363: Five Truths About Grad School Admissions No One Tells You

363: Five Truths About Grad School Admissions No One Tells You

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Dra Yvette Martinez-Vu: [00:00:00] Have you ever had a moment when something didn't turn out the way that you expected, no matter how much you prepared for it? Let's say it was a moment of rejection where you thought to yourself, hold up. What did I do wrong? Now, let's take that scenario and apply it to grad school. Let's imagine you received a grad school rejection this year or in the past. Maybe you had the right grades, maybe you did all the things. You gathered research or professional experience, you had mentors and you felt good about their letters of recommendation. So overall, you felt good about submitting a strong application, and yet you still did not get an acceptance letter.

For many applicants, that moment can feel like a failure. It'll make you question your abilities, your preparation, and even whether you belong in that space at all. But what you aren't told about grad school admissions in particular, is that it operates within [00:01:00] very complex institutional systems. And in our current academic and political landscape, we're seeing departments getting cut completely.

We're seeing budgets being slashed, and so that means that the process of getting in has become that much more competitive. That also means that a lot of the factors shaping decisions are completely outside of your control and those realities still influence who gets admitted and who does not. A while back I shared on social media a post where I said, here's what I would tell you about grad school admissions, if I wasn't afraid to hurt your feelings. That post resonated with so many of you because it named truths that many applicants and educators can relate to. So today I'm gonna walk you through five of those truths. My hope is that at the end of this conversation, you gain some more clarity [00:02:00] about how graduate school admissions actually works, so that you can approach the process feeling more informed and feeling like you have a strong sense of what to do next, no matter the outcome.

Welcome to the award-winning Grad School Femtoring Podcast. The place where first generation BIPOC students and professionals can listen in on inclusive grad school stories and gain practical tools for sustainable success. This is Dra Yvette Martinez-Vu, a certified coach, consultant, author, and speaker.

I will be serving as your femtor, providing you with insider knowledge to help you thrive in grad school and beyond.

Welcome back everyone to another episode of the Grad School Femtoring [00:03:00] podcast. This is your host, Doctora Yvette. Yes, today I am talking about all things hard truths. I have talked about grad school myths before, but I'm not sure that I've talked about truths. So today we're gonna tackle that topic because it resonated with so many of you.

And I'm gonna jump straight into the first truth, and that is that being qualified is not enough. Many of us grew up believing that hard work and earning a certain set of credentials would automatically open up doors to us and would allow us to finally get that ideal career in life. And so you work on doing all the right things, right?

You work on getting those grades, getting the experiences, getting the roles, the awards, and of course those things still do matter. They signal your preparation, they signal your commitment, [00:04:00] and yet at the same time, every year, many brilliant, hardworking students will receive rejection letters even if they did nothing wrong.

Then there's those that do get accepted and later face really harsh environments that make it hard to stay, so they get pushed out. All of this to say that graduate education functions within institutions that, as many of us know, were historically designed to serve very different types of people. Those structures, those systems, those expectations continue to reflect those origins, and that means that admissions decisions don't always operate as a pure meritocracy. I don't really like saying this out loud because I know I work with college students who still fully believe that meritocracy is a thing, and to be frank, I don't believe meritocracy exists, and I do think it's important to name that, to [00:05:00] understand that reality, because once you know that reality, that can protect you from internalizing rejection and thinking that that is a sign of your own personal failure. Your qualifications, efforts, preparation, all of that matters, and yet at admissions, decisions will take place within institutions, systems, departments that will prioritize themselves and they will prioritize what matters to the climate and the culture of the spaces that they're part of. Again, you can do all the right things and still not get in.

Let's jump into truth number two, which is that who you know matters more than many people realize. Again, I don't really like saying this out loud because I am an introvert. I am neurodivergent. I know how hard it can be to build relationships with others. I know that [00:06:00] it's harder for some of us, more than others, and yet mentorship is important, who writes your letters of recommendation is important, who you know and the spaces you're applying to is also important. And when you think about grad school admissions, faculty members themselves rely on their own networks to help them evaluate applicants. So when they're looking at a letter of recommendation, if they see that someone wrote a letter for a student, and that person is respected in their field, that's gonna have them weigh that letter that much stronger, and they're gonna believe in your potential that much more. This doesn't mean that networking is all about focusing solely on finding mentors who are senior scholars or who are rock stars in the field, or who are gonna be people that other professors are going to respect. Again, even if you tried, there's not enough of them [00:07:00] to go around. But what it does mean is that you should be investing in building relationships with others, build relationships with mentors who believe in you, who genuinely know you, who know your work, who know your potential, and can speak to that in their letters.

You also want to tap into relationships at other institutions, so this is where reaching out to professors and the programs that you're interested in applying to can also help. Whether or not they are on the admissions committee is hard to say. Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't. If they are, they may not want to provide too much support because of conflict of interest. If they aren't, they might be able to even offer feedback on your materials or specific advice. But in any case, it helps to have others know you when you are applying to opportunities. And I will also say [00:08:00] this, that sometimes your ability to tap into mentors and build networks can make a difference depending on what institution you're part of.

