On Thursday, I attended a seminar about how to start planning for graduate school.  Among the very useful tips that I learned, I realized just how little I actually know about the process and grad school in general.  As someone who is not completely sure of their career goals, I have never really considered the details of what grad school applications would be like.  Considering that I have not even officially declared my major, grad school is not something I am currently thinking about.  However, I am glad that I attended this event, as I learned just how important it is to start thinking about it early.  One of the most important things stressed in the seminar was that, before applying, you must consider if grad school is necessary for your professional goals and, furthermore, exactly what you would want to study and research.  After hearing more about the details of applying, I feel that I can start to consider how my experiences and classes at Cornell now would translate into a grad school application.  Another aspect of this event that I found really interesting was the differences between undergraduate and graduate school applications.  I am used to the undergrad college application mindset that it was in part surprising to hear about how grad schools are considered to be good based on their programs, faculty, and research rather than a national ranking and “prestige” such as with undergrad.  Putting myself into this alternate mentality will definitely help if I decide to apply to grad school in the future!