“There’s no way you’re getting in”
It’s that time of year again. Grad school applications are open, deadlines are getting closer, and I keep thinking back to my own.
I was sitting in a GRE prep course when the instructor decided to go around the room and ask everyone where they were applying.
So I told him. One program. Close to home.
He didn’t even blink. “There’s no way you’re getting in,” he said. “You need to apply to a lot more schools.”
And honestly? I get it. On paper, he wasn’t wrong. Competitive programs turn away most of the people who apply, and “cast a wide net” is the advice everyone gives.
But that advice assumes you can pick up your life and move wherever you get in. I couldn’t.
Why I only sent one
At the time, I was a wife, a mom of two infants (yes, two, at the same time), and I had a career. Packing everyone up and moving across the country for school just wasn’t on the table.
So I did the thing nobody recommends. I put all my eggs in one basket, and then I spent an extra year of making that basket as sturdy as humanly possible. I took extra classes. I conducted independent research and presented my findings at conferences. I knew my one application had to carry all the weight.
And I got in.
I felt so lucky. So grateful. Chosen, even. (That gratitude turned out to have a cost, but that’s a story for the next post.)
What stands out to me now, looking back, isn’t the acceptance letter. It’s how much invisible work it took just to get that application out the door.
The part nobody talks about
We talk about grad school applications like they’re a test of how smart you are. They’re not. Not really.
They’re a months-long test of executive function. You’re planning, prioritizing, remembering, starting, and following through on a dozen moving pieces at once. And a bunch of those pieces depend on other people actually doing what they said they’d do.
Here’s what you’re really juggling:
Picking where to apply. Researching programs, finding advisors whose work fits yours, figuring out if you should email them first. (Planning and decision-making.)
Entrance exams. Finding out who still requires the GRE, registering, studying, taking it, sending scores. (Time management and getting started.)
Building your CV. Pulling together research, coursework, work experience, publications, and presentations. (Organization and working memory.)
Letters of recommendation. Choosing writers, asking early, sending each one a packet, tracking who’s submitted, nudging the ones who haven’t. (Planning and follow-through.)
Statements. Writing a statement of purpose and a personal statement, then tailoring both for every program and advisor. (Sustained effort and flexibility.)
Transcripts. Ordering official copies from every school you’ve ever attended, then making sure they actually arrived. (Follow-through and working memory.)
Deadlines and fees. A different deadline and a different fee for every single program. (Time management and organization.)
Interviews. Reading the itinerary, booking (and paying for) travel, coming up with real questions for each faculty member. (Planning and self-monitoring.)
None of those things is hard on its own. The hard part is that they’re all happening at the same time, on different timelines, and some of them are completely out of your control.
If your brain finds this exhausting, here’s why
If you’re neurodivergent, or you just struggle with executive function, this process hits you right where it hurts.
Lots of deadlines, zero daily structure. Nobody tells you what to do this week. You have to build that structure yourself.
You’re waiting on other people. You can’t make a letter writer hit submit or make a registrar mail a transcript. You just have to keep track of whether they did, which is a lot to hold in your head.
Writing with no finish line. When is a statement of purpose done? Who knows! That uncertainty is the perfect breeding ground for perfectionism, avoidance, and that awful frozen feeling.
The unwritten rules. Are you supposed to email the advisor first? How specific should your statement be? So much of this runs on norms nobody explains, and if you’re first-gen or neurodivergent, you’re often figuring them out alone.
So if this feels harder than it “should,” please hear me: it’s not because you aren’t smart enough for grad school. It’s because the process is quietly asking your executive function to do an enormous amount of work, all at once.
Get it out of your head
The single most helpful thing you can do is stop trying to hold the whole thing in your brain. Start with each program’s deadline and work backward, so every big scary task turns into a small dated step.
Here’s a rough starting point (tweak it to fit your life):
16 weeks out: email potential advisors
14 weeks out: register for the GRE, if your programs need it
10 weeks out: take the GRE
8 weeks out: ask your letter writers
7 weeks out: send each writer a packet with your CV, a draft statement, and every deadline
6 weeks out: order transcripts and get a first draft of your statement done
2 weeks out: finalize your statements for each program and send your writers a friendly reminder
1 week out: submit! A week early means a website crash doesn’t turn into a crisis.
And because I’m me, I built a tool for this. My free Grad Application EF Tracker is a Google Sheet that does the backward planning for you. Plug in your deadlines and it calculates every date. It also keeps track of advisors, letter writers, transcripts, statement versions, interviews, and a running budget, so you don’t have to. Get your free copy of the tracker here.
One more thing: always double-check requirements and deadlines on each program’s official website. They vary way more than you’d think.
Getting in is just the beginning
That GRE instructor wasn’t wrong about the odds. He just didn’t know my situation, or how much I was willing to build around it.
If you’re applying this season, especially with a brain that finds this kind of thing draining, I hope you’ll borrow some structure instead of trying to carry it all yourself. That’s what an external system is for. Borrow mine while you build yours.
Next time, I’ll share what happened after I got in: how all that gratitude turned into never saying no, and what I wish someone had told me about staying afloat as a neurodivergent grad student.
Got a question about applying, or about executive function in general? Send it my way. If a few of you ask the same thing, it’ll probably become a post.