ColorlessGreen

"What I Did For Love" (from A Chorus Line) is good for letting go of my applications. "Can't regret, what I did for love..."

Including GRE, transcripts, one extra score report, and 4 schools, around $470. And I'll have to pay $65 for my undergrad's graduation app processing fee soon, too.

I don't object to the relative lack of excitement in Iowa - I'm not too fond of big cities, and there's really plenty to do here (especially if you have a car) - but right now I'm hating the weather. I hope you aren't from someplace warm, or you will be miserable in the winter. I walked for ten minutes to the library, and my ears just about fell off. I don't know if anyone should actually choose one grad school over another due to the weather, but I'm starting to seriously consider it. I desperately want to go somewhere where I can go outside without wanting to die.

Is the 2.7 your major GPA, or your overall GPA? Are there any extenuating circumstances? I'm not in your field either, and I have heard of students getting into grad school with similar numbers, but I imagine it would make it somewhat harder. More importantly, it sounds like you aren't sure what you want to study yet, so you should think really hard about your goals. If you don't know why you are applying to one field and not some other, the admissions committee won't know either, and they won't want you in their program. You can start by thinking about classes you've done well in, research you'd like to pursue, your eventual career goals, and what professors who know you well think you would excel in. All of these things should inform your decision of what to study, and where. Good luck!

Um, maybe? If so, I didn't recognize them as such (never took a stats course, personally). There were questions about graphs, charts, etc, mostly percentage increase/decrease things, as I recall. I don't remember seeing anything about standard deviation, but I did have to know how to figure out means, medians, basic things like that for a few questions. Sorry not to be of more help.

Really? I didn't find applying to undergrad stressful in the least. There was far less competition at a far lower level. Maybe it's because I was going to a state school, but I was never worried about getting in, just getting scholarships. Now, what worries me about applying to grad school is that I don't know how good the other applicants are, or how good I'm expected to be. I knew exactly who my competition was when applying to my current college; for this, I have no idea. I agree there's no point to stressing over it too much, but it's frustrating to be told not to stress at all. Anyway, I kind of like the stressing, in a masochistic way. There's a strange kind of joy in looking at the completed application and knowing I did everything I could. Even if I don't get in anywhere, I'll know that I took the risk of putting myself out there to be judged by strangers. ...And that's not actually a comforting thought at all. Hmm. Back to square one.

I feel your pain. I'm the only one of my friends who is graduating college OR applying to grad school this year, and NONE OF THEM GET IT. Last weekend I had to finish one of my applications at the last minute, and all weekend, it was, "Are you done yet? Why are you ignoring us? Wanna watch a movie? Can't you take a break?" and I just bared my teeth in a fierce, taut grin, and answered, "Could you please let me finish my writing sample, I have to mail it off tomorrow and it's not good enough yet." And now this week my friends are all complaining to me about finals, and I am not in the mood to be sympathetic. I'm taking advantage of their preoccupation to work on other apps, but when I tell them this, they all respond with horror, demanding why I'm working on something "unimportant" like applications instead of studying for finals. MY FINALS ARE NOT HARD, PEOPLE. Grad school applications, however, ARE. [/rant]

Oh, definitely. It's always good to vary the sentence structure to keep your readers' attention, and you're doing a good job of that. Your rephrasing also seems to be making the SOP more specific, which is great. There are just a few things that could be even better.

"Ease" doesn't really work here. It's transitive, so it needs a direct object, which you don't have. Really, I'd suggest using a different word entirely. Maybe you could say "will assist me in deconstructing xyz" or "gives me the background I need to deconstruct xyz." The phrase "will be welcomed involvement while integrating xyz" is somewhat grating; maybe "will be of great help to me in integrating xyz" or "could offer me new perspective on how to integrate xyz." Also (and since these are just excerpts you may have already done this), you might want to expand on why those specific faculty members would be so helpful to you, and what specific contributions they could make.

Congrats! It's great that you got such an enthusiastic response!

Awesome! Best of luck to you.

