maelia8

I don't know about you, but I'm an elf, in the LOTR sense of the word. Immortal, lots of braids, able to see the future …. which is how I know that grad school is going to be awesome in the fall

If you're only staying in this city for 2-3 months, I wouldn't count on forming any meaningful new friendships while you're there, although you might get to hang out with the other interns over a beer after work. Last summer when I was alone in a city for an internship (in a single apartment, without a roommate), I spent a lot of time going for walks, working on craft projects, and writing. When you have a lot of free time to yourself, it's a good time to get creative and do some writing, drawing, crafting, sculpting, etc.

I took a screenshot of the header and first paragraph of the congratulatory admissions letter and posted it on my social networks with the text: "I got into __________! Somebody pinch me, because I can't believe it!" I got a lot of funny comments on the status, including a lot of people making fun of the fact that I'll be a "doctor" when I graduate.

I read a LOT of novels, embroider, design and sew costumes, watch fantasy and historical drama TV shows, go to the theater, and play board and card games with friends on the weekend, often with some alcohol on the side

Oh man #17 … or its variant, "thanks so much for your help." I am definitely guilty of ending practically every email I send to a department secretary with that. I guess I always thought if it as sort of a proactive way of saying I expect them to be kind enough to answer my question, but I guess it is pretty passive-agressive

Eh, I'm not complaining - my scores didn't stop me from getting into a good program, and I doubt that a mediocre quant score is going to stop anyone with an otherwise stellar resume and stats from getting accepted to a top institution. That being said, it did seem like a waste of time for me to study all of that math again knowing at during my humanities Ph.D. I'll need absolutely nothing that was on the GRE math section except for the analysis of simple graphs.

Yeah, the reason why it's a bit of a larger cohort (I believe) is because they a) have a lot of funding and receive an awful lot of applications - although I know that Ann Arbor also receives hundreds of applications and aims for a cohort closer to 12-15. Regardless, I thought that 25 people seemed quite small and intimate enough when I was there to visit

Yeah, tutoring probably would have helped the most - the books gave me a good idea of what would be on the test, but not how to face it effectively considering my skill set and lack of that sort of long-term brain training that you get automatically when you're in the sciences. When I took the test, I had literally not taken a straight math class in almost six years (my undergrad allowed you to fulfill "quantitative reasoning" requirements through introductory courses in biology, physics, and chemistry), so I was rusty on the material to begin with, and without that kind of drilling, it wasn't possible for me to get the necessary speed/shortcuts up to par working alone to study for the GRE.

Just out of curiosity (I've already been accepted to grad school and should hopefully never have to take the GRE again), did anybody have luck in dealing with the opposite situation? I'm a humanities person who scored extremely high on verbal without study but barely middling on quant, although I focussed all of my energies on studying for the quant section for months. I felt that I understood the material on the math sections, but was unable to get to a point where i was able to apply all of the necessary tricks and shortcuts to answer the questions correctly in the required time frame. I got flustered from running out of time and I'm sure it affected my score, as I'm usually the slow and steady math test taker who often has to do problems over several times but generally gets the answer right in the end. This style is not well-suited to the GRE, and I never found any books that taught you how to do math problems more quickly and use shortcuts when you're the kind of person for whom skipping steps is incredibly confusing.

I only used the official ETS book and one of those lists of 500 vocabulary words. i took all of the practice tests, although I didn't write any essays, just read the essay examples.

You can start the deferral process as soon as you are able to get an official stamp/signature from the educational institution you'll be attending. However, the deferral won't kick in until you actually start classes, as the deferral forms generally require you to list the start date of your program. For example, I'm finishing my current program on June 30th and starting at my new grad school on August 20th, so I will have to make payments for July and August as I won't be enrolled in a program during that time.

