saphixation

Well, that does seem promising, then! Honestly, if I were you, I'd call or email them and find out what the deal is.

It says you need a student id, which is listed in your acceptance letter, in order to rsvp - that definitely seems promising. Of course, they could just be sending out the email to everyone, so it's hard to say for sure.... hopefully it's a good sign, though! Good luck!!!

Nvm - that sucks, I'm sorry :-(

I remember this time last year, I was incredibly anxious about hearing the GRFP results. This year has been much different; a week ago, my boyfriend and I adopted two adorable seven month old kitties, and they've kept me so distracted that I've barely even thought about the results coming out soon. It's great! Plus, their habit of waking me up every night at 4am when they start chasing each other around the apartment like maniacs guarantees I'll be awake to see the results the moment they're posted. I think it's the perfect system.

So to any future applicants wondering how to cope with result season stress: adopt cats!

I remember this time last year, I was incredibly anxious about hearing the GRFP results. This year has been much different; a week ago, my boyfriend and I adopted two adorable seven month old kitties, and they've kept me so distracted that I've barely even thought about the results coming out soon. It's great! Plus, their habit of waking me up every night at 4am when they start chasing each other around the apartment like maniacs guarantees I'll be awake to see the results the moment they're posted. I think it's the perfect system.

So to any future applicants wondering how to cope with result season stress: adopt cats!

I remember this time last year, I was incredibly anxious about hearing the GRFP results. This year has been much different; a week ago, my boyfriend and I adopted two adorable seven month old kitties, and they've kept me so distracted that I've barely even thought about the results coming out soon. It's great! Plus, their habit of waking me up every night at 4am when they start chasing each other around the apartment like maniacs guarantees I'll be awake to see the results the moment they're posted. I think it's the perfect system.

So to any future applicants wondering how to cope with result season stress: adopt cats!

I remember this time last year, I was incredibly anxious about hearing the GRFP results. This year has been much different; a week ago, my boyfriend and I adopted two adorable seven month old kitties, and they've kept me so distracted that I've barely even thought about the results coming out soon. It's great! Plus, their habit of waking me up every night at 4am when they start chasing each other around the apartment like maniacs guarantees I'll be awake to see the results the moment they're posted. I think it's the perfect system.

So to any future applicants wondering how to cope with result season stress: adopt cats!

I remember this time last year, I was incredibly anxious about hearing the GRFP results. This year has been much different; a week ago, my boyfriend and I adopted two adorable seven month old kitties, and they've kept me so distracted that I've barely even thought about the results coming out soon. It's great! Plus, their habit of waking me up every night at 4am when they start chasing each other around the apartment like maniacs guarantees I'll be awake to see the results the moment they're posted. I think it's the perfect system.

So to any future applicants wondering how to cope with result season stress: adopt cats!

I remember this time last year, I was incredibly anxious about hearing the GRFP results. This year has been much different; a week ago, my boyfriend and I adopted two adorable seven month old kitties, and they've kept me so distracted that I've barely even thought about the results coming out soon. It's great! Plus, their habit of waking me up every night at 4am when they start chasing each other around the apartment like maniacs guarantees I'll be awake to see the results the moment they're posted. I think it's the perfect system.

So to any future applicants wondering how to cope with result season stress: adopt cats!

Seeking, I agree with you that portions of the GRE are harder/less relevant, depending on your major. However, I'm not sure if your solution is really all that reasonable. For example, consider the contents of an advanced quant GRE for STEM majors. What, exactly, would be on such a test? Just because STEM majors are quant-heavy doesn't mean they all use the same types of skills; a math or computer science major may know a lot about graph theory, for example, but those might be completely irrelevant to other STEM fields. Even within the same field, people's quant backgrounds can be vastly different. Someone who specializes in computer graphics may know a lot about linear algebra, while someone else doing cryptography may primarily have a background in number theory. My point is, it's easy to talk about a GRE that tests "advanced quant topics", but the truth is that there are so many things that fall under that umbrella that there would be the exact same problem with some people suffering because their specific STEM discipline does not cover all of the topics. The current GRE avoids this problem by only testing things that people are assumed to have known when they started college; it doesn't expect anyone to have taken any quant-heavy classes post-high school, and in fact, I think the only college-level math course that would possibly be relevant to the GRE is stats, and even then it's pretty basic. Besides, we already have subject GREs to test more discipline-specific knowledge, and even those are frequently considered optional by grad schools, so I don't think attempting to specialize the general test is going to help much.

