My experience is that they won’t let you in if they think you will fail so, while its hard work and some people decide that its not worth it, the vast majority of people get through. This applies to the point that most university departments see it as a failing on their part should someone submit a thesis and not pass.
It’s very easy to flunk out. In principle, just one C will do it, although you can petition to be readmitted. But two Cs is a definite no-no. You fail the qualifying exam, although they will usually give you a second chance. Then many doctoral students get nowhere in research and drop out.
FWIW, I will mention that I found grad school very easy since I didn’t have to take any courses but math and that was always easy for me. I had all As in my undergrad math courses too, but lots of Bs and maybe a C here or there.
My qualifying exams were internal to the department and, in the case of the oral, the grad school. They weren’t transcripted, even after passing them. Interestingly, one of my language proficiency exams was transcripted, but not both.
No. We called it “leaving with the Master’s consolation prize.” And a fair number of people I knew left before completing their dissertation, but having done enough that they could take a Master’s degree with them (but not the Ph.D.). And actually anyone who knew the program would know that’s what happened, since my particular program did not admit for a terminal Master’s degree, but in practice it doesn’t necessarily come up.
The person I referred to before who flunked his qualifiers didn’t, I think, have all the credits he needed for a Masters, so he would probably have just left. It didn’t show up on his transcript, but neither did it show up that he had passed his qualifiers (I don’t think quals explicitly showed up, but I had a different research credit on my transcript, I forget exactly but something like “Dissertation research” instead of “Graduate research” or something like that, after I passed my orals.)
The qualifier exam is not for credit, nor is it attached to any class. It is simply a hurdle which must be passed to proceed in the program. As such it does not show up on the GPA one way or another.
The dissertation is also not for credit. However, as I noted above, I would actually take “Dissertation research” (or whatever it was called) for a certain number of credits every semester, and I guess if I did no work my advisor could in principle flunk me for this “class.” In practice I don’t think this ever happened; you’d probably get booted out or decide to leave yourself before a professor had to resort to that.
No.
I think the OP is under the impression that the goal of graduate school is simply to accumulate a certain number of credits, at which point you’ve earned the degree. It’s not like that–instead, the goal is to produce a substantive and original piece of scholarship. It’s really a completely different animal, to the point where I don’t even like to refer to it as school.
That’s my experience. Undergrads get admitted by the university, but grad students get admitted by the department.
There is also the point that in grad school you pretty much only take stuff in your major which you are theoretically good at.
When I was at Illinois in CS the quals consisted of about five sections, and you only had to retake one you didn’t pass - which was expected, since in those days CS was fairly new, and lots of people same in with different backgrounds. They were mostly incentives to take classes in areas you were weak in.
Now some people did fail them, and others never quite made it through, but in no case was this undeserved.
Also, a lot of classes you take as a PhD student are seminars, and if you do your presentations right you pretty much get As.
I have no idea of what my GPA was in grad school - it was totally irrelevant.
Graduate school is diverse it is really hard to make blanket statements. But yes in harder disciplines people in your cohort will be dismissed, leave or flunk out. For example in math intensive subjects like statistics, physics, economics etc the attrition rate depending on school can be between 10-30% (this is pre-qualifying). Likewise the people receiving Phd’s is sometimes less than 50% of the starting class. There can be a multitude of reasons, outside life problems, grades, motivation, qualifying, thesis etc.
Depending on the philosophy of the university, attrition is built into funding. For example in many schools ( at least in Canada) marks are force distributed. This means someone is leaving like it or not. Normally with a large enough class size this is not a problem, since the spread of scores will be large enough to make a statistically informed decision. Problems do arise when the class the is less than 10 people. Depending on the size of the department, this may be none or all of your classes.
Lastly the whole grades don’t matter, show up, do the work and you will get an A is mostly a myth. For pre qualifying type classes at a competitive university, you will work hard for a B or A. The grading scale in grad school doesn’t compare nicely with undergrad. You have a inherent selection bias in grad school since you had to apply and be accepted. This does not mean everyone is equal. Some people are naturally smarter, have better education, have more time to devote etc.
If you are really interested some universities will publish their attrition rates for incoming master/phd students. At the end of the day universities are a learning institution, but also a business. They don’t stay in business by subsidizing nonperforming graduate students.
Also I should add, the way most mainstream graduate programs are set up are not like undergrad. There are taught master graduate degrees which would resemble higher level undergrad, but these are uncommon and the wrong path for PhD study (terminal degrees). The most common is a MSc/Mphill which includes some class work and thesis. Then on to Phd.
The only reason why you take any course in graduate school is to further your learning and ultimately help with your thesis/research. At the Phd you are assumed to be an expert in your field and can contribute something at the highest professional level.
Anecdotal evidence but my buddy is receiving his Phd in Astrophysics next year. He had a total of 0 required classes to graduate. He of course took 4 or 5 courses to expand his knowledge base and help with his research. Once you pass the qualifying the hardest part is staying motivated and finishing your Phd thesis.
