BFB

As fun as all of this has been, folks, I should probably make this my last post here. I stepped down as DGS at Ohio State this past summer, and it's better for all of you to have input from different people who have more up-to-date perspectives on the application process. Thanks for the opportunity to offer whatever help I could, and best of luck to all of you in getting to the job of your dreams.
 

OK, you got me. When I was on faculty at Harvard, we held regular pagan rituals in which babies were sacrificed on fiery altars, and the flames of those altars were fed  by the files of job applicants from non-top-10 departments.
 
My recommendation would be to take a look at job placements for just about any top department. I'm in the process of doing so at OSU, and our placements run the gamut from junior faculty at Harvard all the way to places you've never heard of. If our rank as a department or our connections with other faculty members were as determinative as you and others here and on PSR think they are, placement records for top departments would be far, far more consistent than they are.
 
Don't mistake certainty for truth. The truth is, there's a lot of noise, and anyone who tells you something different probably has either never been on this side of the process or has an axe to grind.

OK, you got me. When I was on faculty at Harvard, we held regular pagan rituals in which babies were sacrificed on fiery altars, and the flames of those altars were fed  by the files of job applicants from non-top-10 departments.
 
My recommendation would be to take a look at job placements for just about any top department. I'm in the process of doing so at OSU, and our placements run the gamut from junior faculty at Harvard all the way to places you've never heard of. If our rank as a department or our connections with other faculty members were as determinative as you and others here and on PSR think they are, placement records for top departments would be far, far more consistent than they are.
 
Don't mistake certainty for truth. The truth is, there's a lot of noise, and anyone who tells you something different probably has either never been on this side of the process or has an axe to grind.

Hi ?
1. Contact the registrar and try to get it off your transcript!! Many schools (I think) will allow that if you can demonstrate that you never attended. Failing that, you should probably address it in your statement, but not to the tune of more than a sentence or two.
2. I'd use a seminar paper rather than a coauthored paper, pretty much no matter what. They want to know how you write and how you think. You have no idea what conclusions people will draw from a coauthored sample. I'd say it's just not worth the gamble.
Best of fortune to you!

As fun as all of this has been, folks, I should probably make this my last post here. I stepped down as DGS at Ohio State this past summer, and it's better for all of you to have input from different people who have more up-to-date perspectives on the application process. Thanks for the opportunity to offer whatever help I could, and best of luck to all of you in getting to the job of your dreams.
 

As fun as all of this has been, folks, I should probably make this my last post here. I stepped down as DGS at Ohio State this past summer, and it's better for all of you to have input from different people who have more up-to-date perspectives on the application process. Thanks for the opportunity to offer whatever help I could, and best of luck to all of you in getting to the job of your dreams.
 

As fun as all of this has been, folks, I should probably make this my last post here. I stepped down as DGS at Ohio State this past summer, and it's better for all of you to have input from different people who have more up-to-date perspectives on the application process. Thanks for the opportunity to offer whatever help I could, and best of luck to all of you in getting to the job of your dreams.
 

As fun as all of this has been, folks, I should probably make this my last post here. I stepped down as DGS at Ohio State this past summer, and it's better for all of you to have input from different people who have more up-to-date perspectives on the application process. Thanks for the opportunity to offer whatever help I could, and best of luck to all of you in getting to the job of your dreams.
 

As fun as all of this has been, folks, I should probably make this my last post here. I stepped down as DGS at Ohio State this past summer, and it's better for all of you to have input from different people who have more up-to-date perspectives on the application process. Thanks for the opportunity to offer whatever help I could, and best of luck to all of you in getting to the job of your dreams.
 

Just a quick message for everyone on this thread: This is my last year as DGS, so I won't have my finger on the pulse of admissions enough to answer your questions going forward. I'll tell my successor about this board and ask him or her to chime in as I have.
Thanks for being such a welcoming community, and best of luck to all of you, wherever you end up.
-Bear

Just a quick message for everyone on this thread: This is my last year as DGS, so I won't have my finger on the pulse of admissions enough to answer your questions going forward. I'll tell my successor about this board and ask him or her to chime in as I have.
Thanks for being such a welcoming community, and best of luck to all of you, wherever you end up.
-Bear

Only the last part is good news, and it's not great. The upshot is, if there's no one there to work with, don't go... and the "instead" gives me the distinct impression that there's no one there to work with.

