In the spring of 1771, a young James Madison was about to graduate from Princeton when he made a choice that many seniors today might understand — he asked President John Witherspoon to let him stay one more year, becoming the college’s first grad student.
Regardless of how many graduates may wish for more time on campus as they exit FitzRandolph Gate, few will re-enter as graduate students. Though there is no explicit policy against admitting Princeton undergraduates to the graduate program, there is “a prevailing sense among faculty in many departments that students are better served by experiencing the culture and approach of the field at a different, but comparably distinguished, university for their Ph.D. studies,” said William Russel, dean of the graduate school.
Shira Billet ’08 GS weighed that advice when she was choosing a doctoral program, but decided Princeton was the best fit: “The work that was being done in my subfield in the religion department was the kind of work that I wanted to participate in.”
Last year the graduate school enrolled a total of 64 undergraduate alumni. In the economics department, students are encouraged to go elsewhere for their doctoral degrees, said Professor Bo Honoré, director of graduate admissions. “As a very general statement, wanting to work with one’s undergraduate adviser sounds quite narrow-minded,” he said. No undergraduate alumni have returned for graduate work in English in at least a decade, said department chair William Gleason.
The sense that undergraduates should leave their alma maters to pursue doctoral work is common across many peer institutions, said chemistry professor Michael Hecht, although remaining for a master’s degree is more common. MIT, for instance, welcomes back many of its students to its master of engineering program.
The Woodrow Wilson School offers Princeton’s largest master’s program. John Templeton, associate dean for graduate admissions, said it’s a myth that Princeton undergraduates cannot return for policy school, but only about five apply each year.
The numbers at Princeton may be changing. In September a trustee committee on diversity recommended that the University encourage talented undergraduates to pursue graduate degrees at Princeton. Given efforts to diversify graduate enrollment, said Russel, “a thoughtful process for encouraging more Princeton A.B. and B.S.E. graduates [to apply] may be appropriate.”
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2 Responses
Charles Scribner III ’73 *75
8 Years AgoGoing Back – To Grad School
I read with great interest, appreciation, and nostalgia the Student Dispatch column by Carolyn Edelstein. Right after the Second World War, my dad (’43) had been invited back to Princeton, together with the future president Robert Goheen (’40 *48), to pursue a Ph.D. degree in classics. For family reasons (a publishing house), my dad was unable to accept. A generation later, he encouraged me to continue my art-history studies at Princeton, and I stayed on for a Ph.D. under my thesis adviser, John Rupert Martin.
Looking back 40 years later, I still consider it the best decision I ever made for what my dad called “the life of the mind.” I wouldn’t trade those two extra diplomas signed by President William Bowen *58 for anything. “Narrow-minded”? Arguably. (I applied only to Princeton’s graduate school; but then, I had applied four years earlier only to Princeton for college!) Yet I prefer to call it “focused on Princeton” — and that focus has never waned. Princeton remains, in Shakespeare’s lovely phrase, “the constant image.”
Fred Waage ’65
8 Years AgoGoing Back – To Grad School
I was most interested in the column by Carolyn Edelstein ’10 GS, “Going Back: When Undergraduate Alums Choose a Second Round at Princeton” (Student Dispatch, Jan. 8), and English department chair William Gleason’s statement to the effect that no departmental graduates had returned for graduate study in “at least a decade.”
In my era, it seemed there was an actual push for high-ranking English A.B. graduates to re-enroll as graduate students, and there was a designated, albeit meager, fellowship award to the individual readmitted. Since the highest-ranking A.B. graduate in my class chose to go elsewhere, I was offered the fellowship, and I chose to continue at Princeton.
With all due respect to my teachers, I share, based on personal experience, the “prevailing sense” among current faculty that a comparable but different institution, with different teachers, offerings, ideological orientation, etc., provides a much richer educational experience.
The same writers and literary approaches were in favor as in the previous four years; the same insularity ruled, with its dead white (male) bias; the same instructors taught the same subjects in the same way. A particular incident stands out: I and my then-wife applied to a program established to send white academics to teach one year in traditionally black Southern colleges. This didn’t work out, but as I remember, the Princeton English faculty who knew about it were shocked: “You don’t want to do that” was the general reaction.
Everything changes, including Princeton, but I would recommend that members of the Class of 2014 consider very deeply the benefits to be gained from graduate work in an entirely new intellectual and social environment.