Psychology at Sweet Briar

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Why are some graduate students successful and others are not? Pure intellectual abilities--as measured by the GRE and reflected, to a certain extent, in undergraduate GPA--play a significant role, but there is more to graduate school success than raw brain power. Mental toughness, self-reliance, a desire to excel, and a commitment to scholarship are the essential personal characteristics of a student who can adapt to the rigor, stress, and often impersonal nature of graduate school. The successful graduate student is one who possesses both the intellectual abilities and the necessary personal characteristics. The following sets of characteristics of successful and unsuccessful graduate students in the social sciences were identified by Friedenberg and Roth (1954) from extensive self-report and interview data. Which of these characteristics do you possess? If you see yourself possessing more of the characteristics of unsuccessful than successful graduate students, are you willing or able to change some of your beliefs and feelings to increase your probability of graduate school success?