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How to Get Into Graduate School
It's important that your professors get to know you well enough to write an in-depth letter of recommendation. Make an effort to see professors during office hours and talk to them about your career plans. This will help them become better acquainted with you. (Besides, they usually have pretty good advice.)
Make Good Grades.
Decisions on graduate school admissions are based on a combination of undergraduate grades and performance on the Graduate Record Exam (GRE). An average overall GPA of 3.5 or higher and an average of 3.75 or higher in your mathematics and economics courses would be a minimum for many very good departments.
Perform Well on the GRE.
GREs are similar to SATs in format: part verbal, part mathematics. For admission to a good graduate program in economics you are also required to take a separate disciplinary exam in economics. You should buy a GRE preparation book and take the trial exams well before you take the actual exam. A GRE preparation course is not as likely to help your performance as much as those courses offered for the GMAT or LSAT.
Get Involved in Cocurricular Activities.
The top graduate programs are likely to receive many applications from candidates with a GPA of nearly 4.0 and high GRE scores. They will be looking for signs of leadership and other characteristics that signal you are a candidate destined to be successful in your profession.
Important: It is much easier to gain admission to graduate schools at a state university in the state in which you are a resident than it is to gain admission to a state university in any other state. This is especially important for law and graduate business schools. Since there is little grant money available for students to attend these professional graduate schools, the low tuition for students in their home states is another big advantage.
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