Manuscript under review and grad school

[Flux2]

Hi, so I have a 2nd author manuscript submitted and it's under review and probably won't be published the time I apply for grad school.

Will it still help me out for grad school? and how should I state this in my application?

[TakeruK]

If it's under review, then you can cite it the way you would normally cite such a paper in your field. In my field, we cite papers that are not yet published as one of the following depending on the status:

 

Smith, J. et al (2014), "Title of Article", Name of Journal, submitted.  (for papers submitted but you have not yet received a review)

Smith, J. et al (2014), "Title of Article", Name of Journal, under review. (for papers where you have a review and are currently addressing the comments)

Smith, J. et al (2014), "Title of Article", Name of Journal, accepted. (for papers where you have received confirmation that it will be accepted)

Smith, J. et al (2014), "Title of Article", Name of Journal, in press. (for papers that are going to be published but there is no volume/issue/page numbers yet)

 

Depending on the journal, sometimes more than one of these steps might happen at the same time. Some people don't distinguish between submitted and under review, and others don't distinguish between accepted and in press. If the application allows it, include any DOIs or URLs where possible. For example, in my field, the arxiv.org preprint server is very popular so people can post submitted papers there and then you can include URL to that.