Best Practices To Screw Up Grad School Applications

02 November 2012

It is fairly easy to find hundreds of posts, pages, lists as in the form of grad application advices, because application process is hard, time-consuming and complex. You need to spend quite considerable amount of your time and money, and make plenty of important decisions. If you do not pay enough attention, the failure is inevitable. This post describes the best practices, i.e. my experiences, leading to a failure in grad applications.

Applying to grad schools is a natural step to take if you want to be an academic or excel at a particular subject in an academic institution. At least this was the way I see the whole process. After I completed junior year of bachelor degree, I decided to apply to the grad schools in the U.S. I failed to be admitted by a good school because of the reasons I come up in the following section.

Before Applications

I failed, because I had insufficient experience in my area of interest. You may think that expecting a fine experience in a particular area for a senior student is too much to ask, but do not forget that there are other candidates with many projects or even publications. I read that some students start working on projects and collaborating with professors from their freshman year.

Choosing Schools

I searched the term “university rankings” on the Internet, and found a bunch of lists. I created an excel sheet and listed universities with respect to their rankings in three of lists that seem to be more acceptable. As a result, I got my own ranking list of universities.

I went over my list from time to time. I checked up each university’s website and looked for particular research groups and/or professors working in the area that I am interested in. I created a generic email with a few variable statements, and sent it the professors whose areas of interest are similar to mine. It was a real surprise to get responses from some of these professors, since I read that they are generally unresponsive to these emails. This is even clearly stated on the their webpages. While some of responses suggested that I should apply first, some others demonstrated professors’ intention to work with me.

Eventually with the help of responses from professors I decided to apply one to two schools from top 10 of my list, eight to ten from 11-50, and two to three from 51-100. I was a bit generous to have that long list, but my idea was to have a tolerant list with a few best shots, mostly fair choices and some worst-case scenarios.

I failed, because I paid more than enough attention to university rankings rather than finding a convenient school/professor match according to the area of interest. I softly went over professors’ research, and then emailed them telling my desire to work with them. By getting a few responses from professors suddenly I began to think that I almost succeed in grad applications. I didn’t know anything about other candidates or financial support or any other related known/unknown facts that might affect the final decisions. I chose to apply to the schools that I had no real idea (these schools were supposed to be worst-case scenarios for me). I thought that they would admit me anyway, but you what they don’t.

Getting Reference Letters

After I got my school list shaped, I went some of my professors and asked them to write recommendations for me. However, I didn’t omit asking about their opinions about school choices, and suggestions for admissions. One of them made sure me that having a long list of schools would increase the chance to be admitted.

I failed, because I think that getting the right reference letters is a hard and complex issue. I still don’t really know what counts good or not for reference letters. However, one reason for failing might be that I had reference letters from professors whose work is not really related to the area I want (except for one whom I worked on a project), but I believe in that they wrote good letters for me. I did even have a professor working social sciences writing a reference letter.

Tests

I took TOEFL and GRE general test just like other students. TOEFL was fine, so did GRE quantitive and writing parts, but I still remember how I was struggling during GRE verbal test. I had no idea about what they were asking. I didn’t know the meaning of most words. I tried to figure out what sentence means from the context. After I failed to do so, I just picked one answer from the list with no reason. However, the result was surprisingly high for picking random answers.

I failed, because for both tests I got scores that seem to be in borderline. I think getting high scores may not directly lead you to a grad school, but low or moderate scores may result in an early elimination in the process.

Interviews

During late January and beginning of February I got requests from some of professors for an interview. According to my experiences, professors generally ask you about your background in the related area and recent projects. They try to get to know you and decide whether you would be good fit to their research group. If you are an international student, your ability to speak English and express what you think and understand what the other person say, i.e. your communication skills in English, are crucial.

Rather than these usual conversations, you can still expect to experience a chitchat. I remember that during one of the interviews, professor told me about the university, city, living expenses, rental prices and other daily stuff except for research. Finally he asked me whether I got accepted by any school, if any where these are. I behaved honestly and told him my options. Two days later, I got rejected.

I failed, because I didn’t have a strong research statement or idea to propose to the professors. I screwed up in one of the interviews, because the place where I chose to be was awful (but I had no other choice).

If you managed to read all the way here, my advice for you is to decide if academia is right for you. Try to learn what is like to be a grad student or academic (check out Stack Exchange Academia). If you think research is your thing, dug deeper into a subject you are excited about. Collaborate with other people, professors, grad students etc. Get in contact with professors you would like to work with in the future after examining their research in details. Take the tests, get high scores. Do not screw up interviews. Be aware of thegradcafe.

As a result, I failed so bad. However, I am happy I failed, because I learned, and gained an invaluable life-experience.