A Guide for Applying to Grad School With ADHD

For many of us with ADHD, school was not our happy place. Personally, if you want to see the worst side of my ADHD symptoms, just do the following: stick me in a classroom, ask me to listen to a 1-hour lecture, and then give me an exam about it.

Yet despite my ambivalence about school for most of my life, I found myself wanting to apply to grad school. You see, I discovered my passion for psychology research — and at some point, a career in research leads you to a PhD program.

Whatever their individual interests, many people with ADHD will find themselves in a similar position: wanting to apply to graduate school for their career goals, but wary of their past experiences with ADHD in the education system.

This guide is for ADHDers in that position. I will cover issues I dealt with applying to grad school with ADHD: the decision to go for a PhD in the first place, how to deal with aspects of the application like recommendation letters and one’s previous academic record, whether to disclose ADHD, and so on.

I am speaking from my own experience. Everyone’s journey to grad school with ADHD is a little different, so you should feel free to ignore any of my advice that doesn’t resonate with you. But I hope others with ADHD will be able to glean something useful from my experience with graduate admissions.

My experience was that I applied to graduate school three times. I applied twice semi-successfully right after college. By “semi-successfully,” I mean that I was admitted to some schools but ultimately decided not to go. After that I took a long break from the academic world. I started a business, traveled the world, and then later got a job in a psychology research lab.

Finally, I applied to graduate school a third time and attended one of my top choices. Here’s what I learned along the way.

Is graduate school right for someone with ADHD?

At college graduation, I had trudged across the finish line with a sense of exhaustion and relief more than accomplishment. When I thought back to my time in college with ADHD, it seemed silly to even consider going back for another round in grad school. After all, a classroom is not necessarily the environment where those with ADHD naturally shine. So is a huge academic commitment like enrolling in a PhD program really the right choice for someone with ADHD?

This is where your personal goals and experiences become important. For me the answer was yes, for the following reasons:

• Graduate school is different than college: College is often an exercise in attending lectures, following instructions, crunching through homework, and taking exams. In that setting, ADHD symptoms can wreak havoc. Typically, grad school will be more focused on training toward a specific career. For example, in a PhD program, the emphasis is on time spent doing research. As someone with ADHD, this type of work fits much better with my need for autonomy, variety, novelty, and concrete goals. Consequently, I find myself much more motivated in a graduate program than a college classroom.
• Passion is king: The best reason to attend graduate school is if you have a singular passion and career goal that you are laser-focused on, and a grad program is the only way to further that passion. Graduate school is challenging for everyone, and the way to make it through is to go in with a burning passion for a specific topic. In my case, I couldn’t imagine myself doing anything other than psychology research, so I went to a psychology PhD program. This kind of environment can be a good fit for ADHDers, who often hyperfocus on certain interests and who need to be working toward meaningful goals to stay motivated.

The takeaway is that grad school can be right for someone with ADHD, if they understand that grad school is not college 2.0 (which is a good thing!), if they have an intense passion for a certain topic, and if the only way to pursue their career goal is through graduate study.

When is the right time for graduate school?

It’s often said that for a relationship to work you have to meet the right person at the right time. In fact, the same is true for graduate admissions: you have to apply to the right graduate program at the right time.

Some of the factors that make it the “right time” are ones you can control, and some are not. The most important factor that’s in your control is to apply at a time when you have the preparation to succeed in your chosen graduate program.

I am a big believer that it’s better to attend grad school too late rather than too early. I took a long break between college and graduate school, making me one of the oldest in my PhD program — but I don’t regret it at all. A few years of preparation before throwing yourself into the grad admissions cycle can give you all of the following:

• Real-world experience to know that you are passionate about your chosen field of study
• Building skills and a CV relevant to your chosen field
• Building connections that will help with aspects of your application such as recommendation letters
• Learning more coping strategies for ADHD that will serve you well under the pressures of graduate study

The right time to apply to graduate school depends both on your personal journey and the type of program you are applying for. A PhD program, an MBA program, a master’s program targeted at recent college graduates, and an MD program all have different expectations in terms of applicants’ level of experience.

But the main point is that many people with ADHD will take non-linear paths that put them applying to grad school later than their peers. If you find yourself wondering “is it too late for me to apply to grad school?” the answer is usually no.

