NeuroNerd86

rereading The Fellowship of the Ring. Very soothing:)

Iggy, congrats! What school did you get an interview from:)?

coyabean posted a quote from the admissions committee from some school somewhere on forum that they (at least in that school) like it when you acknowledge your shortcomings and then move on.

from what I know, ETS will send all your scores and it is up to schools to decide which ones they would pay most attention to (usually it's the best scores). On many applications you have an opportunity to put in all your scores by date, but if there is only one option, I guess just pick one set.

you can say "current GPA" I guess if you really want to put your GPA on CV

I don't even have my GPA in my transcript and from what I know, a lot of people are the same. On 99.99999999% grad school apps there is a blank spot where you can put you GPA anyways

Thank you for starting this thread, I also got my first interview and now I need to think of how to look good (but not too fancy) for it. I guess I will go with black jeans, tan sweater and good shoes.

I got PIBS interview via phone today too!!! I barely missed it because they called my work and I needed to step out:)

I devoured 5 complete seasons of the Wire.

Workingonit, thank you so much for this link! ::proceeds to dreaming about getting into one of the schools with good adjusted stipends::

I think it depends on the program. Check the results section to see when the notifications start rolling. I'm with you on waiting on professors. One of my applications is due today and is fully done except for one letter.

I wrote "I'm" instead of "I am" once in one of my SOPs and now I am agonizing that they might consider it rude. Am I totally crazy since it is just one instance? 0_o

I think I am in upper 600$$ with all expenses, even though I got lucky and 3 of my applications came with no fee. Ironically, the most expensive application is for the school that I have the slimmest chance of getting into....

One thing I find very stressful about the application process is that is gives me pretty strong mood swings, even though normally I am very level-headed and cheerful person. But these days - oh my! One moment I get my hopes up, the next one I hear about someone very talented and smart getting rejected and feel despair again. For me it got to be the most unpleasant aspect of the application. Relatives/friends don't help either by chanting "oh you're so smart, you will get in!". I feel like I will fail them if I get rejected

congrats to you too NsciApp!

Iggy, congrats! Did you apply to PIBS or Neuroscience only program at Michigan? I'm asking because I applied to Michigan as well (PIBS).

Very true. I turned the web upside down trying to find anything about admission statistics for the Rockefeller University, and to no avail. All I know is that everyone I know who applied there got rejected 0_o

is your GPA strong? from what I know, if one of the stats is not strong but another one is and res exp and LORs are good, then you have a good chance. But if both "objective" parameters are not strong, then it might be a problem. Here is one useful Ppt application on the matter - http://http://www.gradschool.purdue.edu/gradexpo/students/download/expo2009/Beyond%20the%20GPA%20and%20GRE%20PowerPoint.ppt

all 3 fields that you are interested in are very competitive, so 2.7 GPA might pose a problem for most good schools. However, your GREs are very good. A lot will depend on your research exp and letters of rec. I agree that you probably should shoot for masters program and then go into PhD if you want to. For medical field you will need an MCAT.

Gazelle, I'm in your ballpark "numbers-wise" and I just need to hope and pray that my research experience and LORs will pull me through...

for CS verbal doesn't really matter much from what I know. And your scores are actually very solid, so I wouldn't worry too much.

From what I've been told many times, you shouldn't really flaunt your skills anywhere else but CV. You don't want them to see you as a technician - you want them to think of you as a scientist. Therefore, the best decision would be to state the hypothesis of your project briefly and say what you did (and not too specific - you don't want to bore them with the details of how many Westerns you can run in a day) to obtain results, hat results you ended up getting and what you learned from this exp. Hope this helps!

I think I had one stat question on the actual GRE and it was the last one. Since I had about 30 seconds left, I just made "an educated guess" and got it over with. I'm quite positive I got the answer wrong, but I got 760 on the math so I'm not complaining:) That question required a lot of calculations (standard dev stuff) but usually they ask about the mean and the median, and those are very easy and can be done fast. Good luck!!!

You didn't say anything about your analytical writing score. Is it under 6? Then you definitely won't get in.

It's interesting because I had to deal with similar situation back in the day. I got transferred to a major American university after being in the US for a year and had a hard time dealing with class/testing format compared to what I was used to for years in my homeland. Plus, I had some family issues. All in all, I ended up getting no-so stellar grades and overall undergrad GPA compared to what I had back home in the university. I dedicated a short paragraph addressing the issue in my SOP and tried to put a positive spin on it - how I was determined to stay in academic research, took time off to do lab work extensively, improved my performance and blah blah blah. One of my proofreaders said it wasn't necessary, but the rest agreed that I should leave the paragraph in. I ended up leaving it in my final SOP, now we'll see what happens... ::sigh::.