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A lot of this seems like a retelling of your resume in full sentences (though of course I don't know for sure, not having read your resume). I'd want to hear more about what you learned in your experiences, how they shaped your interests and goals, etc.

PhD programs mostly don't care about your ECs unless they're related to your Cs, so to speak. This isn't undergrad, they're not looking for people who are well-rounded, they're looking for people with the singlemindedness to devote their whole lives to the study of hyper-specific topics. I understand that it was logistically infeasible for you to do undergrad research, I'm not trying to put you down here, I just mean look at it from their point of view: If you haven't done research, how can they tell if you will be good at research? How can they judge your capacity to complete the marathon that is a dissertation? Also I would rather have a letter from a no-name prof who knew me super well and loved me and would go to bat for me than from a prof at a top-30 department who would only be able to write "got an A in my class" and other generic impersonal stuff like that. I don't know if that's what you meant by "average," though.

Is there a reason you absolutely HAVE to apply while still an undergrad? Many adcoms see it as a plus for applicants to have had some time outside of school. You could a) try to develop relationships with your second-semester profs and take community college classes after graduating and try to get letters from your professors there. Also, do you just not have enough, or do you have literally no one? If the latter, that suggests that you have never been involved in research, or else your advisor would be a potential recommender. And if you have no research experience, you're unlikely to get in to grad school anyway (at least in every field I know of), so you might as well rethink your timeframe.

Also for recs you should get at least one professional (not just academic reference). Since it sounds like you're doing so well at your current job, is there any particular reason you wouldn't want to ask your boss for a letter?

I don't think you really need to worry about "explaining" your math major. Everything I've seen and been told about this field says that experience is a lot more important than academics. People go into student affairs from all kinds of academic backgrounds. I know student affairs professionals whose degrees are in business, geography, journalism, rhetoric, French, philosophy, linguistics, anthropology, psychology -- all kinds of things, and plenty who never took any education coursework at all. If anything your math degree might make you stand out and provide some welcome diversity in a pool that may skew toward social sciences and humanities.

Thanks for your advice! To clarify, I'm not married to having super close relationships with professors, and I'm not necessarily looking to do research -- I just mentioned faculty research interests because those can affect the content of the coursework, and perhaps the assistantship/internship opportunities? And because it's easier to tailor an application to a program that fits my particular interests.

Hi everyone, As far as I can tell, most HESA programs are heavily or exclusively focused on undergrads. I realize this makes sense because lots of higher education institutions have undergrads but no grad students. However, are there master's programs that are good for people interested in grad student affairs? I certainly don't object to working in undergraduate affairs, but I do have a particular interest in grad students. (There are a lot of people working in graduate student services at the university I currently work at, so I know this is an actual thing that exists, even if it's less common than undergrad student services.) An example of the kind of thing I'm looking for: University of Michigan, which has faculty with research interests in faculty attitudes and career patterns (presumably relevant to grad students because they work so closely with faculty and many of them aspire to become faculty), undergraduate research (relevant in that many undergrad research assistants are aspiring grad students), and graduate education itself. Plus, they have both a master's and PhD program and it sounds like the master's students and PhD students take some classes together. I'm not interested in doing a PhD program myself, but since I am interested in someday working with PhD students professionally, it seems good to study with some and get a close perspective on their needs and concerns. Anyway, does anyone know of any other programs that have any of those features, or features that are similarly relevant to grad student affairs? I'm not planning to apply anywhere for at least a couple years, so feel free to cast a wide net and include programs that might require a lot of planning, prep work, unusual experience, etc.

Well, why does anything matter? Even if you're a medical doctor you could say, "Why does it matter if I save people's lives, since they're all going to die eventually anyway?" If the entire human race went extinct, how much would it affect the rest of the universe? For most of the universe, probably not that much. How about, if we (linguists) don't demand that non-linguists find linguistics as interesting as we find it, non-linguists don't ask linguists to justify ourselves and our interests? Unless you're writing a grant, of course! Then justification is necessary. In a more cooperative vein, though, I would say that linguistics is bound up with social justice and equality. Linguistics matters because the linguistic ignorance of people in the educational system is part of why some students are unfairly disadvantaged. If you care about eradicating racism, you cannot ignore both the systemic and individual biases that harm AA(V)E speakers. Linguistics tells (or would tell, if linguists had better PR) black kids, "The way you and your family talk is not wrong or broken or lazy. It is just as rule-governed and complex and intricate and interesting as any other variety of English or any other language. And your mastery of it is just as impressive and mysterious and honestly kind of miraculous as any rich white Eton kid speaking RP."

I'm not in your field, but it seems all the economists say you need as much math as possible, like even most econ majors don't have enough math for econ grad school, and you especially need real analysis.

