This is Part 1 of this entry. Part 2 (on organization) is here. Eventually, I will write a Part 3 and perhaps more (and I will change this text and insert a link when it's written).
So, you have decided what kind of program you want to apply to (hopefully this entry helped). Now what?
Well, if it is a master's program, the good news is that you request an application and apply. Similarly, if it is Psy.D. or a Ph.D. program at a professional school, you also just request an application and fill it out (you'll know that the school is a professional school because it will have the words "Professional School" in the title or it will offer online, asynchronous degree options). In these cases, what people think about the most is the geography: Where do you want to live while you're going to graduate school? Do you want to live near home? Not near home? Somewhere close enough, but with a buffer? Sometimes it's a matter of thinking about where you want to live for a long time (often this is for clinical work - remember that you get licensed in a state and every state is different and not always transferable). So it's important to be mindful of where you might want to be after the master's program.
Otherwise, there's a hard part, and that's what this post is about. You have to think about where you want to live, the quality of the program you are applying to, and whether there is a mentor(s) at that program for you.
So, let me tell you a little about my own experience. When I was a senior in college, I knew I wanted to be a professor, and I liked psychology more than my other major (computer science). So, I went to US News and World Reports, and I chose the top 10 programs in psychology, and applied to them (well, I cheated, because I didn't apply to Penn, for reasons I'll describe below, which was in the top 10, and I did apply to Brown, which was #11). Yup. That's what I did.
I also wrote my personal statement about Jonathan Livingston Seagull (props if you know what that is, and if not, go read it!)
Don't do either of these things. (In another post, I'll talk about writing a personal statement, and believe me, I'm more embarrassed by my personal statement than by how I got to my list of graduate schools to apply to, but the US News and World Report thing is also a pretty big blunder).
So, what do you do? Well, there are really four things to balance when choosing a set of graduate schools to apply to.
1) Does the program employ an individual who will be my primary mentor?
2) Does the program employ other faculty with whom I'm interested in interacting and learning from?
3) Is the program in a place I'm willing to live for at least 5 years?
4) The wild card round!
Let's go over each of these one at a time.
1) Does the program employ an individual who will be my primary mentor?
Yeah, this is a big one. Basically, when you go for a Ph.D., you have to advised by someone. You are joining that person's research group and trusting that that person will mentor you throughout the next five+ years of your life. So, you want to be mentored by someone who is doing research and scholarship that interests you (otherwise, what's the point?). Fundamentally, the best way to think about this is to think about the research you want to be doing, and whose papers you are reading. Look up those individuals and see where they are and whether they are in a situation where they can take on graduate students (for example, are they employed at a university as opposed to a college without a graduate program)? But, what you also want to do as you read those papers is look at the citations of the papers that resonate with you. Where are those researchers at? Everybody has a personal website (here's mine), and most people maintain a Google Scholar page, which affords a quick link to their publications (again, here's mine), and most people also have a lab or research group website (and again, here's mine, but I hate the color scheme and logo, so we're going to change it). You have to research researchers here. This takes a while. And importantly, this is the first step.
Applying to graduate school is not like applying to undergrad. When you applied to Brown, you probably chose between Brown and a bunch of other schools that you applied to based on their reputation. But an undergraduate school's reputation does not necessarily translate to the quality of the program you are applying to. You don't really care about the quality of the school overall - it doesn't matter if the school has a great Chemistry department, or English, or Kinesiology. You're not going to interact with those departments. You only really care about whether the department you are applying to is good (which I'll discuss below). There are really good undergraduate schools that have terrible psychology departments (For example, when I was applying to graduate school, Harvard did not have a particularly strong Ph.D. program in psychology. It's stronger now (at least in my field), but it really wasn't back then. So, this first bit is not about the reputation of the school overall. It's about the person you would work with. Find people you are willing to work with based on what their research is.
There's a rule of thumb here. If you only have 1-2 people you want to work with, don't apply to grad school. You're too narrow in your thinking, and it's highly likely that you haven't read enough literature to see who else is out there. Similarly, if you have 40+ people, don't apply. You're too broad, and will probably struggle narrowing things down to write a good personal statement. Rule of thumb, but a good one.
2) Does the program employ other faculty with whom I'm interested in interacting and learning from?
