What is the GRE?

The GRE (Graduate Records Examination) General Test is a standardized test that is often required for post-baccalaureate (aka “graduate”) education. Similar to the ACT or the SAT, the GRE is a general education exam, that focuses on verbal, quantitative (i.e. math), and analytical writing skills. The exam is administered by ETS, or Educational Testing Services; as of 2020, costs just over $200; and lasts just under 4 hours. The exam is a computer adaptive test, or CAT. A CAT exam is a learning test: the more answers you get right, the harder the questions become, and the higher your score may be; the more questions you get wrong, the easier the questions get, but the number of points you can score also goes down. You can take the exam more than once.

How do I know if I should take the GRE?

The GRE is generally a required part of a graduate school application (for MA/MS or PhD). It is also being accepted at some business schools and law schools (although this is not universal, and you should check to see if the GMAT or LSAT is a better exam choice for those types of schools).

GRE scores are valid for five years, meaning you can take the exam and use the scores to apply for schools for up to five years. If you are considering graduate school, you may want to take the GRE. Even if you decide not to attend graduate school right away, taking the exam while you are in “school mode” may be helpful for some. You will need to evaluate that for yourself based on your personality and situation.

How do you study for the GRE?

Like other standardized college entrance exams (ACT, SAT, etc.), there are numerous preparation tools available from sources like Barron, Kaplan, and Princeton Review. These include prep books, flash cards, apps, and courses. The test administrators, ETS, also offer practice questions on their website. You will need to determine what type of preparation works best for you. For example, courses often work well for people who have trouble self motivating study or who have test anxiety. Books, flash cards, and apps can work well for those who need an overview of the types of information that will be covered on the exam.

How can I learn more about the GRE?

Here’s a link to the official exam website: http://www.takethegre.com

If the end of undergrad has you considering graduate school over the workforce, you may be considering visiting some graduate schools.

Masters or PhD

Visiting a university where you’d like to attend graduate school is DIFFERENT THAN UNDERGRAD. Namely, it’s MORE LIKE A JOB INTERVIEW. The all caps here are because this is one of those notorious secret club like things. If you try to visit a graduate school before applying or being accepted, they might meet with you, but more likely you’ll be blown off, you’ll irritate the professors, and in a really bad case, it could hurt your chances of getting in. Trust me. When I was in graduate school this happened a couple of times with prospective students; I speak from observing how this was handled in the graduate office.

Graduate school visits are more like a job interview than an undergraduate college visit. Typically, they happen after you’ve applied and been accepted. It’s an opportunity for you to figure out if this university and these professors are the ones that you want to spend the next several years working for and with. Masters programs vary in whether or not they hold a formal visit; most PhD programs do. If you get an invitation to visit the school, you should try to go (many programs will cover all or part of your cost). You’ll have the opportunity to meet with professors, see the campus, get to know some of the other graduate students and prospective students. It’s a very valuable experience (even if you aren’t trying to compare programs).

When you prep for a graduate student visit, you want to approach it like you would any job interview. Get some background on the professors you’ll meet with, and the graduate program itself. This will allow you to prep a list of questions that you’ll want to answer, including: policies on graduate student research (will professors co-author with you, or expect you to hand over your ideas for them to publish?), health care (what’s the graduate student insurance policy like?), pay scale and schedule (are there assistantship opportunities? Will you get 12 month or 9 months of funding?), graduate student life (Do grad students have offices? Where do most of them live–and is it in a nice/safe part of town? What is the university culture like?). The better prepared you are, the more you’ll get out of the visit.

Law School

Before I decided I wanted to pursue a PhD, I seriously considered attending law school, including visiting a few universities with programs I was interested in. Law school visits can be more similar to undergraduate university visits. I experienced two types:

1. The Tour: some law schools offer a campus tour (similar to the campus tours that are tailored to undergraduates). These can be helpful in introducing you to basics about the school and give you a chance to speak with a current student (albeit one who is being paid to talk the school up).
2. The Open House: again, similar to undergraduate programs, these are events where the school puts together a set of events that introduce you to the school, sometimes to the faculty, and to student life.

These types of visits are really helpful at any point in the admission process. They give you some insight into what life is like at that law school, the program, the campus environment, and the students. The other cool thing is that you don’t have to have been accepted into law school in order to attend. Taking advantage of these types of tours and open houses allowed me to figure out that law school wasn’t really going to be in the cards for me. For you, it might help you figure out which schools you want to apply to.

Medical School

Med School visits fall into two categories. Similar to the law school process, you can visit the school prior to applying and take a tour. This will help you figure out where you want to apply.

