I'm with Snorlax also -- partly from my perspective of about 30 years in business/industry and my prior perspective of 10 years as a professor in academia.
I was struck just reading the initial statement on how narrowly focused it seemed to be on the relation of grad school to people who would later become academics. That was from a Dean whose own background was "Communication and Fine Arts", and so who likely has NO experience with people who either want or need to go to graduate school in order to pick up genuine knowledge and skills that they will need in order to perform at a high level outside of academia.
Then there was a lot throughout the various pieces about "research" and finding "the best graduate school". If graduate schools actually depended on students to think this way, most of them would be out of business and their faculties would be out of jobs.
There was a lot of other wonky advice and (perhaps worse) highly conflicting advice -- such as whether to proceed directly to grad school or to "wait" or "work" for a few years prior to grad school. There are some professions, and some disciplines, and some careers where if you decide to wait, then you'll be lost.
Then there's virtually senseless (I mean, literally, meaningless) advice like "Get a solid foundation in math." This is meaningless because ... well ... we have no idea what it means. A solid foundation in math for a professor of accounting is really pretty different than it is for a professor of high energy physics, and certainly very different than it is for a professor of "communication".
If I were considering graduate school, and I was reading these "recommendations", and I was supposed to take these people as representatives of the sort of folks I'd expect to find on the faculty in graduate school ....... I'd turn and RUN away from the idea of graduate school as fast as I could. Very little thought has gone into these snippets of advice, and it's not very good thought in general.
I have no idea (and can't get one from the site itself) who is behind this "The Graduate School Site" or why it exists, how it's being funded, or what the plan is to "monetize" it (surely there is one). The "articles" on it are authored by someone we can know only as "Travis". Fishy.
"We are curators of the wisdom of these wise and generous people." Yeah, right. But who are you, and why are you doing this? And what are your credentials? And who in their right mind would "contact" you about anything on the site?
Last edited by ghmerrill; 01-21-2020 at 02:51 PM.
Gary Merrill
Wessex EEb Bass tuba (DW 3XL or 2XL)
Mack Brass Compensating Euph (DE N106, Euph J, J9 euph)
Amati Oval Euph (DE 104, Euph J, J6 euph)
1924 Buescher 3-valve Eb tuba (with std US receiver), Kelly 25
Schiller American Heritage 7B clone bass trombone (DE LB K/K10/112/14 Lexan, Brass Ark MV50R)
1947 Olds "Standard" trombone (Olds #3)