An overview of 2025 PhD applications

my first PhD application cycle is complete

Dec 17, 2024

*Woman Awakening* by Eva Gonzalez, 1876. Oil on canvas.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Why a PhD
My application process
- The search
- Reaching out and “interviewing”
- The formal application
Rapid review

This is going to be the start of a mini series on applying to PhD programs for fall 2025. One of the best parts of having a newsletter is that I get the creative freedom to write about whatever I want - including my PhD woes.

I recently just finished applying to environmental science PhD programs for 2025 *sweats*. To be perfectly frank, I am feeling quite bleak about my prospects at this very moment. Although, I have just finished this gruelling process a mere five hours ago, I may feel differently once it sinks in.

In the end, I applied to three programs - two at private institutions and a public one (more on the why later).

The following newsletter will be part of an ongoing series about applying to doctoral and masters programs. As a first-generation and low-income college student I strongly believe in demystifying the application process. When I applied to undergraduate, masters, and now doctoral programs, there were many things I did not know. And even though I’ve gone through the undergraduate and masters process, there were still many things that surprised me about the PhD procedures - especially as an international student applying to US programs.

I do not have the connections or the pre-existing knowledge to guide me through, so I hope this will be useful for anyone who finds themself in a similar boat or just someone who is curious about graduate school and wants to learn more.

Truth be told, I am undecided about paid posts / paid components for this series. While I will maintain to keep the majority of these posts free, there are a couple I may put behind a paywall primarily because of the amount of personal information I will potentially share in future posts.

I also put a lot of time and effort into writing these larger thought pieces (paid and free!) so it’s also a nice way to support me as a creator who does not make a lot of money from running Researching Wealth. In 2024 I made approximately $300 USD (and grateful for every dollar!).

BUT with that being said most of the future posts on this topic will be 95% free.

Deciding to apply for a PhD is a serious consideration. PhD stipends are notoriously underpaid for years, are often extremely stressful, and requires quite a number of sacrifices (e.g. time, location, family plans).

Despite this, I decided I wanted to try and apply because my future career goal is to become a tenured professor and researcher. I am extremely motivated by this and a PhD is an essential requirement. There are considerable knowledge gaps in the field I am interested in pursuing and contributing empirical research to addressing them excites me.

But I would definitely give yourself time to think long and hard about pursuing a PhD. Even though I knew I wanted to do a PhD when my masters program ended, I still ended up taking two additional years to gain more research experience and be sure about the decision.

Some really good advice I received from folks included:

What jobs are you interested in and what are the qualifications - use that as one way to determine if you even need to do a PhD specifically or if a masters/bachelors is sufficient
Are you willing to dedicate 4-6 years - for some people this can alter other areas of your life
Can you accept or even take on years of low pay - unfortunately the state of funding for PhDs is abysmal across many countries (with some notable exceptions), so definitely something I have had to think long and hard about!

As I mentioned before, I applied to three environmental science PhD programs across the US.

For privacy purposes, I will not reveal the actual schools but two of them are private institutions on the east coast and one public school on the west coast.

Going into the application process, I wanted to apply to 3-5 programs maximum. The reasons being because I wanted to be intentional about the programs (and more importantly the PIs) I am applying to. This is a 4-6 year commitment so I wanted to ensure I am at least applying to programs with PIs who align with my personal working style and professional research goals.

Here’s a quick overview of what my timeline looked like from searching for PhD programs to submission:

Below I write in detail what each stage consisted of.

The search

This past summer (July - August 2024) is when I started to look into programs and prospective PIs.

I spent a good amount of time collecting information on programs and PIs, as well as what funding looks like.

At the end of summer, I had notified my references that I was planning on applying to PhD programs for fall 2025, with prospective dates of when deadlines were and that I would be in touch with the final selection of schools for the end of October/early November. In my case, the majority of deadlines fell between December 2024 - January 2025.

Advice

I would highly recommend spending a good amount of time on this portion and actually beginning it sooner than I did (May - June), especially for funding, such as scholarships, grants, and fellowships. Allowing more time to search and organize will make your life 10x easier going into the fall months.
Keep yourself organized with a spreadsheet, database or document. I cannot emphasize enough how important this portion was for me, but I wish I had actually started it sooner and had the appropriate tabs already set up from the start (I did not have this hindsight though since it was my first round of applications).
Always let your references know ahead of time that you plan on applying. In my case, I allowed for 2-3 months in advance, but I have heard folks leaving it a month before and it being fine, but I would recommend at least 1.5 months.

Reaching out and “interviewing”

From September - November I spent the majority of the time contacting and meeting with prospective PIs and graduate students.

