StudentHacks.org

If you’re thinking about going to graduate school, you should begin planning at least 15 months before the program starts.

Here is a typical application timetable:

June to August

• Think about what type of graduate school you want to attend and what you want to achieve.
• Compile a list of potential graduate schools you’d like to attend.
• Visit the grad school websites to see what the application process is like
• Start thinking about who should write recommendations for you
• Research financial aid sources for grad students
• Find out what standardized tests you’ll need to take – and how much time you’ll need to prepare. For example: GMAT (Business School), LSAT (Law School), MCAT (Medical School), GRE (Humanities) . . .
• Research test preparation courses for your program

September

• Request applications if the school’s website doesn’t provide it online
• Register for any standardized tests you need to take
• Write a first draft of your application essay
• Take a test preparation course
• Start visiting graduate schools you are serious about attending
• Request your undergraduate transcripts
• Create a list of schools you plan on applying to (with their application deadlines)

October/November

• Start talking with those people you want to recommend you, and ask them to submit their recommendation within a month
• Take your standardized exam(s)

December

• Write a second draft of your positioning paper
• Submit your applications for financial aid
• Make sure all recommendation letters have been sent in

January

• Complete your final draft of your application essay and have it proofread by several different people
• Submit your loan/scholarship applications
• Send in your application essays, forms, et al. to the schools

February

• Prepare yourself for any upcoming interviews at the grad schools you applied to
• Make sure all the grad schools have received your complete application

Upon Acceptance

• Notify the school you plan on attending
• Plan on leaving your job
• Have a party – and get ready for several years of hard work and drinking tons of coffee

Recommended Reading

• How to Get a Great Recommendation Letter
• How to Write a Killer College Application Essay
• The Nuts and Bolts of Time Management
  

You can instantly retrieve more information faster and easier by memorizing data in organized patterns.

Here are 8 ways to make information cement in your mind:

1. Acronyms
I’ve used acronyms throughout my college and grad school career. They’ve helped me memorize information for class presentations, and helped me memorize details for exams. An acronym is simply a word wherein each letter represents another word. For example: HOMES (The Great Lakes: Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior)

2. Acrostics
Acrostics are sentences in which the first letter of each word helps you remember items in a series. For example: Zoe Cooks Chowder In Pink Pots in Miami (The Essential Minerals: Zinc, Calcium, Chromium, Iron, Potassium, Phosphorus, Iodine, Magnesium).

3. Act it Out
Use your acting ability to make a connection with the material you’re trying to learn. For example: reenact a dialog between two historic figures – or carry on a debate between two different philosophers, politicians or literary critics.

4. Categories
Organize information into broad categories to help you remember information faster. For example: Types of Joints in the Body (Immovable, Slightly Movable, Freely Movable).

5. Peg Words
Develop a chain of associations between whatever list you need to memorize and a peg word. Peg words are associated with numbers (e.g. zero is hero; one is a bun; two is a shoe; three is a tree; four is a door; five is a hive; six is sticks; seven is heaven; eight is a gate; nine is wine; and ten is a hen). Here’s how peg words work with the atomic numbers in a periodic table: (1) Imagine a hydrogen hotdog on a bun; (2) Imagine a helium shoe balloon; (3) Imagine a lit tree on fire (lithium); (4) a door made of berries (beryllium); (5) a hive with bored bees (boron); and the list can go on. The odd pairing helps you memorize information quickly.

6. Rhymes
Make up a silly rhyme or pun to help you memorize information. For example: Brown vs. Board of Education ended public-school segregation.

7. Recordings
Make a recording of yourself giving a lecture about the subject you’re studying. This is especially helpful for foreign language classes or a vocabulary section on a standardized test.

8. Visualizations
Turn an abstract idea into an image of something that is as specific as possible. For example, visualize a scene from a historic period. Make it as real as possible in your mind. Use all your senses and imagine what it must smell like, feel like, etc. The more specific you are, the more you’ll remember.

What are some strategies you use to memorize information faster?

[Photo by Rofi]

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Here are some various strategies to help you start remembering what you’re reading:

Write Summaries in Your Textbook
Summarizing your reading causes your mind to comprehend, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate information better. You’re not just reading information passively, you’re causing your mind to join ideas together so you can condense it down yourself. Write down brief summaries as you read various sections in your textbook.

Say it Out Loud
After reading and writing summaries for about 30 minutes – stop and take a break. Try to recite out loud from memory what you’ve just read. Pretend to give a lecture on what you’ve read, and do your best to recall what you’ve just summarized. This might be difficult at first, but you’ll get better at it as you keep practicing.

Argue With Your Textbook
Another great way to remember what you’ve read is to start an argument with your textbook. Think critically about everything you’re reading and question concepts that seem foreign to you. Add question marks and underline areas that cause you to question. And make sure to write down questions in your textbook. These are also great questions to pose in class – or to ask your professor during office hours. It shows you’re an active reader.