1) I only applied to "heavy hitters" as well (top-10 history schools) as well, and in my opinion you just have to be confident in yourself and know that although the chances of getting in are not amazing, you're going for gold and are prepared to do your absolute best. Applying to programs with a poorer fit simply because you think you're more likely to get in would be a waste of your time. Give yourself the benefit of the doubt - if you're applying there with good stats and your interests mesh well, then you are probably qualified to get in and it's just a question of having a good app and being in the right place at the right time with a little luck (factors you can't influence, so sit back and relax after you submit your best possible application knowing that you made your best effort ) 2) I don't know where you got those numbers for Berkeley, but I don't believe they are accurate. I'll be going there in the Fall and there were less than 30 people at the visitors' day, with an expected cohort of 20-25. There are only two other people in my field, and I think 2-3 new grad students per specialty area is normal. the cohort did not seem especially large to me, and department dynamics seemed relatively intimate.

I feel exactly the same as you and am in very similar situation, so I know where you're coming from! I am also in Germany, also broke up with my boyfriend a few weeks ago because I'll be leaving for the USA at the end of June (there just wasn't any point watching the relationship die - once I got into my Ph.D. program in February, things began to go downhill), and now I'm also single and feeling pretty darn bored waiting for everything to take off when I finally leave for my big move. I'm trying to stay interested in my current job and activities but I'm itching to move on and it's hard sometimes. Halt die Ohren steif

THIS. My quant score was 5 points below the supposedly preferred "cutoff" at my top-10 school (although I am a humanities major and my verbal score was outstanding) and I still got into one of these groups of 20 out of over 600 applicants. There is no "typical" student who gets accepted - all of the others that I talked to in my cohort were above average in some areas and below average in others. Not everyone broke 160 on their GRE in both sections, and not everybody had at least a 3.5 GPA. I don't believe anybody is automatically thrown out because one area is a bit below average - if you have other factors that make you a stellar candidate, such as specialized experience, language skills, fellowships or internships, then two or three amazing criterion are enough to outweigh one "meh" slightly below average factor.

@Patrick Bateman I think your scores are just fine and you shouldn't bother retaking. I aimed at some pretty high end schools (I'm in the humanities) and I only scored 148 on quant (but 167 on verbal) and got accepted or wait listed at several top-10 programs. It all depends on the field you're going into - and I think that for IA your scores are quite solid. They would never screen you out for breaking 160, that I promise you

I don't know about a standard grad converter, but I can tell you that American universities frequently ask for your "major GPA," that is, the grade point average of all of the courses that you took only in your major. Generally your major GPA will be higher than your overall GPA, since it's the average of courses that you are ostensibly most interested in/best at.

I don't go out to eat, for coffee, for drinks, or to the movies unless it's a friend's birthday and I can't avoid it (which means I go out roughly once a month, if that). I have a main job with a set monthly salary as well as a side job tutoring where I get paid in cash, and I have a deal with myself that my grocery money has to come out of the side tutoring cash so I have to ration it over the week. I haven't bought new clothes or shoes in almost a year (literally, I bought my last pair of new shoes and socks last July, leather shoes on sale for $30). The only new books I've bought have been when my family gave me an Amazon gift card for my birthday. When I moved into this apartment last September, I got all of the furniture on "Free your Stuff" groups. ebay, or craigslist for free or less than $20 apiece, and I'll be doing it again when I move in August. I totally know where you are coming from.

eh, if your city and university are liberal, then I think it's definitely fine. If you're worried about it, I'd run it by an advisor or older grad student and see if there's been any issues with brightly colored hair before. If not, you're probably good to go

What's the academic environment like at the university you'll be attending, as well as the environment of the field you work in? If your school/city/region are in general fairly liberal, then I think that as a graduate student it would probably be alright. However, I know there are areas where hair colors that are not naturally occurring are quite looked down on in any profession beyond artists/musicians.

My process was something like this (I am not claiming that it was the most thorough, but it worked for me): I went on the AHA website and looked at their interactive map of history Ph.D. programs by state. I went through it state by state in all of the states that had Ph.D. programs (in locations I could imagine myself living) and marked off the ones that had "European" listed under their specialty concentrations (the AHA website provides a concise list under each university profile). I cross-referenced this list with a rankings list of the top 25 schools in European History (based on reputation and publication rate), and came out with a list of about 12 schools. For each of these, I went onto the school's website and read through the faculty profiles of all of their Europeanists (in my case, more specifically Germanists) to see what they have worked on and find out who has interests that overlap with my own. At 6 out of 12 schools there was either no professor researching in my interest area, or that professor was retiring/going on sabbatical, so I crossed those off my list and ended up applying to the other 6, which was about how many I'd been expecting to apply to in the first place.