Just a quick message for everyone on this thread: This is my last year as DGS, so I won't have my finger on the pulse of admissions enough to answer your questions going forward. I'll tell my successor about this board and ask him or her to chime in as I have.
Thanks for being such a welcoming community, and best of luck to all of you, wherever you end up.
-Bear

Just a quick message for everyone on this thread: This is my last year as DGS, so I won't have my finger on the pulse of admissions enough to answer your questions going forward. I'll tell my successor about this board and ask him or her to chime in as I have.
Thanks for being such a welcoming community, and best of luck to all of you, wherever you end up.
-Bear

Just a quick message for everyone on this thread: This is my last year as DGS, so I won't have my finger on the pulse of admissions enough to answer your questions going forward. I'll tell my successor about this board and ask him or her to chime in as I have.
Thanks for being such a welcoming community, and best of luck to all of you, wherever you end up.
-Bear

Just a quick message for everyone on this thread: This is my last year as DGS, so I won't have my finger on the pulse of admissions enough to answer your questions going forward. I'll tell my successor about this board and ask him or her to chime in as I have.
Thanks for being such a welcoming community, and best of luck to all of you, wherever you end up.
-Bear

Just a quick message for everyone on this thread: This is my last year as DGS, so I won't have my finger on the pulse of admissions enough to answer your questions going forward. I'll tell my successor about this board and ask him or her to chime in as I have.
Thanks for being such a welcoming community, and best of luck to all of you, wherever you end up.
-Bear

Just a quick message for everyone on this thread: This is my last year as DGS, so I won't have my finger on the pulse of admissions enough to answer your questions going forward. I'll tell my successor about this board and ask him or her to chime in as I have.
Thanks for being such a welcoming community, and best of luck to all of you, wherever you end up.
-Bear

For us, there's a big cutoff: if your verbal and quantitative scores don't average 75th percentile or above, you're ineligible for the grad school funding competition unless we use a waiver. Waivers are plentiful in the first round and ridiculously scarce in the second.  That doesn't mean that we won't pursue you; it does mean that we may run into problems getting you funded. Same goes for a GPA under 3.6. Neither of those cutoffs plays a role in our decision making, really, but they can in terms of outcomes.
 
As far as the role that GREs play in decision making: they're one factor among many, neither necessary nor sufficient. If they're a little low, a higher GPA can compensate; if both are a little low, a great statement or strong letters can compensate. There's no magic formula. We look at everything all together.
 
Out of curiosity, I looked at our records going back about 15 years, and at least when it comes to completion, GRE scores don't mean squat, either individually or interactively. I've seen insignificant results before, but these were really insignificant. They might predict placement, I don't know (placement data weren't included in the dataset I got). But personally, I don't pay a huge amount of attention to them.

