Graduate Student Life microsite

About Graduate Student Life

The Graduate Student Life microsite (https://gradlife.wisc.edu) is primarily for new and incoming graduate students to help them learn about life in Madison and at UW. It serves as a collection point for many of the resources and topics graduate students are interested in learning about, and relies on linking to other websites on- and off-campus to provide details.

Graduate Student Life is separate from the Graduate School’s website (https://grad.wisc.edu). It is not meant to duplicate information already available on the Graduate School’s website, such as information about the application process, detailed fellowship information, information about programming or events, and official policy information. For example, Graduate Student Life covers the topic of funding by explaining different types of graduate student funding and the terms we use at UW–Madison. By comparison, the official Graduate School website includes detailed information about fellowship opportunities, graduate assistantship rates, etc. The Graduate Student Life microsite links to the Graduate School’s official website in the top-right corner of each page.

Sharing information in Graduate Student Life:

We encourage graduate program staff to share the website with incoming graduate students who have questions about the topics that Graduate Student Life covers.

We also recognize that many prospective students also have questions about housing, transportation, and life in Madison. If you want to share information with a prospective student who has not yet committed to attending, please follow these best practices:

• Tell the prospective student that Graduate Student Life is geared toward new students, so does not include information about the application process or a link to the application.
• Refer the student to the Graduate School’s official website for detailed questions about funding, policies, etc.
• To share specific information with a student, consider using in-page “jump links” to link directly to that section (see below).

Using in-page jump links:

Jump links take a site user to a specific section of the page, rather than the top of a webpage. Graduate Student Life has a number of jump links that lead to different sections that you can use to send students specific information without them needing to scroll through the page.

You can find jump links in the top menus on each page (titled “On this page:”). When you click on one section, your URL bar will fill in the jump link URL for that section, which adds a pound sign (#) and phrase to the end of the URL. You can copy that link from your browser and share it with a student to send them to the right section. For example, https://gradlife.wisc.edu/housing-and-transportation/#neighborhoods-in-madison leads directly to the Neighborhoods in Madison section.

Update timeline:

Broken links on the website are checked and updated periodically (about once per semester). A full review and update of all Graduate Student Life content will take place each spring so that the information is up-to-date by late May each year. A text box at the bottom of the website’s homepage indicates the year when the content was last updated.

If you notice an error, broken link, or other problem with the website, contact Meghan Chua (meghan.chua@wisc.edu).