When I was a (second year) senior, my professors kept pulling me aside after class and telling me that I should go to graduate school. They enthusiastically described how much I would learn, and would always comment on my potential in the field. When I asked them how to get started, they pointed me in some truly terrible directions, like the US News and World Report (which I will cover in this chapter). It wasn’t out of malice or hatred that these poor resources were offered; it was because many of these professors didn’t really know how to track down excellent graduate programs when starting from scratch. The ones who recommended graduate study to me were multi-generation academics. Much of the struggle of finding an appropriate program was significantly lessened by family members and friends. Academia is a fairly strong community. Scholars know each other, and most professors know other professors from every discipline on campus. My colleagues are able to connect their children with experts in almost every field, experts that can point their children toward really strong graduate programs. I never had such resources. Simply put, I was completely lost when I started thinking about school, and I never got the answers I was looking for. I had to learn those answers the hard way.

There is another reason that professors may not be the most helpful resources for graduate school (paradoxically). I’ve mentored many students through the process of applying to graduate school. Done well, it is time consuming and complex. Many of the students I work with have a vague desire to pursue graduate studies, so we end up discussing the idea, the alternatives, the job prospects, and the application process over many hours. Most faculty are eager to do this kind of work, but we are also trying to balance our own projects alongside teaching and mentoring. In a given semester, a professor many have hundreds of other students registered for their courses, meaning they need to devote time to a large number of people. Spending dozens of hours on a single student might be the kind of work we want to do, but it often isn’t feasible. It’s far better to learn some basic elements of the application process and reserve your professors for specific inquiries.

This chapter is about doing the preliminary work of selecting schools. I will present to you a sensical, easy system for identifying and narrowing potential graduate programs. This is a system, so it must be worked. I caution students away from static lists or designating programs as “top choice.” You will never know everything about a graduate program until you are in it for several years. Thus, this process is about narrowing from a limitless field to a rather limited field (10 or so, probably less) based on some objective markers of quality. After you have completed this section of the text, you should discuss this list with a professor and get their input. After getting some reasonable assurance that you have a quality list, you can begin working on application materials.

Building an Organized System

I have said it elsewhere in this book: graduate school begins as soon as you start thinking of applying to programs. The application process needs to be managed in the same way as you would manage a complex project. Research needs to be conducted, sources need to be annotated, and everything needs to be organized and immediately available across devices. Working smarter and staying organized will make this process significantly easier.

The application process will involve indexing digital content and writing, so you will need software that can achieve these ends easily and without cost. I would suggest using a bookmark manager to organize links to various programs. Google Chrome and Firefox both offer decent organizational opportunities that will sync across devices. I recommend that applicants create a bookmark folder for each potential school, and then save links to materials like application information, coursework, and degree requirements within those folders. Most of these managers allow you to customize the names of links, so come up with a uniform naming scheme so that items make sense to you. I also recommend using an office suite like Google Docs for organizing your materials by school.  I provide an example organizational table that can be easily recreated in any spreadsheet software towards the end of this chapter. Staying organized and combating stress/panic will contribute to a much better experience during the application process. Writing your application materials will take an enormous amount of cognitive strength. Don’t waste that strength on practices that can be easily managed using technology.

Location Bound or Free

In general, graduate school requires moving. Rather than considering the entire institution (like in undergraduate admissions), you should strive to find the best individual program (or a lab, for most of the sciences and some social sciences) possible. Some amazing graduate programs might be housed in otherwise mediocre schools, which can lead to some interesting results. A famous biologist that you would love to study under, for example, might work at a regional school in the Midwest instead of an R1 in a major metropolitan area. Graduate programs frequently specialize in one or two key areas of a field, so the process of finding a good program is not as simple as finding a program close to your current location.

While quality of program is a very important factor, some individuals may not be free to drop everything in their lives and relocate across the country (or globe). Individuals may be married with a spouse that has an incredible job. Prospective students with children are typically limited by money, choice of school district, and the child’s emotional health. Some prospective students may be the primary wage earner in their family, or are taking care of other family members. For some students, relocation may be an impossibility. This restriction will do much of your research for you. You may need to draw a circle on a map and only consider schools within that circle. You will need to find overlap between possible graduate programs and areas you are able to move to.