Similar to the Masters/PhD type visits, you will also likely be invited to visit after you apply, and you’ve been invited to an interview. Like the Masters/PhD visit, you should treat this as a job interview. In addition to doing your research beforehand so that you have some good questions to ask, make sure you dress for success, have updated copies of your resume/CV, and are prepared to field questions they ask you. After your interview, make sure to send follow up thank you notes to the people you interview with–so be sure to get their names (and minimally their email addresses) while you are there. Bringing a business card to exchange is a great way to get this information easily.

As a professor, I maintain a Curriculum Vitae, which is a fancy way of saying, I don’t use a traditional resume (CVs are longer and contain different kinds of information. You can see mine at https://kathrynmgboehlefeld.com/curriculum-vitae/) However, this past week, I found myself needing a traditional one page resume. So, I had to ressurect an old one from the depths of my dropbox folders. But it got me thinking about the utility of resumes and some of the common mistakes people make when writing one.

Do:

• Have a Resume. Even if you are a freshman in college, even if you are pretty certain that you are going to graduate school and won’t need one right away. Resumes are helpful in a variety of contexts at all stages, including applying for on campus jobs and scholarships.
• Make use of Resume writing tools. When I went to edit my resume this week, I was pleasantly surprised that Microsoft Word offered to connect me with the tools available on LinkedIN. There are a variety of useful resume writing guides available on line, from professional development blogs (I’ve found themuse.com to be one helpful place) to professional social networking sites, like LinkedIN. Just make sure that whatever you are using has been written by someone with actual credentials, and is not an answer by a random individual on a open questions forum.
• Pay Attention to Formatting. Resumes should be concise, clear, and easy to read. The purpose of a resume is to convey a specific set of information about your job history, skill set, and education to prospective employers. If the reader has to go searching for the information they need, they will likely move on to the next resume in the stack.
• Keep Your Resume Updated. You should revisit your resume at least once a year, not just when you leave a position or get a new job. You can add or switch out new skills, update any awards you have won, or include additional education you’ve achieved.
• Make sure your resume accurately reflects any “digital resumes” you have. In other words, if you have a linkedIN page (and you should! See: https://the-office-hour.com/2018/11/08/why-you-need-a-linkedin-profile-and-how-to-set-it-up/) make sure that it aligns with the information you have on your resume.

Don’t:

• Get too focused on the formatting. There are a lot of really fancy things you can do with your resume. But style versus substance can be a fine line, and you don’t want to end up on the wrong side of it. Also, you don’t want to end up with a resume that’s hard to read.
• Try to include everything under the sun. Resumes are designed to be short. One maybe two pages depending on your field. If you are considering going below 11 or 12 pt font, you’ve got too much information. If you are including every job back to the lemonade stand you ran at age 6, you’ve got too much information. You need to be picky about what you’re including–go for the most important/relevant items.
• Send it out as a .doc. Unless someone has specified that they want that a specific document format, play it safe and send it out as a PDF. PDFs can be opened on all computer types. MS Word documents or Mac Pages can sometimes prevent someone from opening your resume if they don’t have the right program.
• Forget to have someone else proof read it for you. God forbid you accidently send it out with a typo in your contact information. After you’ve spent so much time perfecting your resume, you may be “too close” to the document to see small mistakes. Outsource the final proof reading to someone who can look at it with fresh eyes.

If you have been considering whether to attend graduate school after college versus searching for a job, here are some key questions to ask yourself:

1. Do I need additional education to get the job I ultimately want? If so, what kind of education do I need and when in my career do I need it?
2. Are there funded programs available for this kind of degree or will I need to take out additional loans?
3. If considering professional school (i.e. law school): Do I actually want to be a [insert profession here]?
4. Is there anyone I know who has the kind of job I ultimately want that I could ask for advice regarding graduate school options?

Taking a long look at each of these questions before you decide to skip the job market for graduate school applications is critical.

Some careers do not require additional education. Others require additional education part way into a career (for example, many companies will pay or partially pay for you to get an MBA after you start working for them).

One of the biggest mistakes students make is thinking that they must/should attend graduate school as a safety net. But these kinds of schools can be expensive!! If you don’t ever see yourself being a lawyer, why are you spending money on law school? And however you do graduate school, it won’t be easy financially. Some programs you should expect to get funding from (doctoral programs, in particular), though it may not be enough to fully support you. Others like medical or law school, will require additional loans. Thinking about the likelihood you’ll use the degree and the ability of your finances to support it is a critical step.

Finally, if you have the opportunity to seek out someone in the field you want to be in, reach out and ask them about their graduate school experience (or lack thereof). If you don’t know anyone personally, you can always contact your school’s alumni association or career services center to see if they can get you in touch with someone.

