Dr. Kanagala shared with us some great insight into graduate schools. He began by asking us why we chose student affairs. After giving him answers, he proposed some questions for us to think about when responding. He wanted us to dig deeper and give him more specific answers. He mades us think about
- What makes us different?
- What experiences have led us to who we are today?
- How do those experiences influence what we want to do? Why we want to do it?
- What drives us to go to graduate school?
These are things that he told us would be crucial when thinking about graduate school. He wanted us to think about what story make would be authentic to us but still make us stand out.
After personal statements we talked about letters of recommendation. One of the big points that Dr. Kanagala brought up was giving our personal statements and resumes to the people we choose as recommenders. He advised that we do thins os that when the person writes our letter we can all share the same message with the admissions committee. He gave us the example of the power of the letters and our essay all talking about our passion for students of color versus passion for students of color + LGBTQ community + women. Where all of those are great, a unified message = a stronger application.
Lastly, we talked about email etiquette. This was a big eye opener, because he mentioned how just a simple email can automatically exclude you from the process if written incorrectly. Overall, this workshop was great because Dr. Kanagala was an open book and kept asking what questions we had. As scared as I feel for graduate school I truly believe that it was such a privilege to have this session. I was exposed to areas of graduate school that had not even crossed my mind. So it really was an incredibly informative session. So UVM Class of 2019?
