Grad School Application Process

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When I decided to apply to grad school, I felt bewildered. It took combining my school’s website, a long phone call with the admissions specialist, advice from friends who’re in the program, and a healthy portion of patience and determination to figure it out.

Now that I'm finally in my first semester, I am going to recount, to the best of my ability, the two major parts of the process that got me here: the application, and financial aid. I apologize to those seeking advice on exams. Luckily, my school decided to eliminate the GRE as a requirement before I took it.

The Application

Personal Statement

I took the word "personal" to heart. I had no professional background and a limited volunteer background in mental health. So I chose to leverage my writing and storytelling abilities to engage the reader and try and create a compelling enough case for why my admittance would benefit the school.

I am guessing most MSW applicants' personal statements are more general than personal; that they all include words like, "I want to help people;" "I want to do something meaningful;" "I want to give back;" or outline experience like, "I volunteered with X organization for three years and it was amazing." Not to knock that style at all! I just didn’t have that option based on my experience.

My advice is to be specific. Make your essay unique by using details that are only about you. On top of that, figure out how your enrollment benefits the school. In my case, I want to study a unique form of therapy called psychodrama. It's under-examined, and I would guess I’m the only person out of 500 applicants who mentioned psychodrama in an essay. As a cisgender white woman, this is one way I can bring diversity to their program. I talked about how I want to give back to the institution that would be giving so much to me in these two years.

Letters of Recommendation

Start on these early! People love to procrastinate on writing assignments. That's why you're the one going to grad school, not them. I recommend finding back ups as well.

In my case, I asked my Head of School at my last job (ie: the big boss), my direct boss, and the president of the What it's Like Project, a nonprofit where I’m a board member. The president of the board is also a Ph.D. Student in the program to which I was applying, which was a bonus.

At my school, I was allowed to have one "personal" connection, meaning a family member or friend, but I believe that's it. The rest needed to be professional or academic. If you've been in school within the past five years (which I had not), I think at least two of your letters of recommendation would need to be from professors.

If you, like me, are coming from a very different background than the one you're venturing into, give your writers some direction. What do you want them to highlight about you? What transferrable skills do you have that are relevant to the path you want to take?

For example, I was a Director of Communications in my previous job, which meant I spent a lot of time interviewing people about personal topics. My boss wrote about my ability to make others feel at ease and open up despite age, socioeconomic status, or other characteristics.

Schools may give you the option to see the letters of recommendation that are submitted to them. I did not select this option for fear it would make it look like I didn't trust what my recommenders wrote about me. If it's very important to you to know what was said, I think you should ask the writer for a copy directly. If you're uncomfortable with that, consider asking someone else to write your letter.

Records & More
You will need an official copy of your undergrad transcripts, probably some form of ID, and possibly other documents in order to apply. Make sure you look at what's required early on so the process doesn't get held up for something tedious. Often your undergrad school will have a specific turnaround time for transcripts. All that to say, plan ahead!

In addition, my school required a resume. I did not have a resume relevant to my school, so I revamped mine. Make sure you give yourself the time to work on this, proofread it, set it aside, work on it some more, have a friend proofread it, and then send it in. This is another place where those transferrable skills will serve you as well.

The Wait

People who know you applied are constantly asking, “Any news???” People trying to be helpful blindly reassure you, "Don't worry, you'll get in!" Somehow, at least for me, that made the wait even harder! 

Plan some type of self-care for this period. Schedule some distracting activities. Set other small goals to achieve. Trust me when I say this: refreshing the application processing page three times a day does not actually make you feel better.

For me, the hardest part of this period was figuring out what the future was going to look like. The truth is, schools don’t give you a ton of time to figure things out. My application was completed in January, and I didn’t hear back till the later half of March. That meant I had four months to figure out my finances, my job situation, insurance, rent and living situation… everything. It is not a lot of time.

Thankfully, I worked for a company that knew about the application and was waiting on my acceptance to start the job hunt for a replacement. I was highly fortunate. Even after getting in, I had to make several calls to find out what I’d really be capable of doing. How many classes I had to take to maintain certain scholarship eligibility or face-to-face status (my school doesn’t offer a part-time, in-person option). Could I stay at my current job part time? (The answer turned out to be no).

For this portion, my advice is this: Give yourself some grace, and trust in the process. If you find you haven’t heard anything by the time acceptance announcements were supposed to have been made, phone the school.

Financial Aid & Scholarships

FAFSA

Let me start by telling you what I didn't understand about FAFSA... EVERYTHING! I had not a single grasp on how financial aid worked, and I'm still slowly figuring it out as I live through it.

