In this episode, I share about how and why I deferred grad school and what I wish I did instead. I also share some tips based on my experience for graduate school applicants who want to defer.
A topic not addressed often in grad school is deferring grad school. A lot of common topics are how to get into grad school, how to apply, how to find a group, how to do rotations. But deferrals are not really mentioned and that’s probably because not many schools offer it and also not many people take it. And then at the end of the day, of the people who do take it, not many of them have podcasts. Deferring a grad school acceptance means you’re accepted, but you delay enrollment for a specific time period. Sometimes people call this a gap year.
Why I Wanted to Defer Grad School
There are many reasons to defer. You could have personal goals or life goals, mental health reasons, financial reasons. And in my story, it’s some combination of all of the above. I was a super senior, so that means that I took an extra semester after my senior year to graduate. In this final semester, I mostly applied for jobs, and I actually didn’t even think about the possibility of grad school.
Honestly, the reason why I didn’t think about grad school at all was because of my stats. So my GPA was about a 3.3 and my GRE score was slightly better than average. I think I was just lucky to have known the right people at the right time and be in the right place because I learned about a preview weekend at UW Madison. And this preview weekend is called Chemistry Opportunities.
A preview program, if you are not familiar, allows you to see a school before you apply, which is different than most schools. Usually, other schools, you can only see them after you apply once you’ve gotten in. And so at this preview weekend, I learned about applying to grad school. I met some professors and I basically, like, toured the city, imagined what it could be like to go to grad school. And at the end of the program, they gave me a fee waiver.
Now, I didn’t seriously intend to apply at all until they gave me a fee waiver. And so my thought was, okay, well, it’s free, so I’ll just apply for fun. And again, I didn’t think I would get in because UW Madison chemistry is ranked like top 10. And I was thinking I was maybe like, you know, top 100 type of material, if even. And at the end of that semester, I got a job offer upon graduating around October to start in January.
And I was really proud of myself that I got a job right away, right after graduating. And it was a relief to not have to think about more school and academic stress and that I could kind of take a mental break. I was also concerned about finances if I went to grad school, so working allowed me to start saving and investing money, which I talk more about on my podcast episode with Dr. Emily Roberts of the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast.
So now it’s January and I’ve totally forgotten about my application to UW Madison. My first day of work was 01/07/2019 and it was mostly orientation, meeting everyone, getting paperwork completed and, you know, getting settled in. I was really excited about starting a new job and all the new skills I could learn there.
When I got home from work and ate after eating dinner with my family, I went back to my room and I checked my email. And then I see in my inbox, 01/07/2019, 5:51 PM. “Congratulations on your offer to the chemistry PhD program at UW Madison. Dear Brittany, congratulations. The graduate admissions committee in the department of chemistry at the University of Wisconsin Madison is delighted to offer you admission to our program. Our review of your application suggests that you are an excellent match for our program, and we look forward to having you join us in Madison in fall 2019.”
I sat there in shock. I never expected to get in, and somehow, I also got a fellowship award, which was a really big surprise. I really thought I was just throwing my application into the ether. But now, I was really confused. I literally just started my job. Like, what was I supposed to tell them? Like, Hey, by the way, just kidding. I don’t want to work anymore. I’m going to go to grad school in August.
How I Deferred Grad School
I think I’m kind of a greedy person in the sense that I want every single possible opportunity to work out if I can help it. I started looking on the department website to see if it’s possible to defer your acceptance like you would for college. And then I found an FAQ page and scrolled, scrolled, scrolled, scrolled. At the end, a very short question. Do you offer deferrals in your graduate program? Yes, we offer deferrals up to two years. So this is it. This is my solution. But now I was wondering, like, how am I supposed to go tell them this? Even though it’s on their website, I don’t know how relevant it still is or if it’s still active and how the entire process works.
For all grad school acceptances, they typically invite you to the school to check out the university, the city that you’re going to live in. And so in March, I took PTO from work, really secretly, to go to this visit weekend and to try to get an answer from the graduate program coordinator. So my plan for the weekend was number one priority, find the grad program coordinator at a good time during the visit weekend and ask her about this deferral process.
