California Forum for Diversity in Graduate Education

The California Forum for Diversity in Graduate Education is designed to acquaint first-generation college students with the career opportunities and academic challenges associated with advanced study in a wide range of disciplines. The purpose is to accelerate the flow of such students into the research-oriented, advanced-level degree programs that typically provide the training required of college and university faculty. Outstanding undergraduate students are sought both for direct entry into doctoral work and for entry into thesis-based master's programs that can serve as stepping stones to the Ph.D.

The Forum was established by a coalition of California's leading graduate schools in 1991 to tap a growing pool of highly qualified undergraduate and master's-level students. Previously, adequate mechanisms did not exist to identify these students and encourage them to think in terms of advanced study leading to the Ph.D. degree. The Forum is intended to remedy this situation by bringing together promising students from California colleges and universities to acquaint them with all aspects of graduate study in the natural sciences and engineering, humanities and letters, social sciences, education, and health-related fields. Professional degree programs (medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, law, and MBA degrees in business) have their own recruiting networks, do not typically train future faculty members, and thus are not included in the Forum program.

There are two major components to the California Forum for Diversity in Graduate Education. The first is a program of workshops carefully designed to provide students with the information they need to make informed choices about graduate school. A listing of the workshop sessions planned for the Forum hosted by the University of San Diego on April 9, 2005, will give an accurate picture of the comprehensive nature of the formal program:

How to Select and Apply to Graduate School
How to Finance Your Graduate Education
How to Prepare for the Graduate Record Examination (GRE)
How to Write a Winning Statement of Purpose
Keys to Success and Survival in Graduate School: A Student Panel
The Relationship of the Master's Degree to the Ph.D.
Undergraduate Research Opportunities

Disciplinary Workshops on:

The second major component of the Forum is a graduate school recruiting fair. Representatives from almost all of the leading graduate schools in the United States set up tables where they can talk to individual students about the programs their campuses offer, the financial aid available, and admission requirements and procedures. These graduate schools include all 10 campuses of the University of California, the University of Southern California, Stanford University, and most of the graduate schools from the Ivy League, the Big Ten, Texas, and other regions of the country. Altogether, well over 100 campuses and programs will be represented.

Attendance at the Forum is free, but it is also strictly by invitation only. Because capacity is limited, you must be invited by your home campus—unless you are a Sally Casanova California Pre-Doctoral Scholar, in which case you are specifically invited by the Pre-Doctoral Program. Look for your Forum invitation to arrive via e-mail about five weeks before the Forum. The Pre-Doctoral Program even hosts a special reception on the evening before the Forum, where you can meet in a quieter environment many of the recruiters who are present. And the Pre-Doctoral Program will pay for your stay on Friday night at a hotel or motel near the Forum campus (that is, you won't have to use your Pre-Doctoral Scholarship funds for this purpose).

To learn more about the upcoming California Forum for Diversity in Graduate Education, click on the link below to see in .pdf format a copy of a brochure about the Forum.

2007 Spring Forum Brochure (.pdf) 821K