How Not to Apply to Grad School
by David Faris

Originally published Jan. 2, 2001 on studentadvantage.com.

It was late November of my senior year. Graduate school deadlines were nipping at my heels like a pack of abused pit bulls, yet I found myself in the grips of total apathy. While I clearly didn't want to be out on the streets come mid-May, I also had scant knowledge of what subject I wanted to study, or even if graduate school was right for me at all. All I knew was that I didn't want to work in an office, didn't want to go to law school and didn't want to do anything nutty like join the Peace Corps.

I had the good sense to have taken the GREs that October, so I did the easiest possible thing, which was to pick a handful of graduate schools more or less at random and send off my applications to those schools' political science departments (to correspond with my current major). My professors were efficient, knocking out letters of recommendation for me in time to return for winter break; when I got home around December 15, I carried with me letters for six schools. I had little more than a week to fill out the applications, get my GRE scores sent, write my essays, and Fed-Ex the whole shebang off to the schools.

I can't really overstate how badly I had already erred, and how much worse it would get before I was all done colossally screwing up this momentous effort. To begin with, the schools: Since I knew vaguely that I wanted to study international relations, I accessed U.S. News and World Report on the Internet and applied to a sampling of the country's top programs, which just happened to include — ahem — Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Georgetown and the University of Pennsylvania. As a precaution, I had my professors write me letters for Rutgers University too, a state school in New Jersey. I had top-notch grades and scores, so I thought I was a shoe-in virtually anywhere I applied. Little did I know precisely how exclusive those schools really were (with the exception of Rutgers — more on that later).

I eschewed the Web applications every school offered, figuring they'd prefer the pen-and-paper version. I filled out the forms in pen, trying not to mix black ink with blue ink and whiting out mistakes. That was a mistake; by the time I was finished, the applications looked, if not sloppy, then not entirely like the work of a future Rhodes Scholar. I suspect that my coming disappointments were due in part to this seemingly technical error.

On to the essay. I had been too busy during the semester to really look at graduate programs in-depth, so I had a very foggy idea of what precisely went on in the I.R. programs of these exclusive schools. Nevertheless, I mustered my grandest writing style and told them that I had been inspired by my father (a college teacher) and my professors to continue in their noble tradition and to teach at the college level. In terms of personalizing the essay, my efforts were no more strenuous than to change the names of the schools, as in "I believe Princeton/Harvard/Georgetown/Yale/UPenn is the right choice for me."

You'll notice that I left Rutgers off that impromptu list. I had discovered, quite accidentally, that the deadline for Rutgers was not until March, giving me an extra two months to perfect my application — or so I thought. What it actually gave me was an excuse not to apply. "I'll get in somewhere," I thought. "No need to sully myself with Rutgers."

With my mass-produced essay ready to go, my manually completed applications in the envelope and my GRE scores en route, I packaged everything up, drove to the post office the day before Christmas Eve, and washed my hands of the whole mess. The only thing left to do (except maybe apply to Rutgers) was sit back, finish my honors thesis and relish the 150 days left until graduation.

Though I was outwardly confident, somewhere in those nether regions Jack Nicholson talked about in A Few Good Men, I suspected I was in for a very rude awakening. I hadn't bothered with any back-up plans. No internships for me, no job fairs, no masters programs — zilch. I was going to graduate school.

And then came the awakening. If memory serves me correctly, the rejections came within a few weeks of one another, all to my home address, so that every few days, it seemed, I got a call from my parents. "We got another one of those letters," my mom would tell me mournfully. By late March Princeton, Yale, Harvard and UPenn had all carefully perused my sparkling transcripts and scores and given me a big, fat "no." It was all over but the crying, really, and when Georgetown took mercy on my soul and let me in, it was little consolation, since their financial compensation amounted to paying for the postage on my reply letter. I couldn't afford to go $40,000 in debt for one year of Ph.D. study, so it was over. My decision not to go ahead with the Rutgers application seemed particularly ill-considered at that moment.

The post-mortem was painful, but enlightening. I wrote to Princeton and asked them, more or less, "Why, God, why?" They told me that I needed to specify which professors I wanted to study with, why Princeton in particular was the school of my dreams, and exactly what I wanted to study, accompanied by arguments from pertinent literature. I showed my statement of purpose to some professors, who told me (a little late as it were) that you should never mention teaching in your statement. Research, research, research. Graduate schools want eager little bookworms, not idealistic young Robin Williams wannabes. I discovered that if I was to attend graduate school, I would not be able to bluff my way in.

After finishing my honors thesis, I belatedly started my job search, which yielded, after a trip to Europe which finally confirmed my desire to pursue a career in political science, a job with a well-known reference publisher. I immediately began preparations for graduate school Round II, checking out departments, contacting professors and generally doing all the things I should have done the first time. I ultimately ended up applying to several of the same schools, but at least this time I knew why, and while it certainly isn't a sure thing, I have more confidence than last year. Just in case, however, I'll be working on a few back-up plans between now and late March. I'd advise anyone else considering graduate school to do the same.

David was admitted to the University of Pennsylvania's graduate political science program in the spring of 2001. He dives back into academia this fall.

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