If you are planning to embark upon graduate study in the US, you may be intent upon applying one or two specific schools, or you may need to research the options available to you.
Planning Your Search for a US Grad School Program
The trick to assessing your chances of getting into a particular program is knowing where you stand with regard to the various factors that programs consider when making admissions decisions.
A good way to get a sense of how grad schools perceive you is to create a fact sheet with your GRE scores (or projected scores), and undergraduate grades. Relevant outside activities, work experience, internships, publications, etc will also contribute to the overall strength of your application.
Use A Guidebook
The next step is to find a current source of information about US graduate programs. There are several guides published every year that provide rankings of schools, as well as data about acceptance rates and average GRE scores. In addition, some guides rank schools according to their reputations among students, professors, or prominent people in the field.
How to Evaluate Programs
For each school to which you choose to apply, you may have to select from several different grad programs, different specializations and joint degrees. As a result, you may be faced with hundreds of options. When you sit back and imagine your ideal graduate program, what issues come into play? You need to decide what is important to you. Do you need a program with a flexible schedule? How big a workload do you think you can handle? In what sort of learning environment do you thrive best? You will need to take a number of factors into account when assessing which grad programs fit your wants and needs. Some aspects to consider are:
- Culture
- Location
- Rankings
- Average Starting Salary
- Salaries at the 5-Year Mark
- Placement Rate
- Campus
- Class Profile
- Cost
- Specialized vs. General Curriculum
- Class Size
- Grading Policy
Consider the Following...
There are many aspects to your choice of programs. Among the many factors to consider, concentrate on the following:
Reputation
Which schools in your field have the best reputations? Will a prestigious school really be the best one for you?Curriculum
Which schools offer the specific programs in which you're interested? What are the prerequisites?Workload
There are often big differences between programs. What is expected of the students in the programs you are considering? Will you be able to keep up?Location and size
Are you interested in moving to a new locale? If so, do you prefer a school in a large city or in a rural area, or somewhere in between? Which will serve your needs?Cost
Should you consider public universities over private ones? What are the differences in the cost of living at the schools that interest you?Academic Placement
If you're going into academia, find out if recent grads have accepted academic positions, how long their searches took, and where they're working. Are they getting tenure track positions or one-year contracts? Are they working at prestigious schools or are they taking virtually anything that comes along?Job Placement
Find out if prospective employers visit the campus to recruit. Major industries, for instance, will often visit a campus to interview prospective science graduates about jobs. Are your target employers visiting the campus? What sort of career and job-finding help does your program or school offer its graduates?
