Getting into grad school
By Amy Brown-Bowers • Bankrate.com

The number of graduate programs and graduate students in Canada and around the world is rising each year.

"Certainly everybody I've spoken to in the US, Canada, Australia and the UK is talking about the growing number of students," says Douglas Peers, dean of graduate studies at York University. "The general trend right across the world is that numbers are going up."

The University of Toronto receives about 22,000 applications exclusively each year for its roughly 150 graduate programs. Simon Fraser University recently saw its number of graduate applications rise to about 6,000 from about 4,500 per year.

Applying to graduate school costs both time and money, and competition to get in can be fierce. If you are considering applying to graduate school, here are some things to think about early on in the process to make sure you put your best foot forward.

Research vs. professional programs
Before researching schools and programs, it's important to determine what type of graduate program suits your needs -- a PhD track or professional program.

"There's the category of doctoral stream, which is you're working towards a PhD and you're very much oriented toward academic scholarship. The other category is what we call professional Master's degrees, and that's a very fundamental distinction," says Susan Pfeiffer, dean of graduate studies and vice-provost of graduate education at the University of Toronto.

"I always tell students that if they want to go to grad school, first they have to think a little bit about why they want to go," Peers says. "Is it intense curiosity about a research question? A desire to teach? Professional upgrading? Applicants need to think about why they want to go because, in some ways, that's going to help them figure out the best way forward."