Moving to Graduate School (Part II)

In our last post we offered some tips for moving your precious material goods across the country to a new graduate program.  In this brief post, I'd like to offer a few more tips for moving to a new town closer to where you live now.  

1. Even if you've been on campus before, it is worth your time to reacquaint yourself with your surroundings.  The school where we go now offers a nice guided tour on campus on iTunes.  You can download the tour and check out the features of the campus without having to sign up for a tour with a bunch of 18 year olds.  You can also simply stroll in to the admissions office and pick up a couple of maps.  

When applying to graduate schools, I applied to a few campuses that I had seen before, but didn't apply anywhere where I had received an official guided tour.  The iPod tour of my new campus (which I didn't take until my second year here) helped me learn more about campus lore, history, and taught me about a few interesting campus features I had no clue existed.  

2. Start looking for apartments EARLY.  Post an apartment wanted ad on craigslist a few months in advance and repost the ad every seven days.  When the time gets closer, start looking for housing through the apartment available section.  

3. Think about your living situation.  You might be living with a significant other or you might be looking for a roommate(s).  If you are looking for roomies, make sure that they understand that you may need long periods of peace and quite in your living space.  It is easier, in many ways, to live with other grad students who understand that you may have weird, inconsistent study hours. 

4. Live close to campus - but not too close to campus.  My first year here, I lived a bit too close to campus.  Close enough to hear my students partying, see their weekend antics and just generally feel like I was at work all the time.  I'm happy I moved a little ways away, where I can feel as though I am leaving work at the end of the day - even if I have to bring some of it home.

5. Enlist parents to help out - walk them around campus, but maybe hold off on taking them through the department for now.  

6. Meet up for coffee or beer (depending on the time of day) with people you know in the area. Facebook can be your best friend here, remember that annoying girl in high school that moved to the same town where your in grad school now?  If you can muster having one beer with her, she might tell you where some good spots are for dinner and show you around just a little.  And hey, she might actually be kinda cool now. 

7.  Read up on the program during your downtime.  Read and re-read the department website.

8. Take some time to mentally relax before you start your program.  My first few months in my new graduate program I felt like I was drinking through the fire-hose.  Take some time to ease your way in.  Stroll to the campus store and buy books early, set them up on your new bookshelf and look them over a bit.  Situate yourself on campus.  Practice your commute one day before you actually start your program.

Filling out Graduate School Applications

In this *very* brief post, I hope to give you some tips for filling out graduate school applications. 

Tip #1 - Ask your friend, advisor, parent, sister, and whoever else is willing, to double check your materials for typos and errors.  A silly typo or mistake probably won't eliminate you from contention, but you want to do what it takes to look professional and put together.  But don't let anyone write your application for you.  If your family is anything like mine, they will have a lot of experience applying for undergraduate programs, but won't have a whole lot of experience applying to graduate school.  

Tip #2 - A Statement of Purpose is NOT a Personal Statement.  Graduate school applications are different from applications for undergraduate schools.  A graduate program committee really doesn't give a shit about your sob story about losing a pinky finger shortly after your family came to the United States.  They don't care about your battle to lose weight and what it taught you about the meaning of life.  Unless you're applying to a program related to saving the whales - they don't really give a crap about your quest to save whales last summer in the Pacific Northwest.  What they care about are your research interests and goals.  Why have you chosen this program?  Kisseyface University has an outstanding group of scholars whose research interests coincide with yours.  Explain in some detail what you're interested in and how it relates to their work.  

Tip #3 - Do your best on the GRE.  Take a class if you need to.  At the very least, purchase a study book and take practice tests.  The GRE is weighted differently by different fields and programs.  But nearly across the board, GRE scores are used when weighing applications for university wide fellowships.  How else are committees supposed to weigh applications from different departments and fields?  Nearly every field (not including professional programs and medical schools of course) utilizes the GRE in admissions, so university administrations often find themselves using the standardized test to determine who should win competitive fellowships.   

Tip #4 - Be humble and modest.  For every graduate student admitted to certain programs, there are as many as 14 capable students who get turned down.  Odds are that you will get rejected at one or more programs to which you apply.  Don't refer to a school or program as a "safety".  

Tip #5 - Talk to other people you may know who have either attended graduate school or those who are applying about their experiences.   

Looking for the Perfect Graduate Program Part I

I realized fairly early on in my undergraduate education that I had an interest in attending graduate school.  The lifestyle of the academy appealed to me.  Despite the low pay, constant stress, and sometimes agonizing pretentiousness, I felt as though I could thrive.  I knew, however, that I would only thrive under the right circumstances.  When I first began looking at graduate programs in the humanities, I was given a lot of advice.  Some of this advice was sound and some of it, well, not so much.  

The best advice I received early on was fairly simple.  If you're still in an undergraduate program, work on getting the best possible grades you can muster in your remaining courses.  Write a strong senior thesis or craft a shorter writing sample for publication in a small journal or magazine related to your field.  Also, continue to cultivate strong relationships with a handful of faculty members by visiting them in office hours.  Study for and take the standardized test required for admission to most of the programs in your field (GRE, MCAT, GMAT or LSAT depending on your field).  

When you visit the aforementioned faculty in their office hours explain to them your major interests and reasons for applying to graduate school.  Pick their brain on who the big players in the field are, where do they teach, where did they attend graduate school?  Do all the best people in your field teach at Virginia?  Minnesota?  Berkeley?  Harvard?  Check out U.S. News and World Report's Best Graduate Schools issue and try to get a field for the important schools in your field.  Many scholars will disagree with how US News ranks graduate programs, but it offers a nice starting point.  Start compiling a list with brief notes describing why they made it on the list (for example, Harvard - ranked no. 2 overall in general field, no. 4 in my proposed area, and has faculty John Doe and Jane Brilliant working on history of women living in urban high rises).  

Build up this list to the point where it is nearly unwieldy.  In conversations I had with faculty at my undergraduate institution and others in the field whom I had met, I came up with a list of about 25-30 schools.  

In our next post, I will talk about paring down that list to a more reasonable list of schools to apply.