Crucial BBQ

Yup, they could be on sabbatical; still at the university but retired from research; no longer at the school; broke; and so on. Academics are notorious for their lack of ability to communicate with the world outside of the Ivory Tower. Updating their personal page/lab website more often than once a decade could be a start. Based on conversations I have had, they really don't. Individual POIs have no idea of what the rest of the application pool looks like and the decision is ultimately that of the adcoms.

You'd be surprised at how much fat can be trimmed. Your entire 2 pages can be reduced to 500 words and still convey more information than the two pages you have now. I am not sure about political science, but extending research experiences in an SOP is generally considered to be extraneous; you do not need to give a laundry list-that is what your CV/resume is for. I am not quite sure what political science programs look for in an SOP, but I would imagine it is roughly the same as every other program. One thing to keep in mind: there is no standard format. Here is how I laid out my SOP: (I had a rather unconventional path through undergrad. My SOP is written specifically to demonstrate intention, not to highlight my undergraduate career and why it is a no-brainer to admit me. Because of certain factors I do not have the luxury to let my application speak for itself. Even though everyone should write an explicit SOP, your own undergraduate career and motivations for graduate school will dictate how you write your own SOP. If a program believes I am a great match or is interested in taking a chance on me, awesome; but I do not want to BS anyone or waste their time. What follows below might not work for you). -Concise opening where I tell the adcoms my intentions right away. 1-2 sentences. Some might call this the hook and use it as the opening sentence of the thesis. I keep it separate because it fits my writing style. Do what works best for your writing style. -Thesis: explicit explanation of reason/motivation for grad school. 1 paragraph. -Past experiences: I did not list everything I had done, just 2-3 (I have a ton of undergrad experiences). I did not specifically state what I did, but why I did it and what I had learned instead. 2-3 paragraphs depending on required length of SOP as deemed by program. -Future goals: briefly described what I hope to do after grad school. 1 paragraph. -Fit: here is where I tie in my past experiences with what I know about the program. 1-3 paragraphs depending on required length of SOP. -Other: here is where I put the other stuff that is relevant to the program, asked in the essay prompt that is not discussed elsewhere, and so on. 0-2 paragraphs depending on program, essay prompts, and required length of SOP. -Conclusion: restatement of thesis, basically. 2-4 sentences.

But two of you LORs are from profs? Wouldn't them plus a letter from the postdoc cover the two academic letters?

I have Stata on my old 2007 MacBook. I have yet to install it on my new Retina so not sure if it works with Yosemite. R does, and works great. Matlab works great, too, in case you were wondering.

I think in general that neuroscience will provide a decent salary but it all depends on your own standards of living and location (COL varies city by city, state by state). Where I live in Maryland you might be struggling to make ends meet off the bat, however ten years from now you could be sitting pretty. In Wyoming, you might live like a king within one year.

This is interesting. We did something similar in my English 101 course, but we had read the actual papers, name and all. The papers where from our own class and were critiqued two or three times during a class session with the critiques themselves being anonymous. My particular section, as with them all, was rather small-roughly 20 students; we all knew each other.

The cutoff is not strict. Instead it is a signal that of the applicant pool a 3.8 undergrad GPA is on the low end. It is a way for the program to help ensure that only those with high GPAs apply even though the program itself does not have a minimum GPA requirement. If you feel that you have a competitive application overall, I suggest that you still apply. You can also email students in the program to see what they think of your chances with a 3.7 uGPA if you don't want to risk it.

Maybe this is only applicable to biology: I've heard from many within academia who claim that if the program does not have anyone doing anything in the same area of interests as you then you will not be admitted no matter how awesome your application is. That is to my understanding why it is so important to reach out to faculty members prior to applying.

It's not the kids I don't like, it's generally the parents. DC is pretty cool in my opinion and the food is good when it is not overpriced. They are called water bugs, by the way. The rats are huge, too. In the U.S., sometime in the 1950s. California weather is why I left. I hear it is why people want to move there, though. Good luck to them. Cheech and Chong were doing this about 40 years ago.

Give it about two months, it'll be in full swing.

Thanks yolk! After going through the admissions cycle last year and contacting program directors to discuss my respective applications and where they went wrong, I do feel that I have a good chance. Last year, for me, it was right after I had hit submit. I swear I immediately began to log in to my accounts to see if my status had changed...at least ten times per day...for each program.

