dzk

I applied direct, not through PIBS. I think most of the PIBS committees are meeting this week... I'm also pretty sure you guys don't have the same interview weekend (January 14th-17th). My research interests are in cellular and developmental neurobiology... I'm interested in a number of topics on neuron, synapse, and circuit development.

I was joking a bit, as I've never met anyone who'd be equally happy in, say, Chicago, San Francisco, and Laramie, WY. You'd just come up with a whole new list of things to dislike after spending some time back in the US

Oops. Missed this post. I'm applying to Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Michigan, Penn, Stanford, and UCSD. And despite what I said before, I now have an interview invite to Michigan. Hooray!

$855 for six schools and taking the GRE twice... $515 for the application fees alone. So much for buying Christmas presents. Time to get creative, I suppose.

This is not a sentiment I could possibly understand. I don't think you realize exactly what "anything within the United States" means

As fuzzy said, the main disadvantage for you, as a biology applicant, is not any of the things you listed, but that federal training grants (in addition to others) are not available to international students. Unless you're coming in with your own funding, the program has to find a source that can pay the tuition and stipend for an international student. Programs with funding issues (which, this year, is most of them) will have two pools of applicants... U.S. and everyone else. Some larger private programs in good financial shape could be able to admit as much as 50% of their class as international students. Big publicly funded programs like California, Michigan, Texas, etc.? Maybe one in ten. Did you apply to PIBS @ Michigan? They got 700 applicants. I don't know how many spots there are this year, though. Good luck. [edit: Also, you seem to be under the impression that your GPA and GRE scores matter for biology programs. Not really. If you're above the cut-off, you're fine. Research experience, research experience, research experience.] [edit 2: Oh, hey. It looks like you have funding through Fulbright? Yeah, if I made you worry, then you can stop now Applying with funding, several years of experience, and a middle-author publication, you're easily in the top tier of applicants.]

You're ridiculous. With your statistics, you should get an interview at every school you apply to. Seriously, two first-author publications? Your humility makes me want to barf.

I'm applying to Neuroscience programs as well. You'll probably get a notification in January/February for most programs (most won't even look at the applications until after the break), and interview weekends are February/March. [edit: Also, you're applying to four of the same programs I am. Good luck!]

One idea behind this prompt is to show that you have goals that involve more than just being a graduate student. Programs want to maximize their chances of having successful students... you need to demonstrate that you've considered your options after getting your graduate degree, since a lot of people apply just to avoid real life for a while, and those are the sorts who will burn out when they realize they have to work three times harder than in a typical job. So... I'd think skipping that question would be a bad idea. You don't need to be certain of what you want to do, but you need to make it clear that you've thought carefully about your application.

This is extremely field-specific, and occasionally, even program-specific. The programs I am applying to do not allow for input from outside the admissions committee on who is picked and rotations are required. You apply to the program, not to the faculty mentor. In this case, there are no pros to naming specific professors, but I was advised by several professors that naming names could potentially alienate someone. Neuroscience programs tend to have specific departmental cultures... a place like MIT, for example, has TONS of professors working on learning and memory. If you even try to name specific people in your statement if you're applying to MIT for learning and memory, you're not going to come across more positively than simply expounding upon your interests in detail. It doesn't show refined interests by naming two of twenty professors working on different parts of the same problem, it shows naivety and tunnel-vision. In contrast, most humanities programs seem to have less specialization than this, so it would make loads of sense to name the one professor who is working on 17th century Italian literature.

Absolutely DO NOT attach it without talking to your PI first! You are essentially putting this paper into public domain by attaching it as a writing sample, because if it is interesting, it will spread outside the adcom to their colleagues who are working on the same problem. You may find yourself scooped. It is difficult to overstate the care you need to take with this. If your advisor gives it the go-ahead, then they likely know best, but talk to them first unless you want a letter of rec to disappear.

Re-ordering the paragraphs with some major edits should be fine. You want to make sure it's clear why each of the things you talk about in the second paragraph are important to you, and how you're able to take advantage of such resources, not just write a laundry list of good things about them. It comes across fine, I just found myself looking for more of the cold, hard, accomplishments. Published here, presented here, got awesome grades, whatever. If you don't have more to talk about, then that's all you can do, but I figured you could stand to flaunt your CV a bit more if there's stuff you left out.

I disagree entirely. Your goal is to convince these people that you are awesome, by any means possible. You need to do it tactfully, but you do not want to shy away from showing off your accomplishments. They need to read this and think "We should interview this person." This is not the time to be humble.

IMO, you've structured it backwards. You shouldn't be talking about fit before you talk about yourself. Your introduction is good, but there's no way you should launch into a discussion of how awesome their program is before you talk about what you want to do and what your qualifications are. You do very well with talking about your research interests and how this program is a good fit for you, but your qualifications seem to begin and end at a couple independent study courses. I imagine you've done quite a bit more than that, so you don't want to leave it at that. Talk yourself up more.

