Guest Author - Stephanie A. Allen

Now that you’ve been accepted into your top graduate program, are you feeling anxious? Unworthy? Like perhaps the admissions committee has made a mistake, maybe they didn’t really mean to let you into their program? Well, you may just have a case of what is commonly known as imposter syndrome. Most graduate students at some point in their studies, usually early in their studies, start to doubt their ability to be successful in their programs. It begins with a sense of disbelief: wondering why they picked you out of all the other applicants with similar or even higher GRE scores and GPAs, near perfect writing samples and glowing letters of recommendation. It gradually escalates into pure panic, but believe me, these feelings are nothing new. It’s what’s commonly known as imposter syndrome, and you are not the first to experience it.

Getting accepted into graduate school is the culmination of a long and arduous process in which you do everything possible to differentiate yourself from the hundreds of other applicants who have applied to the same programs as you. After taking (or retaking) the GRE, working for years to perfect your GPA, writing and rewriting your statement of purpose and writing sample, and begging for letters of recommendation from professors who may not even remember your name; not to mention the months of waiting to find out whether you’ve been accepted or not, you should be celebrating your acceptance, rather than ruminating over whether or not you were truly good enough to get in. The reality is that you were good enough to get in; otherwise they would have rejected you. Nevertheless, it’s common; and even expected, that new graduate students will feel some sort of anxiety surrounding their ability to actually do the work they’ve been preparing themselves to do for the past several years. Graduate school is tough. And it’s not for everyone. But guess what? They picked you! That means that you really are good enough, and someone in that program wants to work with you.

So rather than driving yourself into an early grave worrying about whether or not you can do the work, start preparing yourself mentally, physically, and financially so that you can do the work. If you’ve been out of school for a while, set up a reading schedule for the summer and get caught up on some of the literature in your field. Develop a work-out schedule now that you can use when classes start; exercising is a great way to relieve stress, and hey, it’ll keep you from gaining that graduate school gut. Another good thing to do is to create a budget. Graduate school stipends can be pretty modest so you’ll need to learn how to live on a budget.

In any event, celebrate your accomplishments and don’t worry about being an imposter. If you weren’t good enough, they wouldn’t have let you in. So don’t worry, they like you, they really like you!