When possible, I always recommend that students move away from the familiar in order to pursue their studies. I do this for two reasons: First, to be competitive in the academic job market (presumably why you are going to school), it is important to be open to moving to a new, unfamiliar place. Such a move is very difficult for new faculty, many of which only receive little support from their new departments. They are facing a new job, new expectations, new teaching loads, and doing this all without friends and family. A move for graduate school is considerably easier. You will soon have an entire program to rely on for assistance, and most faculty will be understanding of your circumstances. Moving for graduate studies is essential life practice for the aspiring faculty member that’s able to do so. Secondly, the US (or whatever country you are in) is a big place, even if it seems small. Different states, regions, and cities approach their academic labor in different ways. A move to a completely new location will expose you to new cultures, opportunities, and ways of thinking.

If you are not bound to a particular location, then your search for a graduate program becomes a little more complicated. I still recommend these students identify a few areas they would prefer to move to. This can help break ties and contribute to your overall order/ranking of programs. If you find a promising program in an area you’ve always been interested in, all the better.

It is important, however, to avoid over-restriction. I’ve known prospective graduate students that refuse to study anywhere other than Chicago, New York, or Portland. Those are exciting locations, but it’s far too early to narrow to a specific region if you are conducting a broad search for programs. Never prioritize location over quality of program. If you are choosing between an excellent program in the middle of nowhere and a mediocre program in a cool city, I would always choose the excellent program. You could always visit that city or potentially live there. You cannot re-do your graduate studies.

Professional Programs vs. Research

There are two broad categories of degree type in the US: professional degrees and research-focused programs. Professional programs prepare students to enter into specific job, and often focus on practical training. Law schools, medical schools, and divinity schools are examples of professional degree programs. These differ substantially from research-focused programs where students generally take courses, but engage in large amounts of research and writing. Research-focused programs almost always end with a substantial research project (like a thesis or dissertation) whereas professional programs typically end with a focus on licensure and passing practical (or clinical) exams. If you are interested in pursuing a professional degree, you should track down a book on doing so (there are tons of highly specialized books that cover admission to professional programs). The strategies you find in this book may be broadly applicable, but admission to law school or med school involves special care.

A Note on Online Programs

For the vast majority of students, online programs are complete waste of time and money. Online programs in many fields were created for working professionals rather than students interested in research and formal academic training. For example, many graduate education degrees are online so that teachers can continue to work their jobs and study after hours. Many business degrees are online so that people won’t need to quit working in business in order to complete additional degrees/certifications. Online degree programs rarely (if ever) offer any kind of funding program for students, meaning these are paid for fully by students. In many circumstances, school districts will help their teachers pay for such programs. Many corporations and businesses have continuing education agreements worked out with local campuses and may partially fund an employee’s graduate study. You may also see that many of these programs offer an “accelerated” option to attain a master’s level degree in one year. If you are interested in potentially working in academia, you should avoid online programs at all costs. I will provide some reasons for this later, but, to be perfectly clear, many online programs are simple cash grabs of dubious quality. Stay away from them if you have any desire to work in academia.

Interviewing Your Professors

After you have some understanding of your position on moving (can or can’t do it), it’s time to tap some important, primary resources for graduate school information. Students often completely skip over this step, and it’s a huge detriment to them. I often encounter students that come to me with printouts from a seemingly random selection of graduate schools. They have, unilaterally, decided to study at these places without input from anyone. Bad idea. Carefully considered and prepared outreach to faculty can really help during this stage. I say carefully considered and prepared because those elements are missing from many of these encounters.

Do not hesitate to contact some professors in the discipline that you are interested in. The key aspect of this process is to communicate clearly and effectively. Send a short, simple email that explains what you need from the faculty member. Below, you will find a sample email format for doing this:

I often hear about a student’s plan of study very late in the process, usually when they solicit a letter of rec. At that point, I’m often compelled to write a letter on behalf of a student to a graduate program that I am unfamiliar with, or, worse yet, to a graduate program of dubious quality with a poor reputation. Part of your research process is to find information about prospective programs, but also to lay some groundwork for an excellent letter of recommendation down the road.

