Being prepared for postgraduate study has two parts – being prepared academically and being prepared personally. To be academically prepared you need to have the right academic entry qualifications, to have done as much reading as you can in the field that you will be studying and to have a sufficient level of English language skills to cope with the course.
To be prepared personally is a much wider issue, for it means that you must be ready to deal with the challenges of living and working as a postgraduate student. Most important is probably having the skills of organisation and time management to be able to cope with the demands of the programme timetable and managing your individual study time. This is something you will have developed as an undergraduate or Masters student. You need to be able to organise your own work in an environment where you will have a lot of time that is not formally timetabled, and you will need to be happy to work independently on your own assignments or projects. The best way of preparing for this is probably to talk with those who have had experience of being a postgraduate student – friends, family, colleagues at work or your current university who have studied for a postgraduate degree fairly recently.
You also need to be prepared for some of the personal challenges. Most important is certainly the financial issue, for you need to be confident you have or can earn enough to finish your programme without having to worry too much about money and without having to work such long hours for money that it risks damaging your study – it may be better to delay your programme for a year so you can earn and save some money rather than suffer financially by taking a programme immediately.
And then there are the issues of living away from home, perhaps away from friends or family and possibly in a new culture for one to three years. Be aware, in particular, that you may find the first few weeks or even months quite challenging until you have made new friends and settled into your new environment, and while this can be very exciting and stimulating, almost everybody will feel a little alone or homesick at some stage in their early days. So, be ready for these feelings and think through how you might cope with them – weekly phone calls home, a visit home at the end of your first semester, joining societies or groups or new activities to help you settle in.
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