Hacker News Reader

Comment by ramraj07 | Hacker News Reader

Do you seriously think Harvard grad school is in some ways culturally that different from any of today’s schools ?

Yes. I interviewed 10ish grad schools, and some were clearly more supportive than others. Either in terms of the personalities of professors, or in the policies around funding and graduation. I chose a school where I thought I would be happy as well as successful. And unlike many of my peers, I (and most of my cohort) graduated in a reasonable time without any of the horror stories so common in grad school.

My introduction to my "assigned" undergrad faculty advisor (freshman year) was him sitting down the 6 students that were his, explaining to us what tenure was*, and then telling us never to contact him and to talk to his grad student instead.

Somehow, I imagine he didn't treat his grad students much better.

At the end of the day, individual faculty members and department standards make a huge difference.

Mostly because faculty is too busy trying to make tenure or climb the political pole to dean to audit their colleagues.

* I have family in academia, so started to grok where this was going at this point.

I’m genuinely glad you stuck to those principles, and thank you for telling your story.

These kinds of things need to be heard more often so others can feel confident they aren’t alone in having ethics and have confidence in pushing back.

anecdata, but at least in my grad school astro department (which will go unnamed) this kind of bullying behaviour would be, and actually was, called out and ostracised, rather than rewarded! granted, it took a whole year for the university to get its act together and do something about it…

Yes, I remember there were a couple of prominent astro cases around the time I finished up my PhD. Glad to see that there was a good end result.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com