Graduate AdmissionSearch Techniques

You can search in a surprising variety of ways. The simplest keyword search will retrieve the greatest number of results--often not what you want. A more complex search will retrieve fewer results, but each one is more likely to be what you are looking for. Note that many of these techniques are used in all the search programs you will encounter on the Web.

SINGLE KEYWORD SEARCH
For example, Drama. This is the simplest kind of search and is likely to return hundreds or thousands of entries.

MULTIPLE KEYWORD SEARCH
For example, Internet and training or training or courses. Use the modifiers AND and OR to link keywords together into a single search. Keywords linked by AND will return all entries that contain BOTH of the keywords. Keywords linked by OR will return all entries that contain EITHER of them.

PHRASE SEARCH
For example, "Electrical Engineering". Place multiple words inside quotation marks to get results that contain that exact phrase.

LIMITED SEARCH
For example, Title:rotunda. You can limit searches to particular fields of the Web document by entering that field followed by a colon and a keyword. The entry Title:rotunda will only return entries that have the word "rotunda" in the document's title. Other fields to which you can restrict a search include: Author, Abstract, Title, Full-Text, and Update-Time

COMBINED TECHNIQUES
You can combine the techniques listed above into a complex search such as "World Wide Web" and (Title:Library) and (training or courses).

Remember that you can also conduct a:
Search with custom Query Options and Display Settings.