3 Things I didn't do before applying to grad school
Written By: Gen Nguyen | Read full profile
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Over the last few months, I’ve been busy studying for the GRE, writing essays, and worrying about who should write my recommendation letters. Which was one of the biggest reasons why I’ve been on hiatus recently. Oops
And throughout my journey, I found that I was nowhere ready to apply to graduate school. Here’s why:
I didn’t do well in school
I don’t know why I didn’t do well in school. Maybe I took the praise of being precocious too far and stopped trying. Who knows. I was ingenuous, but I’ve grown to know how important it is to do your best (hopefully).
This is pretty self-explanatory. Don’t let your GPA fall too much, it’ll be harder to mitigate whatever damage you caused. Especially if the rest of your classes are hard upper division courses. You might be struggling a lot.
I didn’t get to know my professors
I never enjoyed talking to professors or maybe I was too prideful and never asked for help. But this might be one of my biggest regrets back in college. Had I asked for help from my professors, I’d probably would’ve done a lot better in school and I’d have someone to write my recommendation letters (depending).
Always get to know your professors. Talk to them during office hours, ask for help, whatever. Just make yourself be known. Let them recognize your name and face. And I say all this because you need strong recommendation letters especially if you (sadly like me) do not have a strong GPA.
I didn’t prepare enough for the GRE
I decided to apply for graduate school in mid-October which gave me a lot of time to prepare my application… if I didn’t have to take the GRE. Even though most graduate schools waived the GRE, because my GPA was below average for the schools I was applying to, I had to take it and get nearly a perfect score in Quant and a decent score in Verbal.
Given a deadline of less than 3 months, I didn’t have time to really memorize 1000 words for the GRE. But I tried my best to learn as many words as I could. Memorizing is hard though. I’m the kind of person who has to either hear or read it somewhere. So to commemorate the end of grad app season, I’ll be sprinkling in a bunch of GRE words into my future blogs. I’ve actually incorporated a bunch into this essay now!
Hopefully, if you’re looking to take the GRE and/or applying to graduate school, my future blogs will help you in preparation for it. You can also use them in your casual conversations to show off your extensive vocabulary (or sound ostentatious).
