Romancing the Grad Student

Here we go again. Another wave of Recruitments will arive at UCSF in a few days. Like a bunch of matrons preparing for a debutante ball, anticipation and excitement rush through the faculty. Here at UCSF, a purely grad university, graduate recruitment is taken very very seriously.

A cadre of carefully handpicked candidates, from the hundreds that apply, will be flown into the city of San Francisco. They will be put in luxurious comfortable hotels, probably the first time some of them have experienced such luxury. Once ensconced in their comfortable hotels, and after sight-seeing the city, a couple of intensive days are scheduled.

These kids, with their freshly-scrubbed faces and newly-minted bachelor degrees, now partake in an elaborate ritual. Each of them will undergo a long series of interviews with a series different professors. In the interviews, the professors will try to delve behind those sparkling cv's, stratospheric sat scores and gushing personal essays, to see if, indeed, they have the right stuff. The right stuff, that is, to slave away for the next five years. For the kids who are accepted, they are the clay for these masters of science to mold into the next generation of scientists. What are they looking for? A sharp mind, passion, acuity, but most of all, the ability to submit.

Submission? These kids might think they've been treated like royalty, but little do they realise that, for the calculating professors tenured at ucsf, those who end up here, will provide el cheapo research-per-dollar. Research can be counted in real dollar terms. An top research school like UCSF is judged on its research. This can be measured in terms of papers published in big journals, and on the number of citations. High-quality incoming students will provide the best shock-troops in the battle for the research dollar.

For the next five years, the kids who choose grad-school will watch their friends from college who did law or engineering, one by one, begin to find jobs and earn vastly more money than they. They will suffer the iniquities of being a shit-kicker, but do research that may grace the most prestigous science journals, whilst working hours that might even make a lawyer blush. Of course, this will not dawn on them until far into the future.

Meanwhile, the magic is to make all these worries dissappear. The trick is alcohol. High class catering companies are called in and liberal amounts of alcohol will be served. During the next few days, there will be reception after reception. Waiters in tuxedos and white gloves will pour glass after glass of medium quality wines (after all, what does a 21 year old really know about wine?). Roasted meats, sweetmeats, hors d'oeuvres, cakes will be provided in obscene mountainous piles. This is obscene mainly because the grad students who are already at UCSF, will eye the available food and alcohol with ravenous envy, such is the disparity between life-before-recruitment and life-after-recruitment. Some will manage to sneak into the reception and gorge themselves, despite the best efforts of the Recruitment officers to quarantine them. Others will only look on longingly, unable to break etiquette.

Yet there is something a little stiff about a reception at the university. No, the piece-de-resistance, will be the "after-party". A spontaneous expression of camaderie and scientific togetherness? No, it's planned. Before every recruitment, a "socially-active" grad student or post-doc is tapped. "Don't you just want to hold a party for the recruits?" asks the Recruiting Officer. The tapped student equivocates. "You know, it will be funded by the school," the officer reassures. "Generously." The student begins to cave; just one more push should do it. "But don't worry, we won't need to know what happens. Just show the kids a good time. A very good time." The last Recruitment party ended up in the nether regions of the Castro.

So after a heady weekend of interviews, receptions and parties, most of these kids pack their bags and head-off to their next recruitment.