Level Up! Moving on to Graduate School: This guide and worksheet (written by Olivia Lenz, UW materials science & engineering graduate student) walks through the entire grad school application process, from choosing where to apply to accepting an offer.
UW Office of Merit Scholarships, Fellowships, and Awards: While this office focuses on scholarships and fellowships, they offer workshops and materials to help with writing personal statements, building a resume or CV, and asking for letters of recommendation – all of which are also relevant for grad school applications.
American Chemical Society: The ACS provides several chemistry-specific resources, such as this “Planning for Graduate Work in Chemistry” guide, as well as more general links.
The ACS Directory of Graduate Research: This database includes a ton of information on chemistry professors and departments, and is searchable by research field, location, and gender. It’s a great place to start looking for potential research advisors.
Trends in Ph. D. Productivity and Diversity in Top-50 U.S. Chemistry Departments: An Institutional Analysis: This study, published in the Journal of Chemical Education in 2014, includes lots of interesting data about department size and representation of women and underrepresented minorities in Ph. D. programs over the past few decades. The University of Washington ranks #2 among these departments in the percentage of Ph. D. degrees granted to women between 2005 and 2009!
The Grad Cafe: The blog posts and discussion forum on this site offer perspectives from all different fields, from both prospective and current grad students. There’s also a database of grad admissions decisions to help figure out when you might hear back from your programs.
The Princeton Review and U.S. News & World Report both provide a lot of general information on the grad school application process, as well as program rankings – but don’t take the rankings too seriously! There are many different ways to rank programs, and individual experiences and outcomes vary a lot within each program.
Feel free to add your own links in the comments, or email us at wcsuw@uw.edu!
