The First Year of Your PhD Program

If you are reading this, you have likely made the decision to Apply to Graduate School, been accepted, Evaluated the Possible Programs, and made your decision about where to go. Now, it is time to look ahead to your first year. Below, we discuss several things to keep in mind involving what to expect and how to ensure that your first year in a PhD program is a success.

Adjusting to Graduate School
Undergraduate and graduate school are very different in terms of rigor, focus, and academic life. The key difference between graduate and undergraduate education is that, as a PhD student, your goal is to create new knowledge, while your goal as an undergraduate student was to learn existing knowledge. This shift requires you to change their way of thinking; coursework (and research) in graduate school should not be focused on summarizing or reproducing knowledge, but instead should always be adding something new to what currently exists, even in your very first year.

Graduate school is also more like a full-time job than traditional schooling; you will need to devote much more time to studying and research than you did as an undergraduate. Explicitly treating your graduate studies like a job can be helpful in setting boundaries between your personal and academic life and in setting expectations for both the minimum and maximum amount of time you should spend on school. Setting these habits and getting into the mindset of graduate school as a job early on in your program will help immensely later on.

Defining Your Research Interest
You likely came into your program with an idea regarding what research you want to conduct, but you will need to refine and rethink this idea as you progress through your program. This process will continue throughout your schooling, but it is important to get into the habit of continually rethinking and refining your research interests as you learn more and interact with the faculty and other students. In your first year, you will likely be taking several courses and, if in a STEM discipline, rotating through different laboratories to get to know potential advisors. As you do these things in your first year, take the time to reflect on how what you are learning might impact your research.

It is also important read and learn broadly in your first year, but you should always think of ways you can begin to narrow your research topic down; meeting with faculty members and potential advisors, whether as part of a laboratory rotation or coursework, can greatly help in this. In many programs, the second year is when you are expected to begin to seriously work on your own ideas for research, so doing as much of this work in the first year as possible can help set you up for future success.

Finding Your Advisor
Without a doubt, the most important part of graduate school is finding, and then working with, a good advisor who can mentor you throughout the many years you will spend in your program. Every program has a different process for selecting an advisor, and many people come into graduate school with an advisor already in mind, or sometimes even with an advisor already secured. Even if you think you know who you will want to work with, it is important to keep an open mind and get to know as many faculty members as possible, as sometimes you can make surprising connections. Check out our article on Choosing a Graduate Advisor for a detailed breakdown of how to make this important decision. Many programs will require you to make this decision by the end of your first year, and almost definitely by the end of your second year.

Selecting and Taking Classes
Every PhD program has different coursework requirements, with most social science and humanities programs requiring significantly more coursework, but most programs require close to a full courseload in your first year or two. The classes in your first year will be spent shoring up any gaps in your undergraduate education, and you should use them to get to know potential faculty advisors and to learn more about areas you might be interested in. Remember that having a clear focus is important in grad school and academia, so while some breadth of study is necessary, there should be a common theme linking your classes together to help you begin building a specialization.

Always Think About Publishing
Whatever one thinks about the current “publish or perish” climate in academia, publishing frequently in well-regarded journals is the basis of success in the academy. Given the lengthy process it can take to get a paper published in many reputable journals (often several months, and sometimes even a year) after writing it, you should begin thinking about how to get published in your first year of graduate school. While you may not be expected to publish in your first year, many STEM programs will expect publications beginning in your second year, and social science and humanity programs not long after. In STEM disciplines, your first publications will likely be the result of helping more senior researchers in your advisor’s lab, but to hit the ground running and avoid falling behind, you should begin thinking about how to conduct your own research program in such a way that it will produce publishable articles as soon as possible.

Many first-year classes and seminars, especially in the social sciences and humanities, are designed to work towards producing potentially publishable papers, and you should carefully select topics for final projects in your coursework that can eventually be built out into publishable papers. Generally, throughout your entire graduate school career, almost everything you do should be related, in some way, to publishing your research, especially if you want to stay in academia.

If you do not intend to stay in academia after finishing your program, publishing is somewhat less important. Instead, you should focus on developing particular methodological skills and expertise that will help you get a job in industry. Make sure you keep up with the current techniques and fields of study in the non-academic fields you are interested in, and make sure that you leave your program with the research skills that employers want, as well as a portfolio of projects to demonstrate that you have them. However, even if you plan to leave academia, publishing articles is often the best way to demonstrate that you have these skills, so publishing remains important.

The Second Year and Beyond
It is always important to keep your eyes on the future, so consider reading our articles on Making the Most Out of Graduate School and on Navigating Uncertainties During Your PhD as you continue working towards graduation and your future career.