People rarely flunk out by getting Ds and Fs in coursework. On the PhD level, what happens (in the humanities, at any rate) is you finish all your coursework, 3 or 4 years worth, with whatever grades, and then every semester you have to keep paying a fee to continue your status as an active grad student while passing your area exams (sometimes called Orals, because that’s how they are administered). You also have to pay that fee after passing your area exams while you write your dissertation, which could take years, and you have to submit and re-write that dissertation until your board passes it, which could take years. If you’ve submitted your dissertation and gotten it bounced back to you repeatedly, and/or if you’ve failed your area exams several times, you still won’t flunk out as long as you keep paying that fee to keep your active status as a grad student.
I’ve seen some students who were paying that fee when I entered my Ph. D. who were still paying it when I got my Ph.D. and for all I know are still paying it today. But they’ll never get their Ph.D.s, and have probably been advised informally to pack it in and move on with their lives. After a point, which they’ve passed long ago, it doesn’t really matter: no one will hire anyone whose resume shows them to have taken 10 years to get a doctorate, and I’m sure they can’t get anything better than a very tepid letter of recommendation from their dissertation advisor, so they’ll never get a job teaching or doing research anyway.
All of the following is about work for a Ph.D., since I don’t know much about the work for a law, medical, or business graduate degree: Grad school was considerably harder than college for me. There was hard work in most undergraduate classes, but there was also a reasonable amount of time for socializing. It’s expected that you will do a certain amount of socializing in college. You probably won’t have to worry so much about finances as an undergrad. You probably won’t have to have a job as an undergraduate.
On the other hand, there was simply no way for me to go to grad school without having to work as a teaching assistant for twenty hours a week. The competition from other students was much harder in the classes. My estimate is that only about half the people who start on a Ph.D. finish their degrees. Sometimes the reason they quit is that they can’t do well enough in the classes. Sometimes it’s because they can’t pass the qualifying exams. Sometimes it’s because they can’t finish their thesis. Sometimes they just decide that they don’t want to spend several more years on their lives in such a state of stress. My memories of grad school are of a long sleep-deprived blur. There was simply no time for socializing.
What I don’t think I’ve seen mentioned yet is that, in some graduate programs, many or all of the grad students will have (teaching or research) assistantships that cover tuition and some living expenses, for which there may be requirements such as maintaining a certain minimum GPA or passing qualifying exams within a certain amount of time. If you’re not making sufficient progress, you may not flunk out per se, but you may lose your assistantship, which can amount to somewhat the same thing.
Flunking out of law school is very difficult, for four reasons:
1.) As others have said about grad school in general, the barriers to entry are very high. Getting into a decent law school requires a solid undergrad GPA, letters of recommendation, LSAT score and so on. If you have it together enough to handle this, you can probably handle law school classes, especially since -
2.) Grade inflation is rampant. Classes are generally curved around a “B”, and sometimes ever higher. Further,
3.) There isn’t all that much graded coursework. Oh, there’s plenty of reading, and especially in your first year, you’ll work like a wildly over-educated dog. But most courses are graded on a single final exam, or perhaps a couple of papers; there isn’t an ongoing committment to produce work on a steady basis. Finally,
4.) The most important things you’ll do in law school earn a lot of academic credits, but tend to be automatic “A” grades. For example, in my second year of law school, I taught constitutional law to high school students. The seminar associated with this program carried six credits (over the course of the year) - there really wasn’t any substance to the seminar, because no one much cared about anything beyond teaching the kids. But the administration insisted that we get academic credit, and so we did - automatic “A” for six credits. The next year, I worked in a litigation clinic - 12 credits over the course of the year, never less than “A.”
Don’t get me wrong - we worked hard in these programs, as expected. But the grades weren’t really tied to any measurable outcome, and they skewed GPAs significantly.
Undergrad and graduate students are generally two different animals.
Many undergrad students are still finding their way in the world and are learning the skills to succeed in university. They have many competing priorities and often aren’t sure if they’re doing the right thing.
Most graduate students are mature, have succeeded in their undergraduates careers and understand what it takes to succeed at university. They have made a conscious decision to move forward in a focussed field and are willing to work to meet that goal.
Given the difference between these two types of students, there’s little wonder that graduate students find it easier to succeed and seem less stressed.
In undergrad, if you suddenly stop going to class chances are no one will fight you. You might get a few emails from a concerned prof, but overall there are a lot of students to take care of and they’re used to undergrads flunking out for a variety of reasons. You’re just one more in a long line of students that couldn’t figure out the whole “party on the weekends, class during the week” routine. They’ll cash your check and smile as they show you to the door.
Grad school (at least in a research/thesis-based program like mine) is a different game. Instead of pumping money into the system, you’re probably getting paid a stipend by the university. At best you’re cost neutral, but chances are you’re costing the U money somehow. You will have a much closer relationship with your advisor - think of him as a boss, not a teacher. He pays your stipend, lets you use his lab/fancy equipment for research, signs your travel reimbursement forms, and is presumably an expert in your field. As such, you want to keep him impressed, or at least keep him happy/off your tail. If you fail, he will look bad. So I’m saying there is pressure to succeed. And if you flunk out, people will be PISSED.
