GradSchoolResources

Providing all of my graduate school application materials + some unsolicited advice to anyone currently going through the hell that is grad apps.

What you will find here

This GitHub repo hosts a snapshot frozen in time of all of my graduate school application materials, in the hope that they may help others currently struggling through the process. I've included everything I ever wrote (probably too much material tbh), but you're probably most interested in the documents in the final drafts folder as those are the statements I actually submitted. I also included the version of my CV that went out with most of my graduate applications — if you are interested in the tex code that generates it you can find that in my current CV repository here on github.

My stats

Before I offer you unsolicited advice, I suppose you might want to know all of my other stats. I offer these here in the interest of full transparency, but please do not compare yourself too much (if you're better or worse, and many of you these days are probably better) — you are not just a set of numbers on an application, and I firmly believe the strongest part of your application will lie in your statements and recommendation letters. To be frank, any program that sees you just as a list of stats is probably not a place you want to be anyways. With that disclaimer out of the way, here's all of my numbers:

• My GPA at the time I applied was about 3.86 (see CV)

• I took the Physics GRE once and scored in the 12th percentile (I don't remember the raw number and prefer not to think about it).

• I took the general GRE twice, with my best scores in each category being in the 89th, 94th, and 98th percentiles for quantitative, verbal, and writing. I retook the test because the first time I scored in the 67th on the quantitative portion and after just a little bit of remedial studying (it was mostly math I hadn't seen since high school) I was able to greatly improve that. From what I understand of physics/astronomy graduate programs they mostly care about that number (if they require the GRE).

• I applied to 11 graduate programs, with 10 being in astronomy/astrophysics and 1 in computer science. I got rejected from 9 of them:

  1. Stanford (astronomy/astrophysics, rejected)

  2. University of Arizona (astronomy/astrophysics, rejected)

  3. Berkeley (astronomy/astrophysics, rejected)

  4. Caltech (astronomy/astrophysics, rejected)

  5. UC Santa Barbara (astronomy/astrophysics, rejected)

  6. University of Utah (physics/astrophysics, rejected)

  7. UC Santa Cruz (astronomy/astrophysics, rejected)

  8. UCLA (astronomy/astrophysics, rejected)

  9. UC Irvine (physics/astrophysics, rejected)

  10. CU Boulder (astrophysics/planetary science, accepted)

  11. Boise State (computing, accepted)

• I also applied to the Ford pre-doctoral fellowship and was rejected from that, but those essays are also in the document folders if you are interested in them. Neither of my reviewers left comments, but one rated me almost all in the excellent category and the other rated me almost all in the mediocre category so that's been a real puzzle for me to interpret. It was a good experience practicing writing more formally in "proposal-speak" like this though so I recommend the experience of applying for a fellowship if you have the time/interest if nothing else but for the sake of practicing that academic writing style.

• I had zero (0) published papers, no REU's, and only a limited amount of informal research experience with my undergraduate advisor. I tried to post a bunch of my code from that project to another github repo (and link to that repository from my CV) in the hopes that people on the admissions committee might look there and see that I had actually done a lot of work even if nothing had been published/presented, but I highly doubt any of them actually went and looked at it.

Unsolicited advice

Take this with a grain of salt I guess, since I was rejected almost everywhere I applied, but here are some common pieces of advice I was given by people throughout this process:

1. Start early, and be organized. I created a spreadsheet with all of the schools I wanted to apply to with important dates for my letter recommenders and me, and everyone involved thought this was a good idea. Here's mine (which I also added all my recommenders to) if you want to use it as a template.

   • I started drafting my statements in October. I really wanted to go to Berkeley, so I wrote that one first (and re-wrote it probably 40 times) then used it as a base for all the others.

   • I had finalized the list of schools I was going to apply to by thanksgiving, and I had at least started all the applications by then so I could invite my letter writers to add their letters there that way they all had at least a few weeks to write before anything was due.

   • I started contacting people I was interested in working with at the schools I was interested in applying to as far back as July — more on this in the next list entry.

2. Talk to people! An unspoken requirement I was unaware of before starting this journey was that (in most cases, and in this field) it's generally seen as a good idea to reach out to potential advisors at institutions you're interested in. I kept track of these contacts in that same spreadsheet I linked above.

   • There were a few schools (ahem Berkeley ahem Caltech) where nobody responded to me, and a few responses I got were a little short and something like "if you get in I'll talk to you but not before then" but by and large the overwhelming majority of responses I got from faculty at everywhere I applied to were really encouraging and motivated me to keep going. They also gave me a lot of great advice! This is also a great chance to get an early guage of whether you really want to be at the schools you are applying, and whether those schools have space for you. I took a few places off of my list because the person who I was really interested in working with emailed me back saying that they weren't taking on any new students that cycle, and that was great to know before I wasted $100 applying there.

