Speaker 1: What's up guys, welcome back to another video. My name is Ivan Baldovinos. On this channel, I provide tips, tricks, advice, and strategies for your graduate school applications. So if you are new here, consider subscribing. In today's video, I am going to share with you the spreadsheet that I use during my graduate school planning process. This way, you can adopt a similar system to help you tackle this challenging and demanding application process. Alright you guys, as you can tell here, I am using Microsoft Spreadsheets so I can, you know, collect my information for the graduate school programs that I'm applying to. So at the top here, I put my name. I have a section for an email. I also have a section for your phone number and then date. Obviously, you don't need all that stuff, but it can be helpful. So this right here, these next topics here are really important in terms of you deciding where you want to go, how you're applying to, just really digging into the research of these programs and see if they're gonna be a good fit because if you are applying to a PhD program or even a master's program, you want to make sure that you fit well with these programs or else you might not get admitted. So the first column here is personal ranking, then the next one is institutional type, degree and program of interest, then we have a list of one to three professors who you are interested in working with and why, a list of one aspect of the program curriculum that you're interested in, list any funding or work opportunities, list any required standardized test. Is a writing sample required? If so, list specifications, list specific statement of purpose requirements slash prompts, list any other required documents other than SOP and writing samples, list at least one other aspect of the program slash institution that you find compelling, list anything you still want to know, have questions about, website links where program requirements can be found and then application deadlines. And so what you should be including in your personal ranking, I suggest that you apply to at least nine to twelve programs. There is research out there that suggests that if you do apply between nine or twelve programs, you're giving yourself the highest odds of getting into at least one. This is true mostly for the PhD because PhD programs are competitive because they only accept a very few number of people every year for their cohorts. And so I suggest that you choose three to four top schools, three to four middle schools and three to four bottom schools. So really reach schools, middle ground schools and then safety schools. Then for when you are looking for information about institutional type, you want to make sure that you include the name of the university. Is it a large, a small, rural, public university? Is it a private university? Is it in the Midwest? Where is it at in relative to our nation or wherever you're applying? Is it urban, rural, suburban? That's information that you do want to know because it could help you craft your statement of purpose, but also just give you an idea of what to expect if you do end up going there. Then degree type, you want to make sure you specify, is it a PhD program, a master's program? Are you going to receive a credential? Are you going to receive some type of license? What does it entail? Then you want to state three professors or one to three professors whose research aligns to yours. If you are applying for the PhD, it's going to be very important because alignment and fit do matter a lot when it comes to a PhD. So you want to make sure you at least have one to three professors that might be a mentor for you if you end up going to that school. Then you also want to do some research on why you're selecting this program. What specific courses, concentrations, program tracks? Do they provide you with a master's on the way to the PhD, for example? What is attractive about this program to you? And find that information on their website and list that in this column. Then you want to list any funding opportunities or work opportunities. So do they provide internships? Do they provide graduate assistantships? Do they provide teaching assistantships? Do they provide fellowships, research assistantships or scholarships? What do they provide in terms of funding? Is it an automatic when you get selected and admitted? Do you get receive this funding package? Then you want to list what standardized tests they are asking you for. Are they asking you for the GRE general test? Do they ask you for GRE subject tests? Are they asking you for a language test? So if you're an international student, are they asking you for practices? But that's mostly for teaching. What type of tests are they asking you in terms of the admissions application? Then do they ask you for a writing sample? If so, what do they ask? What is their specifications? Are they asking you for a full on 30 page proposal? Are they asking you for a no more than 10 page document? What is the format? What are the guidelines? And what do you need to prepare for when you are submitting a writing sample? Then I also want you to jot down what are the specific questions or guidelines for the statement of purpose? Write things down such as word count, page length, specific prompts and or questions. Then you also want to list any other required documents like personal history statements or personal statements, diversity essays, short answer questions. What else do they ask you in addition to the statement of purpose and writing sample? Then you also want to list one other aspect of the program slash institution that you find compelling. I would say do at least two to three just because when you're writing your statement of purpose, this could be a good way for you to jot down some of this information into your statement of purpose. But you want to make sure you obviously are a good fit for that program, for that institution, for that context. So you want to make sure you do your research and jot down what really interests you in terms of personal goals, but also graduate goals, postgraduate goals, career goals and really just anything that emphasizes your research and professional career goals. Then you also want to ask or have a column where you where you're able to ask specific questions. What questions might you want to ask if you do attend a webinar or if you send an email or if you contact a professor? What are your questions? Then you want to provide the link to your website, to the program, that way you're able to like, you know, click on it super easy, especially if you're applying to like nine or twelve programs. It's going to be a lot of information that you need to like withhold. So you want to make sure you have easy access to links. Then you obviously want to know the deadlines of these applications. That way you're able to know how to best manage your time in terms of meeting these deadlines. So now we went over a couple of things that you should be researching