bamafan

Put simply, very, very little.

Funding hands down. This shouldn't even be a dilemma at all.

Wall of text alert. To answr your question, you should just email or call the school. I try not to be negative, but I think it's very important also to be honest and realistic, and it's getting awfully late in the application cycle to be getting admissions unless it's from a school that had a recent, late interview weekend. When did you hear from this faculty member? If you haven't gotten anything at all, I would assume you're either rejected or on some sort of internal, unofficial waitlist, so there's definitely a small chance, but you should be prepared for the possibility of bad news coming. You have to play probablities in life. That said, you've identified the weakness of your application already -- research experience. To my knowledge of the process, curricular research experience almost never cuts it so if you do have to apply again in the future, consider spending this year working in a laboratory to buff up your credential. Good luck.

I wouldn't count on the waitlist. It's like waiting to win the lottery. And looking at your accepted list, it's not like you have a list of bad choices. You've got some great schools and truthfully, I don't believe your experience or work output will be different whether you go to one of those or to CMU. Speaking of which, did you visit CMU? If you haven't visited it, then you don't even know if you'll actually like it there. My top choices definitely changed after I visited schools.

The final tally. Rejected: Berkeley, Wisconsin Accepted: Cornell Tri-I, UCLA, UCSD, Michigan, Dartmouth, USC, BU Hoping to make a decision soon...

Also, I've never heard of professors being against someone with a planned future in industry. That doesn't make any sense. Half the professors out there spin off companies that become major players in industry. Of course, they don't want industry necessarily poaching their people, but they realize that after a student graduates, even if they do a post doc, it'll probably be elsewhere.

I'm not sure where you got this idea, but like the above poster said, the majority do NOT end up in academia. Aside from the fact that many people want an additional degree for salary reasons (depending on your field, a BS is a dead end as far as upward mobility without a doctoral degree), academia is so crowded and competitive that you see first-time professors routinely fail to get tenure and drop out. Of course, it depends on field. I don't want to speak for others, but I imagine in a field such as literature, for instance, the more clearly defined path is academia. But for any of the sciences, incl social sciences, I think industry-bound PhDs outnumber academics significantly.

The commute for A is not an option even if you are single with no children and no obligations at all whatsover. It's simply beyond reason.

Right, like I said, I think these experiences are valuable for yourself to know these things. But as far as the grad committee is concerned, they really don't care, and it won't bolster your app at all.

I didn't say these aren't valuable to know. They can be good experience to have, but having taken these classes doesn't mean anything to the grad committee and has no value as far as grad apps are concerned.

When graduate schools look at research experience, it is not curricular. Classes don't count as experience. You 100% need to work in a lab. Pretty much all the techniques and things you need to know, you'll learn while working in the lab anyway. Do that, forget about the courses.

Not necessarily true. I had a horrible GPA, but that's mostly borne out laziness and having too much fun. Grad school is more about research than studying anyway. Likewise, I've gotten into arguably the best program in my field whereas I know some perfect GPA/GRE folks who did not. GPA/GRE is really a tiny, tiny part of the app process, and carry very little weight compared to the rest of the app.

Financial information will be in that letter or come shortly thereafter.

Well, it's not kind of taboo, but unless your acceptance agreement is binding, there's nothing they can do about it. In your case, I think you have no choice but to accept Uni A anyway, right? It's kind of silly to decline one and hope you'll get off a waitlist, because afaik, that's very rare.

First off, you made a huge mistake by not being professional. It doesn't matter if you're both adults. School is school. There is an explicit teacher-student relationship and it is unethical to behave otherwise. Being that you are in a powerless position and there is zero accountability for a professor, you pretty much walked right into a dumb situation. There's not much you can do to salvage this, just learn and don't make the same mistake ever again. Second, what's the extent of the trash talk by this professor? If it's not that extensive, you're best thing to do is move on, forget about it, and to NOT contact this professor ever again. I think it was also a mistake to keep trying to contact him after it was clear that the bridge was burned. Don't take this the wrong way, but this reminds me a lot of bad breakups, where one ex keeps trying to contact the other innocuously while the other acts coldly. I know this sounds negative, but the unfortunate reality in academia is that there is little accountability, especially when it comes down to "he said, she said". He'll always win. He is definitely just as (if not much more, given his position and supposedly maturity) culpable, but he's off limits as far as discipline goes. Keep your head up, move on, and far away. I don't think there's much you can do besides that, and any attempts to "fix" the situation will probably just make it worse.

Alabama is the greatest college football program in the history of the world, obviously. Just kidding, I know we've only been dominant recently and since we stole Nick Saban unceremoniously from the Fins. Not his finest hour, that's for sure. I think with the rotating roster, we're in danger to be upset by some of the other strong (and rising programs) both in the SEC and elsewhere. That said, my name and av aren't exactly mysterious.

It's best to be honest and just say why. If you don't want to go there or have committed elsewhere, let them know. They'll appreciate you saving them time and money.

So I can hit on undergrads obviously.

Rankings are worthless. They're mostly arbitrary and when it comes down to schools within a "tier", they're mostly comparable and it's just a wash to rank them. I've always felt that rankings are designed to boost the egos of some people and allow parents to brag. Instead, you should look up PIs in the fields or areas that you're interested in.

There's an interesting article about how people are happier if they don't get in to their top choice or don't have options. Seems logical, you won't second guess yourself. But perfect is perfect -- if you feel like you can be a happy at any of them, then that's that. It doesn't matter which.

This is blatantly false and wrong. If a school doesn't require the subject, then don't bother. But if a school requires or even recommends it, that's code for it's mandatory. Secondly, your order of importance is also completely wrong. From the mouths of professors and graduate ad com members, as well as my own experience, a more accurate order of importance would be: 1. statement of purpose 2. research experience 3. letters of recommendation (reputation of your recommenders is tied into the reputation of your school) 4. and finally, GPA + GRE

No, not at all, I'm the one being rude, I just thought you posted an unanswerable question. It's hard to say, honestly, your GPA is more than fine (I have ~3.2, though that's admittedly on the very low end), but I'd get your verbal GRE up. Rep your research, write a good statement, get good recs, and you should have a good shot at least 2 of the 4. UCB is a extremely competitive as far as acceptances go, I've yet to meet a single person who got in.

Sounds like a crappy and disappointing situation. Since you know the ad coms well, perhaps you should ask them why you didn't get in. More tactfully of course, but along the lines of how you can improve your application for next year.

This should not surprise anyone. At quality schools, there is a surplus of qualified applicants and it can be the luck of the draw. Ironically, the supply of qualified graduate students is actually << the spots available, but during application season, people tend to cross-apply and be cross-admitted.

I want to note that tier 1 applicants do not necessarily have stellar credentials. Any number of factors combined could bring together an applicant to be tier 1, so having deficiencies in some things is not a disqualifier (for instance, I have an abysmal GPA).