Graduate School Admissions

Class Location: Anywhere with an Internet connection.

Description:  This class details the different graduate programs and tips for applying.

Prerequisites:  Willingness to learn.

Required Text:  None.

Objectives:

1. Figuring out whether graduate school is right for you.
2. Find which graduate program attracts you most.
3. Find out what the admissions committees are looking for.
4. Dive into the controversies of graduate school rankings.
5. Deciding on a Masters or PhD.
6. Information on graduate school waitlist.

So, you’ve finished your undergraduate degree and are ready for the next step—graduate school. The opportunities available in the U.S. for graduate programs are vast and wide-ranging. But sometimes, too many choices can become overwhelming. So, you need to figure out which programs are right for you and, once you do, how to create an application that gets you accepted.

If you want to pursue a graduate program other than the big three—law, MBA, and medicine—it may be harder to find the information you need.  Programs for these three professions tend to be much more standardized than some other graduate programs, such as public affairs or engineering. As a result, the process of choosing and applying to other kinds of programs is quite different than it is for business, law, or medicine.

While the graduate programs for fields such as engineering or public health can vary greatly from one to the next, there are still accrediting bodies and schools with excellent reputations in their particular specialties. However, you won’t find the same ranking systems for these kinds of programs as you will for the big three, since the wide variations in programs within a certain field make it too hard to compare them to each other. All this diversity makes assessing the programs and keeping up with the constant changes in them challenging, to say the least.

Equally overwhelming is the task of applying to these graduate programs. Admission to the top graduate schools is so competitive that many report acceptance percentage rates in the single digits. Making things perhaps even more difficult is the fact that many of these schools are more concerned with the subjective than the objective. They care less about an applicant’s grades and test scores than they do about things like work experience, commitment to public service, or future goals. This means that a strong applicant really needs to impress a school with the overall story that his application presents if he wants one of those coveted slots at an elite grad school.