katethekitcat

One school sent me an acceptance e-mail at 5:30 a.m. in the morning. Add "illogical office hours" to the list of "reasons admissions departments don't make sense."

"Financial aid" in the world of MPH is usually a myth. I wouldn't expect much, if anything, from anywhere you apply.

Would they be willing to do a Skype/phone interview? I don't think it would be wrong to let them know, hey, you're absolutely my top choice but I can't cancel on a school right after they've made expensive reservations.

I'll be attending the University of Michigan come fall. I'm looking for a neighborhood where a.) I can pay a maximum of $400 for rent (I currently pay less than that in Chicago, so I feel this should be possible...right?) - this is, of course, with roommates - b.) I'm close enough to campus to walk and have access to a grocery store, as I am unlikely to have a car. Recommendations of where to look?

You have several threads started with multiple essays. If you're trying to evaluate whether they're improving, try keeping all your essays in one thread so people can see the change over time.

True - I'm just basing this off the biology thread, which is currently sending out a ton of invites/rejections/acceptances. Different departments, admittidly, but most applications have been turned in by now and many places have rolling admissions. Plus it's a shout out to lurkers

Has anyone heard anything, positive or negative, since December 27? This silence seems odd. Or has anyone decided to attend one of the places they've been accepted?

Aaaaaand it's flu season. Sooooo glad it looks like it's our age group getting hit - just what we need when stressing about grad school. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-07/holidays-bring-flu-as-virus-hits-young-adults-at-year-end.html

It's going to take them a lot longer to get acceptances/rejections/invites out if they have to answer individual e-mails and phone calls from everyone who applied The waiting game is tough, but it's normal not to have heard things back yet. Schools understand you have multiple interviews and will usually be flexible if you need to work around a date.

Calm down, guys If every single person is e-mailing and calling to find out about their own status, they have to deal with hundreds of individual requests instead of working on sending out invites!

Again, this is your university's call. But considering that you'll need to set up and design all your experiments in a PhD program, it is probably best not to shy away from the work now. It doesn't do much good to conduct research if you're going through the motions - actually do the work.

FYI - I am employed by a midwestern university, and we've shut down tomorrow because of cold temperatures. I don't know how many others will follow suit, but this could definitely affect invites being sent out tomorrow. SORRY.

Best: University of Iowa. Not only did they answer my question, they followed up a few weeks later to check the applicaiton process was going smoothly. Worst: Tied. University X lost my application fee (found it later) but were super helpful (and funny) via Twitter; University Y gave me conflicting information and frequently misspelled my name. Poll: We always worry when we misspell a professor's name or make a typo. Do you hold it against a univerity if their communication is poorly written and riddled with errors? I will admit I have been biased against programs when receiving such e-mails.

I just ran into this problem. I went back to complete my FAFSA and realized there was absolutely no way to do it without having already filed taxes, and I can't do those until my employer sends me that thing I need to do (I am a finance guru, as demonstrated by my grasp of the vocabulary). So, that's on hold.

These are questions most appropriate for your university. "Honors" means a range of things at different colleges. The primary question should be whether or not you're interested in enough in your topic to commite to the research. It also depends what your future goals are.

I knew there was a reason I shouldn't have used my work e-mail. Now I tweek out every time Outlook pops up in the corner of my screen, waiting for a "check portal" message.

If you've already studied for 6 months and haven't changed your score significantly, it seems unlikely you will on a 3rd try, especially with less time to review. Go with the two and save some money

I am very happy with my decision not to study. My quantitiative score would have been a lot higher if I'd reviewed some basic math - my biggest problem was I wasted time having to figure things out that memorization would have helped - but I just couldn't justify hours and hours of study for a test designed to profit a company, when I could be using that time on my day job, my friends, and other experieinces that, in the end, boosted my resume enough that I got into my top choice grad school despite my poor quantitiative score. However, obviously I have the virtue of hindsight and having been accepted to graduate school. At the time, was I kicking myself for not studying math? Yes. Only since then have I discovered - at least in my field - my LORs, personal statement, and work experieince were what got me accepted. I've had two years of post-undergrad experieince; maybe my scores would have mattered more if that wasn't true. I would also say that timed tests do not bother me and I knew going into the exam that I'd be able to get a high verbal and writing scores regardless of study. So, very happy, but I also completely understand why people study for weeks. If I'd chosen a program that had a 90% minimum cutoff, you bet I would have studied every day for months.

Sorry to hear that Did you get an e-mail or did you check the admissions portal? Has anyone heard from any of the UChicago unclustered (medical physics, health studies, biophysical sciences) programs? I've combed through results from previous years but I can't even determine their interview policy (some people interviewed, some people didn't, some people found out early January, some people found out March).

As ratlab said, your essay needs to be much longer. Longer essays get higher scores. Multiple test-prep companies have studied this. Your argument of "political leaders should step down, but business leaders shouldn't" is weak - I don't buy why the fields require these different stances. In addition, you've addressed two areas - politics and business - but making the distinction (yes in one, no in the other) leaves me wondering your position on education, which the question also mentioned. You're not taking a position on the main idea of the prompt so much as specific examples presented by the question. Be careful with your grammar throughout the essay. There were several errors, and this is going to make it difficult to bring your score up. Yes, you wrote the essay under a timed situation - but the GRE is also timed.

And here I thought the waiting was over...

Perhaps add a "winged it" option. I did not study.

Do you know when we can expect to hear about those? Do they decide after admissions deposits, or would they have been offered alongside your acceptance (i.e. haven't heard anything = no scholarship)?

Woah...two people hate PCR and cloning? That's actually my favorite thing to do!

I started, but for some reason it was having me file one for 2012-2013, not 2014-2015, so I'm halfway through. But it shouldn't take much longer - I am an independendent so I only need my own tax information, and the site just imported it from the IRS. However, I'm not very hopeful for anything except massive piles of interest-accumulating debt.