People have already given good advice for long-term strategies, so I'll give some tips for the day of the test itself.
 
First of all, the Princeton Review book suggests that you do practice GRE problems the morning of the test as a warm-up. I didn't do GRE problems the morning-of, but I did do some logic puzzles to pass the time on the 1.5 hour bus ride to the test center (free Kindle games are great!). I think doing that definitely helped me to focus and get into the right mindset. I really, really like solving puzzles, so by playing puzzle games, I was able to convince myself that the GRE was just more puzzle-solving. By the time I started the test, I was actually really excited about the "game" I was about to play (and of course I wanted to win).
 
Second, the GRE has built-in breaks, but if you need longer, you can use the instructions screen for each section as a sort of bonus time to mentally prepare. Basically, before each section, they will give you a screen of instructions on how to do that section. If you found the previous break was too short, just stay on that page and don't start the section yet. I suppose it's possible it will eventually time out and auto-advance (I didn't test it), but I know at the very least it will give you an extra few minutes. Also, maybe I'm weird, but I found it comforting to read the instructions multiple times, even if I'd encountered that type of section before, because it gave me a "nothing I'm about to see will be unexpected, I can do this" sort of confidence. Hah, okay, I'm pretty sure I'm just weird.
 
Finally, don't get discouraged by tough sections! I know it's easier said than done, but keep in mind that it's entirely possible that the tough section is experimental and isn't going to affect your score at all. My very first section was a super brutal quant section, and I was sure I was doing horribly. The next quant section I hit was way easier, and because the test is adaptive by section, I was convinced that I had been put into a lower score band. Then I hit a third quant section, which was also fairly easy, and it occured to me that the hard one might've been experimental. Don't let a possible experimental section stress you out and cause you to lose confidence!
 
For the record, my scores were 165V, 170Q, 4.0AW. Hope these help at least a little, and good luck!!!

This actually looks like a straight up statement of purpose prompt, not a personal statement one. The questions that you are being asked are about your professional background, your future goals, and why the school you are applying to is a good place to pursue these goals. 
 
This means that the first two paragraphs in your essay are not answering any question that was being asked; this is a good 25-30% of the essay that was not asked for at all. The third paragraph, too, feels like a lot of telling where you should be showing the relevant skills. It's much more effective to discuss the facts about past experiences in a way that shows that you are e.g. well-rounded, but just saying it is not all that convincing (even if true). 
 
The fourth and fifth paragraphs are good first drafts, but require more work to polish them and make them more professional sounding. In particular, if I understand the 5th paragraph correctly, it's where you identify a possible faculty advisor, but still your reasoning for choosing is person seems vague. What is your particular interest and how will this person support it? explain what research goals you have and how they fit with the advisor's goals. The final paragraph is then extremely vague and contains too many generalities. 
 
So, from how I read the prompt and your response, you are not structuring the essay correctly at this point. Think of it from the adcom's point of view -- they have actually given you a very helpful prompt, but you are not responding in kind. You are not clearly answering question 1; you are also not really answering question 2; and you aren't giving a good answer to question 4. You spend close to half of the statement either on things that weren't asked or on such vague generalities that cannot and will not distinguish you from other applicants.
 
My advice would be to consolidate and greatly edit the first two paragraphs; I would propose that not more than a sentence or two should remain of it, if any. Rewrite the third paragraph extensively: talk about facts and specific experiences, don't describe your character because, trust me, it's not half as compelling as conveying these thoughts through your actions. Clean up paragraph 4, and rewrite paragraph 5 to do a better job of showing why the professor you identify is a good fit. Get rid of paragraph 6 and either write something more specific, or don't write anything at all. I also suggest you re-structure the essay: start with identifying your research interests (question 1) in your introduction. Once you identify a particular interest or set of interests, you can then identify a professor who you would like to work with at the new school, and explain why and how they will support you in studying your questions (question 5). Talk about how your interests developed and how your background prepares you for your studies (question 3) -- this is where you expand on past research experiences, and if you want - briefly mention the personal background. Then talk about your short-term and long-term goals (this should include goals past your PhD education! -- question 4). Finally, conclude by explaining why school X is best suited to help you pursue the goals you just described, and be specific! (question 2). This kind of re-write might actually be much easier to do if you start over from scratch instead of trying to editing and moving around parts of what you have written here. 
 
