pterosaur

I got further confirmation on the Marshall, so I just sent an email withdrawing my Fulbright application. So if anyone else here was applying for Imperial College London, that's less competition now! Since the website says they generally recommend 1.5-2x the number of applicants as there are spots, I wonder if that means there were only 2 people up for that specific slot, since there's only 1 Fulbright for Imperial... Oops. I replied to the "no-reply" email. Now I have to figure out who to actually email.

Another possibility is a time you started out in a new or interdisciplinary field where you didn't have a lot of background.

You got an email on the 16th but it wasn't a rejection or a recommendation? What did it say?

I did get recommended. Here's what it said: I am pleased to inform you that the National Screening Committee of the Institute of International Education (IIE) has recommended you for a grant under the Fulbright U.S. Student Program for the academic year 2015-16. Your application has been forwarded to the supervising agency abroad for final review. In addition, your application will be forwarded to the program sponsor, the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the United States Department of State, for transmittal to the presidentially-appointed J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board (FFSB). The FFSB makes final decisions on Fulbright awards. This letter is not notification of a grant since the number of recommended candidates exceeds the number of awards available. The notification timeline varies by country. Final selection notifications for a particular country cannot be sent until the country has made its final selections and the candidates have been approved. Final status notifications will be sent beginning in late February and continue through the spring, depending on the country.Final selection notifications will be sent via email to the account listed in the application. If this address changes, send an email to the IIE Program Manager for the World Region .For further information about the next stage in the selection process, go to the website: http://us.fulbrightonline.org/information-for-recommended-candidates Receipt of a grant is contingent upon: (a) submission of official hard copies of your transcripts (see below); ( completion of the bachelor’s degree for graduating seniors; © approval by the FFSB; (d) concurrence by the supervising agency abroad; (e) medical and research clearances; (f) security factors in the country of your application; (g) availability of funds; and (h) participation in a Pre-Departure Orientation, where required. Congratulations on your success in the preliminary stages of the competition. Sincerely yours, Daniel Kramer Director, U.S. Student Programs

I ran into my fellowship advisor in the hallway today. It went like this: "Have you heard - ? Oh wait, I'm not allowed to tell you yet. Anyway, more good news." And then she ran off. Not sure what to make of that...

Awesome! I'm REALLY looking forward to it. I've never even been to the UK before!

I got one of those fellowships: I'm going to the UK for MRes on a Marshall Scholarship next year! So that puts the PhD applications on hold for a year in the meantime. Thanks for the feedback, though.

I guess I was thinking of it more in terms of the situation that I expected: not knowing the state of fellowships before I submitted my applications. But you're right that it wouldn't be fair to apply 100% knowing that I won't be attending for a year. @peachypie - I'm not sure how meaningful a letter of recommendation would be from someone in the MS program, since it starts in October and I'll be applying in December.

The Marshall is just for the master's in the UK.

Well, that seems to be a pretty unified response. Why is it so much better to wait?

I was awarded a Marshall Scholarship, so I will be going to the UK next year to do a masters in bioengineering. However, I'm also in the process of applying to PhD programs here in the US. Is it better to complete/submit my PhD applications now (they still need some serious work...) and then ask to defer a year, or wait until a year from now to apply? My PI suggested I wait and enjoy my year in London, but when I mentioned this on another forum, someone thought it was a much better idea to apply this year. If I apply from the UK, too, it would be way harder to visit schools. What do you think?

I'm an undergrad currently applying for BioE/BME PhD programs for next fall, and I'm having trouble with my list of schools. After talking with my current PI, I have a list of 3 schools to apply to: Northeastern Northwestern USC The problem is that there aren't a lot of schools with many people working on the motor learning that I'm interested in. I'm currently at Northeastern, and my PI would like to take me on for grad school if she has the funding, so that's sort of my safety option. But I'm paranoid about applying to 3 schools. I think I'm a strong candidate, though, and all 3 are a good fit. (I also spent 6 months working with a professor from USC and he's writing one of my recommendations, but I don't know if USC's admissions give individual profs much sway in the process). I'm also applying for a number of fellowships (Fulbright, Whitaker, Rhodes) to do a masters degree in the UK before a PhD. My PI also suggested the possibility of applying to Imperial College London's MRes in bioengineering outside of the fellowships to keep that as an option, but I haven't given that much thought yet. Any thoughts on this application plan?

