Grad School Admissions Tips

Graduate School
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Hi, I just got my grad school admissions results back and I’m very excited about the results. Thought I would share a few things as to how I was able to succeed. This Unfortunately this post was too long so you’ll have to look in a few comments below to get the rest.

tl;dr work with people who also care about their grades and your grades, find a research passion and work hard and confidently to achieve it, study hard for GRE, be organized during the application process, let yourself shine in the P(H)S/SOP and put more emphasis on content over aesthetics, be choosy about your letters of rec and start early and ask confidently, don’t sacrifice everything to get into grad school and learn to maintain a healthy balance

  1. Grades matter, and who you associate with often affects your grades.

You are who you associate with. There are two types of association. First are those with actual people. Some people just want to get out of college into the workforce, but this is often bad for grades. Don’t allow this mindset to rub off on you if you want to study at grad school. Reach out to those who have a similar mindset in terms of their grades. Reach out to professors too. There are many ways to do this, and I’ll cover this in a separate point. But limiting the scope to classroom instruction if you find a topic difficult to understand or are just plain struggling in the course, be upfront with your professor about it. Many professors I found were much more helpful in OH then they were in lecture simply because they had more time for one-on-one interaction. If you show you care then they will care to help you.

Second type of association is with nonliving things. How so? Do you spend most of your time researching about grad school or playing Super Mario? Is your browser history filled more with textbook and study links or dank meme links? Learn to spend more time away from the fun stuff and more to stuff that will improve skills which will improve your grades.

You might get away with procrastinating on a single assignment, but absolutely don’t procrastinate to get help when you need it!

One other thing. You should not try and boost your GPA by taking fluff classes or major courses pass/no pass. A high 3.9 will look suspect if this is the case. For the record I had a mid 3.8 GPA but I took hard courses to back it up. So be sure to balance out the difficulty of your courses with the results as well.

  1. Develop a research passion, and follow through

Grades are important, but not the only thing. To stand out as a grad school applicant you need to know what you will do in grad school. In other words know what you want to study and accomplish. And it needs to be specific. Some people I know tried to fit the research interests of the schools they wanted to apply to, but this will never succeed. You are you, and you must do what you are truly passionate about. That way both grad school and you will be happy. And often this helps people get into the school they want more so than trying to force their way into a puzzle that they don’t fit in.

Find what you are passionate about and connect with professors and others who share your passion. For me it was data science/analysis. For you it might be different. Whatever the case in order to further develop your research passion you must get research experience in your field of choice. I must warn you that professors may be pretty tough on you when you ask them for research. After all you are going to be a significant time and possibly monetary investment. What helps is if you clearly outline your goals and incorporate one or two (or more) of their research papers and interests, then show how those two match. They will see that you are not just joining the lab because you want those cool research credits or something extra to put on your resume, but you’re doing this because you have a plan for the future such as your grad school studies. So the professor knows that they will benefit from having you too.

You may need to reach out to many professors for research opportunities but they must all in some way point towards your graduate school goals. Oh yeah, don’t worry about “failing” a meeting with a professor or not getting a reply back to an email request unless you’re completely out of options. Sometimes you are not a good fit for the lab or the professor is full. If you outline your goals clearly you will almost certainly get into a lab (or research position) you want.

Then in your research lab build up a good rapport with your professor and others. As an undergrad you will be working with graduate students on their projects, or even directly with the professor himself. Don’t let that intimidate you. They are just people too with goals and deadlines to meet, just make sure you make those your goals and deadlines too. So you must work hard and demonstrate yourself to be a good learner. Attend all of your lab meetings (when possible, sometimes class will prevent you from doing so but try not to use this as an excuse) and report with your supervisors frequently. Learn to say no to other fun activities and association to get your work done, and take advantage of the summer if you can work then.

Contributing to a paper and/or attending a conference is an amazing opportunity if you are exceptional but not necessarily needed for success in the research lab and admission to graduate school. Show yourself to be valuable to the lab through your contributions and your professor and fellow grad school students will respect you. That will be important for a later step.

