A free seminar taking students through the graduate school application process will be offered next Tuesday and Wednesday.

The two-day seminar is being presented by the University of Arizona Alumni Association, Panhellenic Association, the College of Arts and Sciences Student Advisory Committee and Kaplan Educational Centers.

The program is a chance for students to be walked step-by-step through the graduate school application process, said Shana Oseran, director of Kaplan Educational Center.

"Participants will receive handouts and books with information on everything from when to take the Graduate Record Exam to how an applicant should secure letters of recommendation," she said.

Randi Pollack, Panhellenic vice president for programming, said few programs have focused on what these seminars will offer.

"Other classes focus on the tests and statistics," she said. "They don't actually get into the application process."

Kent Rollins, executive vice president of the Alumni Association, said deans from graduate, law and business schools have agreed to attend the seminars.

Rollins said they invited deans from those three schools because they have the most competitive graduate programs.

"This is an important opportunity for them to encourage UA students to attend graduate school," Rollins said. "Enrollment has dropped in UA graduate programs lately because students are going to other schools."

He said that in addition to talks by the deans, Pat Harris, a Los Angeles attorney who has written books on graduate school admissions, will be the featured speaker.

The four campus organizations came together in the production of the seminars after realizing that they were all putting on the same programs individually within a week of each other.

The Alumni Association and Kaplan Educational Centers have been collaborating on similar programs since 1990. When they discovered that Panhellenic was planning practically the same event for the next night the two groups merged their efforts to form the two-day seminar.

"We then realized that the College of Arts and Sciences Student Advisory Committee was also putting on a program of the same nature a week after ours," said Laura Casper, Panhellenic cabinet member in charge of scholarship. "We invited them to join up too ."

She said by merging the two programs, they would be able to reach more students and cut competition for an audience between the different programs.

April White, advisory committee president, said, "Most students don't know we exist. This is really giving us a chance to get our name out to the campus."

Last spring, the advisory committee put on a similar event. White said about 60 students attended. The four organizations putting on next week's seminars are expecting 250 participants each night.

The seminars will take place Tuesday and Wednesday at 7 p.m. in the Memorial Student Union Arizona Ballroom. Both nights will cover the same material. The presentation will last approximately two hours.

Anyone who plans to attend needs to make reservations through Kaplan at 1-800-KAP-TEST. It is recommend that interested parties register by Friday to guarantee a space.

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