Advice for Graduate Students

Building a strong fellowship application

The process of applying for fellowships is an opportunity to refine your thinking about your academic, professional and personal goals and an invitation to make self-empowering choices in pursuing them. If you are enrolled or planning to enroll in a master’s program, it may be that you aspire to achieve the highest degree in your field: a Ph.D. or other doctorate or, for students in the arts, an M.F.A. Or it may be that you are pursuing a graduate degree towards a profession informed by your interest in the greater social good. The advice here is directed to students with these aspirations.

The following discussion identifies the elements of a successful application that fellowship selection committees are likely to value in graduate-level applicants. 

Your academic record and potential 

• Fellowship and advanced graduate program committees want assurance that applicants will be able to perform at a high level of academic excellence. They look to transcripts and recommendations to predict whether applicants will be able to sustain “A” level work in all their doctoral level courses. To the extent possible, then, ensure that your master’s level transcript reflects that you are well able to take on the rigor of academic work at a top research institution in your field.
• Committees also want assurance that you have the self-discipline to excel in advanced studies. Avoid at all costs withdrawing from courses or having incompletes on your record. Do everything in your power to ensure that selection committees have no cause to wonder whether you will repeat a troublesome pattern during the period of fellowship support.
• If you have a less than stellar undergraduate transcript, ensure that your graduate transcript clearly signals a new era in your personal focus and academic performance.
• “I only do well when I’m interested in the material.” If you are inclined to this attitude, move past it. Fellowship committees are looking for students who will contribute to the public or intellectual life of the nation or world. Those who are intensely curious and not hostage to their whims make the best case for this potential.
• Go above and beyond what your professors explicitly require in your written work, class preparation and participation. Overcome any remaining habit of rushing to class with the readings half-read and poorly processed. The time has passed for gambling that your faculty won’t call on you. Also passed is the time for “generalist” responses to readings to conceal that you haven’t actually read or completed assigned readings. Give yourself time to take notes on course readings and to let your thoughts and responses coalesce. Come to every class having selected a few passages about which you have observations or questions. Your commitment to your own growth will be reflected in how your professors think of you when they write or speak on your behalf.
• You tried, but there are flaws in your graduate transcript. Take heart: it is possible to explain these well and to the satisfaction of a fellowship committee. Consult with your faculty or the Fellowships Office for how to address your particular record effectively. Grades are also not the end of the story. A less than perfect performance in a course or on a given essay or exam, can be rescued by a willingness to revise the work or better understand the material, even when such improvements will not be reflected in your course grade. Faculty admire students whose ambitions extend beyond grades. Show that you are such a person.
• When asking for recommendations, give your recommenders at least three weeks’ notice and provide them with all the materials necessary to write strong recommendations on your behalf. These include samples of relevant coursework, graded papers with comments (if you have retained them), a resume or CV (academic resume), strong drafts of your personal statement and other application essays, your transcripts and a description of the fellowship program to which you are applying. Meet with your recommenders to discuss your motivation and fit for the fellowship.
• Ask each recommender how and how often, they would like to be reminded of the impending recommendation deadline, and then do follow-up. While you don’t want to bother them, once a recommender has agreed to write a letter on your behalf, you can assume that they want to support you and appropriate self-interest mandates that you advocate for yourself at this juncture. In reminding your recommenders at the agreed-upon intervals, remain steady and gracious.
• Whatever the outcome of your application, it is essential that you follow-up with your recommenders to let them know and to thank them for their effort on your behalf. 

Build relationships with faculty, seek mentors 

• Only faculty with some personal exposure to you will be prepared to advocate for your candidacy as a scholar, artist or public servant—as well as a person. 
• Build a relationship with each of the faculty members from whom you expect to ask for a recommendation. Go to office hours. Ask about your professors’ research and their experience in becoming faculty members. Some will come from backgrounds not unlike your own. Knowing a bit about your faculty mentors will give you courage and demystify the path towards the terminal degree in your field.
• Tell them a little bit about your life history and the evolution of your academic, artistic or public service ambitions.
• Share your academic passions with your professors and ask for recommendations for readings that will help you become smarter and better informed about your areas of interest. Read the texts they recommend and discuss with them questions or ideas you have based on them.
• Be reciprocal. Show appreciation and consideration in your interactions with faculty who are mentoring you. Remember that you hope someday to be a peer. Show now that you have the sensitivity to make a great colleague in the future.
• Seek productive mentoring relationships with more than one faculty member. Your mentors will have different strengths and approaches and you will benefit from that diversity. 

