Every grad student I know talks about how much they hate being a grad student.
That's funny, every grad student I know is hungry as hell,
and about it.
Grad school means one thing more than anything else--research! If you dig laboriously digging for information and understanding, than you're it!
I am waiting to hear back from six PhD programs right now, and can't fucking wait to get back into the classroom (and/or conference room).
This makes a
big difference--whether you are just going for a terminal Masters, or a PhD.
Nobody will give you any money if you merely go for a Masters. If you commit to the PhD, and get accepted into a program...
FELLOWSHIPS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.
Seriously, in every PhD program I have applied to, acceptance automatically comes with a mouth-watering fellowship with full tuition, gnarly/yearly living stipend, health benefits, and summer research grants. You are expected to have something groundbreaking and publishable after you've successfully defended your doctoral thesis, but that's just another bonus.
Letters of Rec.--Start as ahead of time as possible, professors are really busy people.
Definitely a bonus if in your undergrad time, you did some kind of Honors/independent study research, and the resulting paper (which should be at least 20 pages long), is related to the direction you want to follow in your grad research.
Which reminds me, everything I am saying here, is based on the Humanities. In the Humanities, you are expected to have at least some kind of general idea of what you want to concentrate on in your research--this is not the case in other fields.
And finally,
perhaps nothing is more important than your statement of purpose, so get it into as many hands as possible, and plan on having to revise it oftener than anything else you have written. An outstanding statement can offset mediocre grades and shitty GRE scores (by the way, a lot of schools consider the GRE scores
the least important facet of your application). But seriously, as you will read anywhere, it is difficult to overstate the importance of an incredible statement.
Good luck brother!
Edit: With regards to the whole Masters/PhD decision you have to make, keep in mind that, in a way, some schools
kind of penalize you for having a masters, because they will not give you advanced standing on that work--especially if it was done at another institution. I'm not real clear on the determining logic and politics behind all of this though.
What I do know is, it is rare for a school/program to require anything more than a BA for consideration for acceptance.