Applying to grad school

2023 update

I gave ANOTHER talk on this topic to the math and computer science REU at Ursinus College in the summer of 2023 (last year of the NSF funding for the REU, so this will be the last update for a bit). During this talk I used the following document.

2022 update

I gave a talk on this topic again to the math and computer science REU at Ursinus College in the summer of 2022. This rendition covered almost everything that the 2021 version does, but by virtue of the format of these talks — answering the REU students’ questions being the first priority — this talk has some new information compared to the 2021 talk. During this talk I used the following document to remind myself of topics that arose in the 2021 talk, as well as more general important points I didn’t want to forget (some of which I did however, so reading this might lead to some extra info).

2021 update

I gave a talk on this topic to the math and computer science REU at Ursinus College in the summer of 2021. This talk focuses primarily on how to narrow down what schools to apply to, but also touches on various aspects of applying to grad school such as fee waivers, masters programs, advisors, as well as the Fulbright and NSF applications.

I highly recommend this talk as it includes much more than this text blog post does and includes the knowledge of a whole other round of applying to grad school as well as having spent a year in my current PhD program.

Prior to applying

The following are some important columns that would make up an Excel spreadsheet to help you organize your applications as your decide where to apply.

• Name of school
• List of researchers whose work you’re interested in
• Application fee + $27 for sending GRE + pGRE (where you should total these two columns into a cell at the bottom of the spreadsheet — that way you see how astronomical the total cost will be and don’t end up applying to 20+ schools)
• Deadline
• Components of the application (# and type of essays, paper transcripts, CV word/page counts, etc.)
• Name and email of administrative secretary or grad administrator

Regarding the cost of applying to grad school, I highly recommend looking into the process for requesting a fee waiver. There is no harm in asking the graduate school (and not necessarily the department) whether you could request one.

After applying

The following are some Excel spreadsheet columns to help you compare schools if you get two or more offers of acceptance.

• Name of school
• Funding/taking on students situation of researchers whose work you’re interested in
• Stipend/benefits (9-month or 12-month?) & further opportunities to TA (summer?)
• Region and cost of living
• Job placement in academia/post doc (whatever your intended post-grad career is)
• Are the grad students happy? Hobbies? Good adviser relationship? This can also be inferred from how willing the grad students are to help with admitted students day. Are they happy to mingle with their friends and get free food? Do they joke around/smile/laugh with each other?
• Is the combo of classes/TA/research feasible stress-wise?
• What are the quals like? Are there options to get out of them like doing well in courses?
• What’s the average time to completion?
• How many total grad students are there? How many first years are there?
• What are the relations like between students? Cooperative or competitive?