The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/tag/grad-school/)
Cornell students interacted with admissions representatives from across the country at Cornell Career Services’ Postgraduate Fairs to gain insight on graduate life and applications.
Thousands of students from all corners of the world search for post-graduate study programs in the United States every year. Over 4500-plus universities across the US house approximately 988,000 international students seeking doctorate-level degrees. Navigating the huge transitions to American Ph.d. programs can be extremely daunting for international students, especially for those who may have never stepped foot in the planet’s melting pot. But not many of these stories are known to the Cornell community. Do these students feel as integrated within our academic ecosystem as others?
Coming into this semester I’m confronted even more frequently with the dreaded question of “what’s next?”
Grad students aren’t a particularly merry crowd. A recently published study claims that they are six (!) times more likely to suffer from anxiety and depression when compared to the general population. It’s just a single online study and so I wouldn’t put too much trust into the number, but if true this statistic would not surprise me. Nearly all of my friends in graduate school went through at least a period or two of near-clinical levels of woe and worry, and for some this is more of a permanent state. It doesn’t take a social scientist to come up with a list of explanation for this phenomenon.