Accepted Admissions Blog

“Choosing Graduate Programs to Apply to” is excerpted from the Accepted.com special report, Get Your Game On: Prepping for Your Grad School Application. To download the entire free special report, click here.

As you bring your interests into focus, start to create a list of target programs. Many factors will influence your decision-making process. Here are some things to think about:

• Do you have geographical considerations? (Do you need to be near family, or in a certain city where a spouse works?)

• What are the strengths of the programs that interest you? If you’re looking to work in industry, does the program offer networking/internships/career placement? If you’re considering a PhD, is the program strong in your subfield?

• If you’re planning to apply for a PhD program, is there a faculty member in the department who is doing work in your area of interest, or who could serve as your mentor/research supervisor?

• How many students does the program accept each year? (Some doctoral programs enroll as few as 3-4 students annually, so know that even if your credentials are stellar, you should have more than one plan!)

• Is there funding available?

• For PhD programs: Does the university publish the average time-to-degree of students in the program? (This is sometimes rather different from the stated program length you’ll find in the program catalog.)

• Are there opportunities to work as a teaching or research assistant? If grad students in the department are expected to teach, is there a mentoring program in place? How many semesters do students TA?

• If you’re hoping to work as an academic, inform yourself about the structure/expectations of your discipline. Do the programs you’re looking at have a strong record of placing their PhDs in post-docs and tenure track positions? (Do the professors you’re thinking about working with have such a record?)

• If you have a good relationship with a current or past faculty mentor, ask for advice about programs and potential grad advisers you should consider.

In the next post, I’ll address how to develop a concrete description of your research interests.

By Dr. Rebecca Blustein, Accepted.com editor and former Student Affairs Officer at UCLA’s Scholarship Resource Center, and author of Financing Your Future: Winning Fellowships, Scholarships and Awards for Grad School. Rebecca will be happy to assist you with your grad school applications.

Related Resources:

• Kisses of Death for your Grad School Application
• Obtaining Graduate Assistantships
• Graduate School Admissions 101