AkashSky

I heard back from USC, with a rejection letter. If you haven't heard back from them yet I assume you are still in the applicant pool for admission. I would wait till the end of February before giving them a call about your application status.

I would say that it depends, and that one possibility is the one that you mentioned. However, if the program has been around for quite some time, I think that it is actually more likely that there were a large number of unfinished accounts on their servers, and they wanted to give everyone a chance to finish their applications. I don't really think it implies that there are not enough applicants, but rather they want to get the maximum number of possible applicants (they do get money from the application fee's after all).

As for myself, I don't really know. As long as you applied to schools you were a good fit for, (ie, you researched the schools before you applied and are seriously interested in what it has to offer), I would only feel like I could get all rejects if I applied to a small amount of schools (less than 4). If you applied to like 8 or more schools that were all a good fit, I would not be worried about getting 8 rejects (somewhere you should be a good fit to be accepted), although I would be worried if I had less than 5 schools.

i'm pretty sure those will come out next month. Their app was due like 2 days ago.

I'm pretty sure it will have no impact, so long as you will for sure have your bachelors by the time you start in fall.

Admission to graduate school really boils down to these three main things: 1) Research Experience 2) GPA+GRE (Note that gre is generally given much less weight) 3) Written Documents (Letters of Recommendation+ your Statement of Purpose+Personal Statement) How many years of research experience do you have, and more importantly, will you be able to get strong letters from it? Ideally, you have three letters from three supervisors that you have conducted research for (this WILL make your application very competitive since few people have ALL their letters from research super visors). I don't know if 80% gpa is good or bad, but there is really nothing you can do to impact it significantly anyways so I say don't worry about it. Your GRE seems fine enough to where you do not need to retake it. (However, from this I assume that you are international, which means that its going to be extremely competitive if you are applying to US institutions. I suggest trying to find information about how many international students a school accepts and focus on private institutions). Start writing your statement of purpose ASAP. You need to make sure that all of your required writings that you submit are absolutely perfect and convincing. Make sure to get as many people to read your statement of purpose as possible, and make sure to use your schools career center if available. As for your questions, 1) You should apply to a range of programs. Just because schools are top tier doesn't mean you can't get in. If you are a good research fit (more so than the other applicants,) you will be accepted. Don't look at rankings only, look at research fit. Are the professors their doing research that genuinely interests you? Then apply to that school. 2) Your strenuous program will not have any significant impact on your application. 3) No. 4) Professors of Interest for graduate schools? Read a few of their papers, and write out a tailored email to them stating your interest and that you want to talk to them. There are many other guides online for this. Just google search it. 5) Low if you are international and applying to US. I've seen post of international students applying to like 20 schools. Make sure to look at a lot of programs. 6) Yes, internships will most definitely help if they are related to your field. Almost all the applications I submitted last month had a section to mention work experience if relevant to the field.

This thread should be useful for you. There are many others who have had sub 3.0 GPA's and have gotten into graduate school. I suggest finding one that is relatively active and ask them what they did to get into a MS. http://forum.thegradcafe.com/topic/28621-the-sub-30-gpas-acceptance-thread/

If that patent is actually worth XXX million dollars I don't really think you have too much to worry about.

I submitted 7 applications in total, just waiting for my recommenders to submit their letters. I have a final exam 2maro and this thursday and after that I'm essentially all set for a nice long winter break!

A little late here I suppose, but how did your application process end up? Its december right now so I think the deadlines have occured. (Unless you applied for spring in which case you probably have got / are getting your admission decision).

They are going to be the absolute same score. I have no idea if they will qualify you or not for funding.

The first test would be better, since Poli sci probably favors verbal skills over mathematical ones.

Those GRE scores are not "okay" unless you meant to type 5* instead of 4. Scores of 140 fall below 50 percentile. Ideally, you want to be in ~80 percentile, which is around 160, and a score of ~150 would be 50 percentile which is okay. I suggest you retake the GRE.

After reading your post I do agree with you in regard to your writing score. If you can only improve your Q score, then it isn't worth retaking. This is because your Q score of 162 is already very likely to be within the averages of most universities. If you do end up retaking, it should be solely for the purpose of improving your verbal and writing score. Then again, here's the thing; unless you are an international applicant, it isn't absolutely necessary because you can convince the admission committee that you can write well by presenting an excellent statement of purpose. If you are international, most admission committees are much more strict on your qualifications, especially writing. Unless you have a large amount of time to prepare for your GRE before you apply, don't retake it. Work on your application essays and make them the best essays you have ever written.

Not sure if verbal is too important past average. What you need to do is email the schools you want to apply to and ask what the average GRE score of their incoming students usually is; then you need to hit those averages and then forget about the gre, since at this point if you don't get accepted to the school the GRE score isn't the issue (as you had a score equal to the average of accepted students). You only need to retake if your verbal is like 5 points below their average, im assuming your quant should be fine.