Laying the groundwork

Once you have made the decision to apply for graduate school, the next step is to start strategizing about how to do it — and to start laying the groundwork early.

Those of us with ADHD have a tendency to procrastinate on important tasks. Graduate applications are a time to be aware of that tendency and try to counteract it.

I started preparing in earnest about 6 months before my graduate admissions deadlines, and I recommend starting even earlier than that. Laying the groundwork includes:

• Researching potential graduate programs and making a list of schools you are interested in
• Reaching out to professors at those programs, if relevant (this depends on your field of study)
• Lining up letters of recommendation (and giving your letter writers ample time to do their part)
• Studying for tests like the GRE or GMAT, if necessary
• Drafting your personal statements (you’ll want time to iterate through multiple versions)

Of course, all of these tasks can be done on a more compressed or a lengthier timeline. But it’s ideal to give yourself enough time to avoid cutting corners. In my case, I felt that because of the excitement and stress of applying to graduate school, I was able to overcome some of my usual procrastinatory tendencies. (But I still wish I’d started earlier!)

The other type of advance planning that’s less exciting but necessary is financial planning. Depending on what type of graduate program you enroll in, you’ll either be paying tuition fees, or not earning any money, or earning a very modest graduate stipend. I tried to live frugally for a couple years in advance of graduate school to build some savings in preparation.

Should I disclose ADHD?

For those with ADHD, coping with ADHD is an import part of our personal journeys. It is natural to wonder if one should disclose an ADHD diagnosis in graduate applications. After all, the journey of a person with ADHD is one of resilience and perseverance — valuable qualities in a graduate applicant.

The flip side is that ADHD stigma remains very much alive and well. The person reviewing your application may see an ADHD diagnosis as a liability rather than evidence of resilience, or they may simply not know much about ADHD at all.

Disclosing ADHD is a personal choice, but my choice was that I did not reference ADHD at all in my graduate applications. As far as I’m concerned, there is a time and a place for spreading ADHD awareness, but graduate applications (and job applications) are not it.

When you apply to graduate school with ADHD, the question of how you will cope with ADHD in graduate school will likely be a topic on your mind. But you do not want it to be a topic on the mind of the admissions committee. Rather, you want the topic on their minds to be your accomplishments and the evidence of your potential.

In general, academics and admissions officers vary widely in their knowledge of ADHD. There may be exceptions if you are dealing with an audience that you have strong reason to believe will be sympathetic to an ADHD diagnosis. But it is always good to tread carefully when discussing mental health in graduate applications. Stigmatizing attitudes remain prevalent and admissions officers are flooded with applications — they aren’t likely to change their attitudes toward mental health while scrambling to perform their admissions duties.

One reason ADHD is relevant to graduate admissions is that an ADHD diagnosis may help shed light on some application weaknesses, like a poor GPA in an otherwise stellar application. However, there are often ways to address those weaknesses without explicitly disclosing an ADHD diagnosis. If you can demonstrate your resilience and coping skills without explicitly introducing the wildcard of ADHD into the minds of the admissions officers, it can be a win-win.

Overcoming a mediocre GPA

Graduate school admissions almost always involves a review of the applicant’s college GPA and transcript. That may be unwelcome news for many applicants with ADHD, if they have college records that are middling (or worse than middling). College GPAs often do not reflect ADHDers’ full potential to succeed in their chosen field.

The good news is that graduate admissions committees are aware that undergraduate GPA is a relatively poor predictor of graduate success. Consequently, undergraduate grades are only one data point that admissions committees look at, and it often isn’t the most important.

The most effective way to overcome a mediocre GPA in grad admissions is to have concrete work or research experience that is more recent than your GPA and that demonstrates your potential to thrive in graduate school. This is why a little extra time gaining work experience in your chosen field can be particular helpful for ADHDers: it gives the admissions committee hard evidence that your potential exceeds your college GPA and that you are on an upward trajectory.

Letters of recommendation can also help overshadow a stinker of a GPA. Recommendations from established people in your field of study provide firsthand testimonials of your skills and potential, and firsthand testimonials are more powerful than a GPA. (More on this in the next section.)

