————————————————-Academics—————————————
Stay Organized!
Time management is often listed by current students as a major challenge in graduate school. Invest in a good planner, be tech savvy on your phone calendar, whatever it may be – you’ll have lots of deadlines, meetings, beer dates, etc.
Program of Study
In your first term, find out which courses you can transfer from your university where you were doing master. You can transfer as many as you want, especially those that fulfill you program requirements. This gives you more time to work on your research and you can minimize class work. It counts towards your 108 credits.
Visit CEOAS student office and asked them to give you a list of classes that will be offered in next academic year.
Ask professors to send you last year syllabus.
How do you you design your program of study? Take only courses that fulfill your program requirements and you are not able to transfer them. Plus, take those courses that really relate to your area of expertise.
Make yourself a timetable per each term, when you will take each class; no more than 3 classes per term, especially if you are TA. Try to design your program of study in a way that you are done with classes in 4 or max 5 terms.
Your committee can approve you a waiver for certain program requirements/course. You have to have a reason, but if you justify it correctly and program director approves you are good to go.
If your program of study is designed correctly,, you can also get a graduate certificate at the same time. E.g. many course in Geography overlap with GIS certificate. Good way to get both papers/diplomas/titles without extra classes.
Submit the Program of Study to the Graduate School with only 108 credits. You can always add some extra if you wish so but you cannot drop classes once your program is approve.
Committee
A simple email and perhaps a short meeting with each member is enough to get a faculty member on your committee.
Make sure they are replaying on emails frequently. That shows how much time they have to work with you. If you have to remind them already at the beginning, you might want to reconsider your choice.
Besides your major (and minor if applicable) professor, your other committee members should know something about your research and if you can, take one of their classes.
Make sure committee members are people that could write you any letter of recommendation in the future (for a fellowship, scholarship, or employment).
It is convenient if your GCR has little to do with your research field that way he can just do the job of the GCR and not trip you up during your oral exam and defense 🙂
Research
Try to incorporate any possible piece of your research in any class projects. Saves you double the work.
Before you take proposal writing class, have clear idea what your research will be. In that way, you are ready for a proposal defense when you are done with a class. Again, no double work.