The best way to cultivate advocates is to approach them early, gently, and often. The above email solicits information, but it also opens dialogue. Perhaps, after working with a professor for a matter of weeks or months, they will know enough about your possible interests to write a particularly strong letter- much stronger than a “hey can you get this done in two days, thnx!” kind of letter. The above form is short, to the point, and would be easy to answer. Showing up during a professor’s office hours to talk through these issues is not the best way to solicit advice.  The email above allows you to ask for info, but also leaves open the possibility of a meeting.

When doing this, choose the right professors. Students ask me about possible literature programs all the time. My PhD is in English, but not literature study. Further, I wouldn’t know a decent literature program if it slapped me in the face. I do know lots of great programs in my own discipline. Find out what your faculty do (google them, read their research briefly) and then select people to ask.

Avoid spamming. Do not send the same email to every single person in your department. Do not be rude, entitled, or unreasonably selfish in your requests. Be smart. Faculty talk to each other about students, and you don’t want to gain a negative reputation in this process. The key term here is cultivation. Cultivating something takes time, care, and practice. It’s not done instantly. If a person doesn’t respond to your email, then move on. That’s a signal that they don’t want to help you, which is fine. Don’t take it personally. Not receiving advice from that person is beneficial if they don’t want to give help. Forcing a professor to give you advice or a letter of recommendation will always backfire, and it’s not worth the risk.

Seeking Help Online

Your professors can give you some leads or referrals for finding graduate decent graduate programs, but their knowledge may also be limited. If, for instance, they went to graduate school in the 80s, 90s, or early 2000s, then their knowledge about the landscape of current graduate offerings might be limited. Some professors keep up with graduate programs and faculty, and some don’t. Programs also develop and phase out every year, so you will need to do some additional research online. It’s also important at this stage to treat all information as unsubstantiated. If a professor tells you that program X is amazing, you should be able to find information to corroborate that claim. If not, treat it as unsubstantiated (don’t make major decisions based on it).

The internet is both a goldmine and garbage heap of information about graduate studies. I caution you to disregard most of what you find on the internet about graduate schools/rankings. Many websites are clickbait with nothing important on them. There are, however, some really important resources authored by professional organizations and professors that can be extremely helpful. My major professional organization (College Composition and Communication) maintains a database of all active PhD programs in my field. That’s the only list that a person would need to start the next phase of research. There are similar lists put out by other professional organizations. Some individual professors may publish their own lists as well. In any of these options, make sure to evaluate the credibility of the source. Any professor’s website should have their CV on it. If their CV or a list of qualifications is not on the website, it likely isn’t trustworthy. If a list has an organization as the author, search that organization to ensure they are field-specific and credible. Maintain some basic web search credibility. If the information is coming from a .com website, I would consider it suspect. Any worthwhile professional organization should have a .org web address.

On Rankings Websites

Digging through the US News and World Report rankings seems like a no brainer, but it’s ultimately not that helpful to you. Prospective undergraduate students are shopping for an entire university. Graduate students are shopping for a program or a lab within a university. Programs have professional reputations that can be independent from the university/college. A mediocre school, for example, might have a very well-renowned linguistics program. Attending that school for an advanced degree in linguistics is a great idea. Attending it for a lesser known program might not be the best idea. The US News and World Report rankings treat schools as a whole, generally. They do provide some information for grad schools, but I don’t think it’s particularly helpful. Coursework, completion rates, and student placement are going to be the most important factors for graduate study, and the rankings won’t show you that.