and thinking about. Let's give you some examples. So when I was applying to graduate school, Ph.D. programs, these are all Ph.D. programs here. I chose my top three schools. So I chose the University of Arizona, University of Washington, University of California, San Diego. So let's go with the University of Arizona and kind of give you an idea of how I went about all of these categories, right? So University of Arizona is in Tucson. It's a public university. It's urban and it's in the southwest. I was applying for the Ph.D. in higher education and I wanted to work with either Dr. Nolan Cabrera, whose work focuses on men slash boys of color in higher education, or Dr. Regina Del Amin, who conducts research on men of color. I also liked the idea that they offered a terminal master's and you also got a master's on your way to the Ph.D. Um And then also Dr. Nolan Cabrera was my former undergraduate mentor when I did an internship there in the summer. So I want to work with him again. The department did offer fellowships and scholarships, but mostly their applicants and the people that went there would have to either work as a graduate assistant teaching and research assistantship. So that's kind of like the funding that you would be offered or that you can hold if you end up going there. They only required the GRE, the general test, and I put the institutional code there. So if I did sign up for the GRE test, I would be able to know what the code is for that school. They did not require a writing sample and their statement of purpose was one to two pages single spaced and here are the questions here. So they were asking me how the applicant's professional educational life experiences have influenced the desire to pursue graduate studies in higher education. The applicant's career goals and how graduate study would contribute to their realization and the applicant's goals and objectives of graduate study. Then they also required three letters of recommendations, official transcripts, and CV. Another reason why I wanted to choose this program or why I chose to apply to this program was because they had access to the Higher Education Student Organization. They had opportunities to work with this program called College Academy for Parents Programs because I was also interested in family engagement and obviously in terms of how that helps with college going processes and development things like that. So I wrote about that. Then some of the questions I did have for them though was do first-year students have opportunities to conduct research right away? And how do most PhD students pay for their education? Where can I seek assistantships? Because this program doesn't give you a fully funded package. They expect you to look for your own funding at the university, but they do say that most of their applicants, most of their admitted students do get offered assistantships. Then I put instead of putting the link I put their mailing address because I wanted to make sure that I had the mailing address if I needed it to submit documents for my application and the deadline was January 15th. Let's do one more example. Let's do Harvard here. So for Harvard, it was also in my top and it's Harvard University, Private Institution, Urban, East Coast. The program I was applying to was the PhD in Education, Cultures, Institutions, and Society. The people that I wanted to work with, the faculty I wanted to work with was Dr. Nancy Hill whose work focuses on ethnicities, cultures, and contexts in relation to parent practices. Previous work on father engagement or Dr. Mandy Savitz-Romer whose work focuses on promoting college access readiness and support. Or Dr. Karen Mapp whose research focuses on family community and school partnerships to increase academic success. They were in terms of their in terms of why I wanted to select this program or one of the reasons was because they required teaching assistantship, which meant that I would be able to be trained as a teacher or professor and that's something that I'm considering as a career. They also had this theoretical and practical approach to teaching and they offered a terminal master's as you went along through your PhD journey. Admitted students received a multi-year funding package which includes tuition, health insurance, and a stipend. So that was really attractive to me because they offered you a full funding package and it was given to you right away when you were admitted. They do require the GRE to be able to apply for the program and then they did not require a writing sample. Their statement of purpose guidelines were a thousand words describing the following. How you formulate research topics, how you pursue them, and how you articulate any interesting findings. Emphasize how these experiences have influenced both your decisions to undertake graduate study and your goals within graduate program. They also required to do that as recommendations, upload transcripts to application, supplemental form, specifying concentration and advisors, interviews, and CV. I also liked that I was able to access courses outside of the College of Education and I was able to or and I had access to the Global Family Research Project, formerly known as Harvard Family Research Project, which would help me learn how to conduct research in family engagement. Then I have their website and then their deadline was December 1st. So as you can tell I did this with all the programs that I applied to and as you can tell I was very specific and detailed and I pulled a lot from their websites and from all the research I did on these programs, on these institutions, on the mentors, and I wrote that in here. This is not only going to help me with just kind of visualizing all the schools I'm applying to because I did apply to 9-12, but also it's going to help me write my statement of purpose and my other documents for the application. So as you can tell I did this for the University of California, San Diego, Harvard, Stanford, Michigan State, Boston College, Rutgers, University of Maryland, University of Maine, and then University of Texas, Austin. And these are, I didn't apply to all these programs, for example, like the University of Maine I didn't apply to, but, and the reason why was because this actual outline here, this spreadsheet helped me determine that that wasn't going to be a good fit for me. And so I chose not to apply to University of Maine or Boston College because after doing my research, after writing it out, it just wasn't a good fit and I didn't want to waste my time and energy on a school that I wasn't going to go to if I got admitted. All right, you guys. So that concludes my video on how I prepared to apply to graduate school. I hope you learned something new and I hope this spreadsheet and just visualizing the spreadsheet really helps you in your planning process. Let me know if you have any questions down below and I will get to you as soon as I can. Thank you for watching this video and I will see you in the next video.