Seems to me, the best place to start (at least for now), is at the beginning. The application for graduate school is no less stressful than some of the stages within the degree process itself. After getting past the idea of 2-8 more years of being a poor little student you have a long way to go.
Step 1. Looking at potential grad schools. There are many websites through google and likely through your school that will allow you to search graduate schools by subject matter. (http://www.gradschools.com/; http://graduate-school.phds.org/) This is an okay starting point, maybe to find states or places in the world that tend to focus on your particular area of study. However, in order to make any real headway here, you need to go to each of those potential universities' websites and scope them out. Check out the grad school page and the homepage and get a feel for the environment. Most importantly, go to the department(s) of interest and look at the faculty. Read their little snipits about themselves and their research. Ultimately, you're picking an advisor and topic more than you are the school itself. When you find one(s) that pique your interest, e-mail them. COMMUNICATE!! This is where the soul selling begins. You need to sex yourself up, really sell YOU in order to get attention. After all, many times you are in very high competition. Also note I refer to sexing yourself up academically, not in the horror movie running across the yard at night in your panties with the sprinklers on sexy. Key difference. In your first email, act like a rent-a-bride. Be interested and suck up. Offer to send resume information and to chat more about what they do and where you are going. (Oh, and note: update your resume. Basically redesign it but only list things that are relevant. School, internships, serious jobs. Probably your job at Macy's isn't going to matter anymore, though technically I suppose it shows you have a good ability not to throttle stupid people. Your job at the library though, still good.). Whatever the case, ultimately it's the faculty member that decides whether you get into grad school (assuming you pass all the basic requirements in admin for the U of course). By the time you are ready to apply you want to have a good relationship with him/her and he/she WANTS to have you apply and use your app materials for the final decision. Even after you have this good relationship, keep in contact every week or every couple of weeks. Make sure you stay on their radar and use good things to talk about, publications, work, app stuff, etc. Don't write about the weather, these people get enough junk mail and you'll likely be ignore.
Alright, this got a little longer than I originally anticipated. More to come, after all it's a multi-step process. I'm signing off and leaving you with another deliciously dorky quote:
"Remember that there is nothing stable in human affairs; therefore avoid undue elation in prosperity, or undue depression in adversity." Socrates
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