Applying To Graduate Schools

Be prepared to be disappointed. Some of the most successful professors I have met told me that they did not get into many of the grad schools they applied to. Personally, I did not get into any of the PhD programs I applied to the first time around. However, if you’re smart about it, and understand a little about how academia works, then you can downgrade your stress from unbearable to just above annoying.

The first piece of advice I would offer is that you need to have a backup plan, or be extremely aggressive if you don’t. For me, my backup plan for getting a PhD was to get a master’s degree first, then reapply to PhD programs. This actually worked out really well for me, but I was transitioning from a different field (physics) into economics, so a master’s really had the potential to provide a great transition and give me more time to understand the research. For some, a backup plan might be to just work for another year or two in a related job, or to get a lengthy post-baccalaureate internship. Your backup plan is something that you won’t feel bad about doing, and that has the potential to make you look goo on your second round of graduate applications.

Now, if you are ready for grad school, and you want to get into grad schools…