Online Grad School Resources

There are two places you should spend some time on in your hunt for a graduate school. The Grad Cafe, and Reddit. The Grad Cafe is a hub for all things graduate school. Use the internal search function to mine data on your field. I always find useful info on this site, and it’s not a terrible place to establish some community. The other useful spot is Reddit. On the whole, reddit is mainly for news and memes, but it’s also home to some great subreddits about academic life and graduate school. There are also subreddits for individual fields that cater to specific discussion. Askacademia, Professors, and Gradschool have been incredibly useful subreddits for me across my career. The communities are helpful and supportive, and could help you far beyond the applications. The application process for graduate school can feel lonely, especially for first gen students. Discovering and nurturing relationships with digital communities can help you to vent or solicit advice anonymously, which can help shield your reputation in a program. These websites are both .com, but they are entirely user-driven. I always recommend students take a day or two and read broadly about their career plans on these sites. Registering for an account and keeping up with relevant subreddits is not a bad idea, either.

Surveying Department Websites

All of the resources above were designed to help you arrive a potential list of programs. Note that this list is not fixed, and it will likely change several more times. This is a process, and working the different aspects of the process will result in modified results. Once you have a list of prospective programs, you can begin the process of evaluating their quality and fit for your needs. Larger web resources can only take you so far. They can give a general snapshot of a program, but they can’t tell you the most important things about what you will be studying, who you will be studying it with, and the potential outcomes of your degree.

The next step of the process begins with department websites. Begin by googling the prospective department and locating their main page. Most students blaze past this in favor of hunting down the graduate content. Slow down! Remember, this is a big decision. You’ll be studying in this department for at least two years. Many departments have access to their website to make changes, post updates, and include some general information about the character of the place. Some departments use their websites to great effect, but others treat the website as an annoying inconvenience. I would not fault a department for the overall design of their website (we have little control on the aesthetic dimension), but I would fault a department for hosting vague, old, or useless content. If their community-facing content sucks, then it should tell you a bit about that program.

The website can give you some general clues as to the character of the department. If one of the areas of graduate study is professional writing, for instance, and the documents available on the website are poorly designed, then you have a clue about how the department likely views professional writing. It’s possible that this department highly values professional writing, but, based on the information available to you it does not appear so. A key part of this process is making evidence-based decisions. In general, departments that are engaged with their students will make good use of their website. You might see highlights from recent events, announcements for various activities, and some links to important resources. This kind of content shows that the faculty are invested enough in the students to provide some information on the happenings within the department.

After surveying the main department page, find the location of resources related to graduate study. This is often it’s own page on most department websites, but the information may be housed on another part of the university website. In general, the easier it is to locate these resources the better (if they are easy to find, it means someone decided they should be easy to find). I will cover some key areas of interest in the paragraphs below.

Information for Prospective Applicants

Many departments include a summary of important information for prospective applicants. That information typically includes a welcome note with some marketing language about the program. This might be a useful page to bookmark so that you can easily return and locate other resources later (remember to rename your bookmark with a descriptive name). It might be helpful to begin taking notes about due dates, materials needed, and any other special instructions.

Course Schedules/Bulletin/Offerings

Any functional graduate program will have their course offerings for (at least) the next year (if not two or more) publicly available. Most of the master’s level programs I’ve researched publish their next two years of coursework, which allows a prospective student to plan out their entire degree program before they start. Course offerings may be published as a website or a word document. Browse the offerings, making note of what courses sound interesting and the professors that teach them. You can generally be much more deliberate in the courses you take as a graduate student compared to undergraduate study, so it’s important to be critical about offerings. Most programs have a set of course requirements, but the requirements are much more flexible.

Course offerings are a direct window into the philosophy of a department. One or two members of the graduate faculty can can have a profoundly large impact on the character of a program (and dramatically influence your course of study). For instance, an African-American specialist can offer specialized American literature courses in a graduate curriculum. A school without an African-American specialist will not have those courses. This is why the offerings are an important point of research. They will show you what possibilities are available for your courses, but also for your thesis. If the courses in a program don’t excite you now, they probably won’t excite you later.

Degree Requirements

A good program will publish its degree requirements in a visible place. This is usually in the form of some kind of worksheet. The sheet will give you a great overview of the all the requirements for graduation. Some of these sheets act a kind of cheat sheet for your entire program of study. My MA program had this kind of system. All of your progress as a student was recorded on one sheet. Bookmark this sheet if you come across it.