I am not in anthropology, but I would bet that Michigan and Berkeley are huge long-shots with that GPA and GRE unless you have truly stellar research experience. If you're looking for places to cut costs, then I'd cut those first.

Yeah, I was not aware that you couldn't send score reports until two weeks after your test date. This means I'm going to miss the deadline for all except the four schools I selected during my test. Thanks, ETS! One of those two schools explicitly states that GRE scores must be received by the deadline, too.

Verbal is so weird. In comparison, I was hit with a few words I'd never seen, then suddenly had nothing but easy analogies. I was freaking out during the test because I assumed I must have totally bombed the first few problems... and I got a 690 out of that. First time I took it, I felt way more confident about it before seeing my score, and got a 610. ETS must die.

I think your list is quite safe already.

On their graduate program page, what do they call it? "Graduate Program in Psychology at X University," for example.

The fun thing is that it's not actually "tricky math;" in fact, it's hardly math at all. The strict time limit (1.6 minutes per question) means that it's almost entirely a test of pattern recognition and basic concepts. The reason I had difficulty with it my first time was because I didn't bother to pick up those patterns ahead of time, and figured I could just do it on the fly. Some problems are really difficult if you don't immediately recognize a pattern or have a prescribed way of solving it, because the calculations are outrageously painful. The ability to write well quickly is a reasonable thing to test. I think the structure of the analytical writing section is actually quite good, especially relative to the other portions of the test. The problem is that it is graded based on extraordinarily lame criteria that have nothing to do with the quality of the writing.

Well, I've lived in Detroit, and *I* think St. Louis sucks. I'm applying to six schools.

I just got back from my second try too. Raised my score 190 points! The tests were only a few weeks apart, too. Had a 610V/640Q and raised it to 690V/750Q. Pretty thrilled about that. I know that some of you think I'm silly for retaking it with a 1250, but I'm applying for really competitive programs and fellowships, so I need all the help I can get (and I knew I could do better). Only concern now is that I got a 6 on my AW before, and I'm not sure I'll be able to replicate it. But I'm happy that I don't have to worry about this anymore!

You're still just giving reasons why you want to be back in school. It's just a temporary reprieve. In two years, what's to say you won't end up with another job you hate? You need to think carefully about the reasons you want a degree, and don't act rashly by just jumping into it. I'm guessing an MSW is going to require you to take out loans, and it's possible that an MA in religion would as well. You'd better be sure you'll be happy doing whatever you do after that, because you don't want to be in a bad job and in way more debt than when you began. It sucks that you hate your job, but quitting it for graduate school is not the way to go until you have an exit strategy. Don't leap into anything that isn't going to improve your life long-term... and if sticking it out in your current job will help you get to where you want to be, then I'd use that as your motivation. I was going to apply to medical school for a number of bad reasons. Good ones include wanting to be intellectually challenged by my work and be able to help people directly. Bad ones included that it just seemed like the logical thing to do for someone who really likes biology, and that being a doctor involved prestige and money. I figured out that medicine wasn't for me by researching it heavily and getting myself involved as much as I could by volunteering and shadowing doctors. In the end, I realized that I would be much more fulfilled by becoming a research scientist, and found that PhD programs were more up my alley.

No time for the GRE? So what's changing between then and now that will help you have time for graduate school? Studying for one exam while working full-time isn't a big deal by any stretch of the imagination, even if you have family to worry about. You'll be busier than that if you start a graduate program. [edit: Oops -- upon further review, I may have misread that one. If you actually meant that there's no time to take it before applications are due, that's a bit of a different story. It would depend on the deadlines, in that case.] You go to graduate school because you want to pursue a particular field or advance in your career. In your case, your post really sounds like someone who is simply unhappy with your current position in life and scrambling for an out. You suggest that you are worried about graduate schools perceiving you as simply applying for the sake of being back in school based on what you've done since graduation, but I actually think that you are worried about this because you know that it's true. You articulated your reasons for getting an MSW poorly. If you're not even sure you want to do something that an MSW will help you achieve, then why waste your time? I'll definitely give you the benefit of the doubt, and you should post about why and how going back to graduate school will help you to advance in the long-term and accomplish your goals. Also, before you think I sound like an ass, I'm blunt about this topic because the replies so far have been quite the opposite, and I needed a good dose of bluntness to get on the right track myself. I was going to apply to medical school just because it seemed like a good thing to do, without seriously considering the cons. That's not smart.

I'm not submitting my applications until days before the deadline. I'm "done" with most of my essays, but I ended up changing them a bit after finishing my NSF GRF application, so I figure sitting on them for as long as possible can only help me polish them.