Cesare

I haven't heard back from any of mine as well. It is so depressing. I've been stress eating and it is beginning to show. No joke.

Stop being a drama queen and study! It is possible to raise GRE scores. The AW section is ridiculous in my opinion (got 5.5 first time and 4.5 the second), but the quant and verbal can be raised. Don't give up. You don't have much time if you want to apply this cycle, so my advice to you is to get all of the Manhattan books and Magoosh and study all day (if possible) and throw in 1-2 practice exams (once you completed some of the books) each week. 

After reading the thread about finding a husband in graduate school, I read the title of this thread and instantly thought "omg, they are discussing birth control." 

Anyways, I agree with this:
 

A rejection forum would be so depressing. I'm definitely not creating that!

They'll hate you.
 
If this is the route you want to go, go with something like Interfolio and get a generic letter and tell the writer you want to use it for multiple schools.
 
Frame it as you saving the writer the time, effort, etc.. of writing out multiple letters.. but dont tell them it's 18. Cuz that's legit insane.

You actually have them ranked in a strict order already for yourself..? Have you even set foot on these campuses?

I'll just point out that I've been accepted to more programs and offered more funding than you have, if you want to pull people's history into things as a means to belittle the advice they're giving. 
 
The goal here is getting in and getting funded, is it not? I offer sound advice for that. It is not presented in a manner to spare your feelings. 

I have nothing but contempt for weakness. I suggest for your sake you adopt the same outlook.

Then my question would be why you're going through with all these applications and why they're on your "final" list in the first place. Schools can tell when you're just applying for the sake of applying. They do not look kindly on it. 

Significant? That isn't an issue. Anything can be significant. What might be an issue is repetition. For example, I once had a great idea for a paper. I had my argument, and what I wanted to discuss planned. I spoke with the professor about it, and he liked it. Then I went out and did some research for the theoretical background. And found out that 8 other people had already written that paper. They were all different, but the arguments were the same and so were the points. The topic itself was very narrow, so there are very limited ways to talk about it, and those ways had been done several times. I would not have added anything knew to the topic. I wrote a different paper on a different topic. Right now, there is a lot of academic discussion (in the form of papers and theses) about the use of social media in the revolutions that have taken place in the Middle East. Many people are writing about the same thing, but in different ways. It's a broad topic with a lot of ways of looking at the same thing. Unlike my paper, which had a topic too narrow to not repeat someone else's argument completely, social media in the Middle East is very broad, and there are many view points that can add to the topic.
 
When you choose something to study, it doesn't matter if other people think it's important enough to study or not. When Isaac Newton noticed that an apple hits the ground when it falls from a tree, many people would have thought this insignificant and not worth study. It happens all the time, right? But he studied it anyway. If it's important to you, it's important enough to study. The question then becomes, can you add something new to the discussion on your topic? Even if it may not seem like it immediately, it's almost always possible. Very few topics are so narrow that they've been done to death. People have been writing papers about certain topics for thousands of years. The Talmud, the Hadith, and so on. Adding to the discussion does not mean doing something no one has done before, but looking at it in a different way.
 
pears is correct. The topic you're looking at, cyberspace in your homeland, is huge. The problem with cyberspace in a single country is that there are many, many, many things to study. pears is advising you to focus on one thing about cyberspace. Pick a few things about cyberspace and your homeland that interest you. For each thing, write an argument, that is, write a single sentence that tells your opinion of the thing. For example, if my topic were about video games in my culture, I might focus on things like: how online game environments change the way players define friendship, or how some game players emulate the personality of their favorite video game character. I could then write a sentence (argument) like so: Online game environments, like Call of Duty or Halo, change the way game players define friendship because game friends are also allies in a war simulation, and these allies are people that game players must trust to work with them to accomplish the game's objective.
 
Take the sentences (arguments) that you are most interested in to your adviser. If you cannot express your argument in one sentence, the topic should be narrowed down so that your thesis will have a strong focus.

They should have received them irrelevant of whether you included a department code or not. Maybe it has not been processed by the school yet?

you're ingesting smoothies for breakfast lunch and dinner?? good god man.
 
I understand the convenience of smoothies. I make one every morning using my cheapass and loud blender, with a banana and some berries and 1.5 scoops of whey protein. It keeps me energized until lunch. But I can't imagine donig that for all 3 meals. $10/day budget for food is $70/week. You should be able to get the food you need with that money, with some to spare for a subway every so often. Frozen veg/fruits are good, and actually healtier than most produce sections. Farmers market is the best though. Meat is more expensive, but not if you take advantage of discounts, buy in bulk and freeze. Just stay away from that $1.99 enhanced chicken breast - that shit's nasty.