I do not want a tenure track position. In fact, I want to avoid the cult of academia all together. The first university I attended was small, just over 10K undergrads. It seemed that only half of the science professors where engaged in some sort of research, but this was not a STEM-driven school. Psychology, communications, and business where a really big deal there, the rest, not so much. I really was not in tune with what the rest of the school was doing outside of biology and chemistry, but psychology research was huge there and many professors (nearly all humanities it seemed) had published books. I only know this because every book ever published by a professor at that school wad prominently on display in the main lobby of the main academic building. When I transferred, I transferred into a small LAC, just over 3K undergrads. Every biology and chemistry professor was involved in research of some type. The biology, chemistry, and physics labs at the first university were seriously dated from about the 1960s. No joke. All the labs in the second school were up-to-date and some of the equipment, in particular with chemistry, were seriously holy cow! we have one of those! The science "school" of this second university has since relocated into a building that once housed a pharmaceutical company, so the labs and equipment are now even better...and newer. None of the profs at the second school had labs of their own, they might now at the new facility, however, I dunno. There was one lab which was used for research in general and not for classroom use but most profs just used which-ever classroom lab was best set-up for their research. This second school also had a research course, that could be taken twice, and a mandatory senior research project or internship-which was school-wide for all majors. Also at this school were summer science camps that undergrads were encouraged to "teach"/lead and a host of volunteer experiences to get involved with. My first university had none of this, only a senior seminar; competition for research opportunities were fierce considering they were virtually nonexistent. Students were encouraged to look off campus. I should also note that at the first school biology profs and chemistry profs did not talk to each other; the school itself was highly departmentalized with each department acting as if it were the only one that mattered on campus. This was not the case at the second school. There was some animosity between some humanities professors and some science professors, but in general everyone got along and worked with each other. If I were to end up teaching, I would want to teach at a school such as the second one I attended. One thing that you wrote which I disagree with is that those at SLACs (small and selective?) are less encouraged to pursue funding. At least at my second university; science profs where encouraged to do just so, mainly because with only 3K undergrads the school didn't have much money to spend on this stuff itself.

Not sure about social work but I know that with biology a Master's w/thesis/research component the prof/advisor still pays for the research. When in doubt, contact the program director and ask.

In terms of the Big 10, I gotta go with the Gophers. I was partial to Nebraska back when I was living in Kansas...then I ended up in Minneapolis. What school do you follow in New York

My ex GF applied to seven Ph.D. programs. She was denied to all seven programs but two of them asked her if she would consider their Master's program. She said yes to both, then chose one. Last year, one of the Ph.D. programs I was denied to said they would have admitted me into their Master's program had it not been for something screwy in my SOP. One of the programs I have been talking to this year told me that students who are denied into the Ph.D. program are automatically considered for the Master's (funded) program and that students from the Master's program can move directly into the Ph.D. with a little bit of petitioning if their advisor thinks they are ready to do so. He also explicitly stated that applicants applying to the Master's program who indicate that their ultimate goal is a Ph.D. have the greatest chance of admittance (assuming their applications were acceptable for admittance, of course). I believe that indicating you are willing to do a Master's first is not a sign of settling, but instead a sign of serious intentions as long as you clearly state that earning a Ph.D. is the ultimate goal. I think it would say a lot about the seriousness of your intentions if you are willing to travel from India to the U.S. to earn a Master's degree. One thing that might hinder you is that you already have an MBA and an MS. I would suggest that you apply to Ph.D. programs and indicate in your SOP that you are willing to accept a spot in their Master's program if offered but that your ultimate goal is a Ph.D. It only takes one sentence.

It's hard to tell which pile your application will end in since there are too many factors involved with grad admissions that do not relate to either GPA or GRE. My guess, based simply on what you wrote, is that you will end up in the "maybe" pile.

It doesn't hurt to ask but I would get in touch with the program coordinators first. One of the programs I am looking at states on their website that contacting professors is mandatory. I talked to two different program coordinators from this particular program-one the head coordinator and one a student in the program-both said that it is not required but helpful. Another program said the same thing: getting a faculty member on board with your application is helpful for admissions but not required. Another program I am interested in won't admit you unless you have a faculty member who is willing to mentor/advise you, which must be established prior to application, and yet another program will admit students into the program but not let students matriculate into the program until they find a faculty advisor. A few only want applicants to indicate who they would like to work with and then there are those programs who do not seem to care either way. One of my [former] professors claimed to have applied to the program where he eventually earned his Ph.D. "blind". He said that the prof who eventually became his advisor liked his application and wanted to bring him aboard. Another prof claimed to have applied to the same Ph.D. program three years in a row. The third year, a prof from the program recognized his name from the two previous years and decided to bring him on based on his persistency. I was talking to a prof about grad school this and that when she told me that she had the chance to attend the #1 ranked program for her field. She turned it down because it was not funded (reason, I don't know). She later found out that the guy she would have worked with (her would-be mentor) has an organism named after him and that funding would have eventually come in. Her advice to me was not let a lack of funding stop you (me) from attending a program as funding can be acquired from many different sources.