I made first contact with prospective PIs through email. After two-three weeks, if I had not heard back I would send a friendly follow-up email, but left it there if I still did not receive a response bacl.

In total, I reached out to 17 PIs. My initial search provided me with a starting point of who to contact, but my references also provided me with contacts and names of folks of interest. A quick flowchart of what this looked like:

From the 17, I received no replies from 8 PIs. One of the 8 PIs I had not hear back initially did respond to me. We communicated back and forth for a month and I filled out a lengthy “informal” application. After sending the application, I did not hear back. So not a full ghosting situation but a partial and long drawn out one.

Two PIs had responded that they were not taking graduate students but 1 of them actually still met with me to understand my interests and recommend other faculty (extremely nice of them!).

That left me with 7 PIs who I actually met who were looking for students. Two of the interviews were not good at all (more on this in a future newsletter). One was enjoyable but there was not a strong research alignment, unfortunately, as they were transitioning into a different research area and I was more interested in their previous work. In the end, I was left with 4 PIs who I felt I had a strong overlap in research interests, skills, and almost more importantly, personal synergy (e.g. could I see myself getting along with this PI). 2/4 of the PIs are based in the same program and institution, which resulted in 3 solid options for submitting a formal application.

Additionally, throughout November, I reached out and met with previous and current graduate students. I reached out to 4 graduate students, 2 from the same PI, and 1 each from 2 PIs from the list of 4 I had felt good about. One of the PIs was a newly appointed faculty member who just finished their post-doc and had never worked with a PhD student before, therefore, I did not speak to a previous student. One of the graduate students from one PI did not respond, so in total I met with 3 graduate students, 2 who worked with 1 of the PIs, and another who worked with 1 of the PIs of interest. This means that there were 2 PIs from this short-listed group whose graduate students I did not speak to.

Advice

I will not lie, this portion of the application process is brutal but I HIGHLY recommend doing it - especially for PhD programs. Some programs may state it is not necessary to reach out to faculty beforehand, but I still would, unless it is very clear they do not want applicants to do so. For instance, my friend who had applied to PhD programs as a fully funded Ivy league alum with a 4.0 GPA was rejected from PhD programs where he didn’t reach out to faculty. Luckily for me, it didn’t work out because we would have never met if it did, but I’m sharing this primarily to make the point that reaching out can make or break the difference between acceptance and rejection from a program.
I wish I had reached out to prospective PIs more aggressively in the beginning. I was so nervous to cold email researchers (my first time doing so) and created a self-inflicted psychological block. In the beginning, I was only reaching out to 1-2 PIs per week but after September, I ramped that up to around 3-5 between October-November. I may have been able to reach out to others sooner if I had done this and given myself more opportunities for finding a prospective PI.
Don’t take ghosting too personally. When I first started, I definitely felt quite dejected from PIs I did not hear back from, but unfortunately, that is part of the process and shouldn’t be taken to heart. Life happens, people are busy and emails get lost. However, the reality is they may not have been incredibly impressed with your initial email, but they may end up being on your committee or a co-advisor.
Which leads into this next point well; always be polite and courteous even if you are dissatisfied with the meeting or did not feel you got along well with the PI. You may end up working with them in some capacity, or they may later influence a different stage of your career, so it’s important to not burn any bridges.
Always prepare for potential meetings with PIs and graduate students. Even though it is not an interview, treat it as such, since it’s better to be over-prepared than under-prepared (I will have a specific substack post for this!).

The formal application

There are many components to the formal application because each school will have different required documents and information for programs admissions. If you had done the search portion well, you should already have an idea of what some of these requirements might be. Some of the necessary documents for the programs I applied to included:

Research statement / statement of purpose (SOP)

In my case, both of these documents were synonymous, but this might not be the same in other contexts. For instance, in the UK, you may have something called a research proposal to submit which is often more detailed and longer than a standard SOP.

For the programs I applied to, a research statement or a SOP was 1-2 page document illustrating why I wanted to pursue a PhD, why that specific program/faculty, what research I wanted to do, and how my past experiences will enable me to be a strong doctoral candidate.

CV / resume

Similar to job applications, a document that outlines all your professional, academic, and volunteer experiences. Should be catered and specific to PhD applications (e.g. emphasizing research experience and highlighting honours, scholarships, and publications > work experience).

Diversity statement

This was usually a 1-2 page document detailing the ways in which your unique lived experiences and identities will benefit the program and the how you are committed to advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion. In my case, this was also the space to showcase how challenges in your life affected your academic pursuits and the ways you overcame it.

Writing sample

This can be an essay, publication, report, or other professional writing pieces that showcase your writing skills.

