Reply to Possible to get into a great grad school/become a prof at a highly-ranked college

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]FWIW, doing well in grad school is generally more about the quality and quantity of research and about your advisor being willing to go to bat for you (and having a good rep within the field) than about grades or coursework.  [/quote]

Disagree. Grades are very important. Most STEM programs fund their doctoral students and do not want to waste that money on a kid who will not complete the program (which MANY doctoral students do not). [/quote]

Not sure whether you misread what I wrote (doing well IN grad school vs getting into grad school) or whether we actually disagree.  And if we disagree, I wonder why. My info is based on my own experience getting a social science PhD (decades ago) and my DC’s current experience as a PhD student in a STEM field. We both had excellent undergrad GPAs from elite colleges and went to highly-ranked Departments for our PhDs and were offered guaranteed full-funding for 4 -5 years when we were admitted. I’ve also been involved in PhD admissions and advised PhD dissertations as a jr faculty member at a t20 university. In all cases, PhD coursework was graded on a very truncated scale (basically A to B+) and courses largely served to introduce grad students and faculty to each other and enable grad students to establish a relationship with a dissertation advisor and develop a topic. When I was a (non-STEM) grad student, it was interesting to note that being an excellent student (i.e. knowing how to get top grades in coursework) was no guarantee of research success. Basically, excellent students are good at recognizing and following/mastering other peoples’ intellectual agendas. Doing cutting-edge research (which, in theory, is what it takes to get/keep the kind of job OP aspires to) requires you to forge a new path of your own (and convince others in the field that the work you are doing is innovative/important/transformative). Very different skillsets.[/quote]

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