Graduate school, often abbreviated to “grad school,” is simply education beyond your bachelor’s degree. Our focus in this chapter will be Master’s degrees and Doctorate degrees; however, other types of post-baccalaureate education programs exist, as described in the box below.

Graduate school differs from undergraduate degrees in a number of ways, including the content, time to completion, how to graduate, expectations inside and outside of the classroom, financial aid, and scheduling.

Content

Graduate school tends to be more focused compared to your undergraduate coursework. In your Bachelor’s, you typically complete 60 credits (about 2 years) of General Education courses and another 2 years of major or minor coursework (see Chapter 2 for a refresher). In graduate school, most of your coursework is specifically focused on your chosen area of study. That is, a counseling student will take mostly counseling-related coursework and exceptions will typically still be related to the field, such as research methods. There are some programs, especially at the Master’s level, which may require students to engage with multiple subfields within psychology (e.g., Experimental Psychology programs) but students do not need to complete General Education courses or minors. The assumption is that because you have completed your Bachelor’s degree, you have already benefited from the foundational knowledge, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills developed by General Education courses.

Often, the most important work in a graduate program is not your classes but what you do outside of your classes. Many programs will require students to practice their developing skills in real-world situations. Depending on the area of study, this might look like designing and conducting research, completing an internship, or practicing therapy while under supervision. In some cases, these activities are required for graduation – such as a thesis or dissertation. In other cases, these activities help students meet the requirements for licensure in their field.

Not only are degree plans more focused, content-wise, but the content of a class itself is more focused. In your undergraduate psychology degree, you may take a Social Psychology class. In this Social Psychology class, you might spend one week covering stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination. When I, the author, was in my Social Psychology doctoral program, we had a single course called Prejudice, Stereotyping, and Discrimination. What took a week to cover in undergrad took a full 16-week semester in graduate school. Rather than skimming over major theories, a week in graduate school might focus on a single theory, the development of that theory, studies or alternative theories that contradict the original theory, etc. However, other courses are fairly similar in content to undergraduate courses, such as basic research methods and statistics courses.

Time to Complete

The time to complete a graduate program is often described as 2 years for a Master’s and 4-5 years for a doctorate. However, the time to complete varies and is not solely dependent on the completion of coursework. In your bachelor’s program, you are typically eligible to graduate when you have taken all the required courses for General Education, major and minor requirements, along with requirements like a total number of credit hours. As with your undergraduate degree, graduate programs will have specific requirements for coursework (see the box below) and these requirements generally come out to about 2 years for a Master’s and 4 for a doctoral degree. However, graduate students cannot graduate until they have completed other program requirements, which may include a thesis, comprehensive exam, or dissertation.

In graduate programs, students are expected to engage with their courses in a more professional manner than they may have approached their bachelor’s. This includes excellent attendance and preparation for classes. The minimum GPA to remain in a graduate program is often higher than that required for undergraduate programs – typically, a 3.0 is expected as a minimum, and course grades below a B are seen as a red flag. Every program differs in its exact requirements and what students can do if they do not meet them.

In addition to the higher expectations for attendance and grades, you may encounter a classroom structure that you have not encountered before – the seminar. A seminar course does not involve a professor lecturing at the front of a classroom while students take notes; rather, the professor and students sit in a circle and discuss the assigned readings, with the professor guiding the conversation and highlighting contributions and important points. When I was in graduate school, a typical seminar course involved 6 journal articles to read every week. A few days before class, I had to submit discussion questions or a response paper. When class consists only of 3 hours of discussion, it is very important to read and take notes on the assigned readings and to participate in every class. In these types of courses, exams are rare. Instead, students are often asked to complete large research papers or presentations at the end of the semester.

Many students are familiar with financial aid applications and the FAFSA from their undergraduate degree. Financial aid for graduate programs works similarly, though the amount of federal student aid that graduate students qualify for is less. For example, Pell Grants, which do not need to be repaid, are not offered for graduate programs (Federal Pell Grants, n.d.). Similarly, undergraduate students qualify for subsidized loans, where the government pays the interest on your loans until you are in repayment. For graduate students, only unsubsidized loans are available, which means that the interest on your loans accumulates while you are in school (Subsidized and Unsubsidized Grants, n.d.). There are other familiar sources of financial aid for graduate students, including state grants and scholarships.

Aside from state and federal government sources, graduate programs typically offer students other types of funding. This includes:

• Teaching assistantships – a paid position helping a professor with a course or teaching a lab section
• Research assistantships – a paid position helping a professor conduct research
• Fellowships – Financial support that is not tied to a teaching or research position
• Classroom instruction – teaching a class by yourself as the instructor of record

Sometimes – most commonly for Ph.D. programs – these funding sources also come with a tuition waiver, which means that the student is not required to pay tuition. These waivers might be for only a year at a time or guaranteed for up to 6 years, depending on the program. However, you may still be required to pay student fees even if you do not pay tuition.

In addition to funding from the government or university, graduate students are also able to apply for fellowships and scholarships that are not tied to their university. This includes the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Fellowship Program (https://www.nsfgrfp.org/). This competitive fellowship is intended to support students in research-based graduate programs (NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, n.d.). This is an excellent idea for seniors and 1st or 2nd-year graduate students who have a specific research project in mind. A similar fellowship is the Ford Foundation Fellowship Program, which provides 3 years of funding for doctoral students from underrepresented groups (National Academies, n.d.). Other sources of funding can include the American Psychological Association (see here for a list of graduate scholarships, grants, and awards) and other professional organizations.

Scheduling 

Class schedules in graduate school vary, depending on the program. Some programs, especially doctorate programs, expect students to be in school full-time and classes will be scheduled during business hours (e.g., Monday – Friday, 8:00 am – 5:00 pm). Other programs, especially at the Master’s level, will be geared towards working adults and will hold classes primarily in the evenings and on weekends. A full-time schedule looks a little different from a full-time schedule in an undergraduate degree, however. In many places, a full-time course load is 12 or more credits. Your typical undergraduate psychology course is 3 credits, so undergraduate students usually take 4-6 classes a semester if they are full-time. In graduate school, a typical class is 4 credits, and graduate students are often required to complete a certain number of course credits devoted to research or internships. Because of this, a graduate student might take only 2-3 content-related classes a semester and fill the remaining load with credits for their other responsibilities.

This is not much different from getting course credit for internships or being a research assistant in your undergraduate degree, but the level of involvement in internships, field experiences, or research is much greater. A graduate student who is enrolled in two classes (let’s say, Group Counseling and Play Therapy) and 4 credits of internship credit is likely expected to spend 12 or more hours a week working in their internship. A Ph.D. student who is close to graduation will likely be expected to spend 32 hours a week devoted to research-related tasks – practically a full-time job!