thegirldetective

Yeah I think you'll be fine, as long as you have a good SOP.

I wonder if MIT has enough of a reputation to offset the downside of a lower GPA?

For many grad programs, it's high GPA + research/internship experience. Contact a few programs that are roughly what you're interested in and ask them if a particular type of research/internship experience is helpful for applicants. Then go to a university where you can get that type of experience. And as Mr. Bugle said, a lot of top universities have pretty crazy grade inflation, so a top university doesn't necessarily mean a lower GPA.

Thanks! That makes me feel a lot better...

I think there is a big name or two at U Wisconsin-Madison.

Emory invited 47 people to interview for 14 slots. I assume "slots" in this case means "offers", since they typically have an entering class of 7 or 8. So that works out to being about a 30% post-interview acceptance rate. I think this is unusually competitive, however.

Unless you are extremely tight for cash (and can't get a fee waiver) you should definitely apply. It's an average, not a hard cutoff, so unless they give you some form of range or standard deviation you have no way of knowing how your scores compare to the entering class as a whole. Just make sure you make a really good case in your SOP for why Purdue is a great fit for you (but you would want to do that even if you got a 170). If you are tight for cash, you could try asking the program coordinator or director if someone could be competitive with your score. But more likely than not they'll give you the unhelpful "Our average is 162 but we review applications holistically" which doesn't really tell you much. GRE quant scores can be GREATLY improved with studying, so you could also try retaking it for the next application cycle. A few months of hard studying could probably bump you 4 or so points.

You could try phrasing it as "(PI), I am considering going to graduate school in (field). Are there any skills you think I should develop or areas I can improve on to be a successful graduate student?" Then read the temperature of his answer. I took two years off to do research and it was incredibly helpful. Clarified my interests, gained some confidence, and I was able to focus A LOT more on my apps then I would have been able to during my senior year. Edit to say: Your phrasing was good too, just throwing out ideas.

I had a professor fight for me on an adcom after I contacted her to express interest in her research.

Three things: 1) Talk to your PI or grad students who help you for a reality check. They can give you an honest assessment of where you stand compared to, say, the average first-year grad student. 2) Consider spending a couple years as a tech. It'll give you more time to gain confodence and develop skills. 3) Read this: http://jcs.biologists.org/content/121/11/1771.full

I'd mention it, since it looks like that was the only course you did that year. Maybe not in your main SOP (which should be about selling yourself) but in an additional "extenuating circumstances" document.

It's also going to be pretty awful if he gets caught later, and you are considered complicit by your scientific peers. Talk to an ombudsperson ASAP to figure out your options. Best case scenario: Your department is sensitive to your circumstances and arranges for you to transfer labs, and works out an arragment where you can graduate without too much extra time. Worst case scenario: Your department closes ranks and defends the professor, freezing you out in the process. Talk to your ombudsperson to get a realistic sense of what your best options are.

Agree that 4 is a good number. Some places I am interviewing specified 3-6.

Hey Renvi! I'm interviewing at UMn Twin Cities next month and I have a very practical question: What should I wear? What is considered acceptable professional clothing in a place that cold? I'm in the DC metro area now, where it pretty much never gets colder than negative single digits (and even that is pretty rare) so my wardrobe - particularly my professional wardrobe - is not equipped for Minnesota winter.

Still eagarly awaiting Duke as well...would love confirmation one way or another so I can make plans for that weekend they're rejecting me. IIRC they were supposed to send out rejections by yesterday?

The pre-grad/em advisor at the Big Prestigious Place where I work gave the following advice: "Avoid taking a subject test at all costs. It's basically just a random trivia memorization test. Contact program directors to see if they really mean it when the website says 'subject test recommended.' Ask what percentage of accepted applicants take the subject test. Ask if there are any specific situations where a subject test could help an applicant with a deficiency in another area. Then decide whether or not it's worth it for you to take it, but be biased towards not doing it." I followed this advice, and every time I asked a program director how many of their successful applicants took the subject test, they answered something along the lines of "not many" regardless of what the website said.

I think this is highly field-specific. In my field, I'm told a US PhD includes a lot more coursework than a UK PhD, which is a big part of the difference in time. I'm also told that US institutions want to see more substantial postdoctoral experience from job applicants that got their PhDs in the UK, but I don't know if this because of differences in US and UK programs, or just some kind of elitism/unfounded bias.