I don't really get the people who say "music is my life" and listen to it all the time, wherever they go, and say that they need it in some way to help them process or feel certain emotions - the kind of people who always have an earbud in at work and who talk about their favorite musicians or band members as if they know them personally and are their best friends. I do however enjoy music, and I turn it on at home to listen a couple of times a week and enjoy it, but I don't need it like an IV taped into my arm so that my life has its own soundtrack. I can't stand listening to music while I'm trying to enjoy something else or work on something else important (for example, I'd never work out or go for a walk while listening to music, and I can't stand it while I research or study. I mostly like to listen to music if I'm cooking, or if someone else is over and we're dancing to it. That's about it.

I'm in the humanities and math of the GRE variety (or any variety beyond percentages, simple long division and multiplication, and graph analysis) has not played a role in my life since I graduated from high school seven years ago. I didn't study for the verbal or writing section beyond reading the GRE prep book description of how the questions and essay were structured, and I got 167 verbal/5.0 writing and knew every word that came up on the test in the verbal section. HOWEVER I studied math intensively for a month, reviewing all of the formulas and information that I hadn't used in seven years, and I only managed to get 148 quant. I was scrambling to finish the math questions in time - although I wasn't bad at math in high school, I am just not the kind of person who sees all of those tricks and shortcuts to answer questions on a rapid-fire timed test, and it usually takes me a couple of tries to get the right answer, which will kill you on the GRE in terms of time. I barely finished most of the math sections, and my experimental section was also math - by the third math section I was so sick of it that I honestly didn't care much anymore. I put in all of that study time because I knew that if I didn't review I'd do even worse on math, but I was fine with my math score since it mattered minimally when applying to a history Ph.D. program.

I've been out of school for two years working as a teaching assistant at a high school, and although the work is fun (I get to lead discussions, read essays, teach kids new information, etc.), it's got nothing on academia. When you teach at the high school level it feels like the same old stuff every year, and you feel like you're half-assing it for not pushing the kids to the level of analysis of the subject matter that you know as possible (even though you also know that that level of analysis would be way over their heads). Academia just allows you to push the limits of scholarship as well as your own personal limits of achievement and excellence in a way that most other jobs don't, even other jobs in education, and I need that too much to give it up.

I usually send pretty casual emails to the five professors who acted as mentors to me during my undergrad (I had two majors, so two of them were in one field and three were in the other). I tell them what I've been doing in terms of travel and academics but usually keep it at that. They are generally quite busy and don't have time to write long epistles describing their current research, so I don't usually ask about that unless we decide to meet up in person (which will be possible for the first time this summer when I return to the USA after a LONG time overseas). Generally I just write them a couple of paragraphs and they respond with a "great, nice to hear you're doing well" and we leave it at that. I respect the fact that they are super busy as full-time undergrad course leaders and researchers, so I don't expect too much in terms of response. Although they were great mentors to me, none of them are actually that interested in my specialty area within my research field, so I don't see the need to try and cultivate an academic dialogue with them concerning our various research interests. Of course, this might change once I get to grad school in the Fall and want to run ideas by them

Just to add my personal experience to the mix: I got into a top public school (Berkeley) with 97th percentile verbal scores on the GRE but only 33rd percentile math scores (I applied to a humanities program, and I'm just not that great at timed math tests). I got the standard funding package without any extra fellowship tacked on, which is definitely enough to live on, but I'm planning on applying for other external fellowships as soon as possible once I get there to bump it up a bit. Even if your GRE scores don't get you the chance for getting special merit-based fellowships above and beyond the standard package as an entering student, this doesn't mean that you won't have chances to apply for further funding over the course of your graduate studies! I don't think that there were even that many merit scholarships that entering grad students could qualify for (based on what I remember from the funding/scholarships section of the Berkeley website). Don't let your GRE scores define you or drive you crazy - a good SOP and LORs are in my opinion much more important.