Catria

Is it a school where you have the choice of indicating your own scale?

I wonder what are the biostats standards to this end...

Here's the excerpt from the last email with that POI with anything pertaining to visits at his department:

When general GRE scores aren't used for screening out applicants, GRE scores are also sometimes used to award fellowships that do not discriminate by department (e.g. Centennials at Princeton).

Even though one of the POIs at one of the schools I'm applying to warned otherwise (in the specific context of his school; he said that few applicants actually visited that department prior to admission), I still feel that visiting demonstrates some level of commitment on the applicant's part.

My point stands: in-state vs. out-of-state is a factor at public schools. How much of a factor depends a lot on which state school, and correlates somewhat to how much of a tuition differential exists. But at those schools where state residency is a factor, are out-of-state domestics advantaged over internationals or not? One would think that the cost of tuition waivers would be the same for an out-of-stater vs. an international most of the time (and schools in those states where students don't have the opportunity to become residents of the school's state would then be sensitive to state residency)

In fact, it costs them more to educate even US citizens that aren't residents of the state the school is in, for the only reason that tuition waivers discriminate only for state residency, unless internationals incur additional costs that domestics don't.

How I understood a diversity statement: it was an essay in which one wrote about what experiences, background would contribute to diversity in one's chosen program that one would not write in a personal statement, that is, the experiences and background not directly relevant to the program one chooses to apply to. To this effect, I mentioned, and expanded, on one aspect of my background that I felt had no business being mentioned in a personal statement. I used this document as a guideline (change law school for PhD program): http://prelaw.cas.nyu.edu/docs/CP/2746/LawSchoolDiversityStatementQuickGuidelines.pdf

After the diagnostics test, you might want to review the questions so that you know what to focus on. As for full-length practice tests, PowerPrep II seemed quite realistic.

Dartmouth Thayer on the middle-high end of the list... less selective than Cornell/Columbia.

You might want to earn a good chemistry GRE score for what you want... and pay attention to whether the university is public or private; it is usually harder to get into US public universities than similarly-ranked privates for international students because of the cost of the tuition waivers associated with TA/RA positions.

If other fields have these threads up, why not classics? Here's a template you might want to use: Undergrad Institution: (School or type of school, such as big state, lib arts, ivy, foreign (what country?)... Overall Reputation in Classics?) Major(s): Minor(s): GPA in Major: Overall GPA: Length of Degree: (Are you graduating after 3, 4, or 5 years?) Position in Class: (No numbers needed, but are you top? near top? average? struggling?) Type of Student: (Domestic/International, male/female, minority?) GRE Scores : (revised or old version?) Q: V: W: TOEFL Total: (if applicable, otherwise delete this) Research Experience: (At your school or elsewhere? What field? How much time? Any publications (Mth author out of N?) or conference talks etc...) Awards/Honors/Recognitions: (Within your school or outside?) Pertinent Activities or Jobs: (Such as tutor, TA, etc...) Any Miscellaneous Accomplishments that Might Help: Special Bonus Points: (Such as connections, grad classes, famous recommenders, minority status etc...) Any Other Info That Shows Up On Your App and Might Matter: Applying to Where: School - Department - Research Interest School - Department - Research Interest School - Department - Research Interest

I checked against the University of Minnesota's application forms and they asked for a diversity statement. It's not about what I'm putting in it (it's essentially the same stuff that goes into a law school diversity statement, except that one changes "law school" for "PhD program in X"), but how much it is going to affect my chances, especially since I'm an international student. I know that a personal statement can hurt you if it's poorly written but I am totally clueless about how the diversity statement would affect my chances. How much weight is given to the diversity statement in the admissions process if it is required?

GPA, research/work experience?

Discipline please...

Maybe some of you have an idea as to how much responsibility even having a graduate student really entails... I often have the impression that it's quite a lot of responsibilities that a professor assumes vis-a-vis a graduate student.

One must also take in account the volatility of the applicant pool as well as the yield of those who actually are admitted...

Please forgive my somewhat naïve vision of how research fits in a professor's job... By that logic, I could say that I'd rather teach at a lesser school (whether lesser means less productive colleagues, research-wise, lesser-ranked or otherwise)...

I know that, in actuality, if you're offered a tenure-track faculty job, one will most likely accept it. But not every tenure-track faculty job is for every PhD holder. There are those departments with graduate programs, and there are those departments without (I learned about the latter late in undergrad, because of a lecture in advanced statistical mechanics). Of course, the quintessential departments with graduate programs are those at RU/VH (more commonly known as R1s) universities. When senior year came around the corner, I knew I needed to go to graduate school and my ultimate goal back then was to work in academia at a RU/VH school. But now that I am in a masters program, I have a better idea of the professors' responsibilities towards their graduate students as well as towards their research. Departments with graduate programs: Pros: You can perform research year-round on projects whose scale and scope is larger than at non-graduate departments You can train graduate students Your teaching load is lighter and you have the opportunity to teach advanced coursework Cons You are expected to publish and to win research grants The responsibilities of labs and graduate students are actually quite heavy and you have to deal with them year-round The temptation is very great to favor graduate students over undergraduates Departments without graduate programs: Pros: You are not expected to pursue grants and publications as intensely You don't have to deal with the stress of dealing with research students year-round (or at least it takes less room, and it goes without staying that lab responsibilities go hand-in-hand) You have more freedom to choose research topics provided the research can be conducted without the need for large budgets (especially appealing for theorists) Cons: Your teaching load is heavier You may not be able to contribute to research as much You may not be able to teach advanced coursework as you would have liked to Nevertheless, regardless of whether one teaches at a department with or without graduate programs, a faculty job at the university level is highly stressful. That said, which one fits you better?

Because I had a narrow range of tentative dates, I asked months in advance to meet with either the POIs or graduate students... But is demonstrated interest a factor for PhD admissions? I know Tufts Syndrome is usually associated with schools where demonstrated interest is a factor in undergraduate admissions, though.

The GRE is used for a few purposes, all right, but, if not used as a screening device, it does happen that fellowships awarded university-wide may use general GRE scores as a basis... again, not the sole basis.

I would use ED on UPenn... Mark Trodden and Justin Khoury are the ones I want to work under.

... would you use ED on any one school, provided that school in question offered that option? If so, which school? I knew ED was used in graduate education (e.g. law school, med school, business school) but not for a PhD program.

PowerPrep II #1: V159, Q169 PowerPrep II #2: V157, Q168 PowerPrep II #3: V160, Q170 (AW 5.0-5.5 based on the human graders I used) Real test: V162, Q167, AW4.0 I blamed the discrepancy in writing styles between what ETS wants and what I usually do for this 1-1.5 point discrepancy... but I suppose a 4.0 on AW won't be what will reject me from UPenn (or Harvard/Princeton for that matter).

I am not posting this question out of sour grapes. I might have gotten a 910 on the physics GRE test (87th percentile), and I've read about the East Asian domination over the physics GRE, but do East Asians (here primarily understood as Chinese and Indians, but it is actually more broadly defined) dominate other GRE subject tests to the extent they dominate the physics (and perhaps mathematics) GRE?