My Journey Through the 2021 Application Cycle

Hi everybody! I hope you are having a great summer so far! Since my job for this past year was with a school system, I have been finished with work since Memorial Day. It has been such a relief to step back from a stressful environment and be able to put all of my focus and energy into preparing for grad school this fall and getting my affairs in order. It's been a while since I wrote a post about my journey, so I'll remind you that I last left off briefly talking about my experience between my two application cycles. I talked about struggling to find a job as a recent grad with no plans, especially in a pandemic, contacting programs for feedback, working on my CV, and deciding that I would apply to 10 schools.

During my first application cycle, I only applied to schools that were in my general region of the US. I was 21 at the time, and all of my support system lived in the same state as me. I'd never been to many of the regions that were populated with genetic counseling programs, and I wasn't the kind of person to step outside of my comfort zone in regards to location. This time around, I knew I wanted to broaden my horizons a little more. I wanted my school list to have a little more variety, so I wasn't competing with the same applicants at each school. As someone who's lived in the south all of their life, I still found it hard to be thrilled about moving somewhere that had real winters or a city that was even twice as populated as mine. This left me with the programs out west, which started to become really appealing. I figured that some of the areas had similar enough climates to what I was used to, and the cities honestly seemed like places I would enjoy living and working in. It also didn't hurt that my incredibly supportive partner could easily relocate to any of the cities that housed a program.

With 3 new programs locked in, I went back to the programs I had applied to last year. I had applied to 7, interviewed with 3, and reached out all the programs for feedback. One of the programs I interviewed at was ultimately not a good fit for me, so I decided not to reapply there. I felt confident about most of the feedback I had received, and I also felt more confident in my application and my understanding of the process as a whole, so I decided to reapply to the 6 other programs. I rounded out my 10th school with a program that was new to the 2021 application cycle.

After getting my schools in order, I reached out to two of my recommenders from the previous cycle and asked if they'd be willing to write letters again this cycle. They thankfully both agreed. I decided that I would get a new recommender this cycle, not because I had any feedback suggesting to do so, but because I felt I needed a letter from someone who knew me better and interacted with me more recently. My 3rd recommender the previous cycle was a professor I had one class with my sophomore year, meaning it had been around 3 years since I had regular interaction with her. I decided that I would instead ask a professor who I had just had in my last semester. Although he didn't teach a course in the biology department or have a PhD, I felt that he got to know me more due to the small size and the more lax nature of the course. He agreed but admitted he didn't know much about genetic counseling or what it entailed. I made sure to send him a couple of resources, such as links to the NSGC site and helpful pages about applying to genetic counseling programs.

While I was getting everything in order last fall, I also started this blog and my Instagram page. Through this, I found several webinars and virtual case conferences that helped me prepare for the upcoming cycle. As my only shadowing experience had happened in the summer of 2019, I wanted to make sure my application showed that I was seeking genetic counseling exposure. I added all of the more general webinars to my GC exposure section on my CV and added school specific ones to each particular school's CV.

Once I felt ready to start working on my applications, I made a spreadsheet to help me keep track of everything I needed. For each school, I listed my username and password for the application, the deadline for the application, a link to the app, if they received my transcripts (if needed), if they received my GRE scores (if needed), how many of my recommendations had been submitted, if my CV and personal statement(s) were finished, and if I had submitted the app. I also included my NMS # and the contact information for my recommenders. This spreadsheet was a lifesaver when I was working on 10 different apps that had due dates from December 1 to January 15.

I first started with my two applications that were due on December 1. They were also some of my longest and less structured personal statements, so I felt they were the best to start with anyway. To get started, I went back to the personal statements I had written for these schools last year. I hadn't gotten any negative feedback from any schools about my personal statement, and one of these two had gotten me an interview last year. I picked out ideas and parts that I wanted to keep in my personal statements or expand on. I started working as a special education aide in August of 2020, which gave me new experiences to add onto my personal statement. Throughout the month leading up to December 1, I sent draft after draft back and forth to my partner, who graciously helped me edit my statements down to the final versions. I usually like to submit applications the day before they're due, so I have as long as possible to catch any mistakes or phrases that I want to edit, so I submitted these applications at the end of November.

With those first two out of the way, I felt that I had a really strong foundation for writing the rest of my personal statements. Most of the ones remaining had to be cut down to a page or 500-750 words. I started working on the next few personal statements by bulleting what points and experiences were most important for me to get across in these more restricted statements. Whenever I overshot the word count, I would whittle down less important parts of the statement, such as the intro paragraph. I also scrutinized my descriptions of my experiences and found a few words here and there to cut out. My partner helped me with these as well, and by mid-December, we both had a good idea of what it was I need to get across in my remaining statements. December 15th rolled around, and I had submitted another 3 applications. I started to get more ahead of the game with my remaining 5 applications. I had everything ready to go for these applications much sooner, and I even submitted the last few a week or so before they were due. By January 15, all of my applications were done, and so was I.

Next post I'll pick back up with my interview experience for the past cycle as well as Match Day! As always, if you have any questions, feel free to shoot me a message on here or on my Instagram! If you want to hear more about my journey, please feel free to subscribe to the blog at the bottom of the page, or you can follow me on Instagram @journey2gc!