Narrowing Down Your List of Graduate Schools

In our last post, we discussed putting together a large master list of potential graduate schools. My first list included about 24 schools and a variety of programs that overlapped with my interests.  Of these I would eventually apply to 7 and be admitted to 4.  But how did I narrow the list down to only seven schools?  

My first step was to hit Google.  I spent a lot of time looking up each program that interested me. My top concerns for entering a doctoral program with the hopes of securing an academic position in the future were ranking and prestige of the program, funding, and high quality faculty.  In particular I wanted to find a list of faculty where more than one overlapped with my areas of interest.  I was concerned about the horror stories I had heard where people were admitted to work with Famed Brilliant Dude, Ph.D. and he turned out to be a complete wreck.  Working with several faculty while in graduate school is a reality for most of us and I wanted a broad network of support.  Looking back, I am really happy that I took this kind of approach.  

This combination of factors brought the list down to about 14.  My next move, probably the one that I can only really share because this an anonymous blog, was to cross a few off the list due to being in an undesirable location.  Intellectually, some of these places were reasonable fits, but I simply had no desire to move to a location I knew that I would hate for 6-8 years.  This brought my list down to about 10 schools within two related disciplines.  It is hard to ignore if the perfect school for you intellectually is in an undesirable location, but it is something to consider - after all, the reality of moving to this place to start your new life in graduate school will set in at some point.  Don't you want to be excited about that move rather than ambivalent or apprehensive?  

The next step was the most important.  I looked at the faculty listings again and I e-mailed two or three faculty at each institution.  The subsequent responses brought my list down to a manageable number - 7 schools.  I will expand on this particular process in my next post. 

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.