Create a Mock Essay Exam
After finishing a chapter, write a mock essay exam question about what you’ve just read. And then take 15 to 30 minutes to write a detailed answer to the question from memory. This is a great way to make the information stick.

Record Your Verbal Summaries and Listen
I know this sounds geeky, but I used to record myself summarizing my textbooks. And I would listen to these recordings at night while falling asleep. This is a very easy way to help you memorize a lot of information without even thinking very hard.

The more actively involved you are with your textbook, the more you’ll comprehend and the more interesting you can make your reading experience.

Recommended Reading

• Why You Should Talk to Yourself After Reading
  
• Double Your Reading Speed with These Skimming Strategies
• How to Analyze a Book Quickly

I compiled a list of student bloggers who are focused on writing about college life and student productivity.

This list will continue to grow, so please feel free to email me if you’d like to be added.

Please note that I’m only listing student blogs that are updated regularly and focused on student productivity and/or life hacking tips.

I’ve also linked to this directory of bloggers on my homepage (on the left-hand side).

Most graduate schools want you to have at least two letters of recommendation.

The typical strategy is to submit a recommendation from a boss (who can discuss your leadership qualities and character), and a professor (who can discuss your intellectual abilities).

Here are some tips to help you narrow down your choices:

1. Choose someone who knows you very well.
Whoever you decide to ask, make sure you know them well. And don’t choose someone simply because they have a fancy title. You want a letter from someone who can easily write about your strengths and could share stories that clearly show you at your best. They should be able to discuss your:

• Social skills
• Motivations
• Personal relationships
• Civic responsibility
• Dependability
• Morality
• Sense of humor

2. Choose a person who can talk about your leadership skills.
You want someone – like a boss or business colleague – to write about your leadership qualities. This person should discuss your growth and potential, and provide examples of your work ethic, motivation, and ability to lead a team. They should also be able to discuss your:

• Work habits under stress
• Self-confidence
• Ability to listen and work with others
• Motivation skills
• Planning ability
• Analyze and find solutions
• Thoughtfulness
• Well-liked
• How you overcome difficult situations

3. Choose a person who can discuss your intellectual ability.
You should try and find a former professor to write about your intellectual side. This person should provide some insight into your analytical side, along with how you contribute to a classroom discussion. Here are some other areas they might want to mention about you:

• Imagination and creativity
• Communication skills
• Research methodology
• Qualitative and quantitative research skills
• Healthy skepticism

4. Choose someone experienced in the field you’re interested in.
It’s important to choose someone who has a lot of experience and credibility in the educational field you are pursuing. This could be a former boss, senior business colleague, or professor. This can add a lot of weight to your graduate application. They could write about your:

• Motivation for the field
• Examples of work you’ve done in the field
• Mention any awards or accomplishments

5. Choose a person who attended the school you want to attend.
It isn’t always possible to find someone who meets the requirements above – and also attended the grad school you are applying for. However, if you do know someone that meets all these requirements, he or she is an obvious choice for you. Just make sure they know you well, and can write stories about your leadership and/or intellectual qualities.

So if you are planning on attending grad school, start developing and nurturing relationships with people who fit the above qualifications. The better they know you, the more you’ll benefit from their recommendation letter.

And here’s one more tip . . .

Outline a potential letter for him or her.

Sometimes the people you want to recommend you might not know exactly what to write about, so it’s a good idea to provide them with a potential outline if they request one. This outline should include your strengths – and personal stories of your leadership and/or intellectual abilities. Here are areas to include in your outline:

• A list of your past accomplishments
• Personal stories that highlight your strengths
• Your resume

And – as always – provide your recommender with a deadline date, a stamped and addressed envelope, and copies of any forms that need to be submitted with it.

Let’s face it: dorm rooms are usually pretty tiny.

And it can be a challenge to turn a small space into an ideal study spot and living area with a roommate.

So here are a variety of ways students are organizing their dorm rooms:

Storage Box Under the Bed
Organize your books, shoes, extra clothes, or whatever with a storage box under your bed.

Closet Organizers
Closet organizers are not just for your closet. You can use them anywhere in your dorm. There are shoe racks, stackable baskets, garment racks, etc.

Plastic Crates
Stack plastic crates in your closet to organize items you might not need on a daily basis.

Bedside Pockets/Organizers
Bedside pockets can help you store a lot of essentials close by. You can sew these yourself to save money.

Stack Your Shelves
Bring plenty of shelves if you plan on keeping a lot of books et al. in your dorm room.

Loft Bed
If you’re allowed to bring your own bed – or can hack the one in your room, I’d highly recommend you get a loft bed. It’s the best way to have a study spot and bed in a tiny little area.

Bed Risers
If you can’t use a loft bed in your dorm room, add these bed risers (or breeze blocks) under your bed frame. This will give you plenty of space to stuff boxes, books, and other essentials under your bed.

