If you’ve read the previous post in the Applying to Grad School series, you’ve completed half the roadmap (indicated in bold).
Publications
Letter of Recommendation
Statement of Purpose, Personal Statement
Grades
Standardized Tests
Resume
In this post we’ll cover the rest of it and I’ll also tell you how you can organize this entire process so that it doesn’t break your head. So, gear up and let’s finish this journey.
Let’s take a stroll down memory lane. Fresher’s day at college, seniors assemble you for the “get to know” event and finally give you their two cents about how to handle in college. One wise guy says “CGPA is not important”. Another guru claims “It’s ok to have backlogs”. Fast forward three years, I bet that you’ll have a mouthful to say about their advice.
CGPA is very important. Its like a buy in. If you don’t have enough, you are not allowed to play. Every university keeps a cutoff; while some explicitly state it others may not. And with the competition increasing each year these invisible bars will be kept higher.
Thus, if you are planning to go for graduate studies, keep your CGPA above 8.5. In fact, top universities require CGPA of 9.5 above. Don’t believe me? Go to Gradcafe and check the profiles of people who were accepted last year.
Notes & Tips
Only use profiles of immediate seniors as a reference and set your profile a little better than that. You can also get a rough idea of what kind of profiles were accepted by your dream university last year using Gradcafe.
Next, we have the infamous standardised tests: GRE and TOEFL; which are a necessary but frankly overhyped part of your portfolio. We’ll look at both GRE and TOEFL in detail.
A) GRE
The GRE is a prerequisite for most US and European universities and is meant to test your basic mathematical and verbal skills. It consists of 3 sections: Quantitative, Verbal and Analytical Writing Assessment (AWA). The total duration of the exam is around 4 hours with a ten minute break.
Quantitative. Maximum score: 170. This is your average high school maths. The topics covered are given here. This section is a simple one and does not require rigorous practice. However, don’t be overconfident. Practice moderately, don’t make silly mistakes and you can get a 170.
Verbal. Maximum score: 170. This section is tough, especially for people who don’t do much reading. It involves going through long confusing passages and answering questions to which all the choices seem plausible. You will also have to memorise colloquially unused vocabulary to answer these questions. You can check out the type of questions asked over here.
AWA. Maximum score: 6. As the name suggests, this one involves writing essays. There will be two tasks with 30 minutes given to complete each one. The pattern is always the same. The first one is “Analyse an Issue” and the second is “Analyse an Argument”. You can find more information over here.
One thing to note is that you will have either 3 verbal and 2 quant sections or vice versa. However, only two of each will count for your score. The extra one (you won’t know which one) is an experimental section and will not contribute to your score.
Notes & Tips
Should I score 170 in both? If you can, well and good. But really, that’s not what universities are looking for. There are lots of people who have scored much lesser than the suggested cutoffs but have still been admitted to the college of their choice. To be on the safe side, 165 in Quant and 155 in Verbal is sufficient for most universities. If you are aiming for the behemoths (such as Stanford, CMU, MIT etc.) its better you max out your Quant as much as possible and score 160 or above in verbal i.e get 330+.
Tips for GRE
Use the Princeton/Manhattan Review books and the official ETS guide for practice.
Try to improve your speed (without compromising on accuracy) in the quantitative section. Most people lose marks by not being able to complete the questions.
To improve vocabulary, I used Membean and Magoosh (free) app. Membean is a paid site but its really worth it and it helps cement new words effectively.
Verbal questions (especially comprehension) will usually have answers that will make you shake your head in disbelief. Don’t fight it. Just accept the logic of ETS and decipher the approach they used to arrive at the answers.
For AWA, write down short points to elaborate on before starting the essay. This will help you focus on developing the points during writing. Also, practice typing a few essays to improve your typing speed and accuracy.
Another less known fact about AWA is that the questions are selected from the ETS official Issue Topic Pool and Argument topic pool.
B) TOEFL
This is solely used to test your English proficiency. It has 4 sections, namely, Reading, Listening, Speaking and Writing. The maximum duration of the test is 4 hours with a ten minute break. The maximum score possible in each section is 30.
Reading and Writing. The pattern of questions asked in both these sections are very similar to and much easier than GRE Verbal.