I'm not in your field, but a broadly applicable piece of advice that I feel applies here is: fewer general statements about the field (what your first paragraph seems to mostly be), more specifics about you, and in particular, your future goals/plans. I assume they require a writing sample and will thus get to read about your past research, so you probably don't need to describe it in quite so much detail here. I'm not sure about masters programs but in PhD programs it's generally best if you can name more than one potential advisor. You also don't say much concrete about why you want a graduate degree and what you will use it for. Do you hope to go on to a PhD eventually? Do you have some kind of industry career in mind? You need to convince us that you have thought this decision through farther than, "Well, I liked undergrad and I don't know what else to do, so I'll go to grad school." (The Guardian Princess project sounds really cool, by the way, I'll have to check that out.)

Are there any other professors from your master's program who know you and your work well? Or if not, who wrote your LORs to get you into your master's program in the first place?

The University of Vermont HESA program actually does not require GRE scores, though the university does require them if you want to be considered for assistantships.

Probably most other applicants will also have knowledge of neuro concepts, so I doubt it would make you stand out. Generally humor is a very tricky thing to navigate in SOPs and you're safer not attempting it. You don't know what the ad com members' senses of humor will be like.

I'm not in your field, but generally recommendations from family members are frowned upon. They want to see more impartial recommendations. If you were an admissions officer, what would you find more persuasive, a letter saying, "I work with this person and I recommend them," or a letter saying, "I am this person's brother and I recommend them"?

I'm planning to apply to the same program in a future application season, so I don't have a draft of my own ready, but I'd be happy to look at yours anyway if you like.

I don't have a draft of my own, but I'm still interested to read yours.

Stanford has a sociophonetician who works on the construction of gender and sexuality. Also, I'm curious who you want to work with at Berkeley -- since Robin Lakoff retired their linguistics department doesn't really do much language and gender etc.

I'm in a similar situation, and from what I've read, higher ed admin programs care a lot about your relevant work experience, and it's not uncommon for recent graduates to get jobs in admissions. In fact, a number of student affairs professionals have recommended admissions to me as a good pre-grad school job.

I really do not think they are too different. I know R1 linguists who have done both.

Maybe try to sound less negative about your teaching experience. I don't know if this is true in your program of choice, but many grad students have to teach or at least grade papers. If you might be doing that in your grad program, then telling them you don't like that stuff probably won't make you an appealing candidate.

I don't have a sample, but, well, why do you want to study speech pathology? And what specific relevant experiences, interests, skills, goals, etc. do you have that distinguish you from the next applicant?

I have read (in Donald Asher's book on grad school application essays) that personal challenges are better addressed in your LOR. You could ask your recommenders if they think it's worth discussing in your application materials; if they do, then give them enough information so they can discuss it in their letters, and keep your own SOP focused on your academic and professional goals. Unless of course the instructions say to write about your personal life.

Grad schools don't care that you've always wanted to be a [insert profession here] ever since you were a kid. Everybody says that. Don't bother talking about high school. They want to know what serious grown-up work you've done and how you will be a credit to their department. I'm not in your field but I imagine they're probably more interested in hearing about the projects you've worked on than about the classes you've taken. Be more specific than "be engaged in real projects, do high impact research, and to contribute to the body of knowledge." Any student could say that about any department at any school in any field. What kind of work do you want to do? What are your research interests? Which faculty members do you want to work with, and which of their projects do you want to work on? How is this department a good fit for your intellectual interests and professional goals beyond having a good reputation? What exactly are these "unique characteristics" that UNT has?

Yes -- keep in mind I don't really know how to code in any language, so I can't give advice on which language or anything like that, but I've gotten the strong impression that if you can do some basic programming, it'll significantly increase your value and appeal to a wide range of people, and will probably make your life easier (in the sense of accomplishing various tasks) in the long run. I also don't know anything about bioengineering specifically; my advice was generic grad school advice not particular to any discipline.

If you can make it work financially, get more research experience, preferably with the same PI for longer than three months. That will make their LOR more convincing -- admissions committees will trust their judgment more if they've known you for longer. But if you can't, work experience will still make you a stronger candidate. Teaching/tutoring experience is helpful if you have plans to TA and/or end up as a professor. You can emphasize the research-y nature of your senior design thing in your SOP. Speaking of which, start working on your SOP early. Request advice and feedback from your advisor(s). You could also revisit your senior design project to revise and improve it, for submission as a writing sample if applicable, or even publication. If you don't have a professor's feedback on how to improve it, ask for their feedback. I cannot personally speak to how accurate this is, but at least one professor who serves on admissions committees claims that GPA isn't important, it's all about capacity to do original research, as evidenced by your work and recommendations. If you don't know how to code and you think you could learn between now and application season, try to do so. Everyone can use someone who can code. ETA: I've heard if you have some external (e.g. NSF) funding of your own, schools will be more likely to offer you the rest of the funding you'd need (since then they only need to meet you partway, so to speak, instead of funding you entirely themselves). I don't really know anything about the procedure or timeline for that, but I'd recommend looking into it.