By Adriana Ladera (other collaborators wanted!). Last updated 21 Dec. 2022.
The process for navigating graduate school applications is admittedly lengthy and daunting, and you may even be wondering whether grad school may even be right for you. You may find this page helpful for guidance on figuring out you research interests, choosing the right graduate schools and faculty mentors, and writing a grad school statement of purpose.
In your undergraduate years, your institution takes time to lay out the foundations of understanding for you to gain basic yet working knowledge for your field of interest. Whether that be computer science, mathematics, or psychology, the completion of your undergraduate degree– as well as any internships or research programs along the way– ensures that you are trained to have a general working proficiency in your chosen field of study. So why do people do graduate school?
Graduate school, especially for a research-based graduate degree, is for when you’ve completed your undergraduate studies and are now looking to specialize and hone the interests you’ve obtained in your undergraduate career. Completion of your graduate research-based degree ensures mastery and expertise of a concentration within your field of interest.
Recommendation letters are perhaps one of the most, if not, the most important aspects of your application for research programs, internships, and graduate school. Recommendation letters allow the admissions office to gain a perspective of who you, the applicant, are outside of the person described by your own essays. Generally, a recommender is a Principal Investigator for your research project, a professor who knows you personally beyond the scope of good performance in their class (i.e. a research collaborator or non-academic extracurricular advisor), or an internship manager. Your recommender must be able to vouch for your research performance, leadership skills, determination, and/or your ability to handle challenges and work with others.
A good general rule of thumb for determining who should be your recommender is the 2-1 plus rule for applications that require 3 or more recommenders. The 2-1 plus rule ensures that you have at least two recommenders, notably professors or employers, that are able to create strong letters describing your potential and work ethic as a researcher or employee, and at least one other recommender, usually a mentor or extra-curricular collaborator, that can speak on behalf of your personality and skills beyond the lab or internship.
Once you have decided who your recommenders will be, ensure that you give them at least one month in advance to submit their recommendation letters for your application. Recommenders, especially professors, are busy people who balance deadlines for grant funding, conferences, and other student projects, so please be respectful of their time. While some recommenders are completely content with curating recommendation letters a few days before and even the day of the deadline, chances are, your recommender would like as much time as possible to craft their best version of you in letter form.
This can be for spoken and written languages like French and Tagalog, but if you know any programming languages like Python, C++, or Julia, please put them here!
This can be for spoken and written languages like French and Tagalog, but if you know any programming languages like Python, C++, or Julia, please put them here!
This can be for spoken and written languages like French and Tagalog, but if you know any programming languages like Python, C++, or Julia, please put them here!