Here are the misconceptions we got most often from prospective and first year students:

Wanting to teach is a good reason to get at PhD. A PhD is a research degree. Most programs do little to prepare you to be a teacher. Many people go on to teach as part of their job, but those who become the best teachers do so because of additional training acquired outside of their PhD training.

Grades are important. Doctoral programs are not undergrad. Grades are important to the extent that you learn the material and advance in the program. Almost no one will ever ask a PhD graduate about their GPA in their doctoral program. They will ask about publications and grant applications. They will ask about skills they have. As such, it would be much more advisable seeking manuscript writing, analysis, and/or grant writing experiences than focus 100% on coursework. If that causes a few Be, so be it.

Your work is good enough. I don’t want to seem nasty or insensitive, but it always amazes me how much pushback I and others get from students when we criticize their work. You should listen to the advice of a successful person in your area if they provide feedback on your work. Anyone, even instructors, but particularly students, should remember this. Many students feel unappreciated because their work has been critiqued or because their intelligence has gone unnoticed. Likely, you’re just fooling yourself into thinking you’re brilliant. Learn from the critique and make your work better as a result. If someone is giving you constructive feedback, it’s probably because they think you have some potential as a writer or as a thinker. Give in to their advice and assistance so that you may realize your full potential.

Ph.D. is for young people. One of the biggest misconceptions that I have encountered is that PhD study is only for young people. I struggled mightily for 5 years whether to apply or not and finally did it. I’m very glad I did.

Ph.D. guarantees job. Another misconception I have heard from other PhD students (other students at other institutions or from other countries) that their degree will guarantee them a job. I believe that you have to make your fortune and your future. People think that you can get a non-exploitive teaching job, in your field, at an institution in an attractive location. You might get one of the three, but only the absolute cream of the crop can land tenure-track jobs, with good research support, teaching their specialty at a good school. Many, many PhDs are adjuncts or something like it, or else tenure-track at North Dakota State or the equivalent, teaching heavy multi-prep loads to students who don’t care, while desperately trying to publish their way to something better.

The job prospects are uniformly good or uniformly bad. In some schools and/or some departments and/or some subfields, students can find academic jobs with a relatively high degree of certainty, especially if they are willing to lower their standards. In other departments and subfields, academic jobs are hard to come by, even for the very best students. Ditto for non-academic jobs. Some fields feed naturally into industry, and in others, students have to work harder.