Pay attention to etiquette 

• The way you conduct yourself has consequences for how your faculty and other mentors regard you. Reliability when you make commitments and graciousness in your communications inspire confidence in you as a mature person to be enthusiastically recommended to the academy, future employers and fellowship programs. Consider sending an appreciative follow-up email or note for a helpful reference or an insightful meeting with a professor.
• Courtesy demands that you explicitly thank your recommenders after they have submitted letters of reference on your behalf and that you keep them updated about the status of your applications. Express appreciation for their support whether are not you are selected.
• Show respect in your emails to your faculty. Your email to them should show more care than if you were dashing off a text to a peer. Avoid being overly informal (“hey there”). Instead, address professors with their formal title (“Dear Professor [last name]”). Edit your emails for clarity and lead with a warm and courteous tone.
• Your communication reflects your own excellence and creates a foundation for your professors’ positive assessment of you. Whatever your career or academic goals, you need your faculty to begin respecting you now because of your good judgement and attentiveness to your communication with them. 

The “intangible qualities” of originality, creativity and perseverance 

• Towards the goal of someday making significant contributions in your field, read scholarly and professional journals and new books in your areas of specialization or interest. When you find a classic theorist you admire, find out how contemporary theorists are using, resisting or revising their theories. In gaining a sense of the counterarguments to the thinkers nearest and dearest to your heart and the evolution of thought in relation to the “great debates” in your areas of interest, you will gain intellectual flexibility and become an informed critical thinker rather than merely an enthusiast in your field.
• Consult your faculty and subject librarians to learn about well-respected (“peer reviewed” or “refereed”) academic journals and books in your areas of interest. 
• Discuss with various faculty the questions or problems in your field that are of special interest to you. Seek exposure to a diversity of disciplinary viewpoints and ideological perspectives. The more you seriously consider contradictory ideas, the greater your intellectual maturity. This growth will inevitably show up in your writing and speaking.
• Attend lectures by faculty and other experts on our campus as well as nearby campuses. Look for their calendars of lectures and events.
• Take intellectual risks. For students in the arts, humanities and social sciences, strive to make ambitious arguments that will stimulate your growth as a writer and thinker. For students in the sciences, invite yourself to think innovatively about how the questions you are pursuing might be investigated. Your faculty will be inspired by the vitality of your intellectual engagement. 

Advocacy and analysis in writing and in person 

• Strong fellowship candidates are able to explain not only their own area of interest, but the relationship between it and the larger world. So, read broadly, within and outside your field. You don’t have to master everything you read. The more you read, the more you will understand what you read. Over time, you will make connections among readings and your map of the world will expand.
• When reading, resolve to never again skip over a word you don’t know, especially terms of art in your field. Stopping to look up words will slow your reading, but it will also increase your comprehension of the texts you encounter and enhance your ability to make fine-tuned arguments yourself.
• If you have a habit, either in speaking or in writing, of using words with which you have only a passing familiarity, break that habit today. If you frequently or even occasionally use language incorrectly, rest assured that others who know better will take note. So, look it up! and as many times as it takes! for the new vocabulary to “become yours.” 
• These resources will help you learn how to use new terms correctly in context. (Recommended Dictionaries and Related Resources). 

