Tips to Apply to Criminal Justice School

You have decided on a major and it’s criminal justice. You have even selected the schools that you are interested in attending. The question now is how do you get in? Fortunately, there are a couple of simple tricks and tools you can use to increase your odds of being accepted.

First, and perhaps most importantly, keep your criminal record clean. If you want to be accepted to a reputable criminal justice program, you should probably not have any felonies or serious misdemeanors in your past. While this is not a huge issue for all programs, for more selective and competitive programs, it could put a black spot on your application. While avoiding drug use is probably a good piece of life advice anyway, it is uniquely important when you want to get a degree pertaining to criminal activity. This is just something to consider.

Next, do what you can to make your background as impressive as possible. Does your high school offer any courses on criminal justice, criminal psychology, or public administration? Take them, and be sure to get good grades. This will tell the people reviewing your application that you are serious about a career in criminal justice, and have taken the steps to prepare. Amp up your extracurricular and volunteer work as well. Is there a volunteer police program in your community? Sign up. Can you work with the D.A.R.E. program in your area? Try it out. These are all things that will be impressive as people review your application.

You should also spend a good amount of time crafting a good personal statement. As you write it, make sure you keep in mind that the people who are going to be reading it have probably been reading generic essays about wanting to give back for days on end. Make yours unique. Tell a story about your life that is interesting and shows a proclivity for a career in criminal justice. If you can present yourself as an engaging and charismatic candidate, you have a better chance of being accepted into a program.

Finally, make sure you have excellent recommendations. For criminal justice programs in particular, your character is often taken into consideration. Try to have one academic, one professional, and one personal recommendation letter written for you. Go out of your way to ask people who you know you very well, and will be good at writing the letters. If you have a chance to get a community leader to write one for you, jump on it, especially if they work in the local government or, better yet, are on the police force. Recommendations will push you above and beyond the average applicants, so make sure you select your writers carefully.