The problem is visit weekends are usually jam packed with events, and I needed to be strategic. One of the first events was a poster session with drinks, and so I thought this was the perfect time to find her and ask her about this. I was really nervous to talk to her though because I didn’t want to seem ungrateful. I wasn’t sure if they would approve, even though it said so on their website.
When I approached her, I said, Hello. It’s so nice to meet you in person. I’m really excited to be here and to be accepted. I never really thought I would get in. But I wanted to ask you about a personal issue. I just started my job and I’m not sure if I wanna enroll this fall yet because there’s still a lot for me to learn and do at my job. On the department website, I read that deferrals could be an option. Is that still possible?
And she said, oh, yeah. We do this all the time. So many students get industry experience before they go to graduate school, and it makes them better prepared for grad school because they have a clearer idea of what they wanna do and what they wanna get out of grad school. So totally, we can defer your acceptance. We’ll just follow-up with you next year and then the year after that and depending on how long you want to defer. And whenever you’re ready, we’ll be more than happy to accept you again.
I was so relieved to hear this because I wasn’t sure what she was gonna say and I was also very glad that she reassured me to say that I wasn’t the only one who asked for a deferral, so they already had some process in place for this. So later that year, fall twenty nineteen, she followed up with me as she said, and asked me if I was ready yet. And at that point, I had only been at my job for a little less than a year, and I thought that there was still a lot more for me to learn and do. So I said, Thank you for following up, but I don’t think I will be ready to enroll yet, so I’d like to defer for another year. And she said, Awesome, check-in with you next year. And sure enough, next year, fall twenty twenty, she followed up and asked me again. And we all know what happened in 2020. And so this time I said, Yes. Now I feel ready.
How I Enrolled in Grad School After Deferring
During that time, I realized there’s a lot more I need to learn about polymers. I can’t necessarily do it at my job. And so now it seemed like grad school was the right place to do this and that’s what I ended up doing and I officially accepted and got my acceptance letter. The deferral process for every school and department is different, and so I would highly encourage you to look into the department or the school and ask a lot of questions to the graduate student coordinator if it’s not already on their website.
Do an extensive search of the university policies if they’re written and available and updated well. And if it’s not listed on their website, sometimes it is just a good idea to email and ask. And the worst that they can say is that they don’t offer this option. I only recently realized that the deferral process is actually a little bit tricky. When I was going through this process, I could tell a little bit from my side that it was a little complicated.
Recently, a faculty member graduate program coordinator is and how good they are about following up on you and keeping records of that. When I was doing my deferral process, I had to still fill out an application, even though they had my application originally. I filled up a second one when I finally wanted to enroll for record keeping purposes. But then I didn’t get an official offer letter, and so that’s when I started to feel worried. I followed up with the graduate coordinator multiple times and after some back and forth, it turns out they kind of mixed up my application or got lost since I wasn’t in the normal cohort of applications.
Once I was officially in, I also wondered if it was possible to negotiate my fellowship award that I had received before. Negotiate is not really the right word, but I felt nervous about asking for something even though I was offered it previously. And again, I didn’t want to seem ungrateful because they already let me defer and maybe this money was already allocated to a new student. You know, funding sources change. I don’t know. But I still felt like I should just ask in case. Fortunately, they held their offer for the fellowship award, and it was also adjusted for inflation, which was nice. So I’m really glad I pushed through that uncomfortable feeling and asked about the award and made sure that I got what I wanted and needed.
If you choose to defer your grad school acceptance, make sure that you document your communications with them and ask all the questions to make sure that you get what you need. Even if they allow you to defer a year or two, ultimately, it’s in your hands to get the process going back up when you are ready to enroll. Grad program coordinators are often very busy juggling many people and issues that they can’t keep track of your individual issue at all times. They might not have you front of mind, but you need to have you front of mind.
Pros and Cons of Deferring Grad School
Now that I’ve been in grad school for about four years, I’ve reflected on the pros and cons about different grad schools and have some thoughts on what I wish I’ve done instead. So what are the pros?