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  1. Start preparing early for the GRE

GRE may not be the most important factor of admission but can be a dealbreaker especially if you score below the university’s posted threshholds. Don’t think GRE is like the SAT/ACT you took for undergraduate although there are some similarities. For one the format of questions are different. Second is that you probably have not have reviewed the material in years (especially for math). Third is that it is a computer-delivered test. This makes for a different test taking experience so you must practice, practice, practice. For me I found that spending 3-4 hours per day for about 2 months was sufficient to get my desired GRE scores. Treat the GRE like you’ll have only one chance so you’ll most likely do really well come test-taking day.

I recommend Barron’s 1000 Words for vocab and ETS’s own study guide for practice tests. Manhattan Practice, Kaplan, and Princeton Review also offer great resources, but personally I found Kaplan to be the most helpful all-around especially when it comes to how you should write the two essays you’ll need to complete. Be sure to do practice tests in a computer based environment too!

  1. Find out which programs you want to apply to and learn as much as you can about them

Remember you are applying to a specific program not the university in general for graduate school. So you must know which programs you want to apply to and why. Rankings may provide some insight but more importantly you need to look at what professors work there and what their research interests are. Also try to gauge how innovative the program is by reading publications and their feed. You must make sure that all these factors match what you want to achieve in graduate school. After all you don’t want to be working with professors who don’t have the same interests as you do. These are what we call internal factors.

Now about external factors. A big external factor could be the opportunities available in the city the university is located in. Perhaps you’re big on fintech and maybe for that Columbia University might be better for you because of the stock exchange. Or maybe not depending on your specific interests. It’s up to you to do your research and because this varies between different candidates I will not spend too much time explaining external factors.

Cost is also an issue but I feel like I’m not in the best position to discuss that because my financial situation is quite unique. Someone who had the time to read this whole thing might want to comment about that.

Again I cannot stress how important it is to look beyond a university’s overall ranking or even program ranking and look deep into the specific program. Different metrics use different factors to rank university grad programs so the only ranking that matters is the one you personally make. It may more or less reflect well-known ranking systems out there but that would be mere coincidence.

  1. Get your materials together and soon (anything other than recommendations and P(H)S/SOP for now)

Grad school admissions offices want to see a lot of things like transcripts, resumes/CVs, etc. It’s important you do your research as outlined in step 4 to understand what materials you need to send and by what dates. Some programs are fine with uploading transcripts but others want you to mail them so you’ll need to make arrangements for that. Make sure there are no typos in your resume as that would look bad. Double check, triple check all the information you put regarding school institutions and especially GPA (if specified) because that can be verified and you don’t want to come across as sloppy or even lying.

Tabulate a list of all the grad programs you’re applying to with the respective deadline(s). If you spend at least a half-decent effort on this checklist then step 5 should honestly be the easiest step.

  1. Writing the P(H)S/SOP

I find a lot of people put an undue amount of time into this step, or at least into the wrong components of this step. Why is that? They try too hard to put a ton of fancy jargon and colorful words and random quotes that only end up producing diminishing returns and hurt them in the end. A good P(H)S/SOP no matter how much color you add to it will be garbage if there is no content to back it up or if you cannot articulate your experience and goals well. If the former is lacking see steps 1 and 2. Some strong candidates however struggle with the latter. To avoid this take a deep breath and simply bullet point everything you have accomplished up to the point you’re writing your essay. Eliminate those bullet points that have little to no bearing on your grad school application, then play connect the dots and rearrange those bullet points to obtain a natural flow to your essay that will make it much easier to structure. Then get writing; this “meaty” section will now contain a wonderful story about your story and growth so far in college.

