Getting into graduate school takes more than desire and in order to ensure your spot you have to make a lasting impression on the admissions committee. The admissions committee of the graduate school in which you are trying to gain entry to will be looking for promising students who have the ability to become both great graduate students and great professionals in their field once graduate school is over.

Simply knowing what the admissions committee is looking for can help you to better prepare yourself to get into graduate school. While each committee will be looking for certain criteria and characteristics in particular, for the most part you can count on them all looking closely at your:

• Undergraduate Grade Point Average or GPA: Admissions committees will look at your overall GPA but especially your last two years of school. It is important to note that the committee will be able to determine what merits a good GPA. Just because one person has a higher GPA than another, doesn’t necessarily mean that they will receive precedence. If you have all B’s in advanced classes for example, you can still beat out an applicant with almost all A’s in lower level classes. The moral of this story is to choose your classes wisely.

• Graduate Record Exam or GRE Score: Where the GPA can vary from university to university the GRE is standardized. Therefore it is easy for the admissions committee to accurately compare you to your peers in this area. However, the actual review board of the graduate school you are looking at will determine on the amount of weight that is given to the GRE. Some will use it as a cutoff point to help eliminate applicants and others will look to the GRE as an offset to a weak GPA. Having strong GRE will certainly help you, just in varying degrees.

• Letters of Recommendation: These are of utmost importance because they will give the admissions committee a look into the person behind the GPA and GRE scores. For this reason you need to choose who you have writing your recommendations very wisely. Having a professor that is well known by the committee will certainly carry more weight than having a professor who is a relative unknown. Likewise if you are getting a letter of recommendation within the field that you are going to pursue. If the person is a foremost expert then it will bold well for you. Whoever it is that writes your recommendation, be sure that they truly know you on somewhat of a personal level so that they can give an accurate depiction of you in their recommendation.

• Personal Statement: Also called the statement of purpose, the admissions essay, and sometimes the personal goals statement. Whatever you want to call it you need to ace it. This represents your one chance to introduce yourself to the admissions committee. This is the one place that they will be able to learn facts about you that are not provided anywhere else and thus this is your chance to make yourself ‘leap’ off the pages and make a lasting impression.

Good grades, good test scores, glowing recommendations, and a personal statement that speaks volumes are your key to achieving your goal of getting into graduate school. Because graduate school is such a serious endeavor, you should take no part of the application process in stride and give your all in every category in order to give yourself the best chance possible at getting admitted to the graduate school of your choosing.