vislabgirlx

I applied to the Cognitive Science program and was accepted. It's a great program! I ended up choosing another school, but UCI was a close second for me.

I took a Kaplan course (provided through the summer research program I did) and studied my butt of every. single. day. My roommates at my summer program actually used to tease me because I studied instead of going out with them, but I was able to raise my quant score from a 149 to a 159 (the first time I took the GRE, I did not study at all). I also raised my verbal score from 159ish to 163. I had a great Kaplan instructor who gave a lot of advice and made it fun to learn the material. But, in all honesty, my improvement came from at-home study. The key for me was sitting down for at least an hour every single day to study vocab flash cards and do practice quant tests. Two weeks before the test, I increased my study time to two hours a day and took practice tests once a week. I am not good at standardized math testing, so I was pretty happy with my improvement.

It's absolutely gorgeous in Washington. I'm big on outdoorsy stuff, so I am excited that I'll have so much hiking, camping, mountain climbing, etc. to do. I've been living in a big metropolitan area for the past 5 years, so it will be nice to have the mix of city and nature that Seattle offers.

Nice, I know someone who is in that program. I think she's in her second year of grad school now. She likes it! I'll be attending the University of Washington, which was my top choice from the very beginning. Very excited!

Thank you! It was a tough choice, but hopefully someone else can take those spots.

I just released an offer from UCI today.

I just released offers from UCLA and UC Santa Cruz.

Its a scholars program. These people aren't just my advisers in the way that you all have advisers. They pay my living stipend and are signing off on my honors thesis. I also get graded for my participation in the program. It's in my best interest to be cooperative and abide by the terms that I agreed to when I became a scholar. They aren't holding a gun to my head or anything, but if I accept offers without meeting with them first, I would get in trouble with the program. I could potentially get kicked out. Then, there goes my only source of income. There goes valuable connections that I've spent the last few years building (and letters I plan to use for my NSF application). It isn't worth it to me.

Before I can decline any offers, I have to meet with my adviser and the director of the research program I am a part of. If it were up to me, I would have declined at least one of my offers weeks ago. Unfortunately, my program director treats us like children, and we can hardly make any academia-related decisions without her approval. I will be declining 3 offers at some great programs next week, so hopefully some of you guys get off the waitlist. Once I officially decline, I'll come back and list the schools!

That's still really good! It suggests that they have an interest in you, specifically!

Yeah! He said that, and then told me the bit about how he only interviews people he intends on making an offer to. I think I told you about that in a PM?

@Gvh @FeelTheBern Thanks for the congrats, guys!! To answer your question @FeelTheBern, it varies. I have one school where I am the only person my POI is interviewing, and others where I'll be one of multiple interviewees. I think it's more common these days that professors invite at least 2 people, that way they can have options (and if one person denies their offer, they can potentially extend an offer to a second person). But I do love that I am the only interviewee for one of my POIs, it really takes the pressure off. I know that at this interview I won't be competing with anyone, especially since he has his own funding for me. He says that, unlike many of his colleagues, he only invites people who he intends to make offers, too. Apparently, this way of doing it is becoming less common. Most POIs invite more than one perspective.

I have a few interviews I'm still waiting to attend, but I have gotten acceptances from UC Santa Cruz (cognitive psych) and UCLA (behavioral neuro), so I have gotten some good news!

I've received 1 official offer so far, 1 unofficial offer, and 3 more interviews. Quant: 75th Verbal: 93rd AW: 80th The most important thing to note is the type of program you are applying to. You can get away with a lower quant score in some fields (such as school or social psychology) so long as it is above the cutoff. For other types of programs (like cognitive neuroscience, where the research might have a heavy computational aspect) your quant score would be more important. Regardless of the type of psych program, a high verbal and AW score are important. I applied to computational labs where math is important, but I have a really strong quantitative background (I've taken a ton of stats, as well as linear algebra and other courses from my school's math department) so my 75th percentile score wasn't viewed so harshly. I just suck at taking standardized tests.

I heard from UCI about a week ago. Their interview day is March 4th.