The two body problem. Difficult but not impossible. I’m a veteran.
Almost 30 years ago, while I was still in a PhD program, my wife applied to 10 PhD programs in cities where I could likely find a job after I graduated. She got into 2 and chose the one in the city that was most difficult for me to find a job. That choice made sense because although that one offered no funding for year 1, and we had to pay out of pocket, later years were guaranteed, whereas the other choice was only guaranteed for 1 year, but not guaranteed afterwards, and the existing graduate students complained to her about the baiting and switching.
I’ve recently watched two daughters and two of my employees apply to graduate school in the last two years. My uber academic D1 had 4 out of 10 admits, D2 had 2 out of 7 admits, my first employee had 1 out of 6 admits and an unfunded consolation Masters admit. The second employee is waitlisted at two schools and denied at all of his other choices.
Here’s what I’ve learned. Because admissions decisions are made by professors, unless a professor has specifically told you that he will admit you and take you on as a student, THERE ARE NO SAFETIES. It’s just not a concept that makes sense for graduate school because it’s so individual.
To make this work, I think that you have to both cast a really wide net. You should each have professors as undergraduate mentors in the specific areas that you want to work from your undergraduate institution in who will be writing your most important recommendation. Ask them each to generate a list of at least 15 or so schools that might be appropriate for you and ask them for a frank evaluation of the degree of difficulty for you getting in, also ask them for the names of specific professors at each school whose research you can discuss in your statement of objectives. In the case of all 4 recent mentors that my daughters and employees had, they all underestimated the degree of difficulty in getting in, except my D2 had a verbal assurance from her REU professor that he would take her on, and she now works for him. D2’s mentor at her undergraduate school who she had been doing research with told her that he would take her on also if she needed it, but that he recommended that she go elsewhere, higher in the rankings. She ended up not applying to her undergraduate school because she preferred the research from her REU professor.
I think that you should ignore geography. It simply reduces the chances that you can live in the same place as graduate students
When you both have that list, you can start figuring out which schools are appropriate for each of you.
There is some debate about whether you should contact specific professors. None of the 4 that I’ve mentioned contacted professors prior to being admitted. My professor friends have told me that if a potential student contacts them with a particularly insightful question, it could help their case, but they generally don’t have time to talk to potential students.
There is a Grad Cafe website which is very useful for graduate school admissions. You can google it. I probably can’t type the url here.