Characteristics of Successful Graduate Students

• Prefer scholarly detachment.

• Favor competitive relationships.

• Express attraction to pure scholarship.

• Consider personal relations as secondary.

• Do not resent faculty's preoccupation with their research.

Characteristics of Unsuccessful Graduate Students

• Disturbed by competition.

• Relatively dependent on others.

• Consider the intellectual gratification of their work as trivial.

• Consider warm and friendly human interactions one of their urgent needs.

• Tend to be hurt by what they consider a lack of faculty interest in students.

"In sum, graduate work takes initiative, independence, perseverance, acceptance of responsibility, and a general freedom from emotional conflict and anxiety. The benefits of going to graduate school, especially a top-ranked school, are enormous, but they demand a high price in sweat and anxiety . . . Succeeding in graduate school requires years of single-minded dedication, much energy, individual initiative, and responsible independent study. We wish you well!" (Fretz & Stang, 1988, p. 79-81).