REGGIE >> Welcome back everyone! This is future PhD Dr. E and this is another episode of
of "Putting U into Grad School: Episode 2: How To Get Into Grad School."
Alright, let's get into it
REGGIE >> So last time we talked about if you should go to grad school,
the difference between PhD, Masters, and what you should look at when applying to
for grad school. This time we're gonna look into what steps you need to take to
get into grad school. So let's get into it.
So I'm clearly not an admissions
counselor so don't take my advice as gospel, I'm just sharing my thoughts
and experiences with you and I think there are four components to admissions.
The first one are exam scores, which include your test scores and your GPA.
The second is your CV which includes your coursework and experience.
The third is essays and the fourth are letters of recommendation and you want to do
well in all these areas but the good news is schools weigh each section
differently so say for example you have a bad test scores but you have good GPA,
you have a good letter of recommendation and you have good experience. This can
definitely compensate for your poor test scores but I think I'm diving too deep
into it so I'm going to describe each section step by step.
REGGIE >> The first one is test scores. Different programs have different tests you need to
take, but the most common one is the GRE or Graduate Readiness Exam. This exam is
generally 5 hours long and you answer a lot of different questions from math to
language to writing. And the tests aren't hard per se but I think they're very
tricky and the questions are often convoluted, so you definitely want to
study. GPA is pretty straightforward and this is where schools look at your GPA
from your undergrad or graduate program if you already done. GPAs matter a lot
definitely if you're younger student and you have less real experience but it
matters less if you have if you worked a job for a few years and you have more
experience. And that brings us to the CV. The CV has two components: one is
coursework and the second is experience and for coursework schools basically
look at the coursework that you've taken in your undergrad degree or your
graduate degree and this is just to make sure that the school knows that they
take you you'll be successful in their program and as it is particularly
particularly important if you're trying to switch fields from your undergrad
degree to your graduate degree and if you don't have the classwork to back
this up don't worry you can definitely make this up with experience.
So experience is anything from extracurricular activities, to research
experience, to work experience basically anything out the classroom and I
recommend listing things you've done the last five years because admissions
committees don't really think anything older is current. At the same time I
don't recommend putting everything you've done either. You should put everything
you think is relevant for the program. For instance, I started research and I
was looking into energy and sustainable systems and now I work in the biomedical
field which are completely different but a common thread was I had to think about
interesting and strange problems, I had write notes, I had to design experiments. So
with these skills I developed, I was able to show the program that I have the
skills to do well in this new field. And if you don't have direct experience, you
should put things down anyway and I'm going to explain what that means. For
example, if you worked in retail you probably know how to deal with different
people of different personalities and you definitely know how to be tenacious
in survivng that type of environment. Do you have artistic hobby? Then you
probably know how to think creatively to express yourself. These are skills that
people care about in admissions. You definitely shouldn't sell yourself
short. And if you want an award you definitely should show that too, because
awards show that you're passionate about something, you're willing to put in the
work of something, you're willing to be productive in that field or that project
and if you want to go to grad school like people really want to take in
productive passionate people. And now that we're done with the experience and
coursework we're gonna look at essays. And essays are generally when you write
why you want be in a specific program. If anything else, this is the one thing that you have the
most control over and shouldn't underestimate. Good essays can definitely
take you over the top. And finally we have letters of recommendation.
Letters of recommendation are when people write a letter to support you doing well
basically they're advocating for you. Recommenders can be a boss, they can be
an old teacher, they can be a supervisor, they can be an old mentor and
like essays, a good letter recommendation can definitely push you up and you
definitely should not underestimate that.
REGGIE >> The first thing I'll say is when you do your research is give yourself at least
one year in advance to research different programs because it's
definitely time consuming. You could get by by six or three months but any less you
will not get all the info you need. As I mentioned in the first episode, you will
make a list of schools you're interested in going based on program, cost of living,
activities, and funding. And if you haven't seen that episode you should
definitely watch it, I think it's pretty good. And on top of that, you want to look
in rankings. You want to go to a well-respected school and a highly
ranked school. This is not saying you can't do well in lower-ranked school, but
employers and upper and better opportunities often go to hiring schools
as they often have more money. The next thing you should consider are the
requirements and application of deadline of the program you're interested in.
