Overview of Materials

Writing application materials for graduate school can be challenging. To help you get started, this page offers a variety of examples and resources tailored for master’s degree programs and PhD programs.

We provide examples of the main application components, as well as complete application portfolios. The portfolios are organized by date, with the newest listed first. Additionally, all materials can be filtered by key attributes, including some (e.g., Lower GPA, Non-US Undergrad, No Published Research) that are often concerns for students. The No Published Research tag may be particularly relevant: many applicants report worries about not having a paper that was formally accepted via a scientific peer review process. In reality, most applicants do not have a formally-accepted paper. For PhD programs, an application that describes an independent project, submitted paper, or rigorous classroom activity can be sufficient. For Master’s degree programs, published research is typically less relevant than success at rigorous, upper-level courses. Please consider our advice on nuance when comparing yourself to these materials.

You may also want to check out Zhaofeng Wu, Alexis Ross, and Shannon Shen’s CS PhD Statements of Purpose repository. It has a larger set of statements of purpose, but we note that it focuses solely on statements: it may not include transcripts, CVs, etc. In addition, since it may be more self-selected (compared to this more curated set), it may feature more materials from students who felt very confident in their accomplishments and fewer submissions from students who perceived weaknesses (e.g., lower GPAs, less research, etc.).

We thank everyone who contributed their materials to this project. If you are interested in contributing your materials, please see our contribution guide.

Searchable Graduate Application Materials

Comparisons, Nuance, and A Technique

While these example materials can be helpful, we encourage you to consider them with care, lest they mislead you. Wes notes that most academics suffer from imposter syndrome. Other grad applicants’ materials can easily lead to a mental trap wherein you read them and think “I have less research experience than Person A and less teaching experience than Person B, I’ll never get an offer!” You may not have noticed that Person A had no teaching experience, or that Person B, no research contributions. Beware of comparing your entire self to only the best attributes of others, and remember that application materials serve to highlight the best, most hirable properties of a candidate. They effectively never include mistakes, failures or weaknesses. (Consider Melanie Stefan’s notion of a CV of Failures as a useful contrast!)

This page provides neither a random nor indicative sample of applicants, and the materials are biased towards top-tier outcomes across multiple categories of positions. These may be the right kinds of schools for you to consider, but they also might not be, for your career and personal goals!

In evaluating your own choices and possible outcomes, we encourage you to consider:

• Opportunity costs relative to the grad program you’re actually seeking. There is simply not enough time to do everything during your undergraduate career. If you are looking for applying to PhD programs, at a certain point, getting involved in undergraduate research with a professor may be more useful than any number of upper level courses. Conversely, if you are looking for a Master’s degree, taking a few special topics courses (or graduate level courses, if your school offers them) is likely much more useful than doing research. Etc.
• Grounded information about the relationship between department selectivity and general applicant profile. Leaving aside the (important) conversation about whether rankings mean anything/are moral/useful, etc, higher-ranked/”bigger-named” institutions often, on average, expect “more” of successful applicants. One way you can get a feeling for this in academia is to go to the websites of schools you are considering, find recently-admitted PhD students, download their CVs/check DBLP/Google Scholar, and then only consider the resume items and publications they had by the year they were admitted. For example, you might compare recently-admitted students at the University of Michigan to those at the University of New Mexico to develop a broad sense of expectations.

The latter suggestion serves to help you mitigate your imposter syndrome while giving you the information necessary to make good grad program search and career choices. Wes recommends that applicants seeking graduate admissions sit down (perhaps with their advisors) and determine that “on average, my record is comparable to people who are admitted at schools ranked XYZ”. Then start, as a baseline, by applying to other schools in a distribution around XYZ, but also include some “safety schools” that may be less selective, and some “aspirational schools” that may be more selective, plus schools that are particularly interested in (e.g., are building a center in, have a history of strength in, etc.) an area that aligns with their expertise.

How to Contribute Materials

We are always looking for more application material profiles, especially for program types or locations/fields that are currently under-represented in our guide.

If you are interesting in contributing your materials, please fill out our contribution form available TBA. This form includes places to upload PDFs of your materials, as well as add any information you’d like to better contextualize your application for readers. In this form, you can also indicate if you’d like to be kept anonymous. All materials are optional – we greatly appreciate anything you’d be willing to share!

If you have any questions about contributing, please email Madeline Endres at mendres@umass.edu or Priscila Santiesteban at pasanti@umich.edu.