In graduate school, it's not just about the grades you earn. It's about your desire to learn and grow. It's about the consistency and quality of your work. It's about persisting even when it gets tough or seems like irrelevant information. Click on the tabs to explore some of the main areas in which you'll need to step up your game academically.

PROFESSIONAL & ACADEMIC WRITING
RESEARCH
CRITICAL & HIGHER-ORDER THINKING

In graduate school, you'll write...a lot. It's important to recognize the two types of writing that you'll use:

Professional Writing

Professional writing will include anything that does not require formal APA (American Psychological Association) or MLA (Modern Language Association) formatting, citations, or references. It's important to remember that, even an email to your professor is worthy of draft and proof-reading, and is considered professional writing. In fact, even text-messages to your peers or professors should be viewed in this way, because all of your written correspondence will be a reflection on your professionalism.

Academic Writing

Academic writing is formal, will likely require a specific format (APA or MLA), and will require structure planning, researching, writing and revising, proof-reading (by someone else if possible), and likely more revision after receiving feedback from your professor. If the idea of formal academic writing scares you, just remember that it scares all of us! Everyone can learn this style of writing, and part of your journey in graduate school is perfecting this. We'll talk more about where to start and how to improve later in the course.

Research

To many, research sounds daunting and elusive. When you're just starting out, you won't likely be asked to "conduct" a research study (a complex process that usually takes place over several semesters), but will likely be asked to "review" research studies and summarize or formulate a hypothesis. This process will prepare you for actually conducting a research study later on by exposing you to various methodologies and seminal findings.

There are really only four steps for reviewing research:

Identify the topic you want to know more about.
Find information by using keywords and search strategies.
Evaluate the information you find and decide to use it or not.
Organize the information and document citations.

The best strategy for improving in this area is to read as many prior research studies as you can for your field of study. You will begin to see the terminology, writing style, and methods that are commonly used.

"Education is not the learning of facts, but training the mind to think." by Albert Einstein

The main goal we have for you in graduate school is to develop your ability to think. Your assignments, assessments, activities will require more than rote memorization and regurgitation. There are two areas of thinking that you can develop that will help you to master this in graduate school:

Critical Thinking

The definition of critical thinking is the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgment.

From the Foundation for Critical Thinking - Everyone thinks. But much of our thinking, left to itself, is biased, distorted, partial, uninformed, or even prejudiced. Critical thinking is our ability to "think about our thinking", and to improve the quality of our thinking by skillfully analyzing, assessing, and reconstructing it. Critical thinking is self-directed, self-disciplined, self-monitored, and self-corrective thinking. It entails effective communication and problem-solving abilities, as well as a conscience commitment to overcome our native egocentrism and sociocentrism.

A well-cultivated critical thinker:

Raises vital questions and problems, formulating them clearly and precisely
Gathers and assesses relevant information, using abstract ideas to interpret it effectively
Comes to well-reasoned conclusions and solutions, testing them against relevant criteria and standards
Thinks open mindedly within alternative systems of thought, recognizing and assessing, as need be, their assumptions, implications, and practical consequences
Communicates effectively with others in figuring out solutions to complex problems

Higher-Order Thinking

In addition to your awareness of your own thinking patterns, you'll need to apply high-order thinking strategies to your learning in graduate school. Here's what that means:

In graduate school, you will do a lot more creating, evaluating, and analyzing, to build upon the remembering, understanding, and applying that you during your junior or senior year of college. There will still be some of the lower-level thinking strategies for new knowledge, but the point is that graduate school takes things to the next level in the top-tier levels of thinking and learning.