Why, thank you! The course is a lot of fun. And my condolences on the loss of your mother.
Let me take these in order:
1. Publications are nice, but we don't expect them from our applicants. The profile you describe sounds competitive—conferences are generally a good sign that you understand what you're getting yourself into.
2. Not a problem.
3. If it's related to your proposed course of study, it'd be directly relevant; otherwise, it'd be indicative of your overall abilities. Counts for something either way.
4. A gap year in and of itself shouldn't hurt your chances anywhere. Lots of people sample the waters elsewhere before deciding to return to academia, and I don't think it's taken as an indicator of much of anything. As to the reason for your gap year, let me bundle it with the next answer.
5-6. Whether or not to discuss family is a really tricky question. I would love to say that you won't face discrimination in Ph.D. admissions due to family status. And most of the academics I know would, I'm pretty sure, bend over backward to avoid discrimination on that or any other basis. I can't make that guarantee, though, and I don't want to pretend that I can. I can promise you that anyone who raises it on our Admissions Committee will be informed in no uncertain terms that it's not an admissible criterion. That sort of thing really pisses me off.
What does that imply for a general strategy? I've seen people go in a couple of different directions that make sense to me.
The first is to set up a firewall between your professional and personal life during the admissions process and be extremely selective about what, if anything, gets through. Your personal life is personal—it isn't relevant to your application. You needn't mention your marital status at all, and in fact questions about marital status, number of children, sexual orientation, health, etc. are very likely illegal in an admissions process. (You typically do get asked about race for diversity purposes, but answering should always be optional.) You are well within your rights to answer such questions with "I don't believe you're allowed to ask that question." If you feel the need to explain the deficits that you perceive (though, per 1., I really don't think they're deficits and I doubt they'll hurt you much at all), having a letter-writer mention the suicide of your mother would most likely be sufficient to get people to cut you some slack. Other than that, you don't need to mention anything. You can even take your wedding ring off in advance and let the mark fade if it makes you feel more comfortable. Your marital status is none of anyone's business.
The second is almost the reverse: to use information about your personal status as a screening mechanism to help you narrow down your choices. In this strategy, you make a point of mentioning the details of your personal life under the assumption that, if a department discriminates against you on that basis, it's not a department that you'd want to be a part of. If they go out of their way to help (by asking about whether they can help advise you about a position for your husband, about day care, etc.), you might be more inclined to go there. That said, I should emphasize that the people on the admissions committee are not always (or even usually) going to be the people on your dissertation committee. For that reason, a variant on this strategy is to mention your personal details only to your person or people of interest, in order to flush out their reaction. Set up a call or initiate an email exchange to discuss the department and ask how well you'd fit, and on your list of questions include the question of whether the city is family-friendly, or something along those lines.
You can weigh the pros and cons of each strategy as it relates to your own situation. I've seen both work well. Either way, if you do face the sort of discrimination that you've faced in the past when it comes to research opportunities or anything else, do not hesitate to raise the issue with your advisor, your DGS, and/or your chair. The people in those positions should have a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to such behavior.

@misaki_rabbit ? 
You’re not the only one checking this forum compulsively. 
Originally I was trying to stay away from here and live life without the apps weighing on my mind, but now I’ve decided to just enjoy the nervous anticipation. This process is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, right?
(Knock on wood. Please, universe, let this be my only cycle.)
My two cents, this is a healthy outlet. If it weren’t for this site, I would be bugging my friends and family nonstop with pointless conjecture. 

They're not rare, but they're not too common either. We get a handful every year.
As to your reasons for applying and application strategy, I'm sorry to hear that your experience has been bad enough to prompt relocation. Having your advisor mention it is wise and is probably the most common strategy. As far as doing more is concerned, it depends on how open you want to be. One position I've seen people take is, "It's my private life, it's unlikely to come up, and I don't particularly want others to know about it." Another position I've seen is, "I don't want to go anywhere where people would have a problem with who I am." Both are reasonable decisions, and it's not really for me to say which is best for you.
In any event, good luck.

We bring in a lot of people from CIR, actually. Terrific program.

Jumping in, FWIW: The main purpose for a waitlist is to manage the risk of having a class that's too small, and it takes a fair number of early responses before you can meaningfully assess that risk. So a DGS who does go to the waitlist often does so late in the game and is hoping that the invitee will say "yes." If you truly know that you would come if accepted, therefore, it can be to your advantage to tell the DGS. If you're not sure, letting the DGS know where you stand can't hurt.

Jumping in, FWIW: The main purpose for a waitlist is to manage the risk of having a class that's too small, and it takes a fair number of early responses before you can meaningfully assess that risk. So a DGS who does go to the waitlist often does so late in the game and is hoping that the invitee will say "yes." If you truly know that you would come if accepted, therefore, it can be to your advantage to tell the DGS. If you're not sure, letting the DGS know where you stand can't hurt.