Finally, your statement of purpose (or personal statement) is the place to tie these aspects of your application together and make your case. In particular, you want to emphasize your accomplishments in your field so far, and how you have learned and gained skills since college. Again, you do not need to explicitly tie your underwhelming college record to ADHD. You may or may not mention your college record at all. By emphasizing your ongoing passion for your field, your concrete experience and skills, your accomplishments since college, and your plans for the future, you show that you have what it takes to thrive in grad school and that your GPA is an irrelevant number.

The importance of recommendation letters

If your statement of purpose is the place where you make your case as a graduate applicant, your recommendation letters are the place where other people make your case. And that makes the recommendation letters critical.

For applicants with ADHD, whose stats on paper (GPA, test scores, etc.) may not reflect their full potential, the recommendation letters are even more important. Here, established people in your field can attest to the qualities that make you stand out, which may not be apparent on paper.

You want to line up your recommendation writers far in advance of admissions deadlines, and talk with them about your goals so that they can write letters that emphasizes your relevant strengths and experience.

The recommendation letters can also be an effective place to tackle concerns arising from ADHD symptoms, like a spotty academic record. For example, a supervisor or mentor who can attest to your work ethic, motivation, and resilience can be a powerful way to put admissions committees at ease over a poor GPA. This kind of recommendation letter can implicitly reassure admissions committees about the impact of your ADHD symptoms, without ever even explicitly mentioning ADHD.

Of course, strong recommendation letters from people relevant to your chosen field of graduate study are not always easy to obtain. It requires having supervisors or mentors who know you well and see your strengths — and who know how to write letters of recommendation, for that matter. Even successful graduate applicants may have a range of recommendation letters, such as some letters that are excellent and some that are good but more generic.

With that said, it is worth the extra time to build work experience and connections, in order to have letter writers who advocate for you. For applicants with ADHD, the letters of recommendation can become a key piece of evidence that your strengths go far beyond your numbers on paper.

Dealing with the GRE (and other standardized tests)

Standardized tests can be a mixed bag for people with ADHD. On one hand, a strong standardized test score can partly compensate for other weaknesses, such as an underwhelming GPA. On the other hand, careless mistakes or time management difficulties may leave ADHDers with test scores that do not indicate their true abilities.

In the past several years, an increasing number of graduate programs have been deprioritizing standardized admissions tests like the GRE, either by making the tests optional or dropping them altogether. That may leave applicants with ADHD, who are not keen on standardized testing to begin with, wondering whether it’s worth the effort to take a test like the GRE at all.

The short answer is that it is a personal decision (like many parts of graduate applications). In this case, you have to know the requirements for the programs you’re applying to and your own inclinations toward standardized testing. Then you can make a decision about whether it’s worth investing the effort.

My view is that if you are applying to a program where standardized tests are optional, having a good test score can add a little extra to your application and help reassure the admissions committee about any ADHD-related problems in your academic record. So it may be worth the time to prepare for the test, see what score you get, and then include it in your application if it seems helpful.

If you end up deciding to take a graduate admissions test like the GRE or GMAT, the biggest favor you can do for yourself is to start practicing early and often. Especially if you have been out of school for a while, it may take some time to get back into the habit of taking tests and to remember everything you need to know about triangles and quadratic equations (for example). Additionally, there are certain types of problems that reliably crop up on tests like the GRE, and the way to become fluent with those problems is to practice.

I worked through the official GRE practice books and some supplementary books (e.g., from Manhattan) with additional problems. I started months before I took the GRE, and I made a habit of practicing frequently. In the end, my test score had a few more careless mistakes factored into it than I would have liked (I’ve come to accept that this is inevitable for me on standardized tests). But it was still much better than if I had not prepared or if I had crammed my preparation on short notice.

For many graduate programs (e.g., PhD programs focused on research), standardized test scores are not going to make or break your application. But having taken a long time away from school, I felt that a decent standardized test score was useful to show that I still had the “bread-and-butter” academic skills to be a student.

Interview time!

Graduate admissions starts with a flurry of writing essays, filling out applications, contacting letter writers, and all the other tasks to be completed by the application deadline. And once the deadline passes and your materials are submitted, then you wait. And wait. And then, eventually, may get invited for a graduate admissions interview.

In the case of interviews, I do not have too much ADHD-specific advice, other than the general advice you can already find in guides for all applicants: do your research on the program before you interview, and be prepared to explain your reasons for pursuing graduate study.

