TL;DR: Link to the article: Demystifying the American Graduate Admissions Process.

No. I’m not talking this post. I’m an undergrad in Hong Kong applying to US grad schools and am not at all qualified to write the most comprehensive article about US grad admissions.

However, I found an article that might worth such praise. It was produced by Karthik Raghunathan, a Stanford master’s alumnus who have served in the admissions committee and devoted his time make the article very comprehensive and detailed. The article introduced comprehensively in detail the order of importance of different factors and application materials, the each material affects admissions, and how decisions are made.

Karthic is a computer scienctist with an interest in artificial intelligence (specifically, natural language processing), so his experience should be especially useful for people applying to the currently very hot AI programs.

The article is definitely one of the best materials that helped me understand the admission process and criteria, if not the best. Hope you enjoy and learn a lot from it.