You finally made it.

You have invested three years to get to this point. Your endurance, discipline and determination have allowed you to overcome all of the obstacles that riddled your path.

If you have followed the advice of the previous three years, then you will be well positioned for success in the graduate school application process. Up until this point, you have been able to maintain a high G.P.A. because of your excellent study habits, your concentration on improving your writing skills and your overall attention to class preparation. You have been able to manage your academic and personal lives by forging relationships with individuals who understand and support your goals. You have also gained valuable professional and academic experience by securing internships, studying abroad and working with professors. For your exemplary performance thus far you are to be congratulated.

However, this year will be the most challenging yet. The actual application process is arduous, time consuming and even stressful. Perhaps the toughest task is selecting those graduate schools and programs to which you want to apply. After selection, there are a variety of elements to consider, principally securing letters of recommendation, taking the Graduate Record Examination (GRE), writing a personal statement and choosing a proper writing sample. You will be required to do a significant amount of research into your selected schools and programs, as well as those professors with whom you wish to work.

You will need to visit schools and meet with faculty. After all of your applications are completed, the period of waiting will begin. This can be the most stressful part of the process.

Do not allow this stress to overwhelm you or make you question your commitment to attaining a doctoral degree.

All of the advice given for your freshman, sophomore and junior years has been directed toward preparing you for the actual application process. By this time issues such as self-esteem and confidence, independence and self-assuredness, discipline and proactivity, and personal and professional relationship management have all been addressed and need not be belabored. If you have been engaging in you annual assessments and performing an open and honest evaluation of your strengths and weaknesses the tasks that must be undertaken this year, as well as the eventual outcome, should be second nature.

The simple fact is that during your senior coursework becomes subsidiary to getting into graduate school. Thus, the advice given for this year will focus almost exclusively on the graduate school application process. Issues such as grades have been discussed previously and will not be belabored.