Istoleart

He's canadian

I think it depends on the professor. I read on Katerine Sledge Moore's website that certain profs in the committee do prize prestige while others do not. She's been on an admission committee so her website might be of interest. The fun part is I found out about her website from this forum. https://sites.google.com/site/gradappadvice/about That might explain why some groups have students from all over and others only pick from top schools. I hope it helps

1. The second time usually gets you a better score...unless your score was already impressive to begin with or you are known to plunge into a Van Gogh-like psychosis during the exam. 2. I guess the question has to be how good/bad are your scores? Do you have stellar undergraduate GPA to offset a mediocre GRE score? Or is it the opposite and you need GRE to offset a mediocre GPA? 3. If your scores are below average for your targeted program then you should re-take it. The objective is to do good enough for your program and focus squarely on personal statement. My example: My first try on the GRE I scored 155V/159Q/4.0AW. This was below average for most of the chemistry programs I applied and I needed to use it to negate my 3.1 GPA; plus I'm international so I need higher marks. So I did a second time with a score of 160V/160Q/4.5AW. That puts me right in the middle of the pack for all of my schools and that's good enough. GRE is time consuming and not important enough to go beyond that. I focused the rest of my time doing personal statements. Thank god for that or I wouldn't have enough time to complete applications before deadline. In a few months I'll find out if this approach works.

I'm so angry I couldn't finish my application for a Fulbright. The process was so similar to applying for graduate school! My advice: start early. It's well worth the effort and helps the grad applications. A friend of mine was a Fulbright Student and he said he didn't get his money and award until September when he's one-year into his PhD program.

I can't speak for your field but in chemistry, American Universities typically offer tuition waivers/scholarships and a living stipend (18,000 - 27,000$ USD, usually 5 years) if you are applying for PhD. Including the dozens of dream profs I want to work with, the tuition scholarship and 5-year living stipend was an important reason this Canadian wants to head south. You really can't find a better deal. The down side is that we internationals are expected to work at least twice as hard.

I'm a chemist and my first paper I had to present just completely went over my head. The jargon, graphs, equations etc. made it worst. I think the important part to deciphering papers is to understand their uses. A research paper is a small snapshot of someone's ongoing project within a huge field. It's not the beginning nor the end of the field. Therefore, reading a paper is like reading one sentence in the middle of a book. You can't expect to know the whole story of the book just by reading that one paper. I found that to understand them you need to go to earlier papers, reviews, textbooks, or even Wikipedia if possible. Study a bit of the background that led up to the paper and you'll find it becomes easier to read.

Just send the professor another e-mail. She could be busy with exams or e-mail inbox is swamped and your SOP is overlooked. I've worked with forgetful profs. I've had to chase one for six months to get that person to submit an LOR. Count yourself lucky prof sent in LOR and give the prof the benefit of a doubt.

If you have time Princeton Review has a book of 1,014 questions for math and verbal (I think that's the number). Go through it. I went through 75% of the math and verbal wasn't out when I took GRE. I also did Kaplan but found Princeton better. Lastly, do the practice ETS tests timed. Got a decent score from this method.

I concur. It's a bit premature to judge whether the applicant deserves to be there or not. Maybe the person is a hardworker and just had a rough time with undergraduate classes and tests. I think what would anger me are students that gets into the program and just doesn't work. I've seen students that had excellent Stats but puts in only a few hours of work every week.

Congrats to all who got acceptances! Most of my school deadlines are on new year so I doubt I'll be hearing from them soon. So nerve wracking right now...

3 GRE tests 5 applications (at least one was free...) So many transcripts Nearly 1000$. Damn ETS took a chunk. At least I did decent on them...

I agree that you should be cautious. I asked a similar question to a prof in one university and he said that it wouldn't affect their decision BUT it still must be submitted.

Those stats actually aren't bad although only 46 went to attend UT-Austin. I'd of thought there would be more. Strange they don't mention international acceptance statistics. GRE of 159V/161Q seems reasonable although the UG GPA of 3.8 is high.

I am disturbed about one thing about UNC and that is their international students admission statistics. I noticed that out of 180 applications to the chemistry department, they only admit 8 international students. Compare that to other universities like University of Minnesota Twin Cities where some groups looks like chinatown (I'm also Chinese so that observation really stuck).

I am in a similar situation as you. My grades aren't stellar, and I have a masters already. I'm also an international applying to US graduate schools which makes it all the tougher. But I managed to back up my MSc with three manuscripts which shows that I have extensive research experience instead of potential. My research statement is close to a post-docs fellowship research statement because of those manuscripts. Therefore, you can have an advantage some applicants do not have since you'll be writing a thesis: 1. By the time your thesis is done you'd have read hundreds of papers. That means your research statement can look mightily professional as you can draw on those papers. 2. You'd have research "experience" which is infinitely better than the theoretical research potential 3. Hopefully, you'd have published by the time you graduate or they'd be in the "submitted to Journal of Awesome Chem" phase 4. Are you a domestic masters student? If so, you are competing with a lot of newly minted bachelors of science. 5. If you are truly worried about grades then re-do GRE (Especially subject ones). I hope you can get into a PhD program as I truly do feel the same anxiety from less than stellar grades.

I hope I'm not too late in this thread. There is one crucial difference between Canadian universities and US universities and that is the role of the primary investigator in the admission process. I'm a Canadian master student and my graduate chair told me the most important thing is that your target professor wants to work with you as compared to going through an admission committee first. I got into graduate school because my professor wanted to work with me and that seems to be the same story for a lot international applicants at my school. If you have that then the admission process becomes exponentially easier. A friend of mine had secured a PhD position at Western University simply because the professor likes her research abilities irrespective of her grades and SOP. Ditto for a lot of my colleagues (quite a few iranians among them) who secured masters and PhD positions while not able to write very well. Go e-mail professors that you want to work with and if they agree then you pretty much don't have to worry about your SOP. Just don't use "eh"