Sr. using summer 2 prepare 4 grad school appls. Any Advice?

[jlee306]

Hi, I am new to this forum and have been lurking and reading a lot on here for the last couple of days. This forum is full of great info and well informed ppl! I am using this summer to do some volunteer work counseling at a pregnancy center and studying for the GRE. My senior year starts Sept. 1 and I am preparing to apply to Specialist in School Psychology grad programs at the end of this year. My biggest concerns are the LORs because I am not that "intouch" with my professors at my university but I plan on getting to know them better this semester. I am also fretting over the SOP as I am not sure where to start or what to say. I am looking for any advise you would like to give me...the do's and don'ts, stories from your experience, etc. I have one grad school program here in Texas that I want to get into with a bad passion and it makes me sick just thinking about waiting for the reply. Thankfully, reading the posts on this forum have helped me a bit. I look forward to yall's responses.

[Minnesotan]

"Sr. using summer 2 prepare 4 grad school appls. Any Advice?"

Don't write your SoP in chatspeak.

But seriously, folks... the first thing I would do is identify an advisor to meet with, preferably someone who has not been out of grad school for more than a decade. They should have some solid advice for you, and migt be willing to look at drafts of your SoP. That, I think, is the most important piece of a humanities/ss application.

Once you have a few good revisions done, start recruiting people on the street to read the thing. The more eyeballs see the page, the better off you'll be.

[jlee306]

"Sr. using summer 2 prepare 4 grad school appls. Any Advice?"

Don't write your SoP in chatspeak.

Haha, don't worry, I won't. I only did that here because it would not all fit in the subject area.

[jlee306]

I am still looking for more advice...any is accepted. Thanks!

[Serric]

As far as not knowing where to start with your statement of purpose...well, the best way to do that would be to look at the programs you want to apply to and see what they ask for. They'll generally have a brief outline of what they want, and you can do a quick Google search and find some good sample ones/articles about writing them.

Get started on it as soon as possible, though. One of the best ways to polish something is to write it, leave it alone for a few days, then go back to it so you can improve on it while in a different state of mind. Repeat several times, show it to the professors you'll be receiving your letters of recommendation from, and polish it as best you can.

If there's a program you feel that strongly about, try to get in touch with a couple of the professors in the department. Keep your e-mail short and to the point--professors are doing a million things at a time, so give them as little as possible to read while still keeping your point. Read a couple of their papers if you can, and get a good idea of the direction of their research. Finally, ask if they're accepting graduate students: what's the point of endangering your chances, or even applying, if the faculty you're applying for aren't accepting additional students?

[thepoorstockinger]

re: SOP - Try to get your hands on a variety of recent, successful SOPS in your field and read them. That really should be the first step, since people often are completely off on their first few tries.

I would also make sure you check and see when internal deadlines are for things, and make sure you know exactly where and when you need to send documents outside of your control like transcripts. I definitely scrambled to get transcripts from places where I was a visiting student ordered in time to meet internal deadlines at my school for some external scholarships and it cost me a bit extra to get rush delivery on them.

[jlee306]

Serric and thepoorstockinger: Thank you both for your responses! Great advice! I have done tons of research on all the deadlines and what specifically each program is looking for on the application. I have looked up SoPs for my field but the examples I found all seem way out of reach for what I have done. Reading these examples seem to make me feel worse about the whole process because I think to myself that if these programs are expecting what are in these fake SoPs, then there is no way I'm going to get in. But then again I know that these examples are not entirely applicable (for example, I recall one stating: When I was 6 years old, I went on a missionary trip to India. While there I had to do emergency brain surgery on a woman who I just pulled out of a burning building. That's how I knew I wanted to become a brain surgeon). Oh come on!! Like that ever happened! Geez!

[socialpsych]

Are there grad students in your field at your school? Do you know any? If so, offer to buy them coffee, and pick their brains. See if they will agree to read a draft of your SOP. Grad students tend to be more generous with their time and they're also closer to the application process themselves. They can provide a lot of wisdom.

Some good SOP advice I got last year: plan to write as many drafts as possible. No one has a perfect first-draft SOP. It's great that you're starting early because you'll have time to keep working at it until you're satisfied. However, you also need to get someone within your field to give you feedback in between drafts. Current grad students are perfect for this, but if you absolutely can't connect with any, ask your academic advisor or other LOR writers.

[rising_star]

This might be a dumb question but I thought you had to have a master's before you could get a specialists. Am I wrong about this? I wouldn't worry so much about the research interests of professors if your goal is to be a practicing school psychologist. Instead, try to get funding and make sure they have good internship/fieldwork placements since that experience will help launch your career.

[jlee306]

This might be a dumb question but I thought you had to have a master's before you could get a specialists. Am I wrong about this? I wouldn't worry so much about the research interests of professors if your goal is to be a practicing school psychologist. Instead, try to get funding and make sure they have good internship/fieldwork placements since that experience will help launch your career.

No, not a dumb question. Most ppl I talk to about what I want to do career wise have never even heard of a specialist degree. A specialist degree is one step above a Master's and one step below a PhD. A specialist degree is two years of school work (just like the masters if you are full time) and a one year internship after that...then you graduate. So where a Masters is supposed to take two years and a PhD is supposed to take 4 years, a Specialist takes 3 years (only the last year you are working and not attending school). So to answer, no...you don't have to have a master's before. For the internship, they make you go out and do that yourself. Just like job searching. I already know which school district I want to intern and work in...hopefully everything works out.