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Admission & Application Survey |
| Full-time PhD program |
I applied to 9 schools last fall, so the painful admissions process is
still pretty fresh in my mind. Here's what I went through:
1. Applications: START EARLY AND BE ORGANIZED!!!!! Before you even
start the applications, make a list of all the schools you want to
apply to and e-mail prospective professors from those schools whose
work you're interested in. As a prospective student, you want to check
ahead of time if that professor is still there (sometimes profs leave
but the school still keeps their websites) and if they're taking in
students for rotations the next year. If you don't like any professors
work or the prof you're interested at the prospective school doesn't
accept rotations in his/her lab, you might want to cross that school
off your applications list. Personally, I made sure I liked more than
3 profs work before I even applied.
Once I started the applications, all were electronic, so I just had to
keep typing out the same stuff over and over again. The only issue I
had was finding the necessary things to print out (i.e. official forms
for the letters of recommendation, requests for official transcripts
from your previous school(s), etc) and the addresses to send them to.
This might sound easy, but making sure everything gets to the
prospective school on time is stressful.
Some advice for this part:
A) get a calendar and write out when everything is due! schools have
different deadlines for each thing you submit!
B) get big manilla envelopes/an organizer to file the letters of
recommendation, transcript request forms, envelopes etc. that you will
be sending to each school. You might also want to make a checklist for
each school if they don't already provided it for you.
C) use Word and make sticky labels for all the envelopes you send out.
This saves a lot of time writing your return address, your letter of
recommender's address, school's address, etc. and it looks neater too!
Essay: This is the first thing you start on and the last part of the
application you submit. Being a molecular biologist, my writing skills
aren't that great and I don't think I could have done this part without
the help of my journalist roommate (yes, I know, I was VERY lucky).
Essentially, I used Word and made a chronological outline of what I was
going to say (i.e. undergraduate experience, work experience, future
aspirations) and spent a month embellishing, modifying, and specifying
it to each school. With the help of my roommate, my mentor, and a few
other people, I finally got the essay polished and just cut and pasted
it onto each school's website and submitted the form.
3. Selectivity/Interviews: 3 months later, I got 6 rejection letters,
1 automatic acceptance, and 2 interviews. Yes, it was the most
painful/ulcer-inducing part, but I got interviews into my top 2
schools, which definitely made up for it. I scheduled the interviews
back to back because I was using my precious paid vacation time.
Depending on how organized the program is, you might have to schmooze
first and then interview later, or the other way around. The interview
is generally like a work interview, but you don't have to wear a suit.
At one school, I just had to ask the professor about what s/he was
currently doing and they would talk for the entire time or we'd just
talk about where I've worked and what I was doing. At the other
interview, the professors expected me to know how well known they were,
what they were doing/have done, and then some, which was a serious put
off for me. At this school, I wasn't very comforable with the other
interviewees b/c they seemed pretty arrogant. Needless to say, I
didn't choose to attend this school.
Advice: relax and be yourself! If you don't feel comfortable during the
interview with the people you talk to, you might not be comfortable at
the school if you choose to attend it.
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University of California - Los Angeles: Graduate Science/Engineering Degrees Admission & Application Surveys