Number one, it gave me the opportunity to work and save money, and as I previously mentioned, I talk more about this in detail on the personal finance for PhD podcast with Doctor. Emily Roberts.I was really concerned about a graduate school stipend and not having an emergency fund and I didn’t want my parents to be worried about me when I moved away and I didn’t want to rely on them in the case of emergency because, you know, we’re always like one or two major emergencies away from like being in a really tough place financially. And so during the time I was working, I spent a lot of efforts saving money, investing, learning about personal finance, seeing what I could do to get everything in order to be better prepared for graduate school.
The second thing is that I was actually pretty burnt out by the last semester of my undergrad, so working for this time kind of gave me a mental break. The last year or two of my undergrad was pretty tumultuous. I went through a lot of challenges and it was a really tough time. And so working, even though it was still work, it still felt like a break because it was just less intense, than grad school probably would have been. I was able to heal and maybe recover a little bit from that time as an undergrad, and I was able to explore my other interests, like starting a website business and doing a bunch of other things
One of the downsides of taking those gap years between undergrad and grad school is that when things got difficult in my PhD, my immediate first thought was, was going to grad school the right choice? Did I make a mistake in quitting my straightforward, well paying chemistry job to move over a thousand miles away from my family, my partner, my friends, to do a PhD to feel inadequate every day in my research to be paid way less, to potentially graduate into a bad economy where scientists are not valued. I could have been saving money, traveling the world or reaching other life milestones. I’m very guilty of slipping into this line of thinking pretty often, but what I’ve learned is it’s not really that productive at all to be ruminating on this.
Reflections on Deferring Grad School
After some reflection, here’s what I wish I did instead. I wish that I didn’t rely entirely on this deferred acceptance as a crutch. I wish that in addition to applying to other grad schools, I also looked for other jobs, where I could have learned the skills that I wanted to learn.
Maybe it wasn’t necessarily grad school that I wanted to do, but maybe a change in environment where I could learn more. I also thought that I could have taken more initiative to learn more on my own at my previous company. Maybe if I had been more diligent about that, that could have satisfied my curiosity and grad school wasn’t entirely necessary for that. But maybe also the ending would have been the same. Maybe I would not have been satisfied with just learning on my own. Maybe I really wanted to have this grad school experience for all its ups and downs.
I stand by my decision because I decided what was best for me based on what I knew and wanted at the time. I spent those gap years preparing for grad school emotionally, financially, mentally. Despite all the things that I have gone through and experienced here, I truly don’t have any regrets because I really wanted to have this very specific life experience. I knew that if I was on my deathbed and I didn’t do this, I would always wonder, what if? And now there’s no wondering what if anymore.
Brittany’s Music Box
Today’s addition to Brittany’s Music Box is Brahms Op. 118 No. 2 in a major. This piece means a lot to me because I learned this piece in high school as part of my piano exams. And when I learned it in high school, Brahms felt very complex to me and I couldn’t really understand what I was playing. Like I knew the notes, but the emotions were not really there. And I think that with time, now that it’s been ten years, this piece, I finally understand it.
The piece holds a lot of nostalgia and bittersweetness that I could not have really understood as an 18 year old, honestly. And I find myself reaching for this piece whenever I feel homesick or doubtful, and I want to be comforted. So usually I reach for this piece to play it. My playing is rusty. In some ways, it’s better than when I was 18 in the sense that I can now feel that emotion that the piece is trying to evoke. But technically, I’m still not super strong or as strong as I used to be. I encourage you to take a listen to Brahms opus 118 number two, and let me know what you think of the piece.
Do you also feel the same kind of nostalgia, or bittersweetness? I think when I have time, I will try to practice this piece a little bit more and hopefully get it recorded because I actually don’t have a lot of recordings of my playing published anywhere, and I think it would be kind of cool to share it. That’s a project for another day. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode or want to share your perspective about this episode’s topic, I’d love to hear from you on LinkedIn. Feel free to tag me in a post or send me a message. I’ll see you in the next one.
Brittany Trinh 