Graduate school as an escape mechanism

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While I could understand some people go to graduate school because they want to practice a profession that cannot otherwise be accessed without a graduate degree (e.g. medicine, dentistry, law) other people may be tempted to go to graduate school (or went to grad school) in an attempt to do any of the following:

• Figure out what to do in life
• Resolve personal issues that aren't of the "don't know what to do in life" variety
• Escape the fears of the outside world
• Escape an unsatisfying job/career (although that might be a legitimate reason to change careers)

Maybe I'm mistaken but, while I have the impression that sort of thing exists, it is highly discipline-dependent and only a minority would even try to use grad school for the first three reasons...

How often do people on the autistic spectrum go to graduate school as an escape mechanism? Does it seem to happen more often to people "on the spectrum" or with neurotypicals?

This is a difficult question to answer. Anyone in grad school or having been in grad school is either autistic or not autistic and so each of us can only speak to our own motivations. Even if other people have said why they're going, that could not be the truth.

I have encountered more autistic professors in graduate school than students, but there is usually an openly autistic student around, or someone I am convinced is on the spectrum and just not talking about it. I am NT and my own motivations for going to grad school are mainly because of interest.

If I were guessing, I would say that the autistic people I have met seem to be going so that they can BE something, usually an authority on their interest. The neurotypicals seem to be looking to HAVE something, such as a title and/or money. I don't think the autistic people seem interested in how other people see them and the neurotypicals are definitely interested in that. As to the life postponing, that seem to be contributing for both types of people.

I can only really speak about physics in Canada at this point: there really isn't much with only an undergrad as far as job prospects are concerned, but job prospects improve quite a bit with a masters. Common choices are engineering, teaching and, of course, physics.

If there is any one level of graduate school where people may be tempted to use it to postpone life in the outside world, given the above information, it would be the PhD. Even so, it is a lot more tempting to those with real research talent, and then even NTs would want to earn a PhD in physics to be something, more than for titles or money. Oftentimes people in a pure science field will be more interested in knowledge than careers or money. But I do know that, as an autistic person, if I actually go back to graduate school, I will have to inquire about autism resources beforehand.

Carnegie Mellon, UIUC seem to have extensive experience with autistic students, knowing MIT, while also having a lot of experience with autistic students, is a lottery at the PhD level for just about anyone.

Caltech is another good place.
There are lots of weirdos here.

Based off of my experiences in graduate school, the vast majority of students were there for the interest of the subject at hand. Those that were there for other reasons were soon weeded out of the program by one method or another.

I knew a very intelligent graduate student who was just there because his wife was in the program. (He actually turned down graduate school at Rutgers University because his wife did not get accepted there and he followed her to another university that did accept her.) He did not need to study for cume exams in his area as he could usually pass them just off of what he knew. Well, he ended up being kicked out of the university after a few years because he was doing almost no real research work and was not fulfilling his duties as a teaching assistant. Most of his "free" time was spent on drugs/drinking, rather than his studies. He was sent back to India and last I heard was trying to become a policeman (so he could get free drugs/cash from drug busts). The wife divorced him soon after (it was an arranged marriage that favored him heavily). He knew his chemistry well, just he did not want to apply it to actual work in the laboratory.

Yes, there are autistic students among the students (er, lottery winners), but Caltech, like MIT, is a lottery for just about anyone as far as physics is concerned, whereas Carnegie Mellon (and UIUC if you have no interest in condensed matter) isn't.

Perhaps Perimeter Institute, and hence Waterloo, would be more winnable (not the least because I am a Canadian citizen) than MIT or Caltech.

It seems that all the names I hear about when it comes to their ability to deal with autistic students (other than WUSTL) have strong computer science/engineering reputations.

Universities that are autism-friendly due to many BAP people may not have much autism resources for graduate students, since graduate study is so much less structured than undergrad.

I think the key is more finding a professor who is a good mentor for an autistic student, rather than a school with autism resources, since those would usually be for undergrad.

I knew mental health services were often inadequate for graduate students, even NT graduate students, because many in mental health services fail to understand that graduate students aren't simply older undergraduates from that standpoint.

Unfortunately, before a student can work full-time with one such professor, there usually is coursework, and said coursework-related services may be available for graduate students as well. And even once the student gets to research, the challenges will remain.

Understandably, the challenges will be quite different, but will exist nonetheless.

It seems that most people who survived undergrad to get to grad school would do ok with more classes, as those would be similar to classes in undergrad. Perhaps doing research and taking classes at the same time would be more challenging, but many undergrads also do both at the same time. Once classes are over, research is basically up to oneself with guidance of the mentor, sometimes more than one professor can be co-mentor or close collaborator. In research, there can be problems caused by autism, or by personality, or by any individual cognitive functions, but there can also be advantages, the student usually has to figure out how to use their personal strengths to do research, as they would for a job.

For me, graduate school did not function as an escape mechanism in these ways. In fact, my issues were only magnified in graduate school, although it's just as possible they may have been magnified in a regular job setting.

Graduate school was my first "taste" of having to work on a team, and of dealing with people who socially-speaking act like adults (I don't mean being serious about their research--that's actually a plus--what I mean is dating on an adult level, having formal dinners, etc.).

My 2 cents is this....

Academia is like a warm blanket. Reality is like a bucket of ice water. The more you are "sheltered" from reality, the more you want to avoid it. This is understandable, but you can't keep running away from reality.

Academia like almost like a prison. You get "institutionalized" and the idea of being "on the outside" can be scary to some people. Keep going for more education with a world you've adapted to or go out and really have to wonder how you're going to pay for your next meal. As someone who works for a living, I am keenly aware how a job loss, illness, accident, etc. could leave you penniless and on the streets.

Academia should be preparing people to go out in the world and be self-sufficient. It's not done that for some time. More and more parents are coddling their kids so they don't learn adult responsibility until after they hit 18 (or later). This is very bad because the best chance for a kid to have a "happy" and "successful" life comes from learning the skills that contribute to the odds of getting those outcomes at an early age.

Many very successful people have this in common...a childhood where circumstances taught them to "grow up" and be responsible/reliable long before they hit 18. Many of them were working on becoming independent before they were legally old enough to get a regular job.