Professional development activities: research, conferences, teaching 

• Seek out opportunities to join ongoing research, conduct your own independent research and to share your research at conferences. Speak to your faculty about your interest in research opportunities on campus and at local universities. SFSU's graduate research opportunities include the University’s Research Labs and the Department of Biology’s Faculty Research Labs and Interests. Also seek out research, volunteer and professional opportunities in the Bay Area, nationally or  abroad. Helpful volunteer and internship resources include: the Federal Internship Finder; idealist.org Internship Finder; HandsOnBayArea.org Volunteer Opportunities list; HOSA Future Health Professionals Global Health Related Internships list; Sanford Duke Food Security Internships list, Washington D.C. Internship Opportunities list.
• Designing your own research project will help you clarify your goals and areas of research interest for the next phases of your education. Such experiences incline fellowship committees to view you as informed about and motivated to acquire the skills necessary for doctoral studies. In addition, they will prepare you to address with some specificity, in writing or in person, your future research interests. 
• Ask your faculty about disciplinary conferences you might attend, as well as which conferences in which graduate students are allowed or invited to present their research. 
• In applying to conferences—either to deliver a talk or to give a poster presentation—you will learn how to write an abstract. In representing your research to others, you will gain skills in synthesizing what you know. In fielding questions, you will learn how to explain your research clearly and succinctly and you will gain experience ‘thinking on your feet’ about its design, significance and relationship to other or future research. 
• If fielding audience questions at conferences makes you incredibly nervous at first, know that you may ultimately grow to enjoy the give-and-take with conference attendees curious about your project. Learn to enjoy your development as a scholar, artist or professional able to explain your research or project and its significance. 
• Should you become a finalist for a nationally competitive fellowship in a competition that requires a selection committee interview, the public speaking experiences outlined here will be invaluable to you in feeling that you can represent yourself and your ideas well to strangers.
• Look for teaching opportunities in any form, paid or unpaid. Experience in grading, holding office hours, leading sections, tutoring, as a teaching assistant or as an invited speaker all enhance your understanding of teaching as a profession and help you understand how to effectively and flexibly communicate knowledge and ideas to others. All teaching experiences will enhance your professional preparation, as well as your readiness to speak to a fellowship selection committee, should the opportunity present itself. 

Citizen-scholars and the ‘intangible quality’ of leadership 

• While the following is not true for every fellowship (some focus almost exclusively on academics), fellowship programs often want to know what you care about in the social world and also that you are inclined to give back to the communities to which you belong. Intern, work or volunteer to gain experience in your field and to participate in some degree in improving the world. These activities do not have to involve great amounts of time on a weekly or monthly basis, but in the ideal case your commitment to these activities should be sustained.
• If your department or school offers opportunities for graduate students to participate in committee work, vetting new hires, bringing speakers to campus or putting on disciplinary conferences, pitch in. You will gain an understanding of the kind of work that will be required of you as a future faculty member and you will be demonstrating that you understand the academy requires the collaboration of all its stakeholders. 
• For community service learning and local, CSU and SFSU internships, see the University’s Institute for Civic and Community Engagement (ICCE).
• In your volunteer experiences and elsewhere, look for opportunities to meet an unmet need. If you notice an area of need that you could help address, take the initiative in doing so. These activities will be of interest to selection committees; they will also give you energy, resiliency and depth.
• Leadership can also be expressed in how you work with others. Ensure that your interactions with your peers and faculty expresses an openness to the ideas of others and the highest standards of personal ethics. 

Self-understanding, humility and humor 

• The fellowship application process will ask you to reflect, in a greater or lesser degree, on your life path: how you got to this point, what you need to do next, what matters to you, where you are headed. Use the process of writing for fellowships and preparing for interviews to better understand your values and life choices. Reflecting on your life in order to write well about it well will enhance your understanding of your journey.
• If at all possible, have a sense of humor and humility about yourself. Selection committees are not merely investing in the potential influence of their fellows. In selecting up-and-coming scholars, artists or public servants, committees are also investing in people—and those who are overly impressed with themselves are simply much less attractive than those whose excellence is matched by a sense of perspective about their own importance in the larger scheme of things. In application essays and if called for an interview, do not try to impress upon a committee that you are ‘the smartest person in the room.’ Aim instead to be a self-trusting, self-aware person who takes his or her commitments—but not him or herself—seriously and who is able to truly engage in a conversation.
• Use the process of fellowship application to focus and celebrate yourself — but also know that achieving your own greatness does not depend on being selected for a fellowship.