lewin

This was your problem and you know better now, so don't beat yourself up about it. Applying too narrowly is much easier to fix than low GRE scores or bad grades

This sums up the situation quite well.

This is good advice. Not to be a pessimist, but many grad school acceptances are conditional on graduating and providing a final, official transcript. So the bigger problem is if they withdraw your acceptance based on failing or poor grades.

How do you know they didn't evaluate the entire stack of applications and decide that this person was the only one worth admitting? That is, it's ridiculous they misplaced your application initially--though these things happen--but you have no evidence it wasn't reviewed fairly in the end.

Yes, pretty sure you've made a mistake somewhere. I checked my return and SSHRC income should NOT be included in total income. Here's the CRA guide for that part of the return, line 130. Make sure to enter it as box 105 from your T4A. Disclaimer: I am not a tax expert, just a student who has been doing his own taxes. Buyer beware.

Oh, sorry then

Exactly what the above posters said. An invited talk at a conference really prestigious because it means the organizers want you to be there. I'd add a third type of invited talk: Sometimes people list their job talks as invited talks, though sometimes this is frowned upon. It's not as prestigious as invited conference talks or invited deparmental talks anyway.

It's actually really hard to tell whether you had good research fit. It can take years for papers to be published, so although it might have looked like you had a good match, the professor might actually have moved on from what you thought they were doing. That is, their "recent" papers might actually represent something they were doing three years ago and are no longer interested in. By luck, the places where I got graduate respones were often ones where my stated interests were where the POI was heading in the future, not what they had done in the past. But of course that would have been impossible for me to know at the time of application.

It probably means that the department wants to admit you, but all admissions have to be finalized by the faculty of graduate studies. Typically they do things like ensure grades and GRE scores meet minimum criteria for the university, and make sure a fair process has been followed. It means you're not technically in yet, but quite likely to be admitted.

There's something to be said for some extracurricular involvement that shows you care about psychology as a career and as a profession. But I suspect its overall impact would be very, very small. It's better to avoid that stuff altogether than to have it impact other areas (grades, research, writing). ...If I saw somebody put PBK after their name with their degrees, I would think they are pretentious.

This. I can't see the harm unless you know for sure that your advisor is crazy or hated... and even if so, they'll find out who he/she is eventually.

I'm currently a graduate student. This month we're hosting four potential students. For each visit, we graduate students plan a schedule, organize meetings, suppers, and tours, and host the visitor overnight in our own houses/aparrtments. This a lot of time and work, and the department's money. But it's worthwhile because new students make the program better, and in a karmic sense I "owe" because people were nice enough to host me on my visits. I would be quite pissed off if I found out I had spent a few days hosting somebody who had already accepted elsewhere. It's just too much time and money to indulge someone's curiousity if they don't intend to come here (no offence intended). So I agree with the above posters. You HAVE to tell them. If you don't and they find out, it would be very bad for your reputation (and unethical).

I can't imagine the GRE-related complaining (or complaining about its replacement) that would occur in these forums if admissions were based on standardized test scores. "A single test would even the playing field!" versus "I'm more than just a number!" would be an epic battle.

I'm a few cohorts old, but here's my advice: Develop patience. Be able to delay gratification. I see many applicants on the forums anxious because they haven't heard from this or that program. They want to email the program to assuage their nerves. Or people in the who are constantly emailing to see when the awards will be announced. This is a bad trait. (I'm addressing people who can't handle waiting, and not the rare person who needs this information in order to make an urgent decision.) Stop being neurotic! Stop depending on other people to make you feel better because it will only get worse in graduate school. My advisor is very good, but sometimes I go long stretches of time without getting feedback. Or, we submit papers and won't hear back for months. You will constantly be waiting for people to get back to you. You have to be able to put worries out of your head and concentrate on what's important now because being neurotic is detrimental in a number of ways. First, it makes you less productive because you're distracted. Second, it can actually harm your outcomes because nobody (e.g., scholarship administrators, grad admissions assistants, journal editors) likes to be nagged.

I agree with you completely. But I think implicit in some of the GRE-bashing that goes on around here is that the GRE's aren't predictive, or don't signify anything about candidates, or are something that only stuffy, rule-bound programs adhere to (irrationally) because they prefer black-and-white thinking. They're not the be-all-end-all, but GRE scores actually mean something. What does it say about a person if they are below average (for example) at grade 9 math, can't string together a persuasive argument, or find the meaning in a written passage? This is what low scores suggest, unless there is strong evidence elsewhere that indicates otherwise.

Bingo. When predicting first-year graduate school grades, the GRE is just as predictive as undergraduate GPA (r = ~.30). So it's reasonably informative. (Obviously there is more to graduate school than good grades, but it's an easy outcome measure. And the GRE score range of people admitted is restricted, which probably underestimates the potential correlation.)

Your professors need a primer on measurement error. While their request sounds ridiculous, here are suggestions: 1. Ask one of the departmental complainers to sit in on one of your classes and critique you. 2. Be warm and enthisastic. These highly predict teaching evaluations. 3. Sit in on other TA's classes and see what they do differently.

Keep in mind that the OP sounds crazy. If the story is true, it improves my impression of this university because they dodged a huge bullet.

3000 words seems like a short thesis.

Some programs offer extra funding to international students to make up the tuition difference. Good thing to check for!

I think it varies very much from program to program. As a baseline (and hoping this doesn't sound ostentatious), my program is one of the better ones in its area and 80% of the students have external funding. So certainly not most everyone. But everyone here without an external award gets internal funding that's enough to live on (~22k/yr).

It would be hard to bring this to the program's attention without looking like an entitled jerk. Why should rich people have a better chance at graduate school acceptance than other folks? They already get advantages everywhere else...!

Seriously? An extra thousand dollars in exchange for doing your own deductions? Do it! If you don't want to calculate anything, save 20 or 25% off the top and you'll probably be fine. If at the end of the year that's too much then you've got some nice savings.

Step 1: Stop worrying. Step 2: Email their grad administrator and explain. When you make up the exams, send them the full transcript.

"No need to impress them"... except that these are your future colleagues, collaborators, etc. Dressing formally doesn't always impress, but dressing too casually will certainly make them think you're a schmuck. So dress nice. What's the harm? Jeans might be fine if they're nice jeans.