People are getting contacted about interviews already? Yikes! According to the email I got, it said we would be informed "by the end of January" so I wasn't expecting much before then. I applied to do a research masters in the UK. I'm also planning to apply for Whitaker Fellowship to study bioengineering in the UK. But I've been able to keep my mind off of the Fulbright pretty well as I freak out over PhD program applications and interviews for Mitchell/Marshall/Rhodes. Anyone else in the same boat with the type of Fulbright and know when I might hear something?

I did make it to the next stage! I'm a finalist for the Rhodes, Marshall, and Mitchell, which I still can't quite believe. The problem is, the Rhodes and Mitchell interviews are on the same day, so you can only do one of them. It's really stressing me out, but I am leaning toward doing the Rhodes. Have you heard any news?

I'm just reading this now as I'm going through the process. I'm going to school in Massachusetts, but I'm from Wisconsin and applying there, so @Horb's comment is humorously on point. But we'll see if that's at all helpful in reality.

I talked to my current PI, who is on the committee for bioengineering PhD applications at my university. She thought that I should retake it. She sees it as a red flag if the writing score is low because of how important writing is for science, and the concern is that it won't make it past the initial cut for fellowships. She is also wary of when a statement of purpose doesn't match the writing level from the GRE score, because you can always have someone else write that statement, but not the GRE. Since I did really well on the other 2 parts as well, I don't really want to spend $200 to possibly get lower scores there and not know what I would do differently to improve my AWA. As a compromise, she suggested paying the $55 for a re-score. Based on the searching I've done, I don't expect any change from a re-score. But if I could even get it bumped up to a 4.0, that would be a big difference from an application perspective, I think (and put me past that 50th percentile mark @Machaon01 mentioned). Thoughts on rescoring?

Do you think it's worth retaking it for the AWA?

I think we had 20-something from my university (~12,000 students), which is apparently one of the largest applicant pools we've had.

Why is the turnaround so slow on this? For other fellowships (Marshall, Mitchell, Rhodes) the entire decision process is finished by late November or early December. Is our just because the Fulbright program is so much bigger?

I'm applying for bioengineering and neuroscience PhD programs and just got my GRE scores. I got 169 V / 166 Q, but I only got 3.5 on writing. I'm quite a good writer in general, so I'm surprised by this. I didn't think the writing section went spectacularly, but I didn't think it went that badly. So what do I do with these scores? Just try to write a really great statement of propose to show them I know how to write?

Kaplan: 166 V / 164 Q (1 year ago) Actual: 169 V / 166 Q (today) I was kind of surprised by the verbal score. I did no prep for it, and spent a couple hours max on quant prep. When I was taking the test, the quant sections were definitely harder than the verbal. I was running out of time for quant but had loads extra for verbal. Also kind of surprised that verbal is higher, since I'm a neuroscience major and applying for engineering programs. I think skipping middle school math is catching up to me...

I'm applying this cycle for PhD programs in neuro/BME. The rub: I'm on co-op this semester, but I just got laid off from my co-op (along with over half the company). I'll be starting my final seem of classes in January, but in the meantime, I have 3 empty months. I'm currently trying to leverage my way back into an on-campus lab I was working in before co-op, but I'm not sure what the outcome of that will be. Is his something I need to worry about for applications, or am I being exceedingly paranoid?

I've started filling out my applications (for BME/neuroscience PhD programs), and most of the forms ask for a resume, not a CV. Are they using the terms interchangeably, or do they want a 1-page resume instead of my 3- or 4-page CV? Sorry if it's a stupid question, but I don't want to disgruntle adcoms with an unnecessarily incorrect document.

I currently have a list of 12-15 schools that I'm considering, though I'm not going to apply to all of those. I'm guessing my final list will be around 8 schools or so, but we'll see.

Thanks for the reminder on "official" scores @grad_wannabe. That should save me a chunk of change on score reports! Just signed up for Oct. 16. And dang, it's expensive... So hopefully no retakes just because of the cost.