I went to grad school three times. MBA (Virginia Tech) MS Computer Science (Georgia Tech) and MS Decision Science (Georgia State). I really struggled to keep up at Georgia Tech. But I was working a really demanding job at the time, missed a lot of classes, etc. And there were folks flunking out. No one in the. MBA program seemed to struggle except in a couple or required quantitative courses. Most other classes it was a matter or working hard and trying for an A or sailing through for a B. My funding depending on me being in the top 10% I was always looking for the A. But I still had a lot of slack.
I know lots of grad students. It’s the MBA types who are not worried about flunking out.
Getting my M.S.W. was absolutely brutal - I had four courses and an unpaid internship that kept me occupied 24 hours a week, so it was not uncommon to spend 60 or so hours weekly on grad school stuff. It wasn’t the academics that were so hard, it was the sheer amount of work that was expected for the program. 500-800 pages of reading a week. 1-2 papers/projects due every week. Final projects were grueling - I literally worked 6am to midnight every day for seven days straight. I think I aged five years in two.
It wasn’t a matter of ‘‘Can I pass?’’ it was a matter of, ‘‘How much more am I willing to suffer in order to pass?’’ (With the exception of a child welfare policy course with the Dean of our school, who is an expert in his field - I really thought I was going to fail that class.)
I had a classmate who was an economics Ph.D., and he mostly felt like he was just twiddling his thumbs. This leads me to believe that the difficulty of these programs vary dramatically.
My husband is a Ph.D. student in clinical psychology, currently working on his dissertation and waiting to complete his internship. It has been sheer hell for him (and me, too, to be honest, because it’s hard to see someone you love suffer.) Again, it’s not the nature of the work but the sheer quantity of it. His experience makes my M.S.W. look like a walk in the park.
Wow, wish I had gotten the memo that grad school was supposed to be easier than undergrad!
I sailed through high school, 3.8 gpa without much effort. College took a bit more, what with studying abroad, doing a senior thesis, effortful reports, and comprehensive exams my senior year. I still got by with a 3.5 gpa. It was significantly more stressful than high school particularly due to the college I chose, I believe.
It did help prep me for graduate school (going into Speech Language Pathology.) Unlike the other two, I can honestly say that I’ve worked my ass off for my grades. Currently holding a 3.9 but I know that’ll drop due to one extremely terrible, pointless class. 
Anywho, I think it’s a whole 'nother ball game compared to undergrad. No more underwater basket weaving classes, these are all (for the most part) classes I’ll be using in my field- talk about incentive for memorizing this stuff! I have diagnostic reports, pamphlets to make, presentations to give, summaries to write, tests to take, material to memorize, 25 hours of observation to get in on my own time, the clinical readiness test, the PRAXIS exam…the list goes on and on. All this while trying to exercise, get enough sleep, balance a social life, work, and trying to give myself some breathing room.
In the fall I’ll be working in the clinic. From what I’ve been told it’s 32 hours a week with no pay, I’ll practically be living on campus. Along with the pressure of schoolwork, the constant feeling that everyone knows more than you, the pressure you place on yourself to do your best for the patients and not come off as completely inept…Yeah, it’s significantly more intimidating and tougher than undergrad. Back then I thought “Who the hell could flunk out of school? This is just a continuation of high school only a tad tougher!” but with grad school I think it could be much easier. As you’re older, life can attack you from different angles- financially, family problems, transportation problems, you name it. You have to get a B or higher or else you must retake the class, and you only get to retake a class once I believe. You can get kicked out for failing a class twice or displaying poor conduct. There are some days where I don’t want to get out of bed, I have so much to tackle. I could see it being easy for someone to just continue with that feeling and drop out.
I’m an MBA student and there’s only two classes in my program that are hard, Corporate Finance and the capstone course, Strategy and Policy or something like that. In my other classes, I just show up and collect my B. I’ve thought most of it was a whole lot easier than undergrad. Each class has been a broad overview of courses that had previously taken 2 or 3 semesters. Most of my professors have emphasized not needing to know formulas and specifics, just the concept of what’s going on.
It’s also good to keep in mind, the emphasis in grad school is really not so much on grades. For most grad programs I know, an A is the equivalent of an A or B in undergrad, whereas a B is receiving a C. Anything lower than that is basically failing. It’s not unusual for many grad students to pull a 4.0 GPA, as it is generally much easier to have perfect grades in grad school than undergrad.
The real challenge, then, is the skill-building, whether that’s learning how to be a good clinician or writing a kick-ass dissertation. That’s what the school cares about.
Generally speaking, grad school is a metric shit ton of work, but the retention rate is pretty high (it was something like 98% with my program.) The process of getting in is kind of an ordeal in and of itself, and schools tend to only accept candidates that they think have a high likelihood of completing the program.
Hmm. When I was in grad school (academic humanities), a ‘B’ essentially meant ‘GTFO’. An A- was mildly punitive, meaning you needed to get your shit in gear, and a B was a subtle hint that you weren’t cut out for this and that no one was going to support your application for candidacy, nudge nudge, there’s the door; if you didn’t have a 4.0, or at least a 3.8 (from getting a humiliating B+ in Latin or something) it was a bit of a sign that this was not your scene. Once one of our fellow students got a C+ and we all gasped in horror.