Thesis/Project Resources

A good program will offer some resources related to your thesis/project. The requirements for thesis, dissertations, and other projects are usually similar across departments, but you can tell quite a bit about how the program approaches working with students on these projects. If you can find no mention of a thesis on the website, the process is probably self-directed as opposed to heavily supported by the department.

Placement Information

By far, placement information is the most important information you could hope to find on a department website. Graduate programs should keep track of what their students end up doing after they graduate, even if it’s only for the immediate period after they graduate. If the program has placement information readily available on its website, then it is most likely an excellent program. Many, if not most, programs do not have placement information available on the web. There are some legit reasons why that may be so, but they should at least have some general information on what their graduates do after school. Graduate program directors/coordinators are usually the people in charge of this information. You can always email the director/coordinator for placement information. If they refuse to give it to you or don’t have access to it, then I would strongly encourage you to give up on that program. If they don’t care about placement now, they won’t care about it as you are graduating and looking for jobs.

Funding and GA/TA/GTA/RA Slots

Most professional degree programs require that students pay out of pocket for their degrees (commonly achieved by using loans). It is often assumed that medical school and law school are worth while investments due to the large earnings of people in those fields. While some financial aid, scholarships, grants, etc, may defray the cost of attending these programs, students are still expected to pay the bulk of their tuition.

A vitally important distinction is that many research degrees will fund their students. This means your tuition may be covered in part or in full, and you earn a stipend for work you perform on campus. Once you are sure that a program offers what you are looking for, the next important consideration is funding. Many competitive programs offer what are called Graduate Assistantships, Fellowships, Research Assistantships, RA slots, etc.. The sciences are funded differently from the humanities, and professors that are undertaking research will pay for graduate assistants through grant money or some other combination of grant and campus funding. Under any of these funding programs, the school will pay your tuition (you will typically be responsible for some fees), and you will be paid a monthly stipend for 20 hours or so of work a week (students often end up working more, but that’s an ethical question for another book). The other 20 hours or so of your work week are to be spent on your courses and research. In English, GAs often begin their work in a writing center. After tutoring for a year, GAs transition to TAs (teaching assistants) and then are assigned courses. There is typically a mentoring/training program that accompanies this process. The specifics of assistantships can vary widely. Some focus on teaching while others focus entirely on research or administrative support.

Any good research program should offer funding to talented students. Often, schools have a set number of GA/TA slots to assign to a cohort of students, and students with better application materials are offered funding. Some schools automatically consider all grad students for funding. Other schools require prospective students to submit a separate application for funding. It is critical at this stage to ascertain the funding options at your potential schools. Any that do not offer a funding package that pays your tuition and offers you an assistantship should immediately be discarded, full stop.

Many first gen students believe they should pay the entire cost of their graduate degrees because of the opportunities it will afford them. That’s an understandable, logical sentiment. I was also raised to be skeptical of anyone offering anything for free. The reason departments offer these assistantships to graduate school is partly historical, partly convenient. Traditionally, graduate study is structured as an apprenticeship. You do the job under the supervision of superiors until you are able to do it on your own. Secondly, grad students are cheap labor. In the humanities, graduate students account for a large percentage of the instructors teaching first-year writing (English 101 and 102) at most universities. Many departments get funding based on the number of students across all their courses. First-year writing is typically a requirement for all incoming freshman. Thus, departments pay graduate students a barely livable wage, get more funding because of the total number of students in English courses, and then use that money on whatever they want, certainly not raises for graduate students. This system is obviously unfair and exploitative, but it’s the way things work at many schools.

As mentioned earlier, there are some professional programs/degrees that are not funded. The key takeaway here is that you should know whether your potential field pays, what it pays, where it pays, etc. Professors can be an excellent resource to answer these questions, and department pages will often provide this information as well.

But I really Want to Go to this Program!