I hope this helps -- I'm sorry I don't have the time to do line-by-line edits but honestly I think you need to do too much re-writing for edits to be very useful now. 

I don't get this approach. If you are into him and don't take the time to "pursue him" (say, ask him out on a date or just for coffee), why should he find you worth dating? Being a woman doesn't automatically make me a damsel in distress; I don't need to be rescued by a man, and I'm not a trophy to be pursued.

It sounds like you're way overthinking this. That is a totally standard reply to a variety of emails.
 
If a guy is into you, he will make the time to pursue you. You'd naturally friendzone him before having to guess whether or not he liked you.
 
If a guy is into you and he DOES NOT pursue you, then he's not the kind of guy worth dating. Why be with someone who doesn't make time for you?.
 
And lastly, it's possible he's "just not that into you."
 
DTB

I'm a shy female so I may not be able to give input like a shy male, but I would say he probably doesn't get it. I wouldn't. I'm rather clueless. lol I don't recognize when I'm being flirted with unless someone else points it out. He may be the same way. Asking him to talk about research and then actually talking about pretty much just research, I would think that's all you want! You might want to make the next move. Even if he does get it, shyness can be overwhelming and he may be too intimidated to ask you out (assuming he is single). I personally would think the best course of action would to first find out if hes in a relationship. Maybe add him on facebook first and see? If not, just ask around. If he is single perhaps try to hang out with him a few more times with a solely social intent if you think you could swing it, or just ask! Some of us are just shy and some of us are shy and kinda socially awkward. You gotta help us combination people out a bit.
 
Good luck! 

I'm on the admissions committee at a middling PhD program, and I can say quite definitively that we don't take extracurriculars into account when weighing applications. In the three years I've been on the committee, I don't think an applicant's extracurriculars have even come up in our discussions, much less affected an admissions decision. My second PhD student is getting ready to defend in a few months, and I have four or five more in the pipeline--and now that I have some experience working with doctoral candidates, a "mechanical studious graduate student" is pretty much exactly what I'm looking for in an applicant. So obviously, it varies.
 
LeventeL, I'm very sorry to hear about your mom. Having gone through the same thing when I was a grad student, I know how difficult it can be. Please consider the possibility of taking a year between undergrad and grad school. It was one of the smartest things I've done, and set me up for a lot more success professionally than if I'd tried to go directly from undergrad. Grad school will still be there in a year's time.

People have already given good advice for long-term strategies, so I'll give some tips for the day of the test itself.
 
First of all, the Princeton Review book suggests that you do practice GRE problems the morning of the test as a warm-up. I didn't do GRE problems the morning-of, but I did do some logic puzzles to pass the time on the 1.5 hour bus ride to the test center (free Kindle games are great!). I think doing that definitely helped me to focus and get into the right mindset. I really, really like solving puzzles, so by playing puzzle games, I was able to convince myself that the GRE was just more puzzle-solving. By the time I started the test, I was actually really excited about the "game" I was about to play (and of course I wanted to win).
 
Second, the GRE has built-in breaks, but if you need longer, you can use the instructions screen for each section as a sort of bonus time to mentally prepare. Basically, before each section, they will give you a screen of instructions on how to do that section. If you found the previous break was too short, just stay on that page and don't start the section yet. I suppose it's possible it will eventually time out and auto-advance (I didn't test it), but I know at the very least it will give you an extra few minutes. Also, maybe I'm weird, but I found it comforting to read the instructions multiple times, even if I'd encountered that type of section before, because it gave me a "nothing I'm about to see will be unexpected, I can do this" sort of confidence. Hah, okay, I'm pretty sure I'm just weird.
 
Finally, don't get discouraged by tough sections! I know it's easier said than done, but keep in mind that it's entirely possible that the tough section is experimental and isn't going to affect your score at all. My very first section was a super brutal quant section, and I was sure I was doing horribly. The next quant section I hit was way easier, and because the test is adaptive by section, I was convinced that I had been put into a lower score band. Then I hit a third quant section, which was also fairly easy, and it occured to me that the hard one might've been experimental. Don't let a possible experimental section stress you out and cause you to lose confidence!
 