It's almost certainly a funding problem. I can't think of any other reason they wouldn't even review apps.

I don't know about the process for your field, but in mine you can expect interview requests to go out one day to one week after the meeting. Shorter if it's one person (like the program director) sending the calls/emails, longer if it's a faculty member of the adcom. If they are bringing people in for interviews it's in their best interest to schedule them asap, so they can work through any logistical challenges. I don't about fields that accept people without interviews - seems like they might let it linger until it's convenient for someone to send the calls/emails. On the other hand, the faster they send out decisions the faster people will stop bugging them about it...

If I've learned anything this interview season, it's that…contact faculty you want to work with. I only contacted a few POIs around the time I submitted my applications because of advice from a well-meaning but misguided graduate student friend ("Don't bother contacting them unless you get an interview, you'll just annoy them.") I ended up splitting the difference and contacting a few people, and some of them ended up really going to bat for me. I also learned other important information, like that my main POI at one school was going on sabbatical next year and thus not taking students, which made prioritizing interviews a lot easier later when conflicts arose between that school and another. Yes, it's possible that you'll annoy some disgruntled professor who feels like they get too much email, but more likely you'll either get forgotten/ignored (neutral outcome), or get an advocate/informant (positive outcome).

It's no gaurentee, but yeah, I think it helps. It communicates to the adcom that you were really contributing to your lab. First author pubs are pretty rare for undergrads, so while I have no data to back this up I imagine they help A LOT.

Within each section, every question is weighted equally. But how well you do in the first section dictates the level of difficulty in the second section. The difficulty of your second section has a HUGE INFLUENCE on your score. So for example, 5 questions correct in V1 and 15 questions correct in V2 will not necessarily give you the same score as 15 right in V1 and 5 right in V2. You can find specific tier cutoff a by googling, but I think it's something like 0-7 for easy, 8-15 for medium and 15-20 for hard. When I took a GRE class the instructors told me my #1 studying priority should be to make sure I could consistently get into the hard tier.

Chicago has already selected (and presumably sent out, since this was a couple weeks ago) their first round of invites. I don't think there is a planned second round (though I suppose they might send out more if a lot of people decline the invite? but I don't know this for sure).

My guess is that no one is going to hold such a small discrepancy against you. I wouldn't worry about it.

My SO is willing to move with me to grad school, but with limitations on where he's willing to go. So I only applied to places where he would be willing to live (which was a fairly broad list, so it was easy to find a number of programs I liked) and once actual offers are on the table, we'll re-visit and weigh how much I like an individual program with how good of a fit the location is for him. What makes all of this a little easier is I pretty much knew my grad school plans and timeline when we started dating (in undergrad), so he had time to decide if that was a deal breaker for him before we had both invested a lot of time and emotion into the relationship. friedgreentom: I don't think it's unreasonable to worry about that, but I also think that learning to navigate managing a relationship + school/job/passionate hobby is a valuable thing. You can use this as an opportunity to discuss what her needs are in terms of time with you, what your needs are in terms of studying, and negotiate a system where you spend x amount of hours with her and x amount of hours on school. Though neither of us are yet in grad school, my SO and I have both at various times in our relationship had difficult schedules, and along the way we've figured out a lot of strategies for dealing with that. For example: It makes a big difference for me if we both wake up early and spend ~30 minutes together before we get ready for work. Even though this isn't very much time in total minutes, it meets my emotional needs better than when we were on different sleep schedules and only saw each other right before bed, because (1) I'm more awake and alert in the morning than at night, and (2) it means I see him twice a day, even if only briefly, which feels really different to me than only seeing him once a day (even if the total number of hours is the same). For him, on the other hand, the distribution of day-to-day minutes doesn't matter so much, but it is really important that we get in a good chunk of quality time together about once a week. So when I'm planning my week I try to make sure I'll at least have a full half day on the weekend so we'll have some time together. Similarly, we both need some alone time during our week to be happy - getting this hasn't been such an issue, because we are both so busy, but it's important to know for the future. Figuring out what your needs are and learning how to negotiate that is a good skill, and it will be useful in both grad school and beyond.