Tips for Applying to Grad School

• As a first step request PAPER application packages from every school you want to apply to. The websites for this are without fail full of out of date, misleading misinformation. Maybe one day the on-line application route will make sense, but none of these departments were there yet (and if the computer science departments aren't there, I'm afraid of what the other departments are putting up).
• Find out about scholarships. In Ontario the big ones are NSERC and OGS. Some schools will penalize you financially if you haven't applied for these. Trying to find smaller scholarships is a good idea too (although I didn't do this personally yet... I think this is one of those things everyone says you SHOULD do, but no one actually does).
• Organize deadlines for schools and scholarships and get the reference forms out. Realize that the scholarship deadlines are probably WELL in advance of the school deadlines. Some schools will refer to their forms as "letters of reference". They aren't. They're little single sheets of paper for your references to say how wonderful you are.
• Make sure your references will say how wonderful you are. I've discovered that at least at one school (Waterloo) the application process involves "shopping" the application to interested faculty. If you have a reference from a professor working in the area you are applying to (very likely I hope), chances are good the person considering it will know them. Imagine if you got a reference letter from someone you knew. You'd take it pretty seriously, right?
• Give your references a reasonable length of time (3 weeks to a month), double that for when you'll actually need them. Of the 4 references I used while applying to NSERC and the schools, 2 of them had medical issues that significantly delayed me getting the forms back. It will happen to you too.
• Keep your ear to the ground. I found out weird things that significantly affected the application process, yet were never available in writing (e.g. that faculty sees my application at Waterloo, at some other school a comittee chooses all incoming students). I found out that at Victoria they get foreign applicants before Canadian and some faculty get assigned before the Canadian applications are received. So if you meet the deadline, you've actually missed out on some slots already. So the advice there was to meet the deadlines for FOREIGN students, not just Canadians. You CAN'T know these things ahead of time, so just keep your ears open, and don't feel bad about things you find out about too late to do anything about (although consider publishing them on the net to help others ;-)
• That's about all I can think of right now... Send me an e-mail with any additional tips.