Conducted two workshop sessions to senior and graduate students of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences applying for Master's degrees or PhDs.
Impact: Full student capacity reached for both sessions (total: 61 students)
Students' satisfaction with the workshop (average): 9.0 / 10
Students' satisfaction with the workshop instructor (average): 9.6 /10
"Would you recommend this workshop to other students?" : 90.4 % answered yes.
Subjective Reviews Included:
"Giving students hope with instructions is one hard job that seemed like a piece of cake to the presenter"; "this workshop helped me a lot, I would recommend it to every AUB student"; "it was far greater than my expectations, I can't think of any way it could have been better"; "the only comment is that I wish the workshop was longer, the instructor was wonderful!"; "at first I thought that 3 hours would be too long or boring, but it turned out that there are a lot of things that I had no idea about, and things are more clear to me now".
2. Workshop Outline
When What
3:00 – 3:30 Workshop Presentation
Introduction & discussion
Things to consider before applying
Quick stress & time management tricks
3:30 – 4:00 Workshop Presentation - The 4 STEPS to APPLY
STEP 1: Research & select programs
STEP 2: Acquire Requirements!
STEP 3: Connect with key people
STEP 4: Write
4:00 – 4:30 Workshop Presentation: How do I write?
1. Writing emails to professors/ supervisors
2. Writing messages to strangers asking for help!
3. Writing a research proposal
4:30 – 4:40 BREAK
4:40 – 5:45 Workshop Exercise
1. Writing a statement of purpose
5:45 – 6:00 Workshop Evaluations
3. Is graduate school for you?
FAS Career Services
American University of Beirut
4. It’s costly if you don’t find funding
Studying abroad can be very stressful
Academic jobs are tough to find, abroad
AND in Lebanon
You’ll be out of the job market for 3-7 years
The tenure track is not a certain track,
abroad AND in Lebanon
Pros & Cons
FAS Career Services
American University of Beirut
Your earning potential MIGHT increase
You’ll conduct lots of research
You might get to travel
≠ People will call you Doctor!
≠ You love your topic
≠ All the senior students are doing it!
5. It’s for me.
Where do I start?
FAS Career Services
American University of Beirut
10. How do I write?
FAS Career Services | American
University of Beirut
e-mails to professors asking
for a reference letter
my statement of
purpose
my research
proposal
messages to strangers
asking for help!
11. How do I write?
FAS Career Services | American
University of Beirut
e-mails to professors asking
for a reference letter
my statement of
purpose
my research
proposal
messages to strangers
asking for help!
12. How do I write?
FAS Career Services | American
University of Beirut
e-mails to professors asking
for a reference letter
my statement of
purpose
my research
proposal
messages to strangers
asking for help!
13. How do I write?
FAS Career Services | American
University of Beirut
e-mails to professors asking
for a reference letter
my statement of
purpose
my research
proposal
messages to strangers
asking for help!
14. Contact the FAS Career Services for a prep.
They say you have
10 seconds
To attract a recruiter
FAS Career Services
American University of Beirut
Sure you don’t need help?
Editor's Notes
Intro + who I am
Your name + major & what you’re applying for + what do you dread most about your application to graduate school?
Disclaimer about workshop: it is designed for people who know they want grad school and need practical guidance
Together, we are going to draw on 2 things: psychology & story telling to increase your chances of being accepted
Write on board: Crunching application = Time management + Resourcefulness + Introspection + Good writing
Tips on how to take notes on laptops during workshop
It’s beyond the scope of this workshop to give you guidance on WHETHER you should or should not apply, but here are some things to consider:
The job market and the problems of over-qualification + the versatility of you knowledge (specialization or not?) + importance of skills
Tip: read blogs on PhDs / become BFF with your professor / as we will see later, you need to become proactive + resourceful (I’m gonna show you how to do that in a couple of slides!)
What are good reasons to go to graduate school? What are bad ones?
We said we’re following 2 principles. Here’s the first heads up I will give you: Stress doesn’t bode well on our bodies. What does stress do to us?
Handout 1: the to do list
We’re about to see your to do list. To be able to do it, you have to know how we deal with stress: when we’re overwhelmed, which you very well might be, we tend to freeze. What do you think we should do about that?
Set small, achievable, measurable goals Lay out all your tasks in front of you (visuals help!) + determine how much time you need for each set a timeline. Don’t rely on your own memory
Organize your stressors
Put your emotions aside –> It’s okay to obsess + to stress a lit. But. Be an engineer: point is to increase the chances of you getting accepted. You need to understand you’re not alone in this.
Delegate tasks: seek help, you won’t be able to do this alone. That’s OK.
Per vacancy find job search engines: Nature Jobs.com or Jobrapido
FUNDING - Three options:
Apply for funding separately, through sources THEY will give you
Apply for funding separately, through sources YOU look for (like The Said Foundation, British Lebanese Association, Fulbright program, Asfari Foundation Scholarship)
Receive funding automatically WITH the program (more true for PhD):
Europe usually you have to apply to funding separately
USA: it’s usually assumed that they pay for it
Canada: it varies, but usually you have to find separate funding
A PhD proposal = an outline of your proposed project that is designed to:
Define a clear question and approach to answering it
Highlight its originality and/or significance
Explain how it adds to, develops (or challenges) existing literature in the field
Persuade potential supervisors and/or funders of the importance of the work, and why you are the right person to undertake it
Statement of purpose = Personal, Creative, Passionate it is a STORY …
It’s 90% fun. 10% necessities.
It tells the story from A to Z - Z being the point of application. Everything in your life has been leading up to this moment. Your job is to tell me how.
If YOU know these things, your reader will know you. If you don’t, your reader cannot know you. And if the reader has not “met you”, if your story doesn’t stick, you’re just another application. Who wants to hire a stranger?
When do we tell stories? (when we’re relaxed, comfortable, confident, when we have content, when we have an audience. It’s a pretty lax process, one we usually love to do. Especially extroverts.)
It is STORIES we remember: not faces, not people, not facts: stories. You want to say something people will remember? Say it in a narrative. It’s the first and oldest form of art: oral performances.
How do you tell a story? Can anyone tell me any story they’ve recently heard, one that left an impact?
It’s about events
It’s about timing: what leads up to what
It’s about the ending: the punchline: what happens?
It’s about someone. In this case, it’s about you.
To write it well, you have to do introspection:
Who am I?
What is unique about me? (what I know, what I’ve done, thoughts about the world, and what I want to do in it)
EXERCIZE Part 1:
Write down 3 elements that define who you are. Clusters: family, experience, cause. Example: “I grew up in a home with 3 kids”.
Turn to the person next to you, and tell them one story that’s based on one or more of these elements. The story has to be told in under one minute.
EXERCIZE part 2:
Who has heard a boring story lately? How do you tell a good story?
A good story goes straight to the point. It leads up to it, but it gets there right away.
A good story has passion. You can tell me about a potato, and make me interested in it, if you have passion.
Who volunteers to give us one element that defines them?
How can we now turn that fact into an emotional experience? that’s what you need to figure out.
Once you have that story, you will fit it into a format. You can decide how, and when. But the important thing is the story.
EXERCIZE part 3:
Read Paragraph 1: sample of Statement of purpose.
Did it grab your attention? Do you still want to read? What exactly made you want to read?
As a recruiter, what have you learned about this applicant?
You learned the elements that make her, her: “I grew up with a twin sister (as an element of her identity) + family played a big role in my love for cinema.”
Read last Paragraph 1: sample of Statement of purpose.
Would you accept her?