So students who attend more well-resourced institutions like the top research universities or small liberal arts colleges, they will often receive this kind of support more consistently, or it might be built in to your program or your institution. Nevertheless, you still have to seek out those relationships. And yes, that does mean that if you are first gen or that if you are underrepresented in your field, it is going to be harder for you to seek that out, but it is not impossible. So again, if you're applying to grad school or if you plan to reapply, please make sure that you're investing time and energy into cultivating relationships with mentors and individuals who can advocate for you.

[00:09:00] All right. Let's jump into the third truth, which is that your story has to do more than inspire. When I'm talking about your story, I'm talking about what you write about when you work on your grad school admissions essays. This is primarily in the personal statement, but it also comes up in the statement of purpose.

A lot of times students who are working on their applications, they believe that they have to have the best story, the best hook, the best antidote, and that is the centerpiece of their application that's gonna make or break their ability to get in. And yes, your story matters, your experiences, your perspectives, all that matters, but the admissions committee members, they are professors and they want to understand your intellectual and professional journey. They want to know more about your previous experiences. They want to get a sense that you are someone who will eventually become their colleague. And so as much as a personal statement [00:10:00] is personal and you want to think about the narrative that you're sharing with them, it's also very strategic.

It is a strategic document in that it is showing how your experiences led you to your research and professional interests to your goals and how that program fits into that. And that means it needs to demonstrate alignment. It needs to demonstrate fit with the program, fit with the faculty, especially because when they're reviewing the applications, they're asking themselves things like, can this student be supported by the faculty here? Does this student's research or professional direction connect with our department, with our program, with our strengths? Will this student contribute to the intellectual or professional community that we are building? So again, your story needs to be powerful, but it also has to connect your lived [00:11:00] experience to a clear, scholarly and professional trajectory.

Truth number four is that fit often reflects deeper institutional patterns. And this is a tricky one, right? Because I tell people that they need to focus on fit and they need to acknowledge that and do their research and show that they've done their research to seem like you are the right person for that program.

And yes, that's true. This language is about alignment between your personal and professional interests and the expertise of the faculty and the areas of interest and focus in the program. Yes. All that's right. So in practice, fit is also about you fitting into the institutional culture, and sometimes that comes with the pressure to assimilate, and that's when it can get tricky, right? Because programs [00:12:00] will intentionally or unintentionally gravitate toward applicants who feel and sound familiar to them. Yes. That's why when you go into some departmental sites, you see a lot of people, they look the same, they sound the same. They have similar communication styles, they have similar academic training, they have similar backgrounds. That is a thing, and this dynamic can unintentionally reinforce. Existing demographics, existing cultural patterns, and even existing forms of oppression in academia. So I'm telling you this because it means that you need to be more strategic when searching for your programs. You can't just choose the top programs and call it a day. You need to be clear on your non-negotiables. You need to ask yourself, what programs will genuinely support the topics that I want to study? What professors have a demonstrated commitment to mentoring students like me? Which departments [00:13:00] show evidence of supporting diverse students? When you approach your applications with this level of intentionality, then you're increasing the chances of being in an environment where people will recognize and support your work, and instead of feeling like you have to assimilate, you will feel more like you already belong.

This leads me to the last truth, what I mentioned at the beginning, which is rejection is not always about you. This one's the hardest one to accept, and it's hard. It's hard for me even when I receive rejections there are so many variables outside of our control that we will never get to see.

Okay. There are programs who have frozen admissions. They have programs who continued their admissions, but frozen funding. There are programs that maybe are only admitting one or two students a cycle instead of triple that. So keep that in mind. Maybe the professor you wanted to work with [00:14:00] is on leave. Maybe that professor left. You never know. In fact, I will link in the show notes an episode that I recorded a while back on. I think it was like 20 plus reasons why you didn't get into graduate school, and the bulk of those reasons have nothing to do with you. So I'll link it so that you can listen to that if that's of interest. But in any case, all of this to say that even if you're a strong applicant, you maybe dealing with circumstances this year that shifted the outcome. Maybe in another year when you would've applied, you would've gotten in, and this year, just because of where we are in our current landscape, you did not.

I don't want this to sound discouraging. I do know that rejection, no matter the reason why, it still stings, it will still feel painful, but it can also coexist with the truth that you did your best, that your application was strong, and that under [00:15:00] other conditions, maybe that would've been enough for an acceptance.

So just to wrap things up today, I want to remind you that any admissions decision, any outcome that you get, does not define your worth. It also doesn't define the future impact that you will have in your field. A lot of successful scholars and professionals carry with them so many rejection letters in their histories.

I really wish we could all see each other's rejections if we could see a resume or a CV full of all of our individual rejections, because you would recognize that even the most successful people that we can think of have had so many more rejections. That is part of the process. So that's it for today.

I hope it gave you some new insights. I hope that it encourages you to keep going no matter [00:16:00] what. Thanks again, and as always, I'll talk to you all next time.

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