Prisms may exist, but you can’t get rainbows without sunshine. It’s been a little cloudy, folks …
I always knew the grad school applications process would be stressful, but I never realized exactly HOW incredibly soul-crushingly gut-wrenchingly stressful it would turn out to be!
The exams … oh my goodness. They kept coming one after another, like a lineup of cold, emotionless controlled knights in midnight black armor, ready to slay me, ‘coz how dare I try to cross the borders! I swatted and deflected the blows, in some cases winning outright, in some, not so much, and a couple are still being battled out. I studied and prepared and did countless practice tests, and believe me, it took a lot of time and effort.
However, exams turned out to be child’s play in the entire duration of the application season. Giving exams is the one thing where I actually have some (or in this case, a LOT of) experience, and it is essentially clear-cut: you study, you prepare … and in the exam you can solve questions using standard tools and techniques, and a dash of common sense. The real complications arose when I started looking up schools and programs I would like to go to.
Here, there is no correct answer … no formulae, no constants, no helpful assumptions. If you want to figure out how to go about the process of applying, you are on your own. And the questions never end. How many schools should you apply to? Which schools should you apply to? How do you know a school is ‘safe’? How exactly do you judge one school’s program against the other, based on the information on their websites? Won’t every school be advertising and selling itself as the best? Should you go for a school’s reputation – apply to top places, or mediocre places are alright as long as you know that you will have a ‘good Ph.D. guide’, which is again solely based on his or her webpage?
You trawl through a myriad of murky questions with no clear-cut answers. The more people you ask, the more opinions you gather – the more confused you end up being.
Alright, so ultimately … you manage to make a decent list of places you have decided to apply to. Whew, what a relief. Barring all the second-guessing, you are good to go, and can actually start the application process. Smooth sailing? Oh no, the rough seas have just begun. This is where you start writing your statement of purpose, if you haven’t begun yet (and honestly, it really should have begun long before … two weeks before the first deadline is not the best time!). This is when you go around procuring transcripts, and calling up delivery services to post them off in the shortest possible duration of time. This is when you log onto the testing service sites and pay them ridiculous sums of money so that they can send your official test scores to all the schools you have shortlisted. This is when you make sure your referees are ready with your letters of recommendation. Along with all this, you start filling in copious and tedious details in the online application forms. And one way or the other, you always end up spending a lot more time on this that you’d think is necessary. This is the point when you realize that although you had finally ‘finalized’ your SoP, you need to add/edit/delete a million things for each school. If you are a persnickety being, this time is even tougher on you as you will obsess incessantly over every sentence, the construction, the flow, the commas, and spend forever making sure it ‘sounds right’.
And now for the checklist. Online form completed, transcripts posted, test scores mailed, receipt of reco letters confirmed … fees payment done … aaaaand … submit! Congratulations, it’s over! Apart from a few worries about whether your transcripts and scores have been received and acknowledged, your work is pretty much over. Now it’s out of your hands, and into those of the admissions committees. Step back, heave a sigh of relief, and change back your life’s status from distressed to de-stressed.
And wait for the silver lining.
Sunlit Prism 