Now you just need two more things: the introduction and the conclusion. The introduction is, well, an introduction of you. It’s almost like the “Tell me about yourself” interview question; it needs to be succinct and outline what you think you are and what you hope to be. Of course it also needs to flow into the next paragraph as well but an unambitions and lackluster introduction will probably be a huge minus on your application (first impressions matter). The conclusion needs to explain why you are a qualified candidate for the program you have applied to. This is where step 4 is really important. If you have done your careful research for step 4, then you should know why you are a qualified candidate and honestly the conclusion shouldn’t be as hard as some make it out to be, though of course it will still require a lot of careful thinking.

Note that some programs may have specific things they want you to include in the P(H)S/SOP or may ask specific questions in place of these. Sometimes they will be hidden on the university website or other times the university will be generous and outline it in the prompt on the grad app. In either case it’s your responsibility to make sure you have answered the questions (and followed the word count/spacing guidelines).

After you’ve done all this, then you can start adding some artistry into the essay(s) (the quotes, the colorful words, etc.). Remember this is meant to complement your essay, not become it, and that it will only complement your essay if there is even something to complement in the first place.

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  1. Getting your recommendations

It depends on the university you’re applying to but most universities ask for 3 from academia with maybe an exception if you’ve worked for the industry for a few years (in which case a manager might be OK). Even if recommendations are optional you should still get them as universities always value input from other sources especially your research lab. Contrary to popular belief it is not necessary for all universities that all 3 come from professors (one of mine was from a postdoc supervisor in my research lab) but you should try your best to look for professors in your research lab or who have taught you in the past. This is part of the reason why steps 1 and 2 are so crucial.

Don’t limit yourself when it comes to recommendations and most importantly don’t be scared or lazy about it. If you’re a good student with good relationships with professors and a high performer than you should not be worried that your professor will reject you. More often than not professors are happy to write recommendations for students they enjoyed having or supervising. Even if you do get rejected it is possible that they either really are too busy to meet your time frame (perhaps you waited till 1 1/2 weeks before the due date like I did haha, btw don’t do this you’re asking for a favor and it does take time to write a good letter of rec) or perhaps they don’t know you as well as you thought they did. Either way don’t give up and keep asking around.

Even if a professor says yes you should still be very choosy. For example one of the professors I emailed said he would but also spent a good deal of time saying I was ranked 13th in the class and would probably not have a good shot for top-20 or possibly even top-30 ranked CS/data science programs. If your professor in any way doubts your qualifications then they will have a hard time writing a good letter of recommendation for you. It’s always best to meet in person beforehand so you and the professor can gauge each other’s interest in committing to each other.

Btw I ended up getting into Columbia which is top 20 in CS/data science by many sites though the only reason I care about the rankings is to let my professor know haha.

  1. Maintain a balance despite your workload (AKA the most underrated step)

So you’re applying to grad school but that is not the only thing in your life. People who spend day in day out applying to grad school sacrifice other important relationships, their health, and as a result their overall happiness. True I mention that you should branch out to people who care about getting good grades but that doesn’t mean you have to dump your old friends. True I mention that you should devote a lot of time to look for and complete exciting research projects but that doesn’t mean you can’t spend some time playing Super Mario or looking at dank memes. In fact if you’re super imbalanced towards getting into grad school then you’re most certainly doing something wrong and it will hurt the quality of your application. It’s all about setting the right priorities and learning to be efficient enough to achieve them and yet not sacrifice too much down time, play time, fun association, and sleep.

For me applying to grad school was as fun as it was challenging. Of course I am glad it is over but I don’t think applying to grad school needs to cause you a bunch of negative stress (you know the kind that makes you super depressed and stuff). Keep things in perspective and most importantly keep a positive mindset. There are so many important things in life and even applying for grad school isn’t worth as much as those.

For those waiting to hear back from grad schools, I’m hoping for the best for all of you. If you’re preparing for grad school, be diligent, confident, and have fun.

P.S. Kudos to you if you’ve made it this far, I had some spare time so I thought I’d provide a detailed explanation of my experience but please comment if you felt I missed anything or even disagreed with something.

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I’d just like to point out that I am a faculty member and my browser history is filled with plenty of dank memes. Work hard, play hard.