If the student transfers in the first two years of registration, the destination department must commit to using an admissions allocation to fund the student for the balance of the guaranteed funding years. The original department may replace the student in the next admissions cycle. If the student is beyond the first two years of registration, the fellowship accompanies the student to the destination department and has no impact on admissions for either department.
Student Guide Resources for every step of your graduate education. How flexible is your timeline to graduation? Faculty and adviser opportunities. Faculty and adviser fit in terms of style and expertise were priorities for me. I felt more confident in my decision to transfer because my preferred adviser agreed to work with me.
I encourage you to be communicative and direct with faculty members whom you are interested in working with. Ask about their capacity to take on advisees, their style and upcoming projects. Consider: What are your must-haves in an adviser? You will want to identify necessary steps in the funding process. Is the process different for transfer students, or are you considered alongside other newly admitted students? Do you already have independent funding -- say, an NSF or Ford fellowship?
If so, what is the process for bringing that funding with you? It is also important to assess what other financial resources are available for doctoral students, such as professional development and conference funding. I also inquired extensively about research opportunities, such as research assistantships and volunteer involvement with ongoing projects. What projects are available for you to join?
How will these projects further your own goals -- for example, developing research skills, deepening content knowledge, providing publication opportunities? What support and funding are available for your own research?
Program prestige. Program prestige is an important part of faculty hiring. I chose to transfer in favor of fit and opportunities to develop and showcase the teaching, research and service skills that I needed for the types of jobs I wanted. Further, I know the faculty, student and alumni connections from my current program will be an important resource.
What skills, opportunities and connections will help you be a competitive candidate? How will the program facilitate your access to and development of those skills and connections?
Culture and climate. These can refer to a number of things, including but not limited to: Do you feel like you fit with the people in the department, including students, faculty and staff? Are there faculty members who share identities that are important to you? Will you have resources to support your well-being and success? Will you have the co-conspirators and mentors you deserve? Location and other considerations. Moving across the country is not desirable or feasible for everybody because it is intensive and often more complex for students with dependents, partners and caretaking responsibilities.
Further, proximity to family and other important sources of support can make all the difference. What resources and supports are essential for your success and well-being in graduate school? The graduate school journey is not always as linear as we make it out to be. I chose to make the leap to a new program, and I am glad I did. In my experience, I found myself sacrificing my happiness by continuing down a path that was not for me.
Perhaps you feel the same. Hours turned into days of deliberation, prayer, soliciting advice and finally making a decision. Then came buying a house, saying our goodbyes, making the big move, then finding a preschool and a church, trying to make new friends, and getting used to a totally different area of the country. I encountered a few difficulties during my first semester -- some of them common to most Ph. Institutional culture: I struggled to acclimate to, or make sense of, some of the unwritten rules governing conduct and communication inside and outside the program.
Relationships with faculty members: In addition to a lack of mutual interests, those relationships began to suffer from a lack of rapport and trust. Given the differences between our personalities and experiences, that seemed inevitable. But I then discovered that my supervisor and greatest advocate would be retiring at the end of the year. Program design, content and goals: The program had a very specific vision for forming students, one that lent itself to a particular institutional type.
As I began to realize all those things, I started having a hunch that one of the institutions that had offered me admission a year before would be a much better fit. I applied and was fortunate to be offered admission again. And after one year at this second institution, I can say with confidence that it is much better fit in each of the four categories above. The institutional culture resonates with my personality and experience.
My relationships with faculty are on a positive trajectory. My graduate assistant role aligns nicely with my professional goals. And, finally, the program is more malleable to a diversity of perspectives and philosophies, giving me the space to develop my own. Somewhere between 30 percent and 50 percent of doctoral students drop out, with the highest rates of attrition in the first two years while students are adjusting to doctoral study.
Research suggests that is primarily due to systemic issues at institutions, despite the tempting narrative that there must be some deficiency in departing students.
For example, the culture of a program might be built on critique rather than support. As a result, students may develop doubts about their competence, a key predictor for dropout , while becoming isolated and overly paranoid about what their professors think of them. Students in such situations often feel powerless to change or improve their circumstances, which only makes things worse. They may see dropping out as the only option.
I hope that my story can help to normalize another viable option: to transfer to a different college or university. Some people might interject that it is unlikely that the second institution allowed any of my credits to be transferred. Admittedly, my current institution did not allow this. However, I also figured in the opportunity cost of not transferring, which for me outweighed the loss of credits.
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