I finished paper 2 a few days ago and mailed it off in time for my first deadline. I think it turned out okay - it ended up being longer and more in-depth than I had thought it would be, which is a good thing. Thanks for your advice!

Tea. And I have a tendency to work my way through entire bags of chips without noticing, too. Oops.

I really doubt it's worthwhile. Your SOP and writing sample should show that you can write - I can't imagine a program, especially one in the humanities, giving too much importance to the GRE AW.

Interesting. The questions were about the same difficulty as the ones I got, but maybe the test was adaptive? I seem to recall hearing something along those lines back when I was preparing to take the GRE. I won't deny they probably want your money, though.

I work as a part-time Spanish/linguistics tutor while I finish up my last year of undergrad. Not real work, but real money, which is nice.

I worked through half of it before getting tired of doing it. It seems like a decent predictor of your GRE - at least, from what I remember from April, many of the questions seemed almost exactly like ones I had. It was a weird sense of deja vu. However, I should warn you that some of the questions resembled ones I encountered on the experimental math section - I'm thinking particularly of the fill-in-the-blank questions, which I don't remember getting. I think my math section that counted had no fill-in-the-blank section, although perhaps that was just luck on my part. Anyway, I don't know much about GRE prep tests, because I didn't do many, but it seems like the website you listed is a good predictor for math.

Is there anything you have done under the supervision of this person that could be interpreted as especially creative, or taking the initiative, or something like that? Is he your MA thesis advisor, or undergraduate Honors thesis advisor? If he's the latter, you could claim you showed dedication by doing a thesis at all. I think, at least from talking to my LOR writers, that creativity and proof of hard work are probably some of the best things to write about in a letter. You should mention any experience he could attest to where you had to approach a problem in an unconventional way or did work above and beyond what was called for. I'm no expert, of course, but if I were writing a letter, I'd mention those things. Good luck!

Isn't it scary? I can't figure out why they want to know, but I doubt it's good. Maybe it's something innocuous having to do with financial aid.

I'm applying straight out from a 3 year BA, so I'll be 20 if I start in the fall (my birthday's in November, so I've always been a bit younger than everyone else in my year anyway). I'm trying to downplay my age as much as possible in my applications, though, because I think it will only hurt my chances to draw attention to it. I'm afraid being younger just makes one seem less mature and focused than the older applicants.

Interesting. Maybe I'll just tuck this one in my "Unsolved Mysteries of the Admissions Process" folder.

Sounds like you have an interesting interdisciplinary background. I don't know how you managed to take ling classes you actually couldn't take - independent study? - but good for you! You know the really crazy thing? Two years ago I would have thought cog sci and psych were the same program. Then again, three years ago I thought linguistics and philology were the same thing. That's the beauty of a college education, I guess.

Has the deadline passed already? Maybe you could update your SOP and send it in, telling them to disregard the first one. Depending on the school, that could be an option. Glad to hear you're interested in linguistics too! I'm a linguistics undergrad, and I'm mostly interested in language acquisition and phonological development....for now. I have yet to take a class I dislike in my major, so I'm open to going in almost any direction. Except historical linguistics, I guess. I love my current historical ling class, but I can't imagine doing this kind of stuff forever. I like the theorizing we've been doing all semester, but I'd hate to be bound to what little data can be found on some dead language for research opportunities. Give me a living language any day, and I can still spin you some crazy theory about it. You're Cog Sci, right? Are you applying to schools known better for Cog Sci, or for linguistics?

Oh, OUCH. Well, maybe he'll be interested in the research when he hears it stated in a different way? There might just have been some kind of communication problem before. Was that the only faculty member at the school who you wanted to work with?

Does anyone know if admissions committees try to admit a balance of students straight from undergrad and students who already have MAs? Or is it all just the best applicants period, even if they all end up being just the ones with their master's? I ask because I feel a lot better competing with other BAs than I do with students with graduate experience already, especially after the conversation I had with one of my LOR writers on Monday. (He was nice enough to inform me that he was writing a LOR for a PhD student applying to one of my schools who was sure to get in. Thank you, that's comforting.)