This comes via Graduate Students for a Healthy MIT, Black Graduate Student Association, and Graduate Student Council Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee

This comes via Graduate Students for a Healthy MIT, Black Graduate Student Association, and Graduate Student Council Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee as a bit of context - the author themselves is anonymous. Note that I've seen advisors who came through an older system (ie, if this prof was older) not mesh well with new groups of candidates. You OBVIOUSLY need to talk to a few students - ideally those with a somewhat similar background to yours - to get a sense of fit. Some notes. In old system, if a grad student had kids (usually you waited till much more plentiful back then tenure track position to start family), the (male) grad student's partner stayed home full time with the children. Now families often have two working / studying parents - so your grad student is MUCH more likely to have more parental responsibilities - which despite what anyone says IS a big distraction (yes, I know lean in says you can have it all, but raising kids is wonderful but also takes time). Manner of speaking etc. The article mentions the advisor making fun of how folks speak (??). That's a weird thing to make fun of frankly, but groups someone advised used to be very homogenous. I notice this just with age gap - so much more shorthand / casual communication style. "My advisor’s words would pierce right through me and the period at the end of each sentence felt like a punch in the gut." Pretty intense stuff! A period = a punch? BTW - I think 80% of the phd system is a bit of a racket :) But that's only because I got to hear (daily) complaints about advisors and research and being a phd candidate (and then postdoc hell continues this!!).