Foreign grade evaluation

If you did not complete your undergraduate and/or graduate degree at a US institution, some schools require you to have a foreign grade evaluation done by a third-party company. Costs of this will vary between $150 USD - $500 USD depending on your situation (e.g. if the transcripts need to be translated into English, timing of services).

Other aspects of the application

On the actual application portal itself, some schools may ask for additional information to be inputted rather than uploaded (the majority of the documents I mentioned above were documents I uploaded). In my experience, this may include:

Job experience
Academic history
Research interests
Rationale for faculty chosen
Short essays for fellowship and scholarship purposes

Advice

I cannot emphasize enough how important the search portion of your application process is. It would have saved me $100 USD if I had paid better attention. With that being said, even if you think you’ve done a good job with this part of the process, always double-check at least five weeks before your deadlines in case you need to get a foreign grades evaluation done. If you need an English test (e.g. TOEFL), you may need to consider this as well and actually give yourself a lot more time. I didn’t need one as a Canadian national who has only attended English-speaking institutions so I don’t know what the process looks like.
Cater each document to each program. For example, do not submit a generic research statement / statement of purpose to every program. There are elements across all the SOPs that may be the same, but ultimately you are applying to different faculty members who may specialize in slightly different things and programs with their own unique elements. This should be evident.
Read the prompts for each document carefully. Similar to the point above, each school may be asking slightly different things (at least for me they did) so make sure you are addressing everything that is being asked of you.
Look up how standard documents should be structured in the context in which you are applying. For instance, a SOP for a US program may look a bit different than a SOP for a Dutch program.
Have someone look over your documents. Asking folks early and giving enough time for feedback can be extremely helpful for the success of your application. Some of my prospective PIs offered to look over my documents which was incredibly kind, but you can ask friends, past supervisors, or references as well, if you have that kind of relationship with them.
Take breaks - personally, I found this quite difficult but rest is an important part of productivity.
Open the application portals early. I did this a bit later than I should have and realized there were other components I did not anticipate such as outlining my professional experiences (between you and me, seems a bit redundant if you are sharing a CV or resume) and answering essay questions on the actual platform itself that were not noted on the program website.

How much did it cost?

In total, I spent $658.90 USD for three applications.

$335 went toward application fees. To complete the foreign grade evaluation, I spent $323.90 for two GPA course-by-course transcript evaluations, a 5-day rush fee, and other costs to retrieve my undergraduate and graduate transcripts and degrees from the institutions.

Advice

A month before my first application was due, I got the sense that my the foreign grade evaluation was going to be a pain in my ass due to the inflexibility of the company and my institutions. These grade evaluators have very strict conditions for evaluating transcripts and degrees from other countries (even English-speaking ones) so if you are able to get on this earlier, I would do so to avoid having to pay a rush fee like I did. Even though I had started a month in advance, the time to liaise and negotiate with all three entities left me no choice but to pay a rush fee.
Thankfully, I contributed around $700 to my sinking fund with the expectation I would have $200 leftover to move to debt repayments or my buffer. As you can see, I totally maxed out my sinking fund so I would definitely recommend over-contributing especially if you are an international student. Even if not, if you last-minute change your mind and decide to apply to more programs, a generous sinking fund will ease the pain of paying those applications fees. If you are applying as a low-income domestic student, I highly recommend looking into a fee waiver.

How do you feel?

Relieved and anxious simultaneously. To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure if my applications will be successful this round, which would be a bummer because I don’t take academic rejection well. Fun but also sad fact: I’ve only ever been rejected from one school, and while it did bother me because the feedback was mean (or I at least perceived it to be), I felt okay in the end because I got into two programs at Oxford instead. But I know I will take any rejections really hard because I’ve had so much support from previous supervisors and researchers, and if I can’t do it this round, it’ll feel like a punch in the gut.

BUT considering my housing instability and difficult work period, I’m really proud that I tried. I have a lot of valuable knowledge if I were to apply again and I will be better prepared for it. This is an investment into my future and taking another year off to work, save money, and gain more experience is not a negative thing.

When will you hear back?

Most likely between February - April 2025. But I’m hoping I might get a call back about the recruitment weekends, as a couple of my prospective PIs had outlined I would be a strong candidate for this short-list. Some of the programs also have interviews so I might potentially hear back about interviews in mid-January.

I hope this overview was helpful for anyone who is thinking about applying to PhD programs in future years. In 2025, I plan on creating more specific posts for different stages of the application process such as how to reach out to prospective PIs, what to expect from the “interviews”, and how to write each component.

Happy holidays and talk soon in 2025!

Sending lots of love and warmth.