Loric

) I just don't think it's "right" to be discussing money when your admission is still in consderation. A school should not be picking you, or "not picking" you, based on a financial situation. Yes, i get the practical "How are you going to pay for this?" question on an app. But amounts of awards and grants and such..? Then they just shop for the dollar amount they want and pick those students.. it's not supposed to work like that. The same way your whole financial aid status. This is essentially carte blanche to eliminate "poor" people from the applicant pool. The school is not supposed to be looking at your financial aid information when making their decision.

Oh i'm not even considering Berkeley and the opinion of anyone who is would be useless to me. I'm just morbidly curious as to why it matters so much to these people. There, as yet, appears to be no rational explination outside of "because it's the thing to do."

These future projects I've discussed i hope to fund via the X Y Z fellowships I've applied for. Something like that.

Very true, in giving my work a final once-over I realized my attempts to stay within the word count had resulted in some strange juxtapositions. I found a statement that was just sort of floating in space in the middle of a paragraph. It was an idea I wanted to express.. and given more words would have made sense. But I didn't have more words. It got cut and the other areas were made stronger with those extra words it sacrificed.

I went to a 4 year university but I was in the arts. Some of my classes were literally doing Yoga 3x a week for 1.5 hours. I still took 100's of other tests, mostly with scantrons, to get my degree. The people who say they didn't take tests make me seriously question the validity of their degree.

If anything, look for idea/statements you may have repeated.

The analytical side of theater is nothing without the performance/creative aspect of it. Without performance theater does not exist. You tell me you wrote a full script and even submitted it at the thesis level, I want to see something of it. Some part of it. Not presenting it begs many questions, none of them good for an applicant.

If anything, she has to explain that script so that they're not sitting there wondering why it's not something they can look at. I wrote a book, it gets face time in my app. No, not all 260-something pages of my book. A short portion that sums up the essence of what it is and the spirit of what it is.

Think of it this way.. You're on the adcomm and you're a theater person. An applicant lists their thesis which is essentially a script for a 2 hour movie. They give you a research paper to read as the writing sample. You sit there baffled as to why you're not seeing any part of this script...

But the OP also wants to go into theater.. where being interesting is vastly more important than being well cited and gramatically correct.

I still think 15 pages from the larger pieces would prove more interesting and valuable then a paper your professor said needed revision.

"Howdy! How ya doin? Iz you good? I wants to know! But seriously, I was interested in applying for your program in XYZ as a PhD candidate and John McJohn said you might be a good person to approach for questions I have about the program. If you have the time, do you mind if I pick your brain a bit? I saw that you did BLAH BLAH and I'm interested in BLAH-BLAH adjacent topic of BLEH-BLEH. Do you suppose that would be in line with the research direction of your program in the future? Also, is there a good place to get chicken and waffles at 3am anywhere near the campus? Sincerely, Moi." There, done. Send it.

Funding also varies year to year due to donations, finances, etc.. so that you got it in 2011 and got say.. i dunno.. $5.. but someone else got it in 2009 and got $50 makes it seem like the person was a lot more worthy in 2009 or got a bigger prize. Technically they got a bigger prize.. but that award may have been as big as they could give that year, not that you didn't earn it just as much as the person in 2009. Same criteria, selectivity, etc.. but different amounts. And along those lines, what if your amount -is- the smaller amount? Did you really not earn it? You met the criteria for getting an award and were awarded whatever monetary amount as attached to that award at the time. List the award, don't mention if it came with a lifetime supply of waffle fries.

When you're 70 words or more over and you don't have "permission" from the admissions adviser it's very likely you'll have someone on the adcomm who goes.. "Did not follow instructions. Eww." And on their little rubric of your SOP they'll mark you down, regardless of if its the greatest thing they ever read. It's entirely possible they wont care, but unlike say.. having one too many letters of reccomendation (which most schools will overlook) submitting writing that's too long is taken a personal offense by many people in academia. You essentially gave them more work to do. Would you be happy if your job was "make 8 widgets" and then someone comes along and says "I need 2 extra widgets.. you get no extra time, no extra money, but do it.." Once, you might not be upset.. then someone else does it.. then someone else.. then you've got 2x as many widgets to make and no extra time or resources. At that point you start to become hostile toward the people requesting extra widgets. That's what the people reading papers are like. They have been burned by people who turn in things 4-5-10x as long as the requested length. So any noticeable amount over is going to provoke them into rage mode.

I'm anti-fluff in papers, which is what a page or two of filler will be. It wont be your best work. Email them, usually paper lengths are somewhat negotiable. They'll probably be more interested in seeing the best parts of your script than in seeing a few mediocre papers.

I recall the first day 1 "app" having some short answers I quickly filled in, not thinking much of them. I have no idea what those even said anymore. Here's hoping I didn't blatantly contradict myself somewhere!

You assume those who have done it before are willing to discuss the matter. Sometimes the elite clubs want to stay that way. Everest is ripe with teams who have tried to sabotage each other. Not to mention the locals have gotten plenty of press lately for endangering and threatening the lives of climbers who weren't willing to pay their blackmail/ransom.

I'm starting to think no one actually knows why everyone wants to get into Berkeley other than "it's the thing to do." Just a thought.. if you cant easily articulate why you want to attend.. you dont stand much of a chance writing it out in your PS/SOP/etc.

I did the same thing with a transcript - reordered and it was processed by the end of the next day. Live and learn. Also, if your school is on quarters, they're on a short vacation right now (or will be, so lots of people take off early, especially office staff.)

If you write it yourself, you run the risk of using your own voice. The longer it gets, the more likely that becomes. You, me, the adcomm, everyone knows that profs sometimes ask people to write their own letters. But still, one can't be caught blatantly doing so.

A page, or less, with a few paragraphs. Imagine if it was printed out and sent what a one page professional letter should roughly look like.

Hi hi! I recently graduated from the "Application" portion of this website to the "Waiting it Out" section. I'm all excited - everything is going so fast! In just a few weeks I can go bum around the "Rejected - Now What?" area! But seriously, I'm happy to finally be waiting on them instead of them waiting on me.

I changed my answers to the 100word/1000 character "short answer" questions on the app at least a dozen times.

It's done! Yay!!! So that's about 2 and 3/4 months

Your best bet - be upfront and mature. If you accept that you weren't the most mature but have moved beyond that, they'll put a lot more stock in your value than if you tried to sob-story it.