Ultimately, because of my GRE scores, gradepoint average, and economic situation, I settled on one university in particular that met the majority of requirements that I had outlined for myself. These requirements included cost per semester, probablity of getting a stipend, my own goals such as research topics/areas, and faculty with similar research interests. My decision on universities was also made much easier by traveling to my final two choices, meeting the faculty, speaking to current students in the department and generally hanging around a while. I spent about three days at each school and had set up some informal meetings with various faculty--who further introduced me to some of their students. Meeting and speaking to current students was a real plus. I think that I put more effort into making myself a visible entity than I did into my application letters. Fortunately this tactic worked well in my benefit because by the time I started my first semester I was on familiar terms with several of the faculty and students. And I never really felt the trauma of being one of the herd of new graduate students that semester.
Research First
I think that my application process was greatly aided by the research I had done prior to visiting the campuses. My meetings with the faculty and students were facilitated by well-thought out questions pertaining to several issues: course load, instructor style, student interaction, teaching methods, field work opportunities, departmental requirements and the like. My feeling is that this type of interaction gives the prosepective student an opportunity to demonstrate their seriousness and the faculty a chance to see their prospective students in a social and one-on-one setting. On a more candid note, I found that some faculty do take the opinions of their more tenured students to heart when considering new prospective students. It never hurts to meet and mingle with tenured students, provided you have done the requisite research on the department.As for myself, I found faculty members that were willing to accept me as a student. Although this is probably quite an unusual situation, I actually had an informally designed thesis topic by the time I left from my visit at the university I eventually attended. I had an idea of what I wanted to do, the faculty I wanted to study with, and a geographic region in which I wanted to specialize. It's possible I may have overprogrammed myself for these visits but for me these types of structured visits worked well.
