after the presentation. Our third speaker was a HMS Curriculum Fellow (ref. 5) whose career goals included teaching at a comparable institution (primarily undergraduate institution, PUI). This event was held at the end of the day, and prior to dinner, 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. Our host’s participation and feedback was also encouraging; in particular, we learned that the portion of our presentation devoted to transferable skills gained from a PhD was well-received. 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, which we continued to develop for an expanding network of colleges. Our decision to incorporate a HMS Curriculum Fellow served three purposes: (1) to engage another speaker so our team represented professionals 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>