I am not fluent on direct subsidized loans, direct unsubsidized loans, and pell grants, but I can tell you what I received. I believe that if you are a graduate student, you are not eligible for subsidized loans, only unsubsidized. The main difference between subsidized and unsubsidized loans is that the U.S. Department of Education pays the interest on a direct subsidized loan. Sadly, that's not an option for grad students.

The amount you can borrow for grad schools is up to $20,500 a year. I borrowed the full amount.

It was quite alarming when during orientation, we were told our tuition needed to be paid by August 13th, but our financial aid wasn’t scheduled to hit until the 20th. I was terrified of being dropped from classes after working so hard to get here. However, they reassured me that if I had approved aid that I could see in my account, that I would be fine. And I was! Hooray! This is because the school controls your funds. They are the one who reimburse you the remainder of your loan after your tuition is paid. If you run into a similar date issue, I suggest talking with your advisor or financial aid liaison just to make sure your school is the same. It is scary trusting the system, but it’s the only choice unless you can pay out-of-pocket up front.

One last thing about FAFSA - your school most likely uses your FAFSA information as part of their decision-making process for scholarships.

Scholarships
In case you aren’t aware (I wasn’t!) scholarships are essentially “free money.” That means, it’s a gift you don’t have to repay or worry about interest on, unlike FAFSA-granted student loans.

In some cases, if you receive a scholarship, that will lessen the student loan total you’ll be awarded. For example, if FAFSA grants you up to $20,500 for the year, and you receive a $5,000 scholarship, then FAFSA may only loan you $15,500 if they determine that your cost of school doesn’t exceed that $20,500. That’s a lot of numbers, so feel free to comment if it doesn’t make sense, and I’ll try to re-explain!

Personally, I received one scholarship, but it didn’t come through until late September, which I didn’t even know could happen! Apparently, some of my school’s donors take a while to process everything, and I was one of the last three students to receive funds. In reference to what I said in the last paragraph about scholarships affecting your loans, I was lucky enough to keep my full student loan amount.

So where do you find scholarships?

Many schools have scholarships that are university-wide, as well as ones that are college-specific. For example, the University of Houston has a general "Grad Student" Scholarship. Any UH grad student can apply, no matter their focus. In addition, my college, the Graduate College of Social Work, has many of its own scholarships. These are solely distributed to GCSW students.

I applied for many outside, national scholarships and received none. Some of these were quite time consuming. After going through it once, I recommend trying to find scholarships specifically related to your field or your gender, ethnicity, or some other part of your identity. Otherwise, there are so many people applying that I think you just get lost in the mix. If you have tons of time on your hands, by all means, get after it!

Timing & Using Your Loans

Plan to pay some up-front expenses before your loans are disbursed. For example, parking passes, textbooks, and potentially student housing and meal plans will need to be paid for before loans disburse, which for me has been within a week of the first day of class. You may have to use a credit card or ask a family member for help if you don’t have the cash when you need it. You can pay yourself or someone else back when you get your loan.

I was confused about my loans and whether there were stipulations on them. Did I have to use them on only school-related expenses? Because I’d already paid for textbooks by the time I had the funds. In case you, like me, didn’t know, you can spend your loans however you need to. Most of my loans go toward tuition and then the rest is for living expenses. I work 20 hours per week at an assistantship for $1000 a month. If not for my loans and scholarship, I couldn’t afford my rent, groceries… anything besides school.

Regarding the timing of loans, half is distributed in the fall, and the other half in the spring. So I received $10,250 (minus tax) of my $20,500 in August, and will receive the other $10,250 in January. These coincide with the major expenses of fall and spring tuition. However, in my program, I have to take summer courses to graduate on time. I don’t get more financial aid until August, so I have to budget my funds for summer classes. If the case is the same for you, be sure you estimate your tuition and textbook costs for summer before spending your loan on living expenses.

Lastly, I’ll say that paying back loans is the scary part that I have not investigated enough yet. I recommend doing a search on your own for more info on that, as it’s going to be very important. Unfortunately, being a grad student doesn’t afford me a lot of time for financial research.

Talk About It

While money can be a taboo subject, and announcing you’ve received a scholarship may unfortunately get you sideways glances in the hallway (yes, even at the college of social work!), I think it's important to talk about how you’re able to survive financially when taking on grad school. In my case, if I didn’t have an assistantship (my part-time job), student loans, a scholarship, and a boyfriend and dad who help financially, I couldn’t be here.