However, the most important contribution from a letter comes from how well the writer knows you. A superficial letter from a faculty member pales in comparison to a rich letter co-authored by a graduate student and a faculty member. Ideally, you want someone to write you a letter that can detail how you would be a good investment to graduate program. Can the recommender speak well of your research, communication, and analytic skills? Does the recommender have knowledge of your motivation level?
Do you think they can convey why you are special and important? Most training programs require some type of research to be conducted while in graduate school. Research experience is the best avenue to gain the basic skills necessary to exceed in graduate school.
Even in applied training programs, you will need some ability to search for, read, and critique a vast amount of research articles. Being able to conduct research, whether from archival data or from creating new experiments, is critical to your experience in graduate school. If you worked in different labs, is there a common thread that complements your research interests, or do you just lack focus?
By integrating your varying research experiences and showing how each lab fills a gap in your research knowledge via your curriculum vitae or personal statement , you will look like a much better investment. Especially for PhD programs, consider taking a year off and getting more experience. The primary avenue for describing research experience is through the curriculum vitae CV , which is a resume for the academic world.
CVs are often at least 11 point font and formatted in a way that is easy to read. Lastly, committees will be looking to see if you are a good match for the program and for the specific faculty member s with whom you wish to work. If you do not match well, you will not last long, and their investment will be lost. The longest and most productive relationships are those with a good match. How do you know if you are a good match? Yet the best way to gauge a good match is by going to the school, meeting the faculty members and graduate students, and talking about what life as a graduate student is like in their lab and department.
Then ask yourself whether that environment is one that suits you. The most practical way to interact with the faculty and students is to first exchange emails and then go to conferences to meet them in person. Doing so lets the faculty members get to know you as a person. You will no longer be a superficial name with academic scores attached to that name. They will also get an idea about your communication skills and possibly your analytical skills. When advertising yourself to a school, try to appeal to more than one faculty member.
Have you learned skills that may be applicable to multiple labs e. You will have to impress at least a few faculty members because a committee chooses you, not just one person. Faculty members will be more likely to vouch for you if they have met you before the application process. One of the most powerful ways that I have seen to increase your chances of getting accepted is to work in the lab for which you are applying at least a year before you actually apply.
This is a very important point. It is essential to the reasoning behind much of the advice presented throughout this book. Consider that an individual professor might have several hopeful students applying each year to do graduate studies under his or her supervision, and from among that group, he or she might choose one or two A faculty member cannot be forced to be the graduate supervisor for any particular applicant, and in most programs, a student cannot be accepted without a consenting graduate supervisor.
Generally speaking, therefore, if you are not accepted by the faculty member whom you request to have as your supervisor, you do not get in. She or he would be the one working with the student for the next few years, and this is the main reason why they are the ones who get to decide whether or not you are accepted into the program. Many professors will still accept applicants despite a poor rating from an admissions committee.
This may happen for any number of reasons. Each professor uses his or her own criteria for deciding whether to sponsor individual applicants. The next subsection deals with some of those criteria and how you can take advantage of them to increase your chances of being accepted into a graduate program; there is as lot more of this in later chapters, too. As we will see, there is a great deal at stake for professors who decide to supervise your graduate studies, so you must keep in mind that they will decide to take you on as their student only if they think it is in their best interest to do so.
They will be comparing you to other applicants who also wish to do graduate work with them. As previously alluded to, the members of the admissions committee are looking to bring the most promising people into their graduate programs.
Similarly, the prospective supervisor is looking to bring the most promising people into his or her own individual research program. But, these important decision-makers are also looking for more than just those applicants with the strongest academic abilities.
Many students underestimate how specialized some graduate programs are. The reason for this specialization is because a graduate program can provide the best training only in the areas in which its own faculty members are experts. For example, one graduate program in Agriculture might be particularly strong in animal nutrition, whereas another one might specialize in plant physiology, and yet another in animal breeding and genetics.
Most would have more than one area of strength. As usual, there will be differences among various programs and across disciplines in terms of the most important factors. Doctoral programs may be looking for evidence that the applicant has already demonstrated an ability to perform beyond the undergraduate level by earning a masters degree.
Students in some sciences, such as Biology or Chemistry and many others, have plenty of opportunities to participate in original research while they are still undergraduates. This research experience is something that graduate programs in those fields are looking for in applicants. You get to this page by logging in as a returning applicant. We also encourage you to familiarize yourself with some of the numerous programs and services available to University of Washington graduate students:.
Many of the most common questions we get are addressed in our Frequently Asked Questions pages. Please look through the appropriate FAQ page first; if your question is not addressed, please contact us at uwgrad uw. Admissions FAQs. International Applicant Information. US Accreditation : Confirm that the U. Foreign Accreditation : The official recognition status of the degree granting institution is verified through the appropriate educational authority in a country, such as, the Ministry of Education or other governmental authority.
Additional resource: The World Higher Education Database is a search engine that provides information about higher education systems worldwide, including degrees offered, school contact information, affiliations, and accreditation. The database is maintained by the International Association of Universities.
Support the Graduate School. UW Graduate School. Understanding the Application Process. International students must have a visa status that allows academic study at the UW.
0コメント