Exploring Grad School in the UK? TH!NKUK Online Sessions March 16-18

On March 16-18, a group of 34 UK universities will collaboratively offer a range of online sessions for North American students and advisors interested in UK graduate study.

TH!NKUK will be the largest scale event organised specifically for North America, bringing England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland higher education at your fingertips.

We welcome students and advisors to our general and subject specific sessions, and we will also be offering opportunities for participants to connect with universities in 1-2-1 sessions.

Registration for the event is open here:  https://gck.fm/punwe, and we hope you’ll join us if you have time and help us to spread the word!

What’s Included:

  • Academic Panel Sessions: these give insight into specific subject areas and involve our faculty
  • Student/Alumni Panels: hear from current North America students studying at universities in the UK, and ask questions about their experiences
  • General Sessions: Co-presented by university reps – are designed to give you information on studying in the UK and how to apply
  • University Intros: Each participating university will be offering a 10 minute introduction part of a group. Join these sessions to discover unique features and get general information about universities in UK
  • 1-2-1 meetings: the opportunity to book slots to engage with International Officers and ask your questions. You can find sign up information here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PfzWBqy_N4JYfBFiSlQje7auB-h4VY-v/view?usp=sharing

Letters of Recommendation

Excellent letters of recommendation are critical for successful fellowship applications.  I can’t stress this enough; without strong letters, you will not win a fellowship or scholarship.  The readers of fellowship applications depend on these letters to give a fair evaluation of your achievement and your potential in the context of their professional experience.  I once had a letter (another institution many years ago) from a faculty member who thought a fellowship applicant was an amazing student with tremendous potential.  “Pick this one,” he wrote in his letter.  And guess what?  She was picked. (Of course, there was much more in the letter, describing the student’s fine intellectual qualities, academic achievement, her potential as a scholar, and it was all stellar.)

So how do you get a letter like this?  I’ll start at the beginning.

1. Get to know your faculty.  This takes initiative on your behalf, and it may be easier for some students than other, but it is critical you do this.  Most of your letters of reference will come from faculty members who have taught and/or advised you, so it’s a good idea to start getting to know them early on in your college career.  If these folks have known you for more than a semester, have spent time talking with you and evaluating your work, they will be able to write detailed, knowledgeable letters about you.  And this is the kind of letter that is essential for a successful application. There may be occasions when you need letters from employers or research supervisors (more frequent for alumni), but the same holds true. If people do not know you very well, their letters are of limited value.

2. Select your letter writers appropriately based on the requirements and selection criteria for the fellowship.  Look at the goals you outline in your application.  What projects do you talk about?  Which intellectual interests? Are you writing a thesis?  The faculty who are closely connected to these activities are good candidates to write for you.  Someone who knows you very well in another context–say a former high school teacher or work supervisor–may be your biggest fan, but s/he is probably not be such a good choice unless they can speak to qualities you possess or work that you have done that is relevant to this scholarship application.  You might be a fabulous camp counselor, for example, but if you’re applying to a master’s program English, your camp director won’t be much help in getting you there. Make sure you choose people who know you well and can speak knowledgeably about you in areas that matter for the competition you are applying for.

3. Discuss your fellowship ideas with your faculty early in the process.  Whether you’re applying for a graduate program or creating an independent project, they can be extremely helpful in suggesting excellent programs given your interests and refining your thinking about project ideas.

4. When you ask anyone to write on your behalf, provide them with a current resume, a transcript or degree progress report, information about the fellowship (and the selection criteria!), a draft of your statement of purpose/research proposal/personal statement and clear instructions about when, where, and how the letter is to be delivered.  These are all very important, especially since fellowships differ in what they are looking for and how they want letters submitted.  Make sure you and your letter writers know these details. In many cases, the fellowship advisor will also ask for a courtesy copy of the letter for her files, but letters of recommendation are typically confidential.

5. Make sure you give your writers plenty of time to get this done. When I write letters for students, I appreciate at least three or four weeks of advance notice.  If the deadline is early fall, talk with your writers the previous semester about your plans and find out what would work best with their schedule. Talking with your recommenders well in advance also helps you adjust for their plans.  If the professor who knows you best of all happens to be on sabbatical in a far away place with limited email access when you need that letter, you’re in a tough spot.  So better to have talked with them well in advance and made arrangements so that you can indeed get that letter when you need it.

6. Problems or questions, talk with your fellowship advisor! And typically, she will want to talk with you about recommender choices prior to your final selection of your writers.

The personal essay: pitfalls and tips to get started

This is the first of a few posts about writing the personal essay for your fellowship application.  These comments are most germane to the personal essay, as opposed to the project proposal or other more focused questions.  I’ll talk about those in a separate post.  These comments are geared toward those amorphous intellectual autobiography kinds of questions (typical in the Marshall and Rhodes, for example).  The Rhodes, for example, just asks you describe in 1000 words or less “your academic and other interests.  The statement should describe the specific area of proposed study and your reasons for wishing to study at Oxford.” Don’t let the simplicity of the question fool you.  This is a very hard essay to write well, especially in 1,000 words or less.