For the record, my scores were 165V, 170Q, 4.0AW. Hope these help at least a little, and good luck!!!

1000Plateaus, I am very sorry that you are in this painful situation. It is very difficult to hear unfavorable assessment of your abilities and to realize the implications of having a unfavorable review from your supervisor and second reader. What follows may be hard to read and I apologize in advance, but after you calm down a bit you may want to seriously consider your professors' opinions of your potential to succeed in graduate school. From all I can gather from this post and your previous one, there was never any serious blowout between you and your supervisor -- the main problem seems to be your ability to do up-to-par work at a reasonable pace. (Yes, I understand that some of the blame for that is on your supervisor for letting you take on what turned out to be an over-ambitious project but no, I don't think there is any reason to think your supervisor was maliciously setting you up to fail). You took three years to do a two-year degree and you had to basically write your whole thesis from scratch after the first submission was rejected. You may have finally brought it to a satisfactory level for a masters and you were therefore allowed to defend, but that does not entail that you can or should continue on to a PhD program.
 
It appears that both of the people who know your work best think that you should not, and they will not write you strong letters of recommendation. I think you should respect this choice, or (as you are contemplating doing) work very hard to change their mind and persuade them that you deserve their support. As it stands, if they do not believe that you can make it in a PhD program, you cannot ask them in good conscious to write such a letter. They will have to lie, or the letter will not be good; from their perspective, it's their name on the line: they are vouching for you and your success, but they don't believe in it. Beyond that, if they are in fact correct, they are doing you a favor in telling you their honest opinion from the start. Certainly, the delivery was lacking and hurtful in your case and I am sorry that you had to go through that. But not everyone who wants a PhD can be successful at a PhD program. It's better to know that now than to waste several years before either dropping out or finishing the degree but failing to get a job. I honestly don't know if this is true for you, but sometimes you simply have to tell students the hard truth instead of letting them just struggle along and waste important years of their lives on an impossible mission. 
 
As I said, I don't know if what your advisor said was a fair assessment of your work at all. Either way, it's important to view it as an assessment of your ability to do the training for a certain job, not as an assessment of your personality or person. There are extremely bright and successful people who would struggle in a PhD program because the requirements are set up in a such a way that it does not play to their strengths. That doesn't make them any less accomplished, you just need a very specific kind of personality, abilities and strengths to make it through, and only a (small) portion of it has to do with your intellectual abilities. Maybe that's something to consider. If, on the other hand, the assessments of your professors are simply wrong, I wish you all the best in your battle to attend graduate school. I think your approach is the healthiest one: do your best to prove that you are able and willing, and earn the letter and the trust.

You seriously waited this long to reply to your other 6 offers?  Might not want to tout the fact that you hogged 6 offers for weeks or months at the cost of others on the waitlist or hoping to hear from one of those programs before making a decision to attend elsewhere.
 
Take another read over your post and see how conceited it sounds.

What's not to be sold on?? From bjacque's program, you'll be over 120,000 dollars in debt, have a degree from an unaccredited program (errg...excuse me...on probation from the APA), and not be able to find an internship.  Fun huh??  Oh...and a 14% APA accredited internship placement last year 

Surely the European faculty at the institutions you're thinking about cheating will have ideas/feedback for you. 

@Andean, I think a Euro-PhD is a bit different from a US-PhD. I can commute to the UK from just about anywhere in Europe with an airport and a library as my only responsibility is to meet with my supervisor once a month. I'm also, frankly a bit surprised at how moralistic everyone is! I understand Zabius's point that I'm withholding a place from another candidate, but other than that I really don't see the harm. Didn't you Americans coin the phrase 'business, not personal'? TakeruK's comments about full disclosure are aimed solely at intellectual integrity - and indeed, my major concern initially was was plagiarism! Anyway, I feel that maybe the whole idea and process of doing a PhD in the States is maybe too different to really make a good comparison. Do any Europeans have ideas/feedback?

many programs don't interview... you might be unofficially waitlisted.

If your computer is working fine for what you need it to do a cheaper alternative may just be to buy a new battery.

What happened with that bathroom? The more you post about this, the more it seems clear to me that you probably did something totally out of line, because I refuse to believe that one small, honest mistake like going through the wrong door would lead to all of this. Did you say something inappropriate? Do something to cross boundaries? Because if so, you deserve all of this. The dearth of women in science is bad enough without predation from within.