Students considering an academic career may want to take the graduate school’s Preparing the Future Professoriate or Pedagogical Practices courses. I have heard good things about these. Students considering a career in government, business, or the non-profit world should think seriously about doing an internship.

All students should make it a point to meet with their advisor early in their graduate career. This is doubly true for Ph.D. students. You may change advisors as your interests mature but you should forge your path in consultation with faculty members. You will want to make sure that you have the training you need to successfully complete your dissertation. If your research interests will, for example, lead you to use time series analysis or translate French, you will need to take appropriate coursework. All students should become familiar with the library's resources and consider taking a one-credit course and installing VPN. don't know what that is? See Bruce Pencek's guide to getting started in the library for students of administration and policy.

SUNY-Albany’s public administration and policy program provides a useful manual on academic job seeking.

Paul Krugman has advice on how to be a good economist that applies to more policy-oriented scholars as well.

Apply for travel funds from the Virginia Tech graduate school (twice yearly).

Struggling with your dissertation (or master’s paper) proposal? Try the fivefold method of proposal writing:

1) What is the question? 2) What are the usual answers? 3) What is my answer? 4) What is the evidence I expect to find? 5) Why should others care about my topic/project?