   • Don't nag people. It's fine to reach out once, maybe fine to follow up if you have a really good reason, but past that it's just annoying and will probably hurt your application more than helping anything. They may not be allowed to talk to you, may not have time, or may just have a personal rule against it, and those are all fine reasons to get no reply — don't take it personally, and no response doesn't mean you don't have a shot at getting in.

   • While reaching out to prospective advisors is super important, I would also highly recommend reaching out to current graduate students at the places you're interested in. I had skype calls and email chains with quite a few of these incredible people and it made a huge difference in providing an inside look at their home institutions and what life would be like for me as a graduate student in general. If you are interested in Boulder and want to talk to me please feel free to reach out! It's also nice just to have people on your team to help motivate you and root for you through this, because it's very draining.

3. Get outside feedback on your materials. I assembled a small army of people to read my statements, and I had different people read different things. For my purpose/research statement and CV I received a lot of valuable feedback from two professors in my department who did a lot of research/grant writing. For my personal statement (the life story one) I had everyone from the president of my university (seriously, Dr. Tromp is amazing) to a beloved high school english teacher read through it and offer feedback. I even took a workshop class offered in the fall from the honors college at my university that was specifically designed to essentially just workshop personal statements. Some of those graduate students and professors I cold-emailed offered excellent feedback on my CV, and I asked for some of their old application materials to see what their statements looked like in styling mine. The biggest piece of writing advice I received across the board is to stay away from cliches and to write about yourself affirmatively. In astronomy these cliches might look like "when I was a kid I always looked up at the night sky with wonder, so now I want to be an astrophysicist" -- while this is certainly true, it's true for everyone and won't set you apart. Finally -- if it's something you're comfortable with -- take some creative risks! I met an incredible prospective graduate student at my visiting weekend in Boulder who got in pretty much everywhere she applied (and she had a similar list of high-caliber schools) and her personal statement was written in the form of a play!

4. Using your personal statement to explain any shortcomings you think you might have. For example, I had pretty limited research experience, but I had a good reason for this! I explained this in my statement of purpose and tried to demonstrate that I still had the potential to be a good researcher even though I hadn't done a lot of research before applying to grad school. If you have a low GPA, test score, whatever, and you're worried about this being knocked against you I would highly recommend you try to weave this into your narrative to explain why your set of numbers is the way it is, and how you're still a great candidate for grad school and academia in general.

5. If you're accepted, go to visit! I love Boise and was really tempted to stay here to do a Ph.D. in computing even though it would be leaving the field that I love, but my visit to Boulder totally turned that around. Everyone I met was awesome, super interesting, and there were so many opportunities I hadn't learned about from the website that really provided a paradigm shift for me and made me excited to leave home and go someplace new for graduate school. This year visits might look different (praying to a God I don't believe in for a vaccine) but even if they're in some kind of alternative format try to attend as much as you can and talk to as many people as you can. Remember, you have to live wherever you go, and you're going to have to interact with these people a lot, so make sure that you are happy with both of those factors. Another fantastic piece of advice I've heard is that your advisor in graduate school is one of the most important factors in determining how happy/successful you'll be, so when you talk with those potential professors make sure they seem like a good fit with you, and you can straight up ask them about this! In my one-on-one meetings with professors at Boulder that was basically my top question -- what are you like as a mentor and how will we support each other?

6. If you're not accepted, don't take it personally. This is another great piece of advice a lot of other graduate students gave to me -- past a certain point it's just a numbers game... I applied to 10 schools that all had around a 10% acceptance rate and got into 1 of those (I know that's not how statistics works but whatever). You'll meet some people who got in everywhere they applied, you'll hear of some who got rejected everywhere, and everything else in between. Don't compare yourself to others and remember that this is a hard and often random process -- there are only so many spots and there are so many incredible people! If I could go back again I might apply to more "safe" schools as I think I got pretty lucky to get into Boulder and actually want to be there. Since it is a numbers game, apply to as many as you can afford to apply to (and can create good applications for). Anecdotally I was told by faculty at about half the places I applied to that my CV was "highly competitive" and they would be "very surprised" if I didn't get in...and I didn't get into any of those places, so really, don't take it personally. Don't let these rejections define you -- worst comes to worst you try to find a job as a post-bacc researcher and try again the next year with an even better string of qualifications (if it's something you're still really interested in), or maybe you'll land an awesome job outside of academia and make more money than the rest of us anyways.

Good luck! And if you anyone who stumbles on this would like to talk/review statements/whatever please reach out to me. A lot of people helped me get where I am today and it's the least I can do to pay it forward. :)