So, if you followed Step 1, you have a list of researchers at a bunch of schools. But the next question is whether the school is a good place to go. This means two things. The first is about the quality of the Ph.D. program overall. This is a hard thing to assess from the outside (although, you can often see whether lots of people get their Ph.D. from that school - that's usually a good sign). But here's are two rules of thumb: (1) Are there multiple people in the department you would be excited to learn from? This is important because if you get in, you'll probably take classes from these people and probably have some of them on your committee. Does that excite you? and (2) Are the people there active researchers? Look at their Google Scholar pages, and check to see if they publish and have active labs. Even if you might not be super jazzed about working with them, you do want to learn from people who are engaging in good scholarship.
There's also a balance here. Sometimes, there's really only one person in a department you're interested in, and no one else excites you. Usually, that would be a no. But if that person is your absolute first choice, then you have to think about it before eliminating it. The goal here is to get up to at least 5 programs that meet these first two criteria (that's usually easy) up probably 25 programs at most.
3) Is the program in a place I'm willing to live for at least 5 years?
OK, this one is obvious. There are some programs that are really good program for certain topics, but not everyone wants to live everywhere (Look, not everyone wants to live in Providence, and I suspect that's one of the reasons I lose potential applicants to other programs, like those in California, especially if the applicant is from California). But this is the last thing that you think about, not the first.
One thing to think about, however, is that you would be living in a University town. University towns tend to be nice places to live (because there's a large university there, and it has to accommodate all the people who work and go to school there). And academics tend to like creature comforts. So, that means that many universities are located in places that might be better than average, even if it is in a part of the United States (if you're looking in the US - international stuff will be in another post) that you might not initially think you'd want to go to.
4) The Wild Card Round
OK, so, you have done your research, and there's a bunch of programs that have a good mentor, and that have interesting people, and are located in places you're willing to live. What now?
Honestly, the first thing to do is contact the person you think would be your mentor and ask whether that person is accepting graduate students for the next academic year. You should introduce yourself. You should tell the person a little about yourself and your educational background. If you're doing a thesis or other kinds of work, you should talk about it. You should talk about why you're interested in working with that person. You should include a CV if you have one (you should, you should write one; this is another post). This is an email, and it should be a paragraph or two, not longer. And you should ask directly, "Are you taking graduate students for the start of the XXXX academic year?"
When do you do this? Well, I usually start getting these emails in August. But the majority of them come in September and October. Every now and then, I'll get a late one (our graduate school applications are due in November, so November would be late for these emails), but there you go. If you're really committed to this, this process tends to start in July or August.
Critically, this will help narrow down where you apply. Some people will respond and say yes. Great. Some people will respond and say no, they aren't considering students. In that case, don't apply. It doesn't matter if they are your first choice. It means they aren't accepting students that year. People don't accept students in certain years for lots of reasons, and this could just be bad luck.
I have heard of someone waiting a year because they really wanted to go to grad school with a particular mentor at a particular program. It failed spectacularly. I don't recommend putting off applications for a year because a single mentor isn't accepting; there's no guarantee that that person will accept students the next year.
Also, incidentally, this is the one case where winning the GRFP won't help you. In order to get into a graduate program, a mentor has to say yes. If the mentor isn't accepting students that year, it doesn't matter.
But here's the thing, what most people will do is not respond to you. Professors don't always respond. Don't make any inferences from this. You can still apply, even if this happens.
A secret is that professors tend to respond to emails during the week, and tend to ignore or forget emails received on weekends. If you can, send these emails on a weekday morning. Tuesday mornings are usually best - it's early in the week, so people are still thinking about their work, but its not Monday, so people aren't playing catch-up from the weekend. Sending emails on Tuesday at 10am means you're more likely to get a response from a professor than Saturday night. (This works in all situations, by the way, not just for emails to potential mentors).
Conclusion
So, hopefully, at this point, you have something between 4-12 schools to apply to. Four is usually the minimum. I wouldn't apply to more than 12 (remember also, these applications are expensive, so 12 adds up quickly). If you find that you have many more than 12, then you really need to think about cutting, but also think about why you have so many, and at which step you're not eliminating programs.
But now what? Well, you have to write a CV (actually, you should have written this already), a personal statement, decide whether to take the GREs, solicit letters of recommendation, and usually a few other things. These are other posts.