Advisors  Identifying Programs & Schools   Study Abroad Admission Exams Financial Aid, Fellowships & Assistantships School Rankings

• Research programs
  Review websites and informational booklets from interested schools - take note of application deadlines - many schools have different deadlines!
• Consult with your Faculty Advisor about the programs you are interested in
• Prepare for and take the required admissions test
  Be sure you choose a date is early enough to adhere to the graduate school's application deadline that you are applying to.
• Begin preparing materials that are required when applying to the schools you have chosen
  Many schools require essays, letters of recommendations and transcripts.
• Send in your applications
  Deadlines, deadlines, deadlines. Make sure you know the deadline for the graduate school program that you are applying to!
• Follow-up
  If you haven't heard from the graduate school after two or three weeks, call the admissions office to verify that your application materials have been received.

• Consult Your Academic Advisor
  Your official graduate and professional school advisor is your Academic Advisor. Make an appointment to meet with them. Meetings will be most productive if you have already identified  some graduate or professional school programs of interest. Ideally, the consultation process should start in junior year or sooner. However, the process can start at any time, including senior year. You may want to ask the professor to recommend some books that will deepen your intellectual understanding of the field you are interested in.
• The Office of Career Services
  The Office of Career Services provides valuable resources to help you get started including individual advising and a library of resources.
• Pre-Law
  The Pre-Law Advisor at Providence  College   is    Christopher Fortunato,  Associate Vice President for Student Affairs. It is recommended, that you use the Official Guide to ABA-Approved Law Schools, a publication of the Law School Admission Council  and the American Bar Association. The Official Guide to ABA-Approved Law Schools contains a wealth of useful information beyond admissions information; the Admission grid for each school gives a far more accurate picture of admissions practices than GPA averages and LSAT averages.

• Request Program Booklets
  Contact your school of interest in order to receive program books.
• Peterson’s Guides – Six Volumes
  This set of books, officially called Peterson’s Annual Guides to Graduate & Professional Programs, is a great resource and are available in The Office of Career Services. Each volume contains  information you need to get started, admissions test requirements, deadline dates, financial aid information, and contact information for the Admissions person in charge of each program. 
• CollegeSource
  This directory enables you to identify schools by type of programs and location. This is a PC subscription and it can be accessed from any computer on-campus.
• GradSchools
  This directory enables you to identify schools by location and program.
• Faculty Specialized Guides
  In many departments Faculty have in-depth guides to graduate school programs in their areas of expertise.

• England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland
  British universities make some research scholarships available to US citizens. For information, visit studyintheUK and click on "Learning."
• Study Abroad
  There are two useful websites for international graduate & professional schools: Study Abroad and International Education .

The required admissions test for any program is determined by the type of program to which you will be applying. Below are links to the websites for the four most common exams. Consult appropriate faculty as needed for additional exams.

• The GRE
• The GMAT
• The LSAT
• The MCAT

The leading national test prep services are Kaplan  and Princeton Review . Many university and college evening schools (Schools of Continuing Education) offer test prep courses. Call a school to inquire. Make sure you ask for the evening division.

• Financial Aid
  Check with the graduate school that you are interested in to recieve information about financial aid. Please note, in most cases the application deadline for Financial Aid of any kind is in advance of the general application deadline.
• Fellowships
  Certain fields of study offer Fellowships for doctoral candidates. Fellowships exempt you from tuition and provide a modest income in addition. There is no work requirement – you are expected to spend all your time on scholarly pursuits rather than work. Fellowships are very competitive and tend to go to those who have outstanding credentials and clearly defined research interests. Information on Fellowships, if available, can be obtained from each program.
• Teaching or Research Assistantships
  Assistantship typically exempts you from tuition and also grants you a modest income in return for part-time work as a Teaching Assistant or a Research Assistant. Teaching and Research Assistantships are granted by the faculty in the program/department to which you are applying, so direct contact with the program head or the Admissions coordinator is necessary.
• Resident Assistantships
  Many schools offer Resident Assistantships to accepted graduate students. These assistantships are granted by the Residence Life Office, so you must contact the Residence Life office to find out what is available and how to apply. Resident Assistantships in most cases exempt you from tuition, pay you a modest income, and provide you with campus housing in return for working as a Resident Assistant in an undergraduate residence hall.
• Special Fellowships
  Highly competitive national and international Fellowships (such as the Fulbright, Rhodes , Truman, etc.) require that you be nominated by the school’s advisor for those fellowships. Planning your research proposal with faculty needs to start well before senior year, or at the very beginning of senior year at the latest (it may be too late, however). Inquire at the Dean’s Office to determine who the faculty advisors are for the various Fellowships.

There are numerous ways schools are ranked. Although much skepticism is expressed about these rankings, they are taken seriously in certain fields such as law, business, and scholarly fields. In other fields, ranking may or may not be important. Rankings seldom make a difference if you are limiting yourself to part time programs or local schools. For local schools it is more important to find out how internships, co-op or field experiences work (availability, paid or unpaid), and which employers hire and for what positions. The closer you live to a top ranked school the harder it is to get into it, since ranked schools value geographic diversity and want graduates to be flexible about location when they graduate and pursue jobs.

• The Gourman Report
  This book is considered the most serious. Inquire at the library.  Ranks all varieties of programs. You will get some information on the web by doing a Google search and entering “Gourman Report” or "Gourman Report+name of school" you are considering.
• PHDS
  This is a good site for Ph.D. aspirants . Also provides rankings for a wide variety of fields. Undergraduate research is extremely important.
• U.S. News & World Report
  A wide variety of graduate and professional school programs are ranked. Visit US News and click on Schools & Rankings.
• MBA
  There are many ranking systems – US News & World Report, Business Week, and the Financial Times are the usual sources. All use different methods so make sure you understand the method being used. Other excellent sources are  bschools.com and  MBA.com. A good way to judge MBA schools is to find out what recruiters from top companies think. An excellent source for what recruiters think is a book titled The Wall Street Journal Guide to Top Business Schools.