Listening. This section will have questions based on audio clips which you have to listen to. Not too difficult. All you have to do is concentrate on the conversations and jot down important information for later reference as the clips will be played only once.
Speaking. There are several subtypes and each one has different time limits and objectives. So know the rules of each type. Don’t speak after the time limit. This is because your answer won’t be recorded after the time and you will be abruptly cut off which will in turn affect your score. They are not looking for a Shakespeare; they just want to know if you can convey what you want in sensible fashion. So plan what you want to say and keep it simple.
Once you get the scores of GRE and TOEFL you have to send it to the graduate schools you are applying to using the corresponding school codes. Additionally, you are allowed to choose a set of schools to send to when you register(included with the registration fees). So, if you know some schools which you will definitely apply to, make good use of this as each new score report is around 30 $.
Notes & Tips
TOEFL is more widely accepted compared to IELTS (preferred mainly for UK), so go for that.
Tips for TOEFL
Compared to GRE verbal, TOEFL is a piece of cake and so I would recommend taking GRE before TOEFL.
The official TOEFL guide is more than enough to acquaint you with the format.
Keep a total score above 100 in any case if you want to be considered for graduate assitantships. Teaching assistantships will generally require a speaking score of 27 above.
NoteFull youtube series is extremely helpful and I would suggest anyone attempting TOEFL to take a look at that. It really gives you a hang of how the whole speaking/listening sections will be and how to go about each section. Even the formats suggested for writing are foolproof.
Finally, we have the C.V/Resumé. I suppose this one doesn’t need much introduction as you would have already used it for securing internships. But for those who haven’t, your resumé gives a quick glance of who you are and what you have done, to the graduate committee.
The main sections to include in a resumé are Academic qualifications, Internship/work experience (with details), Technical skills, Relevant coursework, Achievements and Co-curricular activities. A crucial aspect of the resumé is the presentation of the content while being short and informative at the same time. It has to be professional and well organised both of which sounds synonymous with LaTex. I would suggest Overleaf, an online LaTex service which has numerous templates for resumés. However, if you are not familiar with LaTex you can go for Word as well.
Notes & Tips
Don't try to fit your resumé into a page like Elon Musk. Use a simple, standard design and limit it to two pages.
Now that you have an idea about each of the documents in your portfolio, only one question still remains. How do I go about doing all this without messing it up?
A) Timeline
The timeline given below is what I did for my graduate application. Its is just a suggestion and can be altered as per your needs. I would like to once again remind you that I’ve considered Fall applications.
B) Organising Information
Searching for Schools and Professors is a tedious task. Over the entire process you will look through atleast a 100 professors. As you look through more and more you are likely to forget where you started. This means you need to distill information and categorise them as you search. Here I shall share a three step manual process which helped me a lot during my application.
Step 1 - Going Cloud
I would suggest using Google Drive considering the plethora of other services like Google Docs and Sheets that are integrated with your account. First, create folders for each university you are applying to. Save all the documents needed for each university in their respective folders. Its also wise to keep a backup in a hard disk. While this may seem boring and time consuming initially, it will save you loads of time and stress during the application process.
Step 2 - Universities Sheet
Make a google sheet with tables as shown in the images. This will help in collecting information of all the schools during your search.
This is the main part of the sheet. The universities are split according to the country they fall in and by their type i.e. ambitious, moderate, safe and in consideration as given in the Legend. You can also note down the professors that you found interesting for later reference.
The above tables provide additional information. The first one let’s you keep a count of the number of programs you are applying for and the total LOR’s you will require from each professor. The second helps give a quick glance of the deadlines for each program.
Step 3 - Checklist Sheet
Make a Checklist Sheet as given below. Initially, highlight all columns in red indicating “not completed”. Each time you finish uploading a document you can alter the corresponding cell to some other color. This system will be very helpful for tracking the progress of each application. Click on this link to access the Google sheets Organiser Template.
And that’s pretty much it. Once you submit your applications, there will be a long wait of about 2-3 months. This can be quite maddening especially when many of your friends will be getting placed. Keep calm and wait for your moment. The results will start pouring in around February end and you will definitely know where your headed by May. Good luck and Godspeed!