Applying to graduate school is a terrifying experience.

I can tell you this after sending in only two applications. With several more deadlines in January, things can only get worse.

Graduate programs waste their time by mulling over candidate submissions and comparing personal statements. Truthfully, anyone surviving the application process deserves an automatic letter of acceptance for bravery under pressure and intelligence in the face of extreme ambiguity.

On the other hand, willingness to subject yourself to such an arduous and nerve-racking process probably proves you are a moron and therefore don’t deserve a spot in graduate school anyway.

Sarcasm aside, the spectacle of graduate school application offers an intriguing look at the true dynamics of power.

Graduate school applicants are serfs?peasant workers writhing anxiously under the intense glare of admissions deans. Those controlling admissions?the deans and graduate faculty?are the slave drivers. They control the lives and destinies of the hopeful.

Applying to graduate school would not pose such a challenge if we knew what our lords wanted.

For instance, graduate schools require a personal statement. Admissions officers exercise substantial power over students who engage in a guessing game of what graduate programs want.

Tell us why you want to pursue graduate study?

Let’s rephrase that:

Tell us just why the hell we should let you in? And be brief about it, please! I’m busy debating my colleagues on how many angels can fit on the head of a pin.

Do they want my goals? My favorite decade in American history? Which element I would date if the periodic table were an escort service? Or how about a juicy tale of personal trial? Nobody likes sob stories, but nobody can resist them either.

Some schools offer more direction. The University of Virginia’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, for instance, doesn’t want students rambling on about why they love a particular subject matter. Virginia’s Web site says, “Your commitment to a selected field of study is assumed; we want you to discuss some of the problems and issues that particularly engage your mind.”

Does Virginia’s philosophy hold true for all schools? Who knows?

Ask three different professors what they think, and you’ll get three different answers.

“Focus on your area of expertise so they know you’ve got ideas.”

“What idiot told you that? Set yourself apart by writing something personal.”

“You’re applying to graduate school? That’s hilarious!”

In taking advice, pick a professor you trust. That person may not get you in, but a good professor on your side helps alleviate the power imbalance of you against the graduate school apparatus.

If personal statements seem confusing, the remaining instructions on an application may as well appear in Latin.

The graduate school itself needs part of your submission. Other portions go to the specific department in which you plan to study. Of course, different schools have different breakdowns, and it’s never clear exactly what goes where for a particular application.

Imagine the trauma of being rejected by a graduate school because page 248 went to office K and sheet 249 ended up in room L, instead of vice versa.

As if worrying about grades and writing samples wasn’t enough, now your fate lies in the hands of the postal service and the campus mail of some strange university.

The near impossibility of flawlessly filling out all forms and correctly addressing each envelope demonstrates one’s intelligence and deserves consideration as an automatic ticket into graduate school.

Ultimately, this charade represents a supreme display of power. If an admissions officer ordered applicants to write the personal statement while standing on one foot, we’d all do it. No questions asked.

Your application must be written in your own blood. And you must include an 8-by-10 photo of yourself sitting in a tiger cage wearing a coat made of pork chops. Send at least one severed limb to prove the photo was not doctored.

An eager applicant’s only response? “What the quickest way to the zoo?” Somewhere, admissions deans must be chuckling at the novelty of wielding such influence?not because they should or would use it, but because they could.

Finally, these challenges and attempts at mind-reading are pointless if you can’t ace your favorite standardized test. Choose from an array of delicious flavors: GRE, LSAT, GMAT and MCAT.

What about the NRA and ACLU?

The makers of these tests wield inordinate power by defining what students should learn. These exams supposedly measure your intelligence and ability to succeed in graduate school.

It is impossible to prove whether the LSAT accurately predicts your success in law school because each college accepts a crop of students whose LSAT scores correlate with the reputation of that institution.

Yet each school, no matter how good, fails some students while graduating others with honors.

For example, according to U.S. News and World Report, the average student enrolled at Yale Law School scores between 167 and 174 on the LSAT. The average at the University of Maryland is between 150 and 159. Yet both schools grade on a curve. This means you could score a 167 on your LSAT and flunk out of law school at Yale, while you might score a 159 and graduate near the top of your class at Maryland.

The LSAT can’t predict your future law school performance, because there is no significant LSAT variation among those who attend the same schools. Anyone claiming otherwise is mistaken.

As for measuring intelligence, such tests only gauge your ability to answer the questions posed. If admissions deans consider a high GRE score the sign of intelligence, then the writers of these exams have pulled a coup and defined what makes a person smart.

Perhaps the biggest joke is the volume of study guides available that all say the same thing: We’ll help you get a higher score through effective guessing and anticipation of what questions will appear. No one even pretends that these tests measure intelligence. If the exams were an accurate gauge, no amount of preparation or advice would help.

Yet standardized tests loom large in the graduate school admissions process, reflecting the power of the test makers.

Consider the fact that graduate school admissions deans possess executive judgment over who gets in. Writing samples?term papers that display the type of work a student can do?get mailed to the individual academic departments. Test scores? They go straight to the admissions dean.

We seek to impress these deans with personal statements and test scores that supposedly reflect our intelligence.

Test makers and admissions deans maintain the power to define intelligence. They hold the attention of those who sit on the outside, desperately seeking an invitation in.

James welcomes feedback at: [email protected] or send letters to the editor to: [email protected].