This is my diversity statement for Yale. I was admitted there, so it couldn't be THAT bad, but I certainly don't think that it was that important in relation to the rest of my application.


As both a minority in a dominantly white community and an adopted child, I grew up an anomaly in my community. These differences helped to spur my curiosity in the wider world and my academic and travel pursuits to this day.
My interest in my own culture, different from my parents, pushed me to learn about other languages. My interest came not only in the grammatical and syntactical elements of the language, but how people used language in everyday life. After serious study of Arabic and Persian in college, I pushed myself to be immersed in complete language environments in both Amman, Jordan and Dushanbe, Tajikistan.
As an adult, an increased interest in my own heritage has led me to begin to study Spanish, which I hope will one day help me with field work and to be a more complete scholar of the world.

Your list makes perfect sense depending on what your very specific interests are. Georgetown has excellent IPE faculty, so I would keep them on your list. I've heard the same about their funding, but it is worth a try. George Washington has poor/difficult funding as well...

Also, you should add additional schools because 4 is far too few for Political Science. 

Wow, wildviolet, your dynamic with your friend/colleague sounds a lot like the dynamic I have with a friend/colleague of mine.  We entered my program the same year; we were in the same lab with the same advisor and she just defended whereas I have one more year.
 
Initially I struggled like you did, because I realized that despite our friendship we were essentially competing with each other, and she's more like your friend - competitive, never afraid to ask questions, acts differently when academic crushes come around, makes comparisons between the two of us that makes me uncomfortable, etc.  Over time I just got over it and we've become close friends.  All of my friends have habits that annoy me to a certain degree, because nobody's perfect; but for us, our friendship and the benefits thereof outweigh the annoyances.  Plus she knows everything and she's a great person to go to for feedback and information about academia, the job market, etc.  In turn, I've proofread her grants, her dissertation, etc.
 
I wouldn't say she's more of a go-getter than I am, but she's definitely got a very different personality and a different way of going  and getting.  She is definitely the kind of person who's on every committee and goes to every seminar and asks questions all the time.  I tend to be a bit more selective (or lazy) with my energies.  At first it annoyed me, too.  Then I realized that it annoyed me because I felt insecure.  I felt like people would always be comparing me to her and find me lacking, and I didn't want to be her - I wanted to be me.
 
Well, that ended up never happening.  I mean, I'm sure people compare us, but I know that my advisors and professors respect me and my work separately (a good representative comment from one of my first-year professors is that I don't talk or ask questions that often, but when I do, it's something good).  I also just decided that if this academia thing didn't work out with me just being the best version of me, then screw it, I was going to leave anyway.  I have become less shy about asking questions in seminars and walking up to people and introducing myself, et cetera.
 
We also have the same personal appearance thing - not in exactly the same way, but similar dynamic.  She teases me (good-naturedly) about dressing up for class, always having a new handbag (it's a vice) and spending lots of money on makeup (I spent A LOT of money on makeup) while also complaining about her own looks.  I've realized that some women just like to complain about their looks because it's a social/cultural thing amongst groups of women.  I've just gotten used to it, and I just stare and nod and/or make sympathetic noises until they stop.  (I don't participate though because I don't like to encourage micro-criticizing.) Sometimes if I feel like it I tell them that they're being ridiculous and point out something good about their personality.  I don't, however, give anyone unsolicited advice about their looks.

Keep your distance. 
 
Not to sound Machiavellian, but you'd be surprised at the amount of one-upng that happens even in the best of labs. It's only a matter of time before this person is sandbagging you to get ahead. 

I consider myself an introvert who likes to keep a lot of my life private. I don't volunteer a lot of personal information: if you ask me how my weekend went I won't be giving you a 30 minute soliloquy on what I was up to. When moving to a new area I factor in 6-9 months to make friends, simply because it takes me that long to start opening up to folk. I also do not necessarily view the people I study/work with as "friends", nor do I assume that I'm going to become friends with them. (Doesn't mean I don't like or don't get on well with them - just that I view our relationship as more of a 'business colleague' one).
 
As an introvert I also dress really scaffily and prefer comfortable, baggy, second-hand clothes to clingy stuff that shows off my breasts. You won't catch me wearing makeup either. It certainly isn't because I'm self-conscious or dislike my body, I simply value practicality higher than personal appearance. Putting on makeup every day is a damn faff, too.
 
