was not applying to enough grad programs and i say that feeling like i ended up in the best place for
me but i think if you have the privilege of time and money to send in more applications
and do more interview weekends i think they're good experiences um both personally
and i think for getting a feel of what different universities are like and those experiences will
probably come in handy later in the future i was a first generation college student
so i had no idea about grad school applications and i think the biggest mistake that i made
was not to reach out to the departments that i really liked and ask about their programs i
think it would make a big difference my application process for graduate school
wasn't actually very stressful because i did my graduate studies where i did my undergraduate so
it's a little bit more unusual these days but my advisor in my senior lab and it was already the
field i wanted to be in so it just worked out well for me not applying sooner not doing that
starting the application sooner i waited to the last second to do the gres waited till
last second to write the essays and it was super stressful so don't do that honestly i don't feel i
made a mistake when i applied to grad school but there is some something that i will do differently
and that would be to look at programs outside of the us and not only inside the us
not having the guts or nerve i don't know what you want to call it to ask people for more advice than
i did and i i don't just mean professors and and teachers of mine but also graduate students that
i knew just about sort of the process of getting in and what being a grad student is actually like
i'm shocked things worked out the way they did but i would uh not do it that way was to apply to
um way too many places so i assumed wrongly that i would not get into any of the oceanography
programs because my academic background was not in oceanography of course that turned out not
to be true and so i got into all of the 10 places that i applied to and then was faced
with this really challenging decision of um which places to visit and then um you know which one to
choose and it also costs money to apply to all those places aside from putting the wrong name
at the top of the first email that i sent to a prospective advisor i'd say my biggest mistake was
not knowing the diversity of funding available for students even before they get into graduate school
there's a few different grants that you can get that basically fund you as a person more so than
your scientific ideas which frequently are fairly undeveloped at that point i don't think i talk to
enough professors i was scared to talk to them i think it's really intimidating sending a cold
email and i just forgot that they were real people who wanted to talk to us and wanted to
find good students and if i could go back i would just email more people talk to more people and
really get them to have a conversation with me and not just have an email exchange
i only applied one place and in hindsight i'm glad i went where i went i wouldn't have it any other
way but i think i would have had a lot better perspective on what grad school was all about
if i had seen multiple places thanks a lot for watching please support what we're doing we have
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