Some students think going to a particular program is more important than getting funding. This could not be further from the truth. Getting funding is vitally important. Students that are funded are freed from seeking other labor (mostly), which gives you time to be on campus in your department building. During my degrees, I was on campus and in my building for most of the day, every day. This gives you access to professors and your cohort. It is vital enculturation into the academic community that is missed when one doesn’t have funding. Attending a higher ranked program without funding, then, is a wash. The most important stuff I learned during my degrees occurred in one-on-one conversations with my faculty, something that’s much, much easier to do when you are on campus at the same time they are. Students that are not funded end up missing the vital academic instruction they need, and are less prepared to pursue academic work after they graduate. Again, for emphasis: learn the funding norms in your field and do not attend a program that offers funding without it!

Inquiries to the Grad Coordinator/Director

Now that you’ve browsed the website, there is only one further step that I recommend. Every department will have a person in charge of graduate studies. They might be called a director/chair/coordinator (the differences in title aren’t important at this point), and it’s generally their job to head up graduate studies in that program. Part of that job is fielding questions from prospective applicants.  This resource is almost completely ignored by most graduate students, especially first gen students that want to avoid bothering anyone. A grad director/chair/coordinator will have the most important information available to you, but it’s sealed behind an email. I would not recommend sending an application to a school without first asking a few important questions to the graduate coordinator in an email that looks something like this:

Short and to the point. Grad coordinators/directors are super busy. It’s best to try and email them over the summer, if possible (if you are following the timeline, this should be no problem). The coordinator should be able to answer these questions. If they are unable to answer them, then select a different program. Some programs have absolutely abysmal placement records and know that a majority of their students are adjuncting, or otherwise underemployed. They may try and hide this information from you. Don’t press the individual. It’s not worth your time or theirs. If you cannot easily get good answers to your questions then move on. There should be another program that will give you the answers you seek.

I recommend always asking for a current or former student to talk with. My PhD program had a graduate committee that existed to help prospective and new students. They were happy to answer any questions a prospective applicant might have. This shouldn’t be a problem, so, again, if a coordinator refused to put you in touch with someone then move on.

These may seem like minor issues, but they speak to the character of a program. This information should be freely available, and a good program should be open and clear. In short, good programs have nothing to hide, and they often are thrilled to show off the good work they do. Receiving no response from a graduate coordinator, on the other hand, is troubling. If they aren’t willing to answer questions now, they certainly won’t be willing to answer questions after you are enrolled.

Establishing a List

After conducting this research, you should have a stronger idea of what schools you are interested in applying to. The total number of programs that students apply to varies. The general consensus is no more than 10 schools, but a lesser number is certainly acceptable. In general, the more applications you prepare, the less amount of time you have to prepare them, which roughly correlates to a decrease in overall quality. Don’t underestimate the amount of time it takes to write a compelling letter of application.

Creating an ordered list is the next step because it prioritizes your work for the next few months. Generate a list of schools you wish to apply to in order of preference. Don’t become too engrossed in the specific order. Rather, think of your list as a continuum of choices ranging from most preferred down. This list may also change as you consider options and begin writing your materials. This is a part of the process, and working the process will often result in changes in how you think about options. You can now begin populating the list into a spreadsheet or table:

Once all of your options are added, you can cross reference due date by priority and then start working on applications. Different schools will request different materials in different ways, so the “requested materials” box may change, and the additional requirements/notes box allows you to add any information you think is important. Many schools also require fees in order to accept grad apps, so you may want to indicate that information in another column.

This document represents your overall strategy. Rely on it, and use it well. I always recommend students begin with their high priority programs and work downward without sacrificing quality. You will likely not send all the applications that are queued in this list, and that’s okay. It’s better to send out 5 quality applications than 10 crappy ones, especially considering money. Sending transcripts and GRE scores costs money, as do applications and potential shipping costs if the school still accepts paper applications through certified mail (not common now, but it can happen in some smaller programs). These fees add up quickly, and you may need to budget. You can ask schools to waive the application fee because you cannot afford it. You may need to ask around in admissions, the department, or the graduate school. This process is time consuming, but can save much needed money. You may not have enough money to afford all of these applications, and that’s okay. Money can help you prioritize your list, and that means more time to craft stellar materials for the apps you do send.