Instead, I just wanted to share a more basic message: don’t be too hard on yourself during the stress of graduate interviews, and don’t feel the need to be perfect. In one of my own graduate interviews, I mistook a famous professor who I should have recognized for a graduate student. Being inclined to over-interpret everything during the pressure of an interview, I thought I had toasted my chances with that inattentive slip, but in fact I ended up attending that graduate program.

Your interview may be your first face-to-face interaction with the people who are your potential future professors and colleagues. In this sense, it is also a good time to start noticing the less tangible factors that may be best observed in person: the work environment and the “culture” of the graduate program. For people with ADHD, being in an environment that is a good fit can make all the difference in successful coping. It’s good to keep this in mind as you start to discover more about a program.

After graduate admissions

Your graduate admissions journey (and believe me, it will feel like a journey by the time you’re done!) will end one of two possible ways: either you will be accepted to a graduate program, or you will be rejected. Because graduate admissions decisions are inherently unpredictable, one has to be prepared for either outcome, and I will cover them both below.

Outcome 1: Congrats, you got accepted!

Following the hard work and anxious waiting of graduate applications, an acceptance can be a huge relief. It’s an accomplish to celebrate. I still remember vividly receiving an acceptance to the school I ended up attending.

But there is still work to be done. Once a graduate program decides that they want you, you have to decide if you want them. In particular, this stage is where you have to carefully consider what your future life in that graduate program will look like and where it will lead you.

There are many considerations in choosing a graduate program to attend, but the one that is most relevant to ADHD is assessing whether this is a work environment where you will be able to thrive with ADHD. You want to gather as much information about the day-to-day life and “culture” of the graduate program as possible.

How do students feel about their experience? Do they feel supported? Are their academic, personal, and career needs accommodated flexibly? What hours do they work? What is the culture of working remotely vs. in person? How are collaborations structured? What is the style of the mentors you would be working with? What mental health resources are available to students? You should learn as much as possible about these questions and more, through conversations with current students of the program, graduates of the program, faculty, and anyone outside the program who knows its reputation.

This is also a time where you can ask more pointed questions about the program’s culture that you may not have had time to ask during your interview, or that you may not have been comfortable asking. If you have any lingering concerns about the program or about what it might be like to cope with ADHD there, this is the time to seek out information: the school has made an offer to you, but you have not yet committed to them.

Choosing to attend a graduate program is a big commitment. The goal is to learn as much as possible in advance so that you know what to expect when you arrive.

Outcome 2: Oh no, you got rejected!

It can be crushing to pour your energy into graduate applications only to get a rejection letter (or a stack of ’em) in the end. Yet this outcome is common: many people who go on to thrive in grad school have to apply more than once.

The key is to remember what I said earlier: getting into a graduate program requires applying to the right program at the right time.

Sometimes the first time isn’t the right time. Often, that is due to factors outside your control — the idiosyncrasies of what a particular admissions committee is looking for in a given year. But the best strategy is to focus on the factors that you do control.

If you end up having to wait a year and try again, that means using the interim time to gain more experience and improve your application. It doesn’t exactly take away the sting of rejection in the moment, but the experience gained in an additional year before reapplying to grad school can work to one’s advantage in the end.

Those with ADHD and a history of academic difficulties might be tempted to take a rejection as a sign that grad school isn’t for them. But it’s likely just a sign that graduate admissions is both highly competitive and highly random, and an opportunity to prepare for one more year and come back even stronger the second time around.

The wild ride of graduate admissions with ADHD

Graduate admissions can be a wild ride, and so can life with ADHD. Put the two together, and what do you get? A doubly wild ride filled with painstaking preparations, looming deadlines, anxious waiting, and open-ended uncertainty, all while coping with ADHD symptoms.

Why do grad school hopefuls put ourselves through this? Because graduate applications are a means to an end — they are a step toward pursuing the topics and careers that ignite our passion! And for people with ADHD, pursuing the things that spark your passion is an essential part of staying motivated and coping.

The uncertainty is what makes applying to grad school stressful, but also what makes it exciting. It is the blank slate for your next chapter. Good luck as you write that next chapter (because a little luck never hurts in graduate admissions). Hopefully you were able to find something useful in this guide, or at least something to commiserate with. If you have other tips for applying to graduate school with ADHD, feel free to leave a comment below!