Requirements can vary by program. Some programs require essays, others require
an interview, and you want to make sure you have everything in order because you
don't want to get rejected from a school of your dreams just because you didn't
turn things in all on time. So the last thing you want to look at are
application fees and fee reduction. Most grad school programs have an application
fee attached to them, often ranging between 50 and 100 dollars. The reason for
this is because you have to pay the people reviewing your application and
it's also a method to deter people from randomly applying to every program.
Reviewing applications take a long time so from a perspective or reviewer less
applications is better. Overall I think applying for grad school can be very
expensive, however you can reduce costs if you are low-income. Some application
fees can be reduced or waived completely if you meet certain requirements. How
that said you need to look at each individual program to see how you can
qualify and if you qualify. So now that we have all that let's go to Step 1: The List.
REGGIE >> So now that you have those nine schools I want you to further divide them into
three different categories. The first one is a dream category. These are your dream
schools and these are schools who you'd love to go but they may have super competitive
requirements. Three schools should also be in your 'key schools category' which
will match your test scores and GPA and these are places you would be happy to
go to. And the final three schools should be safety schools where you know you
can get into. Once you made your list and know the requirements, this will
give you an idea of the target GRE scores you need as well as GPA.
So for the GRE, you want to do the best you can do and the best way to improve your GRE
score is by practice. There are numerous ways to practice with GRE and there are
websites that can help you practice the GRE.
There are also subreddits where you can view to train yourself and many of these
resources are free. I recommend doing this because GRE registration can be
expensive and I'm not sure if you need a fee waiver for this one, so make sure you do
well on your first try. When I took the GRE the scores you want to get to get
your top program is 150 on both the math and English portions and 4.0 in writing.
So good luck
So now I'm going to go into letter recommendation. As I mentioned before
letter recommendations are from people you know best - professionally, not
personally. This can be an old mentor you've worked on a project with, a
manager, a supervisor, anyone really. Ideally though you should find someone
you should find people rather that know you differently because you want writer
to say different things about you so the reviewers know you as a better person.
Who you choose can vary. I think that you want a person who's
known you a long time so they can write about how you grown over time, a person
that you've known for kind of a long time like an old manager and someone who
knows you more recently like a current manager. You don't want too many recent
or old recommenders because the reviewers will question the gap time in
your reviewers. I think it's helpful if you give your letter writer an update CV
so they can write about that as well as provide specific things you want to tell
a specific reviewer to write about. Keep in mind the letters are favors so the
less work they have to do the better. You want to give them as much time as
possible but at the very least give them six weeks prior to the deadline so they
have time to write.They may be writing for a lot of people. You should also
provide them with a statement and purpose and personal statement, if you
can, so they have even more things to write about.
Generally grad schools want you to write a personal statement and a statement of
purpose. They can be seen as two sides of the same coin. The statement of purpose
is seen as what professional experiences have brought you to the program while
the personal statement is seen as what personal reasons do you have for applying
for the program. And there are no perfect essays but here are some tips that I've
used. And you should write a story and a real one. Reviewers read hundreds of
generic and un-memorable essays each year. Don't think you can fool them. That said,
you don't necessarily need a sob story to get in. One of my buddies in the
mechanical engineering department stated her essays with: " I like how things
move" and she added examples how how liking things move led her to a degree in
mechanical engineering. It doesn't have to be smooth, many memorable essays are
quirky but you should write something that is real to you and your statement
you should write your professional goals and how the program's gonna help you get
there.
As I mentioned before you should have an updated CV and your CV as I also
mentioned before should include your work experiences, research experiences
and your awards and special titles that you've earned. You can look up the
specifics style for CV to get you into grad school through Google. Many schools
offered templates and samples that you can face off of.
Some programs don't require this but if you can provide some of your work so
schools can get a better idea of your skills you should definitely send them.
This can be especially useful if your GPA or GRE scores were low. This next
piece of advice is for PhD students but you should email and contact the
professors yoh are interested in working with. This will show your initiative. You
should also read their work and get a better idea of what they do and you can
ask more thought-provoking questions leading to a way better conversation.
