Loric

Find him and staple it to his forehead!

It's a reordering of clauses. I do it all the time - and some people think I can't write. It's a habit of certain folks.. At the same time, I've lived off royalties for the books i've written. It's a matter of what people are willing to accept and what their exposure to the language is. If they're entirely rigid, formal, and not well read they will have trouble with such a sentence. It's not a typical or easy sentence. It's not wrong, it's not what people expect. A story I like to tell in such situations.. way back in my AP Lit class in high school the students had to read and edit each other's essays. The valedictorian was reading my paper, me the barely-a C avg student who slept through class but never got less than an A on anything I wrote. She took offense to my sentence structure. We argued. She walked it up to the teacher, certain I was going to be told to change my wording. My teacher looked it over and said.. "What's the problem?" The valedictorian became so indignant and tried to express all the grammatical reasons the sentence was flawed. The teacher lowered her glasses, look at the paper once more, and replied.. "If it's good enough for Mr. Thoreau, it's good enough for Mr. Loric." And jaw agape, that was the end of the valedictorian's edit of my paper. The teacher wrote A+ on it and handed it back to her. "You could learn something you know.."

Call him. And no, it's not rude - he agreed to do it. But you do need to speak to him to confirm he's still going to do it and knows about the deadline.

Here.. all the good movie quotes:

And for the record, the original "theme" of my SOP was to be based on the idea of borrowing a ladder - from the school/dept, so to speak - to ascend to new heights and achieve my goals. I had just watched Gattaca and if you've seen the film, the idea of a "borrowed ladder" permeates it thematically.

Stop putting % after the number.. that's not how the English works. It's "98th percentile."

I feel like I'm not really explaining this well.. If you want, you can PM me and i'll send you a copy of my SOP to read. It may be awful, it may be awesome, I'm not really sure. But you can at least see how I tackled all this.

And to more directly answer this question... The MFA i'm applying for is related to my BA (and aborted MFA in the same subject.) My overall theme was that I was a unique asset that would help the team - as it is a collaborative medium. The idea that the whole group would benefit from my presence, experience, etc.. even if I wasn't the ideal/perfect candidate. My "moment" was when I left my former major because I was so fustrated with it - it wasn't where my heart was. At the time, there wasn't a program that covered specifically what I wanted to study and do. You went into the related programs and then carved out your niche later. No oen told you going in that you'd be mocked, told your work was a farce, and treated like you were somehow pssing on a legacy each time you mentioned your interest in the field. So I left. I struck it out on my own and wrote a book about my true interests. Researching everything on my own in my own time, no guidance at all. Got it published - profit. But it didnt get me into the industry. I'm just seen a smart outsider.. one who the press comes to for soundbites when they're doing a story on the industry. Then I learned about a newly formed program that emphasized the industry and getting into it. So my SOP focuses on my leaving (very breifly, not to dwell) doing my own thing, noting the insular nature of the industry, and then finding this program as a new way to get in, to something i'm obviously passionate about. Then I rant on about my experience, skills, etc.. and how i'd be an asset.

Well, if you can't sell yourself, they're not going to buy it. One way i've seen suggested to overcome this hurdle is to look at your peers and try to sell them and their accomplishment. How would you describe what they've done? How would you see them as an asset to a program and a good fit? Now, what do they have in common with you? Describe those aspects of yourself the same way you just described them as they pertained to others.

The 99th percentile is the highest possible ranking, there is no 100th percentile.. so you're probably trying to express that you did well, thus the 98th percentile is the correct wording.

I forgot that existed

I find it very funny that you made point 2 into three things but say there's no benefit in subdividing things

I don't even know what R1 means.. I do know that Purdue really dislikes it when you misspell their name as if they produced chicken. Had an adminstrator write me a very terse email once when I wrote a story about one of his grads taking over a position at a major company. On my own little obscure blog. Ok.. so.. let's rank this! Flyover State Schools: U of Tennessee U of Nebraska U of Oregon Somethings that Sounds Overly Religious: Southern Methodist U Chicken People: Perdue Places Named After Superhero Men: Kent State Wayne State Hippies: U of Colorado Boulder Other: South Carolina U U of Washington Rochester There, whoo.. that was some tough ranking but I think it'll help you pick the right school.

Bunny got over it and Bunny knows this - it's the big picture "you."

Come to think of it.. I'm entirely ok with creating a "Rejected" forum and just moving all the new "What are my chances?" and "Is this GRE high enough?" questions to that forum by default.

I mean, getting people to -admit- they emailed the adcom contact several times asking if they had a decision yet (seriously, how can people not see that as a big no-no?) will be difficult, but any information provided would benefit people on the next round. We always talk about what it took to get in, but never what it took to get "out." Knowing what really results in being out will benefit people and their expectations. Plus we could force all those "EMERGENCY: What are my chances?!?!?!" posts to read and post over there.

I fail to see how a degree that let you make all your decisions at home at your own pace while hiding under a security blanket, sipping herbal tea, and sniffing sachets of lavender benefitted you at all in becoming a professional of anything. Maybe a professional cat hoarder. In the other thread people are saying the idea of being medicated to get past the stress/anxiety isn't right. Well then what is? Either it's clinical and needs treatments or someone is just whining an awful lot over something they need to cowboy up and get over. The inability to get over it says, to me, that you don't have what it takes to make it in grad school.

This is not meant to in any way be aimed at you specifically.. But I find the most important thng people seem to fail to read when writing their SOP's (plural - you don't just copy-paste a single one to multiple applications) is the actual prompt given by the school. There seems to be this idea of "write an SOP" and what an SOP consists of is somehow programmed into people's minds. They then create these dreadful things that don't answer the questions the school is looking for in their SOP and almost always start with the phrase "Since I was a child I've been interested in.." or something like it. So the most valuable resource is what the school itself asks for and says about the SOP. It is a part of your overall application package. It needs to answer the prompt while also playing up aspects that will not be well represented in other areas of the application. View your application as a whole - heck, give it a theme you want to drive home throughout - and then see how the SOP fits into that big picture. Each school will be a little different in how you can convey that information and thus the SOP will be different.

If you just apply and i dunno.. mention it? Nope, not gonna help. Now if your sibling knows someone who still works there and who is willing to put in a good word for you, be on the lookout for your app, talk to the movers and shakers and decision makers.. yes, that will help. Just being related will not help. Having contacts due to that relation will.

I'm one of the biggest touters of "say no negative" - but that's framed as a positive. You got more out of the overall experience than the grades show.. I fail to see how that's negative for you. You're not saying the school was crap, or that you did poorly, or that you even learned from a mistake. Just that the total is greater than the sum of the parts.

Oo, I like you. Post more.

Or just add the safety schools. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Also, just to follow up... nothing is obvious. They don't know you, how your mind works, or anything of the sort. They are making decisions based on what you're telling them. They will not assume your career goals, even if they seem clearly spelled out. For all we know you could be going to grad school to find a husband - seriously, search these forums, there's people who do/did.

I don't see how that's bad.

What was the wording...?