Stress and the Ph.D.

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A study by Ramior Valdez at a northeastern school of social welfare found that, on a standardized scale where 200 equaled the amount of stress experienced by someone whose spouse had just died, doctoral students in their first year scored an average of 313 points. Only 6 percent of the students were considered to be "below crisis level," and the other 94% were all described as "crisis" level of stress. A second study by Robert Nelson, formerly an assistant psychiatrist at Harvard, found, not surprisingly, that graduate students had a higher percentage of "psychoneurotic" symptoms than undergraduates, and suggested that "more therapeutic hours should be available for graduate students than for undergraduates.

Although master's programs are shorter and tend to be better structured than those of the Ph.D. level, master's candidates also will face new, stressful challenges. The master's thesis in particular will present many of the same problems as a Ph.D. thesis.

Peters, Robert L. Getting What You Came For: The Smart Student's Guide to Earning a Master's or a Ph.D. New York: The Noonday Press, 1997, 5-6.