#7: Read work by faculty members

As soon as you have a list of faculty from each school, you need to choose at least one person per program and read their work. If you’ve already read some faculty, read them in more depth or extend to a second or third person. Obviously, doing this helps to make sure you really want to work with them. But there are many other reasons you should do this, which I’ll summarize here and detail in later entries. First, reading their work will help you to troubleshoot your writing sample in terms of appropriateness of content, ways you can connect your own work to that of faculty, and weak areas in your writing that could be criticized as ignorant by admissions boards. Second, reading their work will help you to write a highly informed and purposeful personal statement in which you detail exactly what areas you want to study with each of your preferred faculty. Third, a good knowledge of how their writing intersects with yours will help you to write convincing and relevant follow-up emails to faculty after you have submitted your application.