Please leave a comment to let me know of any other essentials you think are valuable for dorm rooms.

I know a lot of students struggle when writing their college application essay.

Here is some advice from actual college admissions officers on what they look for in a quality college essay:

Be Original
“The essays we dislike the most are those that seemingly could have been written by 2,000 or 3,000 other applicants. We’re looking for distinctiveness. Think of us hoping that the application will at least figuratively come alive in front of us, so when we’re struggling to read applications at 10:30 p.m. on any given night, seven nights a week during the reading perio, we’re looking for personality. We’re looking to grasp hold of an individual.”

Tell An Interesting Story
“A student’s writing style can sometimes tell us as much about the student as the actual story itself. I like reading something interesting that happened to students. The essays that I dread reading are, of course, the ones that start out about ‘My trip to Europe’ or something like that. If they do have a story to tell and it is something about their trip to Europe, I’d rather hear something about a specific incident that happened rather than a travelogue and summation that says, ‘Now I have a greater understanding of culture.’”

Be Creative
“I don’t think everybody has to have some major event that they have to write about in their lives. I think the student has to use some creative juices to come up with an interesting way of talking about the family dog or a relationship with a sick aunt. Those are the kinds we like to read, those that aren’t the typical “300 words — Pikes Peak — out-the-rear-window-of -a -car-essay.”

Be Concise and Clear
“I like to see things that are written concisely and clearly. I dread the long, long, long essay that brings in every unimportant detail about what they’re trying to get across. I really like it when people can express themselves in a brief manner and also be effective at the same time.”

Write Straight from the Heart
“We want essays that come straight from the heart. That’s the point of the essay. Why do you want me? Why do you want me as a student on your campus? What are you going to contribute? I don’t mean by being president of the senior class or being an All-American. There are lots of ways that students can contribute. They need to have a sense of themselves in order to present that in written form.”

Show Your Personality
“The essay should not be simply a regurgitation of information that’s already in a student’s resume. I like to see students walk out on thin ice and use humor if it’s natural for them. They shouldn’t put on some kind of corporate vocabulary simply to try to impress the committee. We’re more interested in personal style and the substance of the writing than how they can impress us with their vocabulary and their sentence structure.”

Don’t Try to Be Funny if You’re Not
“Many people bomb when they try to be humorous because people’s senses of humor don’t always match. Someone may think something is funny, and it may be derogatory to someone else.”

Please comment with some personal advice on writing college application essays

I’ve been really enjoying Carl Zimmer’s Science Tattoo Emporium — a blog dedicated to showing science-based tattoo art.

So here are some of my favorites posted on his site — along with some others that I’ve found:

1. Quadratic Formula

2. Elliptic Partial Differential Equations

(Monge-Ampere & Infinity Laplacian)

3. Zermelo-Fraenkel with Choice Axioms of Set Theory

4. Y Combinator

5. All Values (from Zero to Infinity) are Less Than Love

6. Math Lip Tattoo

7. The Continuity Equation

8. Schroedinger’s Equation for the Wavefunction of a Particle

Studentjobs.gov is a one-stop portal for employment opportunities for students within the Federal Government — and is open to students in high school, college, or grad school.

There is no charge for using Studentjobs.gov, and users are not required to pre-register to look for a job.

The site gives the maximum flexibility in performing one-stop employment information searches. It’s convenient, user-friendly, accessible to persons with disabilities, and available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Check it out when you get a chance.

If you have any old books that you never plan on reading again, here are some fun ways to recycle them:

1. Hide stuff in your hollowed out book.
Read tips on how to hollow books with a ruler, pen, box cutter, and Elmer’s white glue.

2. Make Book Bookends.
Learn how to turn an old textbook into a bookend.

3. Create an invisible book shelf.
Learn how to stack books on your wall without any shelves.

4. Turn a book into a clock.
If you have a book cover you really like, learn how to turn it into a clock.

5. Make a lamp shade out of a book. 
Easy way to convert a book into a lamp shade.

6. Turn a book into an iPod case.
Go ahead and stick your headphones into that book. I’m not kidding.

7. Make table legs out of books.
Any English Major or grad student has probably countless books stashed in their bookshelves or closet. Learn how to make a table out of books.

8. Make a Lift-the-Flap Book for Toddlers
Kids love board books — especially lift-the-flap books. Learn how to make one as a creative gift for that next baby shower or birthday party.

9. Trade your old books for new books. 
There are a variety of websites that let you trade books.  Check out bookmooch.com, paperbackswap.com, and bookins.com

10. Set a good book free with BookCrossing.com
Over 680,000 people in over 130 countries have decided to let a favorite book go free. You simply register your book – leave it at a favorite coffee shop or wherever – and track its progress. Learn more at BookCrossing.com.

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• Rent Books Online with BookSwim