This article is the second of a series on what to do in the 12 months leading up to submitting your graduate school application(s). 

As was previously suggested, graduate school is not something to take lightly.  It involves a major investment personally, intellectually, socially, emotionally, and financially.  Be sure to allow yourself enough time to do your “due diligence” and get all of the information you want and need.  

9 months before applying:

1. Start thinking about making some campus visits.  Due to financial resources or other circumstances, it may not be possible for you to make an in-person visit.  If so, be sure to take the virtual campus tour that is offered on most admissions office websites. Most institutions offer a variety of campus visit programming, usually described on their website.  Here is a good tip:  If you can afford to visit an institution more than once, make your first visit unannounced.  This will help you get a feeling for what the institution is really like.  How you are treated as a “complete stranger” can be very revealing.  If, however, you do not have the time and/or funds to do more than one visit, you may want to wait for your visit until you have started the application process.
2. Start preparing for any standardized tests required as part of the application process.  Depending on the program, graduate school admissions committees may require the GRE, GMAT, LSAT or MCAT.  In addition, an international applicant will most likely be required to take a test to demonstrate their level of proficiency in the English language. There are quite a few materials available to help you prepare for these tests.  You will most likely learn about these materials from the Educational Testing Service, the Graduate Management Admission Council, the Law School Admission Council and the Association of American Medical Colleges.  These organizations have preparation materials available on their websites.  Other organizations, such as Barrons, Kaplan, Peterson’s and the Princeton Review offer test preparation classes.  In addition, you can go to your local bookstore and find a host of printed materials and study guides.

8 months before applying:

1. Now is the time to do some additional research on your options.  One area that may be of interest is the type of press they receive.  There are at least two ways to find this out:  One is to go the website and look for a link that might read: “(institution name) in the news,” or “press coverage of (institution name).”   A second way is to log on to a search engine on the web, and look for press coverage.  Conducting this type of search will yield more news clips than would be found on an institution’s website.  This is because institutional websites tend to accentuate only positive press coverage.
2. Another way to learn about your options is to read their institutional and student-run newspapers.   In some cases you may have to ask for access these, and in other cases you can view them freely on the website.  This allows you to review both external (press) and internal (institutional/student) perspectives (faculty, research, etc.), which you will not find in admissions or other promotional information.
3. Find out if there are rankings of institutions offering the graduate program you are seeking.  Various organizations provide annual or bi-annual rankings that can be useful to you.  However, REMEMBER:  RANKINGS AND REPUTATION ARE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS.  Organizations that do rankings may try to provide reliable information, but those actually doing the data gathering, analysis, and dissemination of the rankings have biases of their own.  Often times they have never stepped foot on campus.  Also, rankings provide a source of revenue for the organizations doing them.  As a result, in many instances rankings differ, sometines greatly.  In addition, by the time you enroll in graduate school, the ranking of your options will most likely have changed.  It will change again while you are enrolled and yet again after you graduate.  So you need to be very careful how much you allow a ranking to influence your final decision about where to apply.  You may be better off looking for trends, such as:  Has a particular institution been consistently ranked in the top 20 over time?

7 months before applying:

1. Contact current students and/or recent graduates at the institutions on your list.  If you know someone who is attending or recently graduated, contact them and ask some questions.  If not, ask the admissions staff if they can put you in touch with a current student/alumnus or two.  Many admissions offices have volunteers who are willing to talk with prospective students.  Two critical questions to ask:  1) What do/did you like most and least about the program? 2) If you had it to do over again, would you still attend this institution?  If you can ask the same questions for each of your options, you will have more information for purposes of your spreadsheet. 
2. At this point do a second evaluation of your options, considering what you have discovered from external and internal press, rankings and conversations with students.  Remember, you are not ready to make your short list yet.  You can, however, change your spreadsheet evaluations at any time.  It also may be that something you learn from the press or rankings about an option that was eliminated earlier from your list may cause you to place that option back on. 

 

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