Definitions of Graduate Student Success in Physics for Faculty, Students, and Alumni

Graduate student success in physics is an essential yet amorphous concept for graduate education. Education researchers, admissions committees, and program reformers utilize implicit or explicit definitions of graduate student success that allocate different aspects importance. These aspects of success may come from the breadth of the graduate student experience: research, academics, teaching, degree obtainment, professional success, social success, and personal success. We developed a survey measuring the importance of 36 aspects of success to 147 respondents from a single institution. Faculty, students, and alumni mostly agree on definitions of success at the population level. Education researchers should know the objective metric of success that was most important was degree completion, as seems broadly assumed in the literature. Admissions committees should know and consider broadcasting to potential students that this institution most valued independently carrying out research and continuously learning throughout their career as aspects of defining success. Program reformers should know that all three groups viewed ability to continue in desired career path significantly more important than the ability to continue in academia and thus reformers should consider professional development opportunities and mentoring for non-academic track students.