So, I don't think it is a sin if there's a girl in your cohort who seems to be that way too. No one should get judged poorly for being an introvert, seeing the world slightly differently & not rushing to become your new best friend. 
 
With regards to over-achievement and competitiveness: in a job market over-saturated with PhDs, you do what you can to stand out. Working hard, asking lots of questions to make sure the professors notice you & know that you're thinking critically instead of hiding at the back, going to lots of seminars to broaden your horizons, sitting on committees to network with other academics...I think your colleague is going about grad school exactly the right way. 
 
I'd say step back from the friendship a bit if it's making you unhappy: that's kinda the opposite of what a friendship is supposed to do. Spend a bit more time with extrovert folk outside your immediate sub-field.

i would personally lie and put it as my top, or top 1 or 2 as you mentioned.  otherwise its pretty much telling the admissions committee that "your my last choice and i would only really go to you if i don't get in anywhere else."  just like a job interview or any other application, that obviously is a very big turn off.  i believe that when applying to a school you should make every effort to make them believe they are your top choice, otherwise why would they want to spend the time and money considering you if they think you are going to reject them in the long run?

After reading the thread about finding a husband in graduate school, I read the title of this thread and instantly thought "omg, they are discussing birth control." 

Anyways, I agree with this:
 

Well we all know my life desires and being 23 not knowing what to do with myself is not exciting is annoying and scary and frustrating

I know it is really stupid and petty, but I have been unable to shake this deep-seated regret that I have carried ever since my senior year of college that I went to the wrong school. (That was a couple years ago -- a year has now passed since my graduation.) I turned down more personality-fitting and intellectually rewarding schools for the sake of a single major that was offered at the school I ended up going to, which I ended up losing interest in. Academics aside, I tried to convince myself that I liked the prevailing culture of the school in question, but down the line, it was clear that that was not the case and that I had wasted so much time trying to fit in with vain, vapid peers I did not care for for acceptance's sake. History illusion and whatnot, I did not predict that my interests, my desires would change with experience, and when I finally became confident and informed enough about what I wanted, it obviously was far too late to transfer.
 
I know the phrase, "Wherever you go, there you are." I understand that I would have had similar problems at whichever school I went to. I do not regret the wonderful friends I ended up finding at the tail end of my college time and my advisors I was privileged to interact with. I am just having trouble escaping my regret, knowing that I would have found more intellectual fulfillment, been more prepared for grad school, saved time and led a more efficient path (as opposed to working jobs I did not enjoy before going back for a postbac) had I gone to the schools I turned down.
 
I was just wondering whether anyone else had similar feelings. I usually hear more about immediate, initial regrets on college choice which culminates in transfers or acclimations, rather than gradual disillusionments.
 
Not a big fan of the ever-increasing emphasis that American corporate society has helped push on specializing ever earlier in life.
 

Just work to rephrase sequntial "I..." statements. It makes the flow go better.
  Be careful if you do this; don't use the passive voice.  There's nothing wrong with using simple language ("I enjoy...") as long as you're not repetitive.  For example, I would not say "Getting into your school would be enjoyable."  I would simply say "I wish to attend Awesome University's program in X because Y."  Then elaborate.   attending workshops and conferences several times a year, such as Big Name Confernce in the field, fuels(?) my commitment to lifelong learning/professional development(or however you will phrase that). ?   This is a great example of that.  This is wordy and long and unclear.  Why not just say "I attend several workshops and conferences per year, and I find that they enhance my professional development.  For example, at XXX Conference, I was able to explore beachside basketweaving, an area of weaving to which I had not been exposed."   For example, is it okay to say "I am committed to lifelong learning.  As a xxxxx at yyyyy I have continued to expand my knowledge of zzzz and my skills in aaaa through attending workshops and conferences several times a year, such as Big Name Confernce in the field."   This is too long and wordy.  See above.

You can reference A in the course of developing your research questions, e.g. "A's (1899, 1902a, seminal work on X shows blah, I want to extend it to Y, where similar work has not been attempted before. This extension is important because blah. It's similar/distinct from X, raises the following questions," etc. If everybody knows A pioneered the field then there is probably a way to reference that, but that should not be the focus of your essay. Even if you do work with A, as I said, you should develop your own independent research agenda (at some point in your grad education). You want to show that you can ask your own questions, not just work on your advisor's project. This is all the more important if you end up at some other school - you want to show how the professors there can help you study the questions you are interested in, and how you can independently develop your questions into pursuable projects. 

And fanboys weird people out.. keep that in mind.

I had 3 quant and 2 verbal both times. They do not switch it up based on what you got before. It is completely randomized.