If you took the test today, and sent today's scores, of course they would be the most recent. Is this a bad thing? Now, if you want to use Score Select, and let us say you want to include the quant score from today's test and the verbal score from last year's test, then, I dunno...

1. 13 lines "long" can be read in 10 seconds or less. 80 lines can be read in under a minute. 2. Yes, read the passage first. 3. No. You do not need to read every single word in the passage but you should not skim. You need to read actively. This is exactly what ETS knows you will do and wants you to do. If you read the question choices first and then skim the passage for matching words or phrases you run the risk of selecting the wrong answer choice because the answer choice itself is only partially right. The correct answer might not even contain a matching word or phrase. The only way to work it is actively read the whole passage. That way, the correct answer will be more obvious. 1. In my opinion the best book to use is The Official Guide to the GRE by ETS and other publications by them. 2. The Official Guide to the GRE.

It sounds like you made up your mind, but... ...tablets just are not there yet. From a productivity standpoint they are the pits. Sure, they can aid in productivity, and most certainly do, but on their own they royally suck if not coupled with a laptop/desktop. Workflow absolutely does not flow in the same way it can on a laptop/desktop.

There are people who claim that grad programs want to see LORs from well-known researchers in the field, and others who claim that even if you got an LOR from a well-known researcher in the field it would not make a lick of difference. Think about the words "well-known" for a minute, they do not necessarily mean "famous". The chances of a well-known researcher having at least one colleague in the program you are applying to is greater than if they were not well-known: that is the logic behind it. The chances for an undergrad to work with someone famous is slim enough to begin with; it would not make logical sense for adcoms to expect that, in particular since most, if not all, are not famous themselves...but if one were so lucky I am certain it would look good for the applicant. There are also a good number of academics/researchers who do not teach undergrads. It is generally understood that all Ph.D.s have jumped through the same hoops, more-or-less, and if one can vouch for your potential as a researcher, that is good enough. Besides, just because someone is well-known does not necessarily mean they will write a stellar LOR on your behalf. All that really matters is that you get great LORs from faculty who know you.

There is discussion on Magoosh over whether Quant has gotten harder. A lot of posters say it has (on Magoosh) and Magoosh points to a recent (August 2014) publication from ETS of a new Quant prep book that, according to Magoosh, has practice problems that are harder than what ETS has previously published. Magoosh also speculates that a change in Quant has come about because too many people are scoring high and that if they want the test to remain relevant more people need to score lower (look here on gradcafe, we have film, english, and history majors who claim to have scored 170 on Quant). There is also speculation that ETS is trying to position the GRE to take over the GMAT, at least with some schools. For those who are not aware, the GMAT is tougher than the GRE; so if schools want to buy into the GRE ETS needs to up their game with Quant. I took the GRE in 2011 (like two weeks after they changed to the new format), 2013, and a few months ago. The math seemed harder the last time but my scores were the same when compared to 2013. My highest Quant score was from 2011, and that was with zero study/prep.

Some users claim that applications are reviewed in waves, with those submitting their applications early going through the first wave/cut. I have know idea if those statements are true or not, but if a program filters applicants by GRE/GPA, and has strict cut-offs, you might know sooner than later if you were rejected. Some programs also have rolling admissions of sorts, meaning that even though the application period is only open from D Date to ED End Date they review and decide on applications shortly after they are received and complete. Other than that the only advantage I can think of is the weight lifted from knowing it is done.

Of course it does, and sure. I was merely suggesting that apple333 consider some other programs, not to eliminate her entire list.

Works fine on my 2007 MacBook. The range for Magoosh is 6 points, which is fairly wide if you think about it. In terms of percentiles, for quant, that is like ranging from the 40th percentile to the 60th. Or from the 60th to the 78th. Or from the 78th to the 90th. Pretty dramatic, really. It seems that most claim (on here and other sites, including Magoosh) their actual scores either fall within the range or above it.