Many undergraduate programs are generalist in scope, meaning they cover a significant breadth of topics within a given field. In my current English program, we cover literature from Old English to contemporary. That’s quite a bit of literature to study, but our purpose in undergraduate education is to familiarize our students with the broad strokes of literary history and accompanying critical work. Graduate school will function rather differently. Some graduate programs are also generalist, and strive to deepen the understanding that students have of a field in general. Other graduate programs are specialist programs, and they only focus on several dimensions of a single topic or sub-field. Regardless of the kind of program you want to attend, you’ll need to identify a sub field/project area in order to maximize your ability to get admitted.

Admissions committees are centrally focused on something called “fit”. For a graduate program, fit roughly translates to “do we have in-depth expertise on what this student wants to study? Do we have a professor here on the graduate faculty that could direct this thesis?” If the answer to these two questions is no, you won’t be admitted to the program. There are some rules in how graduate programs operate, and ensuring students have access to a key professor/advisor is part of it. Your advisor needs to be squarely in your field because they will be the primary person evaluating your thesis work. If your advisor was not squarely in your field, they wouldn’t be able to evaluate the quality of your thesis work.

Many, many students write competent applications and send them to schools that don’t have professors in their chosen area. Often, professors are thinking “this student really should have applied to X University’s program instead of ours. We don’t really do this kind of work.” These students get rejected and wrongfully assume that their applications must be sub-par. A similar thing happens in job searches for professors. I’ve been on job searches where our program wanted to hire a specialist in Writing Studies. We received tons of applications from well-qualified African Americanists, Linguists, Creative Writers, and everything in between. Understanding your specialization is vital to showing how you fit into a graduate program.

To maximize your chances of getting accepted to and succeeding in graduate school, you need to identify a potential area of specialization. This area of specialization will help you map out your coursework and will provide an sandbox for your thesis or dissertation work. This won’t be entirely binding. You will have some wiggle room after you start a program to slide your specialization around. The point at this phase is to generate some specific ideas about what you want to study in your program. This, in turn, helps you write far better materials.

In your application, you will have about a page to present yourself as a competent researcher. Many students use this page to discuss varying interests across a program. Some look at the course offerings and then write about all the courses they would like to take. That’s a good way to broadcast uncertainty. Most students think that expressing broad interest across a program shows fit, but it often reveals that a student doesn’t have a firm plan of study.

Schools are increasingly looking for candidates that have figured out part of their scholarly trajectory before starting their studies. Graduate programs are often evaluated on how long it takes students to finish them. For a master’s program, the length is two years. Students that end up matriculating (staying longer than two years) can cause the program to suffer (there can be a range of negative impacts here, chief among those being less money). Given this reality, it’s a far better strategy to narrowly define your interests as close as possible within the department’s area of expertise.

The first step in determining your specialization is to look at your coursework and research papers. Do any topics stick out? Were any specific projects more engaging than others? Try and detect patterns in your work. Many students gravitate towards their specialization without really knowing it. There are some other effective ways to hone in on some areas of specialization in your field.

The Quick Google Search

At this stage in the process, I usually recommend students perform a Google search in the areas they are interested in, and, in particular, a Google Scholar search. Most of your time in graduate school will be spent reading primary and secondary texts. Depending on the philosophy of your undergraduate program, you may not be super familiar with reading scholarship. That’s okay. It is important, though, to learn about what your potential areas of study produce. This search doesn’t have to be exhaustive at this phase. Reading through Google Scholar search results can give you a more granular understanding of the kinds of stuff you will be reading. If the majority of the results are not resonating with you, then it may be a good idea to consider another area of study. If you aren’t interested in the scholarship that surrounds your topic area now, you won’t be later.