If you're not sure how to write an email just introduce yourself, tell them you
are applying and ask them if they're available to talk to you or have a phone
call at a certain time. Don't be discouraged if they don't email back professors go
through a lot of emails a day and you might get missed.
Keep trying. Ooh! Before I forget, you should contact the faculty members your
interested in working with at least a month before the deadline so it's fresh
enough that they'll have your name up when they're looking for graduate
students to take.
So this is a graduate school application timeline. It starts
from May to December and I chose May to December because seven months is plenty
of time. You could have more time to research but you don't need it. And with
that let's begin. In May you want to research graduate schools and in this
video and in the first video I mentioned that you want to look at the program,
cost of living, activities, location, funding and fee waivers, and that's nothing new.
The only new thing you want to do in May is take the GRE practice tests and this
is because you want to know how much you need to practice. Some of you may be
great test takers and you may not need to practice a lot. Some of you you
may be out for a few years from school and you may you may have to get back
into the test-taking grind. But this will just give you a good
indicator, a good starting point, and this will just tell you how much you need
study for. So moving on to June, again you want to
keep researching grad schools and you want to study for the GRE.
As I mentioned in the video there's a lot of free Internet resources to study for the
GRE and that's it's just as simple as that just keep practicing and you'll get
better and the GRE is no different. In July you want to talk to professors for
letters of rec and you want to talk to your professors about grad school. In the
video I mentioned the significance of letters of rec but I also want to talk about
the second part which is the recommendations. Professors know a lot of
people: graduate school can be a small world and if you're thinking about
graduate school, you probably have a professor that knows someone in that
field you're interested in if it's related of course. And they can give you
a good idea about like the environment of the grad school you want to go into
that can also give you their thoughts and since these are experts in the grad
school field you should listen them. The second thing I wanted you to mention is
you want to use their network and professors are people too so for
instance you want to go to a certain grad school you talk to an old professor
and your school and their friends. Them being friends will give that letter of
recommendation so much more power and you should definitely use that network
You should also draft the list of grad schools for application materials needed
the deadlines etc by two months you should probably have an idea of where
you want to go but you'll keep making that list as it'll be people signed up
but by after 2 months you should definitely know which schools you really
want to go to and of course you want to keep studying for the GRE. Then in August
you want to start writing your letters recommendation - no, not your letters of
recommendation. You want to start writing your essay letters, the statement
of purpose, and personal statement. Again you want to study for the GRE. And for
September this is the point where you want to finalize your list of nine
schools. I'm sorry this is finalized list and I say make typo. Um, you also want to
look at the professors that you're interested in working in working with
and this is PhD only because most grad programs don't require a research
component but if you are looking to get a masters with research you should also
do this. You also want to again contact mentors about letters of rec because
professors are human and they may forget about a lot of rec they have busy lives
and just send them a gentle reminder, well, just be a blessing for them because
they forget just like you and I and they can definitely be helpful. And then again
you want to study for the GRE. In October you want to update your CV. I'm
not sure if I mentioned the original video but the CV is basically your
resume whereas the collection of your experiences your schools your awards etc.
And you want to send your draft statement letters your mentors. And again
you want to study for the GRE. In November, you want to send your
transcripts and this is assuming you've graduated with a bachelor's already. If
you are currently in undergrad and you're getting your bachelor's you want
to send your transcripts at the end of your fall term. And you want to actually
take your GRE in November just because you maximize the time studying so this
should be this one time should be good. And in November you should have your
mentors and friends read your drafts because draft writing can be difficult
even if you are a very good writer and if you keep writing your essays will get
better and better and better. And again you want to remind your mentors about
the letter of rec. Then finally in December you want to complete all your graduate
application materials and you want to submit all of your application materials. Again you want to
look at the application deadlines for each school because some application
deadlines may be in late November, some may be early January, it really depends.
But anyway this is pretty much a full guide on how to apply for graduate
school.
So that's the end of this week's episode. Next week's episode we're going to
assume that you got into grad school and what you should expect for your graduate
school visit and how do you choose an advisor. This is future PhD Dr. E signing
out. Bye-bye.