Here are some common problems with these essays: they are boring, full of cliches and even spelling errors, they are poorly organized, discuss the wrong things, the goals are too vague, and leadership examples too superficial. (And this list of faults is not campus specific; I’m getting these critiques from the people at foundations who read the somewhere between hundreds and thousands of essays submitted each year!) So to help you get going and avoid these pitfalls, here are some strategies organized by the different stages in writing. Remember, there is no magic formula and no perfect essays. There are many strong, effective essays. They are all unique, but what they have in common is a clear, compelling rationale; a thoughtful perspective; clear goals; and a personal voice that comes through the writing.

Brainstorming: Think about the material that these essays should reflect. You should think about key events and ideas that have shaped you as an individual and your interest in pursuing the study of x.  Think about anecdotes and stories worthy of retelling (and note, no epiphanies at the top of a mountain, please).  Identify concrete details that give your anecdote precision and imagery.  Is there a thread that connects your past experiences to future goals? What is it?

Draft: Work the ideas culled from your brainstorming into a draft.  Put it away.  Go do something else and return to the draft the next day.  Read through it.  Redraft.  Repeat the process until you have something that seems coherent, well-organized and reflective of you. Getting your personal voice across in the essay is important.

Test the draft:  This is a good exercise for you to do by yourself and with a friend (if permitted! Rhodes and Mitchell applicants, work on your own).  Get a brightly colored pen or marker. You pick the color. Now read through your essay and underline every expression that you’ve heard before and every example that could be true for any number of people you know.  Ask your friend to do the same with a different color marker.  Look at what’s left.  That remainder is probably the beginning of your original, unique content and writing style. Remember, if you can’t grab your reader’s attention within the first two paragraphs, you’re not going to progress to the round of finalists.

Review the draft in conjunction with selection criteria: The foundations write out their selection criteria for good reason; this is how they evaluate your application. Do you address these criteria in the different parts of your application?  For applications that rely on only one or two short essays, much, though not all, of this work will happen within the essays.  Do your examples illustrate well the qualities the selection committees are looking for? Read the essay in conjunction with the other application sections: is it clear how you exemplify their selection criteria? (Remember, letters of recommendation and the endorsement letter, if applicable, also do this, but you do not have access to them.)

Select good examples: Much of what you do in this kind of writing is illustrate through example.  You need concrete details in order to provide your reader with real way to understand you and what you’ve accomplished.  Choose examples that address important selection criteria (e.g. intellectual curiosity, leadership) and write about them in a way that reflects on their significance. They should also connect to your broader goals.  So if you organized a conference on campus on issue Y, think more concretely about that activity.  Ideally it should be related to intellectual/social/political/environmental issues you care about, but be specific about your role in the event and the impact that the event had on issue Y.  There is an important reflective component to these examples.  If it’s not there, that’s a problem.

Be reflective and concrete in talking about your experiences: You don’t have a lot of space, but it’s helpful to move between general statements and details. You want to avoid phrases, sentences that are too vague or general to be useful to your reader.  As you read through, note the places where you see this and the places where you see a statement grounded with a few details and you’ll see a big difference in impact.

Share your drafts with other readers, unless this if for the Rhodes or Mitchell: Faculty, fellowship advisors, friends and family can all be useful readers in this process.  Faculty will primarily pay attention to your academic goals, your professional aspirations, your academic program of choice (if this is for post-graduate study), as well as to the language and organization of the essay.  Fellowship advisors will look at the whole essay and application for coherence, detail, and rhetorical effectiveness. Friends and family will be able to speak to how well you’ve done articulating YOU as a unique, accompished person.  When you share your drafts, ask all your readers to think about how well you’ve answered the following questions: Who am I? Who do I want to be? Where do I want to go and why?  What inspires me to achieve this goal? What makes me special? Rhodes and Mitchell folks, you need to do this work on your own. Take breaks between drafts, so you can see your work with fresher eyes.

There is no magic formula to a successful essay.  It’s all about deep reflection and serious revising.  You should expect to work through anywhere from 10-30 drafts.  I often see 5-10 drafts from individual students.  And if it sounds like a lot of work, it is.  But it’s useful work.  It can pay off greatly in winning a scholarship.  Even if you don’t win, it’s very useful writing for graduate school and employment applications.

Mitchell and Rhodes applicants, you will need to do this revision work without the benefit of outside readers. You’ll need to try to imagine yourself as an outside reader at times and read your essay with that lens. Would this make sense to someone who did not know me? Does the essay give a good understanding of who I am, what I care about, where I want to go? Does it provide a grounded and clear understanding of what you have worked on, what you’ve accomplished, what you’ve learned, and why that all matters?

Don’t forget the copyediting. Spelling, grammar and correct word usage is essential. You do not want your reader getting tripped up by your language; you want your language to be a transparent vehicle for your reader to learn about you, your goals, your accomplishments, your story.