<p>Hey, I am unsure if this is a good idea to follow these steps. Could someone with experience this department give me advice? Thanks.</p>
<p>[How</a> to get into a PHD program | eHow.com](<a href=“http://www.ehow.com/how_4747849_phd-program.html]How”>http://www.ehow.com/how_4747849_phd-program.html)</p>
<p>I live my life according to eHow.com’s instruction.s</p>
<p>This is for CS specifically, but it can be applied to any other field, I feel like: <a href=“http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~harchol/gradschooltalk.pdf[/url]”>http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~harchol/gradschooltalk.pdf</a></p>
<p>It’s actually written by a professor, so, I think it carries more clout than eHow.com…</p>
<p>I don’t trust anything written by people with fancy letters behind their names.</p>
<p>If time permits, try participating in Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) summer program (look for it using search engine). Not only that it funds your research for the summer, but it also offers seminars and workshops relevant to: “get into a PhD program.”</p>
<p>“a PHD is generally considered to be a “de facto” union card for an academic position”</p>
<p>Sigh. I wish it were.</p>
<p>It all sounds like good advice to me, if not in the order presented - for example, you should start working on “Step 5” your freshman year, not last!</p>
<p>Also, I don’t think the instruction to “apply to 15 schools” is valid. I’m in the humanities and I heard that the average is 7 or 8. Sure, the more schools you apply to, the better your chances of getting accepted and the more choices you might have, but each application could cost up to $100 and each application is a lot of work. At some point enough is enough.</p>
<p>I think most of the advice provided is generally ok – but the 15 schools to apply to is outright silly – if you’ve identified the “right” schools for you, 6 or 7 at the most should suffice. I think alot of applicants apply to that many because they are not applying to the right schools to begin with. I’ve noticed a definite propensity for applicants to shoot way over their heads and apply to schools they have absolutely no chance of getting into. </p>
<p>When folks ask me about my “reach” schools, they’re dumbfounded that I didn’t apply to Harvard, Yale, etc. on the “off chance” that I’ll somehow get lucky. At this point, I’ve been accepted at 3 of the 4 schools (all top 20) I applied, and am waiting to hear from the last. All with full funding. Keeping my list tight allowed me to hone in on very specific reasons for applying to the schools I did apply to and my SOP definitely illustrated this point.</p>
<p>oldergrad, thanks for the advice. I have schools that seem to be matches. Yes, statistically I have a good chance at being rejected because of the large number of applications, but at least my GRE, GPA, etc. make me qualified. Those schools would be NYU, Texas, UNC, and UC San Diego. I would want to apply to Penn, Cornell, and Columbia because they are ideal but a bit out of my reach, but 15 schools? How is that even possible?</p>
<p>Easy, if you have money to spend.</p>
<p>Ideally, you only need to apply to 7 schools maximum for graduate studies. The department (faculty, strength of field) is more important than the school name itself.</p>
<p>I applied to 10 schools, and although I know it’s more than what other people applied to, it’s been very nice to have a good number of choices. As tenisghs said, money actually may be the limiting factor here - if you can secure funding for a lot of schools, and you have found multiple departments that you’d like to apply to AFTER reading up on them and having a good sense of their pros and cons, I don’t see anything wrong with applying to 15 schools or even more. Also though, consider the fact that you will have that much more paperwork for each additional school…</p>
<p>Now, there is NO POINT whatsoever in applying to schools just for “safety” when you don’t really want to go there. Make sure you would be happy going to each and every one of the schools on your list.</p>
<p>Honestly, it may be hard to even come up with 15 departments that you’d want to be a part of. I had a bit of trouble coming up with my 10. BUT! If you can find 15 good programs and can pay for the application fees, I say go for it. :)</p>
<p>And definitely apply to your “reach” schools! If you think you have numbers to match their school average (it sounds like you do) then just get awesome recommendation papers and go for it. BEST OF LUCK! :)</p>
<p>Thanks PatchesNBrownie, I really appreciate the advice.</p>
<p>The number of schools you should apply to really depends largely upon your field of interest. Sure, in certain humanities (for instance) you may only need to apply to 5-7 schools as long as you choose well, in other fields (for example, clinical psychology) 12-15 is quite common (12-15 is the minimum recommended, 15-20 is also an often cited range for the field). I would guess I am a strong candidate and I applied to 9 schools and have so far received 3 interview invites, 1 alternate/deferred invite, and am waiting on 3 schools that have yet to send out any invites (I have 2 years formal research experience with several publications and 2 yrs professional experience w/ a clinical population and 3 years with a subclinical population all directly related to my research and applied area as well as 2 1/2 yrs TAing, great letters of rec, 90+% GPA, GRE and Subject GRE percentiles and a second BA directly related to my area of interest). Assuming that I receive 1 more invite out of the remaining 3, that would give me 4 interviews. Of interviewing schools, most accept 20-40% of their interviewees, so assuming this 1/3 average, out of 9 schools, I will likely get 1-2 actual offers. With that in mind, I would suggest that it really depends upon the field. I know of people in Clinical Psych applying for as many as 20-30 schools they claim were well-chosen and not receiving a single interview! …Of course, my response to those people would be a simple question as to whether they actually considered their match with a POI there instead of looking only at geography, etc.</p>
<p>I work with a person who only applied to one school. That seems crazy to me but if you aim low enough I guess it shouldn’t be an issue.</p>
<p>“Therefore, it is a good idea to apply to at least 15 PHD programs to better your chances of gaining acceptance.”</p>
<p>At least 15 PhD programs? Yikes.</p>