Submitting materials continued

Along with sending in your application, recommendation letters, personal statement and transcript, you will likely need to submit a resume, writing samples and/or a portfolio. Your resume, writing samples and resume are the areas where you can show what experience you have and really make yourself stand out.

The New York Times posted an article yesterday titled "Do Grades Matter?"  (you have to log in to view it). The article discusses just how important grades are for getting accepted into grad school.

Sheila Curran, president of Curran Career Consulting, is quoted saying, “The more you have relevant work experience in a particular area, the less important grades are. But if you want to become a professor, then grades are absolutely essential."

I think this quote nicely sums everything up. If your transcript doesn't show what you want it to, your experiences related to your field of study can make up for poor grades. Though, the importance of grades does depend on what profession you want.

If you do have excellent grades, you need to have experience as well to show that you can excel beyond the classroom.





Grades aren't everything. To be accepted into grad school, you need a combination
of decent grades, positive recommendations and experience in your field.

   When working on your resume to submit to grad schools, you want to highlight your out-of-class experiences. Most likely, your professors who write letters of recommendation for you will boast about your work inside the classroom, and your transcript will show all of the classes you have taken.

You should construct your resume so that it explains all of the experiences you have that relate to your chosen field of study. If you worked on an important class project that relates to what you want to do in grad school, that's fine to put on your resume to send to graduate school, but don't waste space by listing your relevant coursework.

If you are required to submit a portfolio or writing samples, choose several pieces of work that relate to what you want to study at grad school. Try to select projects that are quite different from each other to show the wide-array of work you have completed. Also, choose writing samples or projects that you are proud of. If you did not receive a great grade on it or if you didn't put your full effort into it, odds are the admissions committee won't be impressed by it either.

For more tips about selecting or creating a writing sample, read the article "Producing a 'Winning' Grad School Writing Sample."