How to navigate the Graduate School application/process?

SouthernHope
Tue, 04 Jun 2019 18:54:36 +0000

My oldest just went through this process and starts grad school this fall. She’s in the diplomacy and foreign affairs world so I’m not versed in the STEM grad school process but last year I helped a friend of hers with his grad school essays for aerospace and he ended up getting into some famous school in Paris…which he then turned down for Stanford…which he then turned down for MIT. So that worked out pretty well.

My D applied to 7 schools and got into 7…in retrospect, she kind of wish she had applied to more…she felt like she perhaps underestimated her value and - we found out – having acceptances in hand makes it much much easier to appeal financial aid offers…in her case, it came down to johns hopkins and tufts and she chose one.

Her experience:

1. you really need your GRE score in hand before you can decide what schools to target. i'm just guessing at this but he'll likely need at least in the low 160s to be competitive within this major.

2. Even more so than undergrad, it really helps to try for schools where he'll be at the top of the pile...two of the schools D got into offered her almost a full ride.

3. but that's where it gets complicated because she really wanted to be in a school where she would be a striver so she ended choosing a tough school and received a much more modest award (though it truly helped).

4. grad school applications are a bear...every one is unique...but you do get into a groove and application 7 was a breeze compared to application 1.