I’ve finally accepted the fact that this is my final year at Penn State– for the most part anyway, as long as you don’t mention “graduation.” Because I’ve finally realized I’m moving on from this place, I am applying to graduate schools in English to further my education. My reasons for wanting to attend graduate school are varied and rather boring to anyone but me, so I won’t get into that here. I do, however, want to impart upon you all the various things I have learned and I am currently learning as I am knee-deep in this process:

Figuring out where to apply is hard work. Seriously, I had no idea where to start for a while. I managed to cut it down to two criteria– location and funding.  With the second, I tried to search programs that funded most, if not all of their PhD students. It turns out that many grad school programs provide funding, so this didn’t narrow it down much. Location, however, is important. As much as I love Penn State, I think I would like to be somewhere less rural as a grad student. Geographic location was also very important to me in this search, as I still am quite close to my family and I did not want to move across the country from them. Another criteria important to consider as you look around at grad schools is the ranking/reputation of the program. I wanted to find a mix of top schools that had stellar reputations in English and good schools where I had a better chance of getting accepted. With all of this to consider, finding a place to start was a difficult aspect of this research that I did not really expect.

Figuring out where to apply is scary. I’m hoping this one isn’t just me, but the idea of relocating to some place completely new where I do not know anyone– it’s exciting, but in a totally terrifying way. I remember the stress of freshman year of college, realizing that I needed to get out there and make friends– and quickly. I remember thinking to myself, “Not this again! I thought I was done with this process!” Though it is always fun to meet new people, the terror of spending my time alone for a while before friendships kick in is still lurking.  

Start early. There are some aspects of this where I did well and feel I can pat myself on the back, and others where I’m still stressing. If you’re applying to English grad schools, or anything else that demands an extensive writing sample, you can’t start working on this too early. Seriously.  I picked my writing samples rather early in the game, which was a good choice on my part, but because I didn’t finalize my list of schools until later, I was rather shocked and dismayed to find out that most schools have a different length requirement on their papers. I’ve seen it range anywhere from about 10 to 25–and some want two separate samples! This is a major headache/scare factor because the writing sample is an extremely important part of the application. So have a couple options and choose early. And edit until you can’t see straight. That helps, too.

Be flexible. From the applications I’ve completed so far, it seems most schools want similar information from you, but they all word it differently, or have a different length requirement, or have some aspect that was not included last time. The best way to tackle this is to have materials that you can easily adapt from one form to the next.  Many people think that preparing one personal statement is enough. But many schools have a secondary personal statement in which you are asked to talk about your life experiences, etc. Think of a couple good ideas for this and get ready to adapt them depending on the school’s requirements.

Be on top of deadlines and specific requirements for each school. This could be my most important tip for you: make sure you know when everything is due and what materials each school needs. Be on top of where you need to send official transcripts. Find out who has supplemental materials that need to be mailed or uploaded online. This will make a huge difference in timing. 

If you stay organized, you’re on your way to success in the application process. Those are the encouraging words I keep telling myself to get through the second half of this application process.

If you have any experience applying to graduate school, please feel free to share in the comments section of this blog post.