First Person

Part Gatekeeper, Part Huckster

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By Frank Midler

In his third voyage, Jonathan Swift's Gulliver visits the island of Laputa, a land populated by geniuses of the abstract whose minds are so attuned to the movement of the stars and to geometrical science that they require "flappers," servants who will slap them across the face when their attention needs to turn to mundane things like food, shelter, or conversation.

The graduate-admissions season is in full swing, and as the new director of graduate studies in my department, I have found myself so overwhelmed with work this term that I need my own version of a flapper -- and it comes in the form of Microsoft Office notifications.

Tiny reminders pop up continually on my computer screen. And because I am as tethered to my machine as the Laputians were to the stars, I find myself startled by all kinds of reminders: "meet with the dean"; "graduate student needs forms signed"; "lecture by visiting scholar"; "write memo"; and so forth.

I engaged in my own little act of rebellion on a recent weekend, a sad attempt to spend 24 hours away from my computer. Given the nature of my administrative position, it is unsurprising that it was graduate students who bore the brunt of my folly.

I had agreed to moderate a panel at our Graduate Student Association's annual conference that weekend, and I had it in my mind that I was scheduled for 3:30 p.m. on the agenda. When I reluctantly flipped the lid of my laptop to figure out what room I had to go to, the Microsoft Office reminder in red, boldface type informed me that my panel had been at 10:30 that morning. "Attention! Overdue!"

I had purposely chosen a panel with presenters from other universities, hoping to serve as an ambassador and publicist for our graduate program. I scurried to the campus, readying apologies and ruing the day I had ever accepted the position.

I had been warned before taking the job that the admissions season would be the toughest and most sleepless part of the year. That has, indeed, turned out to be the case. I'm still in the midst of it. I've been able to clarify my views on graduate study in my discipline and more particularly the graduate program I'm directing, but I find myself sucked into petty details of the job. I worry that I'm turning out to be a version of Jimmy Carter: someone with the best intentions whose tendency to micromanage rendered his term in office unsuccessful.

The admissions season demands a Dr. Jekyll-and-Mr. Hyde approach to the applicants, some of whom will become our students next year. I've had to morph -- sometimes from one hour to the next -- between harsh gatekeeper, turning away a great majority of our applicants, to huckster, extolling the virtues of our program to the students we hope to lure to the campus.

I'm much more comfortable as huckster.

It wasn't that difficult to deny the many applications of perfectly bright students whose personal statements began with high-flown rhetoric concerning their love for the discipline and their success in school from an early age. That kind of personal statement tends to correlate with half-baked examples of scholarly work, barely revised from undergraduate classes. Those students write well and think clearly, but don't really understand the nature of graduate study.

On the other hand, there are the no-brainers, those applicants whose examples of scholarly work demonstrate mastery of the primary and secondary material in their proposed fields and independent critical thinking.

The more difficult problem was to choose a limited number of those students who fell somewhere in between.

Do we accept the student who got his M.A. from our institution five years ago, but put together a lousy application to our Ph.D. program? He was a good student then, but what induced him to put down as a proposed concentration a field in which none of our professors teaches or does research? (The answer here was a reluctant "no.")

What about the applicant who fit very well with our faculty's strengths, but whose materials were inferior to those of a string of candidates who were stuck on the alternate list for a more popular (but less well-staffed) subdiscipline? (The answer here? "Yes.")

Then there were the hard-luck cases: students who had been idling in our relaxed college town for some years, taking a few graduate courses while working at the vegetarian restaurant or a local gallery. Those students had inferior qualifications, but had forged ties with faculty members who had grown accustomed to their presence in seminars. Should they be admitted to full-time status? (I wish I had said "no" more often.)

As it turns out, I'm very happy with the group of candidates to whom we have offered places for the fall semester. About half of them have degrees from elite institutions, and the rest are outstanding students from regional colleges and universities.

They are split almost equally between men and women and scattered across the myriad of concentrations we offer in the discipline. Some are from our part of the country, but we have representation from all parts of the United States and a number of other countries. Most would come to us within five years of their undergraduate degrees, but there are a healthy number of students returning to advanced work after pursuing careers elsewhere.

What they all share is evidence of great potential, particularly displayed through samples of scholarly work that uniformly show promise, if not polish. Although it would break the bank, I want them all to accept our offers of admission and financial aid. We give them until April 15 to make up their minds, regardless of the fellowship package we're able to offer. If historical trends continue, 60 to 70 percent of them will be here in the fall.

Many of them will have competing offers. Other universities offer higher stipends or reduced teaching schedules. Our students regularly teach two courses every semester. Our typical stipend might be enough for a single person with no family responsibilities, but many students have children (or parents) to take care of.

I love life in our small college town, but I know that many prospective graduate students long for a more cosmopolitan setting. I can understand why some of our accepted candidates would choose to go elsewhere (or to go nowhere at all), but I know I will feel personally rejected with each "decline."

I'm readying my arguments and an avalanche of propaganda. We are, for the first time, holding an "event" for the students we're trying to bring here in the fall. We'll show them the campus and community; introduce them to our curriculum, our faculty members, and our graduate students; and answer any questions they might have. We've been able to offer partial reimbursement for travel to the campus as part of an effort to retain students and ensure higher degree-completion rates. (The thinking is that the better prospective students know us and know what graduate study here entails, the more likely they'll be to persevere when the going gets tough. Proper selection on both sides, followed by good mentoring and strong student work, will make everyone happier.)

It is remarkable how similar the graduate-application season is to the job market. By the time that doctoral students near the end of their programs, they forget how challenging it was to get there in the first place: the horror of months spent lining up recommendations and samples of scholarly work, and promoting themselves in two-page narratives, only to finally find release in the frantic e-mail messages from a graduate-studies director begging them to accept offers that should be more generous.

Most of us were loved once. Our applications to graduate school were successful. We had institutions offering us the moon. We had visions of days in the lab and nights in the bars. We pictured reading books in a carrel in a remote corner of the library by the fluorescent equivalent of candlelight. Or engaging in life-changing conversation in intense graduate seminars. We would drive to campus on a dusty (or rainy) day in August in the beat-up Plymouth Volare our parents never should have bought. Our hands would shake as we handed out a syllabus to a group of freshmen as scared as we were. They were going to learn something from us?

Driving down that memory lane, now in my stereotypically professorial Subaru, I recognize that I am still persuaded by those imagined circumstances, even though my own reality -- and that of everyone I know -- fails to live up to the fantasy.

I truly believe that even with unclear job prospects and the hassles of living in penury for five, or six, or seven years, it is a wonderful thing to be able to do advanced study and be paid for it. Graduate students have the opportunity to contribute to the knowledge of the world and to the education of the world's youth.

In my mind, I am an aging hippie advocating a laid-back world of neverending education. Could there be too much learning? Would our country be worse off if every taxi driver had a Ph.D.? Don't you think that we all should. ...

Aargh. You'll have to excuse me. A notice has just popped up on my screen reminding me to attend an hour-long workshop on the university's academic-integrity policy. Integrity calls, and hucksterism must take an afternoon off.