ernment agencies, but who are inappropriate candidates to
recommend the applicant for graduate study in psychology.
For example, one KOD occurred when
an applicant included a letter of recommendation from a state
senator who was a friend of the family and only knew the ap
-
plicant as a child and adolescent. The letter said little about
the applicant and described the senator’s powerful role in
overseeing the funding of higher education in the state.
Discussion and Recommendations
Although the KODs identified in this study reflect unwise
choices on the part of applicants, we believe many of these
KODs resulted more from a lack of appropriate advising and
mentoring than from a lack of applicants’ intelligence. Unless
undergraduate psychology programs provide appropriate ad
-
vising and mentoring opportunities, their majors are likely to
commit many of these KODs because of a lack of exposure to
information that would otherwise enable them to understand
the graduate school culture, the requirements of the graduate
school application process, and the exact nature of some of its
components. For example, an unmentored psychology major
may interpret a personal statement at face value by perceiv
-
ing it as an opportunity to share personal (i.e., private) infor
-
mation with the members of a graduate admissions
committee. Unless applicants know that a personal state-
ment should address issues such as research interests and per-
ceived fit with a program, they may misinterpret its purpose
and write personal statements that inadvertently doom their
applications. Similarly, an unmentored student may interpret
a letter of recommendation as a request for information from
a person who knows her or him well and can vouch for her or
his admirable traits and strong values (e.g., a family member
or a member of the clergy).
We believe undergraduate psychology programs can pre-
pare their students to construct successful graduate school
applications that do not contain KODs in the following three
ways: (a) mentoring, (b) academic advising, and (c) teaching
classes designed to prepare students for their lives after un
-
dergraduate school. Keith-Spiegel and Wiederman (2000)
defined a mentor as “an established professional in the stu
-
dent’s general study area who facilitates the student’s under
-
graduate accomplishments and the path to graduate school”
(p. 67). Although some departments may have official
mentoring programs, most mentor–protégé relationships are
likely to develop when students participate in research con
-
ducted by faculty. Departments can help their students un
-
derstand the importance of research participation in the
graduate school selection process by sponsoring informal so
-
cial gatherings for undergraduates to talk with graduate stu
-
dents (Appleby, 2000b). Likewise, departments can promote
mentoring by engaging in community-building strategies that
encourage closer relationships among students and faculty
(Appleby, 2000a). Effective mentoring of undergraduate stu
-
dents can help them attain the research and classroom expe
-
riences that facilitate strong letters of recommendation,
compelling personal statements, and proficient writing skills.
These experiences can help students avoid KODs in their
graduate applications.
Academic advising is a second strategy that departments
can use to help their undergraduates avoid KODs. Ware et
al. (1993) described the role of advisers in preparing their
advisees for their postbaccalaureate educational aspirations:
Advisers may encourage students to seek a match between
personal characteristics (e.g., values, interests, skills, etc.) and
characteristics of the graduate program. Additional advising
tasks include establishing a realistic time line, preparing appli
-
cations (including a goals statement), taking the Graduate
Record Examination (or other standardized test), and select
-
ing faculty to write letters of recommendation. (p. 58)
This process, known as developmental advising (Crookston,
1972), reflects the conscious effort of advisors to help
advisees understand how their undergraduate program can
help them develop into the people they wish to become
(Appleby, 2002). Unfortunately, this type of time-
consuming, one-on-one advising may not be available to all
psychology majors because many departments lack the hu
-
man resources to provide it.
The third strategy to help students avoid KODs is to pro
-
vide them with a class that familiarizes them with the nature
of graduate education and the graduate application process.
Oles and Cooper (1988) described a class titled Professional
Seminar that allowed “one faculty member, together with
volunteer help, to provide 150 students with 13–14 hours of
academic advising each semester for a total of 1400 contact
hours” (p. 63). Although the primary focus of this class was to
familiarize students with their program’s faculty, curriculum,
and research opportunities, it also included information
about graduate school and required its enrollees to write a pa-
per that included “their plans for graduate school” (p. 62).
Classes of this nature have increased in the 17 years since
Oles and Cooper described their pioneering seminar. Now
34.2% of psychology departments that answered a survey
about this type of class reported offering one (Landrum,
Shoemaker, & Davis, 2003).
The purpose of these classes is to provide students with
academic and career advising information that may other
-
wise be unavailable, overlooked, or ignored. When taught
well and taken seriously, these classes provide students with
the guidance and encouragement they need to identify their
career goals and understand how they can use their under
-
graduate curricular and extracurricular opportunities to ac
-
complish these goals (Appleby, 2003b). When Landrum et
al. (2003) asked departments that offered such a class how
important it was for enrollees to gain knowledge about 33
issues typically taught in these classes, the ratings (on a 0 to
3 scale, with 3 being extremely important) were 2.50 for
“know the information needed to apply to graduate pro
-
grams,” 2.30 for “know how to apply to graduate school,”
and 2.11 for “know the value of letters of recommendation”
(p. 49). Students who possess this type of knowledge are
much less likely to commit KODs than their peers who are
unaware of this information.
Not all psychology departments possess the resources to
offer their students a full range of mentoring, advising, and
academic opportunities designed to prevent them from com
-
mitting KODs in the graduate school application process.
However, we believe that most departments can provide at
22 Teaching of Psychology