Last week, I warned you that the grad school application process is quite a time consuming effort. Well guess what folks? You’re going to need to put ample time into choosing your prospective grad schools too! Sure, this might seem a bit obvious, but this columnist doesn’t always think things through.

For me, grad school was a roll of the dice, and six possible schools came up for me: Georgetown, Rutgers, Ohio State, North Carolina State, San Francisco State, and the school I eventually chose, hereafter refered to as X University.I chose these schools on a whim. Georgetown was my “reach,” and the closest I could get to Ivy League while maintaining a glimmer of hope for acceptance. Rutgers was relatively close to my hometown (by close I mean a 5 hour drive); Ohio State is a party school notorious for it’s tailgating parties (I swear, that’s why I applied- don’t judge); North Carolina State was an hour from my only other friend attending grad school; and San Francisco just seemed like a cool city to live in, as did the location of X University.

Rule number one in choosing grad school? Don’t be superficial when planning your future!

Take your time to research graduate programs across the country. If you want to focus on a particular location, check out as many schools in that region as you can. Take notes. Google the faculty. Check out some of the courses being offered, and find out what the plan of study entails. Many grad schools have student ambassadors that you can email to get a current students’ point of view on the program. Seriously, folks, exhaust the freaking websites. Scour them like you scour Perez Hilton.

In college, you have a lot of room to change your mind. Changed your major? No biggie. Transfer student? Piece of cake. On the five- or six-year plan? Join the club. Masters programs, on the other hand, are only two years long. Stretching out the plan of study can raise flags when you are applying for jobs or PhD programs, and not only is transferring schools relatively rare, you’re likely to lose the credits you’ve already earned. Having transferred schools and changed majors in undergrad, I can appreciate the trial-and-error aspect of college. In graduate school however, you’re in it for the long haul.

In the end, my final decision was between Georgetown and X University. Georgetown= awesome school. X University= tuition waiver. I reasoned that completing a M.A. in itself would be an accomplishment. Where I got the degree wasn’t that important right? Let’s just say I plan on framing my Georgetown acceptance letter and hanging it above my X University diploma. Oh, what could have been.

I realized I was at the wrong school during my first semester, when the homework for a required course consisted of blogging about our experience as graduate students each week. That’s what Myspace bulletins are for! Though my friends and I drank away our frustrations that fall, it wasn’t until the following semester that I realized I would give anything to transfer to Northeastern University, a school that hadn’t been picked up on my original radar, but that I thought was pretty much the perfect school for me. I was shit out of luck.

Make a list of you want to get out of your education. Trust me, you’re going to be working your butt off in grad school, so it might as well be worth it. Take your time looking at schools, my friends. A few extra hours of your time now is much more efficient than two years of your life at a school that isn’t right for you.

Life after college…it can be hard to fathom actually getting to the diploma, no matter how many years you’ve been in school. But what happens after graduation? Most of your peers will be joining the work force, but a decent percentage will move on to even higher education and pursue master’s degrees, PhDs, or professional certifications. While the job application process is hard, getting into and completing a post-graduate degree is even harder. Having experienced the trials and tribulations firsthand, I’m here to share some tips so you can decide whether moving on to even MORE school is the right choice for you.

Towards the end of my junior year of undergrad, I realized that I had to start thinking of a post-college plan. I was finishing a Bachelor’s in English, had no clue what career path I wanted to pursue, and was having way too much fun on Thirsty Thursdays to want to give up my laid-back student lifestyle. So, I decided to elongate my college experience by going to grad school. Boy, did I get a rude awakening.

Once you’ve finished your Bachelor’s degree, choosing a path for the future should be taken very seriously. If you are considering moving on to graduate or doctorate work, don’t make the same mistakes I made.

The first thing you need before you begin applying to graduate schools is TIME. I decided to get a masters on a whim a few weeks into the fall semester of my senior year. I found myself trying to balance fifteen credit hours, two part-time jobs, and an active social life with preparing for the application process. I didn’t anticipate simply applying to schools to be so much work, so in my mind, I had plenty of time to apply to and choose a school, while fighting a major case of senioritis (in the form of an unyielding craving for margaritas).

Before you even decide to start looking at schools, you need to ask yourself: Am I willing to set aside the time?

Plan to spend a considerable amount of time on each of the following: letters of reference; searching for schools; choosing a program; taking the required tests and collecting writing samples or other materials; and making the final decision.

1. Letters of Reference

In high school, you work much more closely with teachers than you do with the majority of your college professors. You might have aced your psychology lecture freshman year, but chances are, a TA who has since moved on to publishing articles was the one grading your exams, and your professor has no clue who you are. Or perhaps you did do well in smaller sized classes, but it was a graduate student who taught the class. That being said, it took me a while just to weed out three solid references out of 60 or so credit hours.

Oh, and even after I chose my three references, I had one professor decline my request. FYI: If you can’t handle being rejected for a reference, grad school probably isn’t for you anyway. I totally understood the teacher’s reason; I asked her for a reference because she was the only professor I’d taken more than one class with, but I had gotten a B in one class and an A in the other. She felt that the “B” in the first class didn’t demonstrate graduate level scholarship. Looking back, I’m sure she was swamped with reference request from kids who had gotten flying A’s in every course she taught. But that still meant I had to find one more reference.

Once you’ve solidified your refs, they will probably want to meet with you to discuss your reasons for wanting to go to grad school, your ultimate career goals, and your basic interests outside of their class. Be prepared to answer these questions! It’s not a bad idea to make up a folder or packet for your references that includes a list of each of your prospective schools and application deadlines, a copy of your resume (so the professor can acknowledge your accomplishments both in and out of the classroom), and samples of the work you did for their class. Since I was an English major, I gave each of my references a copy of the best paper I wrote in each of their respective classes, because after reading hundreds of essays per semester, chances are, they’d forgotten the thesis statement of my final paper.

As you can see, simply getting people to refer you to a graduate program is a lot of work, and requires a variety of efforts: writing professional, polished emails to ask for a reference, organizing packets for each reference, and meeting one on one with your professors (which will be at THEIR leisure, of course, not when it’s most convenient for you). The good news is, if you can’t even get past this step, at least you haven’t wasted too much time in the first place. If you can muddle through the references-debacle, you’re one step closer to becoming a grad student…but there will be many more obstacles along the way.

Come back next Tuesday for more grad school tips.