If you’ve ever applied to grad school, then you know that piece of cake this experience ain’t!
No matter if it’s your fancy to be a life-saving doctor, hotshot lawyer, or learned intellectual, first you’ve got to get through the admissions process alive!
Half of the fun in grad school is getting in. I’m sure very few people would describe this process as actually fun, but it is a necessary evil for a lot of careers. No matter your career path, applying to grad school means that you have to submit proof of your grades, standardized test scores, letters of recommendation, and then an essay… or two… or three.
And then if that isn’t as much fun as you can stand, you just might have to be interviewed by phone before flying in to undergo interview by committee. Or the grad school gauntlet, as I like to call it.
I’m talking about hours upon hours spent applying, and then months and months of your life sitting in admissions purgatory waiting for a committee to determine your fate. And then you will find out whether you made the cut… or whether its “Sorry, kid, try again next year.”
For far too many people, lifelong dreams of becoming a doctor, lawyer, engineer, psychologist, or CEO die when you receive rejection letters in the mail.
I know all about rejection letters. I’ve received my share in the mail.
If I were to estimate, I’ve probably submitted no less than 20 applications to grad school in my lifetime. I applied three different times over the course of three years before I finally got admitted to a Ph.D. program. I know how it feels to get a slew of rejections. I know exactly what it feels like to have a dream, an ultimate career goal, and feel it slowly slipping away because you couldn’t get in the door.
I also know how sucky it is to have to move back in with your parents – you know, back into the old room where you used to dream about being in college, not imagining that you’d end up right back here after graduation.
Getting good information about getting into grad school could be as easy as visiting your local Barnes and Noble. There are plenty of books on applying to law school, medical school, Ph.D. programs, and everything in between. Applying that information to the tune of acceptance letters is where the hard work comes in. And it is crucial that you get everything done properly.
You have a lot of choices in applying to grad school the first time…. or the next time.
Yes, you can grab a popular book title, but what if you have specific questions? Try as you might but those pages are never going to talk back to you.
You can schedule an appointment to talk with your professors, but there’s a long line of students not-so-patiently waiting for a few minutes worth of time alongside you.
Or what if you’ve been out of the university for a few years? You probably feel like there’s no one you can reach out to to get your questions answered.
Until now.
Grad school coaching help you develop an individualized game plan to get into grad school.
Is your GPA keeping you out of grad school? Your test scores? Which are the best programs to apply to? Who should you ask for letters of recommendation? Not sure what to write about in an admissions essay? What the heck do I talk about in my interviews? Should I even be going to grad school in the first place? What did I do wrong last time to get all these rejection letters in the mail?
If you need answers to any of these questions, then you can benefit from working with a grad school coach. Working one-on-one with a coach will give you easy-to-follow and actionable steps in bite-size doses – without all of the confusion and feelings of being overwhelmed and stuck in the “now what am I gonna do with my life” phase. Again, if you’ve ever applied to grad school before, you know exactly what I’m talking about here.
Grad school coaching makes it easy to get in and then get on with your life…. successfully.
Today, as I type, I am a 30 year old with a Ph.D. in psychology. It wasn’t too long ago that I was just some kid who was smart, knew she could do well in doctoral level work, and had professors who told her you NEED to go to grad school. What I didn’t have is the tools needed to get in successfully on my first and second attempts. My third time? I accepted an offer to attend one of the top universities in the country in my field – University of Michigan.
What a grad school coach offers is a wealth of experience on how to get into grad school the right way and how to steer you away from doing it the wrong way – where you either don’t get in at all and have to break the news to everyone that yes, you’re moving back home, and no, you don’t have a clue now what you’re going to do with your degree.
Cookie cutter advice just isn’t good enough. You need real solutions to fit your real life situations. You need to know how to let your brilliance shine in a way that makes admissions committees take notice. It is possible – I know because I’ve been there too. *smile*
Now that you know exactly what a grad school coach is…
How can one help YOU get into grad school?
