Prepared by Dean Cathleen Fleck, Ph.D.
Pregrad Dean, College of Arts & Sciences, Washington University in St. Louis
For more information, please email pregrad@artsci.wustl.edu
If you are considering applying to a Master’s or Ph.D. program, here is some information and many useful links about the six main parts to your application:
GENERAL APPLICATION ADVICE
The Application Process from the WU Career Center
What do Graduate Schools Want?
Preparing an academic CV or curriculum vitae (versus a resumé)
RELEVANT EXPERIENCE
The need to and method of gaining relevant experience can vary widely depending on your field of interest. In certain areas of the natural and social sciences, lab work would be considered an essential prerequisite to grad school. In the humanities and other social sciences, independent research on a substantial project of your own would be needed. For some areas, non-academic experience can be just as significant. Talk to your major advisor, faculty in your area of interest, your recommenders, grad students in your department, and especially those whose position you would eventually seek to gain advice on relevant experience for you. In addition, some departments have opportunities listed on their websites, so do check them out.
Office of Undergraduate Research, Washington University in St. Louis
The Career Center for internship information.
REFERENCES/LETTERS OF RECOMMENDATION
Letters of recommendation are a very important component of the application for grad school, especially because you are sometimes applying not just to work with a school, or even a program, but a small group of persons. They will take into account the opinions of their peers that are offered in your letters: more relevant information given to your recommenders means better, more detailed letters about you, so plan to provide at least a resumé or CV and your application essay.
Letters of Recommendation: This handout from the WU Career Center will help you learn more about how and who to ask for letters of recommendation.
Introduction to Letters of Recommendation
Dos and Don’ts of Asking for Letters of Recommendation
Frequently Asked Questions About Letters of Recommendations
APPLICATION ESSAY: Personal statement or statement of purpose
Called personal statement or statement of purpose often, an application essay for most Master’s and Ph.D. programs should in fact be more of the latter. It should describe who you are as an individual from an academic and professional standpoint—and your purpose in going to graduate school—more than it shares about you personally. (This is different from a law or medical school application). You should certainly plan on having at least a couple of people read your essay, so work ahead and plan to EDIT, EDIT, EDIT! Your recommenders would likely benefit from seeing this as well.
The essentials to writing a Personal Statement
The Dos and Don’ts for a Statement of Purpose
A Great resource for Writing Application Essays. Take some time to explore the entire site because it contains A LOT of information.
ACADEMIC RESEARCH OR WRITING SAMPLE
Again the nature of this sample would depend on your field, though you can expect that a program for doctoral studies or a research-focused master’s degree (vs. a professional degree such as MBA, which does not require a research sample) would ask for such a sample. This might be an abstract from a presentation/poster, an actual research paper for a class, a chapter of your senior thesis, a copy of a publication, etc. Consider that the committee has many samples to read, so do keep to the page limit that they request (often a maximum of 20 pages).
Planning on doing a research project such as a senior thesis or poster presentation in your senior year is helpful not only to you for experience and confirmation of your goals but also to provide the grad programs with a sample of your work and a sense for you as an intentional student and as a committed researcher.
STANDARDIZED EXAMS
The GRE (Graduate Record Exam) is required for most graduate programs in the arts and sciences, as well as for some professional programs such as Social Work. Find out in advance what your programs require. GMATs are required typically for MBA programs. How much weight is given to exams depends on your field, so ask advice of your advisors to get a sense. For research master’s and doctoral programs, the scores are but one component of the application, though the scores may be a practical cutoff point before they consider applications. For professional degree programs such as MBAs, more weight is often given to this exam score. Work on preparing for the exam the summer before applications to get a head start, though fall of your application year is usually fine to take the exam.
GREs: Find out from the Educational Testing Service about the GRE (Graduate Record Exam) structure, how to register for an exam, and what materials you receive to help you prepare
This site offers some insight into the GRE, including tips for scoring well on the GRE. The site includes free GRE practice tests and offers mini GRE courses for a small fee.
Some more insight to the GRE. Includes a comprehensive list of GRE vocabulary words.
GMATs: Find out from the Educational Testing Service about the GMAT (Graduate Management Admission Test) structure, how to register for an exam, and what materials you receive to help you prepare
MAT (Miller’s Analogy Test)
Free Practice Tests and a good overview of the MAT
TRANSCRIPTS
Do consider requesting a copy of your official transcript early in the fall when you apply to look it over yourself. You want to make sure that any discrepancies are resolved before sending this out to schools. Just like for the standardized exams, different schools will weight your GPA differently. Certainly the grades in your own field are most relevant, and some will use the GPA as a general cutoff point before considering applications. Typically a 3.0 or better is expected in your field, with competitive programs having higher cutoffs.
Get your transcript from Washington University in St. Louis
Role of the GPA in grad school admissions
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