Good Students Aren’t Always Good Scholars

Just because you pass all your tests and get awesome grades on your papers and kill it in class discussion does not mean you automatically have what it takes to be a good scholar. Good students try hard, they listen to directions, and they meet expectations put on them. Good scholars, on the other hand, set their own expectations and are propelled by their own sense of urgency and curiosity. This entrepreneurial spirit is a must by the time you graduate from a Ph.D. program, and you should really try to embrace this spirit earlier in your scholarly training.

Graduate School is Not an Extension of Undergraduate Education Many people make the faulty assumption that a master’s degree is just an advanced bachelor’s degree, and that a doctorate is just an extension of a master’s degree. Yes, some professional master’s degrees are set up this way, with just another year or two of prescribed course work beyond the bachelor’s, but any serious academic master’s degree involves some amount of self-starting and some kind of final capstone accomplishment. These master’s programs may leave many of the courses up to your choosing, requiring you to craft your own unique program of study that meets your needs, and they also usually require comprehensive exams, a final project, and/or a traditional thesis at the end. These two qualities are what make a master’s program a scholar endeavor and not a student endeavor. And it’s this entrepreneurial spirit that is the reason many master’s programs require some evidence of maturity (often a year or two in the working world or some other evidence of research experience as an undergrad) before admitting students.

Doctoral programs are even more entrepreneurial than master’s degrees. Yes, they almost always involve formal course work, but nearly every Ph.D. leaves much of that course work up to the student’s design. And just about every Ph.D. program culminates in a comprehensive exam process and a dissertation. There is basically no way you can get through a Ph.D. without being an entrepreneur. You can’t get a Ph.D. if you still see yourself as a student (in the undergrad sense).

Grades Don’t Matter For the record, no one in a master’s or Ph.D. program cares what your GPA is. One reason is that graduate grades may not even be on the same letter scale or grade point scale. Graduate grades at UNC, for instance, are H (high pass), P (pass), L (low pass), and F (fail). Hs are rare, Ls put you in danger of being kicked out of the program, and Fs will certainly get you kicked out of the program. Basically, you’re supposed to pass in a graduate program – you’re supposed to master the objectives. This is a very different system than A, B, C, etc. It assumes that you’re there to become competent in some topic and grow beyond that to where you can become a producer of knowledge.

This also means that graduate grades are, when calculated numerically for transcripts, quite inflated. If making a B means you’re not doing well in the program (as was the case at Utah), then that means everyone who’s still in the program has a brilliant GPA. The point is: who cares what your GPA in graduate school was? Just leave it off your CV and focus on what you’re going to do with your course work later on rather than focus on making straight as in your graduate course work. Think broadly about the application of your knowledge and you’ll end up with awesome grades anyway.

Written by: MMASI IRENE