Hi everyone! As we are all currently working on editing our personal statements, CVs, and researching the graduate programs we want to get into, many of us may be wondering the mistakes we should avoid doing in our applications that may diminish our chances of getting into graduate school. We generally learn the positive things to do to impress admissions committees such as research experience, leadership roles, a high GPA, and strong letters of recommendation. However, this research article entitled “Kisses of Death in the Graduate School Application Process” suggests that we should take into consideration the negative things that many applicants have done that contributed to their not being accepted to the graduate school of their dreams. By presenting its insightful findings, discussion, and recommendations, this article offers excellent advice on how to avoid the 5 categories of mistakes (kisses of death) that psychology graduate admissions committees look down upon. I have listed these five categories here and I strongly suggest that each one of you print out the article and mark it for yourselves to see where you stand in your application thus far. I found it very easy to read and quite entertaining, but most of all, useful and applicable for my application process. I hope you all will too!
5 Kisses of Death (in descending order of frequency):
1. Damaging Personal Statements
2. Harmful letters of recommendation
3. Lack of Program Information
4. Poor writing skills
5. Misfired attempts to impress
Here is the article:
http://psychology.unl.edu/psichi/Graduate_School_Application_Kisses_of_Death.pdf