applying to grad school (3)

Undergrads often ask which is most important in their grad school applications: their letters of reference, statement of purpose, or transcripts. The answer is all three: your application will be picked over by a committee whose individual members may well rate the significance of each of these differently.

Some undergrads, by second or third year, have convinced themselves that university grades don't matter in life. That may be largely true. But the one place where university grades are important is ... universities. If you're planning to apply to grad school or medical school or law school or whatever, your university marks will be important. I have seen many grad student applicants explain that their low first and second (and sometimes third) year marks are unrepresentative, that they saw the light on the road to Damascus sometime in third year, and therefore their higher upper year marks better demonstrate their potential. Maybe. This may well convince members of the grad committee to accept you ... or they may ask you to do a make-up year or take some make-up courses, to confirm that the good student is the real you. Better to do well in courses the first time.

applying to grad school (2)

Ten ways to get good, helpful reference letters for your grad school application:

10. Be a good student. Get good marks. Write good essays. Show up for class. Speak up in class.

9. Don't ask your priest, Member of Parliament, orT.A. for a letter.

8. Ask professors in the field to which you're applying. (Weigh carefully whether to seek a letter of reference from an Adjunct Professor, for two reasons. One, it's unlikely to be part of their job, so they're doing it strictly because of their generosity and sense of professionalism. Second, though they may know you best, their opinion may not be as highly regarded as that of a fulltime faculty member to some of the people who will read your application. This is unfair, but it's still something you should consider.)

7. Ask professors who know your work. Remind them who you are by giving them old essays they marked, by outlining your grades in their course, by a cv. This will also be very useful to them when writing your letters.

6. Ask them if they like your work. Be direct, and ask them to be direct. If they have reservations about you, and about writing you a letter, you need to know about it now.

5. Ask them, at some point in the process, if they would be willing to show you the letter, at the end of the process. Some won't be willing, some will (and those who won't be aren't necessarily saying bad things about you). Whatever. It can't hurt to ask, and it may help you in two ways: by letting you see how others see you, and by letting you see whether your referee writes good letters of reference (some people don't).

4. Ask well in advance. If they agree to write letters for you, give them plenty of notice -- at least a month, if possible -- before the deadlines.

3. Make it as simple as possible for them to write their letters. If a school you're applying to has an online form, don't just give the referees the url -- print out the form, add your contact information yourself, and deliver the form to them. If you're asking them to write 5 more letters, ask in 1 email rather than 5 (if possible), with a table of application addresses, deadlines, etc.

2. Ask them if there is anything else they need, and thank them.

1. And then send an email thank-you immediately after the deadline. If they've forgotten -- which happens! -- this should spur them to write and fax a letter straightaway.

applying to grad school (1)

It's a new year and I'm girding my loins for an onslaught of grad school applications. In my first five years teaching History at Western, I've read about 500 such applications and expect to read another 150 or so in the next couple of months. One hundred and fifty transcripts, 300 letters of reference, maybe 50 writing samples from Ph.D. candidates, and 150 "statements of purpose" -- the applicants' paragraph on why they want to do a graduate degree, and why here, why with us.

The statement of purpose is tough to write -- and read. For one thing, students are asked to write only 200 words, hardly enough to warm up (the 100th word of this blog post came earlier in this sentence). But a bigger problem is that these mini-essays become too personality-centred, reading as a natural extension, maybe, of the essay the student wrote for undergraduate entrance to university. Here's how author Gerald Graff (with Andrew Hoberek) puts it in a chapter of his book Clueless in Academe called "The Application Guessing Game", and then offers a solution:

Here is a typical statement, made up by us but instantly recognizable, we bet, by experienced application readers: "Ever since age three I've been passionately in love with the sensuous sound of words. So when Mother Goose was read to me in my crib, I somehow knew I was destined for a lifelong love affair with literature." ... It is not that love of literature is no longer considered a good thing, but that in a graduate application this love is taken for granted and therefore does not score any points: love of one's subject is a necessary qualification for graduate study, but it is not sufficient to get you in. ...In Ph.D. application workshops we developed for MAPH [Master of Arts Program in the Humanities] students, we suggested that the point they needed to get across was not that they loved their subject, but that they are ready to join an intellectual conversation about what they love. They need to translate their passion for their subject into an indication that they know how to discuss it publicly with other knowledgeable people, rather than simply enhancing their private enjoyment of art, philosophy, or classsics. This means showing that they have some plausible picture of the academic field or subfield they envision themselves joining.

Good advice. I'd recommend this chapter to anyone about to apply for grad school. If you want to borrow it, just ask.