Talking to Your Faculty

In conjunction with some light Googling, it’s also a good idea to begin conducting some informal interviews with faculty. Believe it or not, faculty are a consistently under-utilized resource on most campuses. Inexperienced students don’t use their faculty as a resource for a few reasons. First, they often feel that the road to success is paved through rugged individualism. First generation college students, in particular, are often shown non-academic models of success that often include an individual overcoming impossible odds to escape the cycle of poverty. My own family is filled with such stories, and I assumed that methods to succeed in academia must be similar. That’s a mistake, and it excludes asking for help from the individuals that are most capable of dispensing it. Second, many students think that faculty are far too busy to talk to an undergraduate student about school. They surely must have more important work to do. Any given faculty member is probably buried in work, but most are always willing to set that work aside for an engaged student. Admittedly, I can sometimes get annoyed when students come to my office to chat without any sort of an agenda. However, I always make time for students that need help and have considered the kind of help they need.

Talk to faculty members, but also prepare them to help you (this is a critical practice for succeeding in graduate school, so start developing the habit now). First, email them ahead of time and set clear expectations for your meeting. Provide a quick description of your needs, and then wait for a response. Have a set of questions (like the ones below) to ask during your meeting. Bring a pen and paper in order to take notes. Most importantly, show up on time. Faculty often have a ten to twenty minute window for meetings with students. It’s important to respect that boundary. Faculty are much more likely to help students that are demonstrating initiative and thoughtfulness.

A Sample Meeting Request and Interview Questions

The sample email below is a great way to reach out to a faculty member. I often have first gen students email me something like “Can I meet to talk to you about something on Tuesday?” This might look fine, but, as a professor, there are tons of red flags in the message. I can’t clearly understand the purpose of the meeting, or even ascertain whether it’s professional or personal. Critically, I am unable to prepare for the meeting or respond intelligently to the message.

This message provides everything I need to know about the meeting, and will even allow me to collect some resources for the student. It can even save a lot of time. I know next to nothing about 19th century British lit, so, if I received this email, I would respond with a list of faculty in my program that do know something about British lit. This prevents an unnecessary meeting and shows the faculty members involved that you are a strong professional communicator. I’ve taught undergraduate literature surveys in the past. I know enough to teach such a course, but I’m unfamiliar with scholarly production in the field. Most importantly, I know nothing about graduate programs in that field. I would need to direct a student to better resources. Some students interpret this as kicking the can down the road, but it’s often about efficiency and getting you the help you need.

Many students also lack the experience and mentoring to know what questions to ask faculty. This isn’t the fault of the student, but rather the obscure way that academia operates. Insiders are privileged and outsiders are often left bewildered. Below is a list of questions you can ask faculty members that will give you a better understanding of the work they do and whether you want to pursue studies in their area.

Most professors love talking about their work, and these questions can provide you with a rare window into the work life of an academic. Pay attention to their responses, also. Working as a professor has its own set of benefits and drawbacks. The job is also changing rapidly, and the answers to these questions may help deepen your understanding of what graduate studies and academic work may entail.

Reading Field Histories

Most specializations in academia have texts called field histories. These are often written by seasoned scholars, and the text will provide a very broad overview of the history of a field and its scholarly production. These can be useful to skim as they will chart out the various directions a field has taken, and will provide insight into possible areas for you to explore. Make sure to ask professors about such texts. This serves as an effective complement to searching in an academic database. Databases will provide you with specific studies while field histories will flesh out an overview.

Making a Decision

After reading, thinking, and talking through your potential decisions with professors, family, and friends, it’s time to make a decision about what you want to study. At this point in your timeline, you should arrive at one or more possible areas of specialization. It’s okay to arrive at multiple possibilities. The process of writing your application documents will be a long, involved process that will force you to clarify your thinking as a writer and thinker. By the end of writing your letter of application, for instance, your thinking about your potential area of study will be very, very different. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that, but you must make a decision about a possible area of study now in order to move forward with the process. Many students languish here. They are split evenly between two prospective fields. They become paralyzed and then watch as the application deadlines sail by. Avoid the paralysis. Start doing program research on all of your potential areas. Remember, this is a process. Working the steps of the process will yield results.

Academic work is free-form, which is part of what draws so many people to graduate school and beyond. This intellectual autonomy comes with a price: uncertainty. You are ultimately the architect of these plans, which means you cannot rely on a professor or mentor to make decisions for you. Living with this kind of uncertainty is part of academic work. Coping with these feelings can be very challenging, but know that every other prospective student is feeling very similar feelings.