I recently applied to several graduate schools and thought it would be a great idea to help out those people getting ready to apply with a sort of how to and when to for graduate school applications. I made several mistakes and several good choices during the process. My mistakes centered mostly on the timing. This will be an overview of the graduate school admissions process and how to best navigate the intense amount of requirements associated with it.
These steps assume that you, the reader, already knows that you want to pursue a PhD, and understand the implications of such a commitment.
In writing this guide I will pull from several sources including my own experience, but whenever I’m getting information directly from another source I will post a link to that site. My current list of sources include:
- Mor Harchol-Balter: http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~harchol/gradschooltalk.pdf
- This guide is the one that I used most during my applications process. I’m going to use it and add my spin onto what it is talking about. It’s good to get the opinion and experience of someone who just went through the process. This guide is extremely thorough and worth the read.
I will be writing a series of posts to describe each of the following parts of the process:
- Make yourself look good here
- Deciding which schools to apply to
- Creating a personal/research statement
- Getting letter of recommendation writers
- Fellowship applications
- When you apply
- Waiting for results
If I have forgotten an important step, comment and I will make sure to add a post for that. As I write these documents I will also add links from the list here to their respective pages. I assume as I go through the creation of the pages I will remember other things that must be discussed. I hope this is informative and useful.
–nathan