Introduce yourself to your professors, they said. Ask them about the syllabus, or their office hours, they said.

“Introduce yourself!” is one of the most common pieces of advice given to college students at the beginning of the semester. While it’s good advice, a lot of students can make small mistakes that end up making what should be a positive interaction an awkward one. In this post, I’ll walk you through (1) Why you should absolutely introduce yourself, (2) common mistakes that students make, and (3) some of the best ways to reduce the awkward factor.

Why you should ABSOLUTELY introduce yourself to your professors.

There are a lot of benefits from getting to know your professors. But, to do this, you need to introduce yourself. Why? because depending on the size of your school, professors may have anywhere from 60-over 300 students per semester. That’s a lot of names and faces for anyone. If you want the professor to learn your name, your best bet is to initiate.

Having your professor know who you are from go has a lot of benefits. Professors are great people to have you write letters of recommendation Thinking of applying to any scholarships this year? you’ll probably need a professor to write you a letter, and most professors won’t write letters for students just because they sat through one of their classes. Maybe you need a reference for a job? Professors can also be a good sources for this–especially if you’re going for a campus job. Professors are connected. You might be at a school for a few years, professors spend their career there. Professors are also excellent sources of help in a difficult class. Knowing them can make a lot of difference.

There are a lot of benefits to having your professor know who you are.  SO, you want to make a good first impression. BUT, common advice can leave you looking more like an idiot than a great student. Here’s why.

Common Mistakes

Often, students are advised to ask professors about something on the syllabus or about their office hours. This seems like great advice because these are low stakes topics that should be of concern to both students and professors. What’s the problem?

1. You asked a question about the syllabus, when the answer is IN the syllabus. If there is one major pet peeve that is shared among university professors, it is when students ask endless questions about the class and the answer is in the syllabus. We give you the syllabus so that you have all this excellent information at the beginning of the school year. Don’t just ask a question about the syllabus when the answer is pretty clearly already in there. Doing this says to the professor that you are Lazy, that you didn’t put forth the effort of finding the answer before you asked. Advice: Don’t ask a question about the syllabus JUST to ask a question about the syllabus.
2. You asked a question about office hours when the professor already told you when they were. Similar to the syllabus pet peeve, professors kind of expect you to know how office hours work–and they’ll usually tell you the first week of class. Professors would prefer not to have to re-explain an administrative thing like office hours individually to every student.
3. You found an unimportant pretext for talking to them. I really don’t recommend this one, and it comes from personal experience. My freshman year of college, I wanted to introduce myself to my Math professor, I didn’t have any questions about office hours or the syllabus, and I thought I needed to have some pretense for talking to him after class. So, I told him I was concerned about getting out of class late because I had another class across campus that met 10 minutes after this class ended. His response? Mile high eyebrows. Why, you ask? Because in reality it wasn’t HIS problem. It was MY problem. If he ran class over, then it was my responsibility to figure out how to handle the situation gracefully: leave before the end of his lecture or arrive late to my next class. Also, this was the second class, so it was like I was asking him if he was going to do a bad job in class.

Reduce the Awkward Factor

There are easy ways to reduce the awkward factor when introducing yourself to a professor. Below are a couple of examples of students who have done this really well.

1. Keep it Simple. Last semester, I had a student introduce himself to me on his first day of class. He came up to the front after class, shook my hand, told me his name and said he was excited for the class this semester. This worked. It was straight forward, simple, and to the point. I highly recommend this option.
2. Ask for a clarification–but only if its needed. Sometimes, syllabi or verbal instructions CAN be confusing. If you have actually read the syllabus through and there is something that is unclear, then you should ask about it. For example, if assignments are due online, but only a date and no time is specified, asking if the professor wants them at the beginning of class or at midnight is a really great question to ask. This shows that you are detail oriented and capable of reading the syllabus through.
3. Stopping by office hours. If you didn’t manage to introduce yourself after class one of the first few days, this can be a great option. But, professors are busy people, so I don’t recommend just stopping by office hours to chat. Rather, have a specific question or two about the class, assignments, or a previous lecture. Since the semester has started, this should theoretically be a more focused/less random type of question. When in doubt, ask for advice: ask about what makes a successful student in the class, about what clubs/organizations are available for someone interested in this topic, about where you could go to get more information on interesting topic X that you talked about in class.

In short: Introducing yourself to your professors at the beginning of the year is a good strategy for doing well in their class. Don’t come up with a random excuse or ask them questions you should be able to find the answer to. DO be straight forward, professional, and keep it focused. Good luck!