Interview with Dr. Shirley Chan, Accepted Admissions Consultant [Show Summary]

In this episode you’ll hear Accepted’s own Dr. Shirley Chan share her soup-to-nuts perspective for graduate school applicants. She has worked as an academic advisor, career advisor, and admissions committee member and views the process holistically. During this show Dr. Chan provides information on how best to approach critical aspects of your application, including your statement of purpose, resume, and interview. She also provides insights particularly important to Asian applicants. Read on!

How to Get Into Grad School, and Get Jobs After Grad School [Show Notes]

Our guest today, Dr. Shirley Chan, is a Trojan through and through. She earned her Masters of Education and Doctor of Education from USC. She then went on to work as an academic advisor in USC’s computer science department where she advised students on which classes to take and how to best prepare themselves for life after graduation, whether that be grad school or jobs. Then she transferred to Marshall’s MBA program working with international students, and becoming the Senior Associate Director for MBA Admissions. Most recently she has worked in Career Management at Marshall and as an independent career consultant before becoming a consultant for Accepted this year.

The standard line in admissions is that admissions and higher ed is not a field people decide to go into in kindergarten. What has been its attraction to you? How did you get into it? [2:34]

In college I was a high school outreach coordinator, particularly in low-income communities, helping students apply for financial aid and scholarships. I found it really rewarding to guide students toward achieving academic and career success. Since then my career has been focused on higher education, developing students through academic advisement, career advisement, and admissions. I wanted to understand from the very beginning to the very end of the process, which is why I worked in all of these areas. I really felt drawn to admissions because having that beginning-to-end perspective made me really understand from a candidate’s perspective what they are looking for, what they cared about, and has allowed me to provide a life coaching approach when I work with my clients.

You recently joined Accepted as a consultant after 15 years in different advisory roles both in academics, admissions, and career management. On the graduate level both in the engineering and business world, how should career goals guide both the applicant and student? [5:06]

You don’t start driving until you know where you are going to go, so you really need to know your career path, or at least have a good idea of where you want to go, before you begin. Applicants need to explore in advance, because they will be spending lots of money and time on the program. They should speak with alums or current students, and look at career paths after, and really think about, “Is this the type of career I will want in the future?” For students already in a program they need to fine tune the function they want to do, and that will look different depending on the program. If they are going into electrical engineering, there might automatically be more focus, whereas someone getting an MBA will have a more versatile skillset and could go into finance, marketing, operations, etc. Talk to people and figure out the type of organization you want to work for – the type of culture, big or small, those types of things. For a business degree in particular yo...