Vene

Heh, I'm just entering into one with only a BA (not a masters) and I turn 27 in a little over a month.

Speaking as a dumb American, I don't think I'd bat an eye at seeing a Spanish university listed on a resume. I might decide to google it, but seeing wiki call it the best university in Spain is all I need to know to be satisfied. As for the cash cow stuff, I highly doubt American HR know anything about countries/universities have the English language programs as low effort degrees and which have them as rigorous programs. I didn't even think about such a thing before reading this thread, to be honest. That said, I do think that getting into a US university is probably better, as more people will recognize it. If you do a non-US school a university in Canada or the UK would be a better bet.

What type of research do you want to do? That should be your primary reason for selecting programs, at least if you're looking at a thesis option. Check out what the professors at the various universities do and see which one has more work being done which you could see yourself doing. Otherwise, you can rank for yourself what other features are important such as location. I, personally, wanted to make sure that wherever I went that I would be able to maintain a certain level of comfort so I compared stipends to cost of living and used it to weed out a few programs. For a MS I don't know what your funding situation will be like, but you can either use funding opportunities or expense of the degree to weed out some programs as well. Ultimately, however, nobody can tell you the questions to ask. It is up to you to figure out what you want from your education. Other people can tell you what was important to them, but nobody can tell you what you want.

I think I've managed to "sneak" exercise into my daily schedule, for lack of better phrasing. I live about a mile from campus so instead of driving I'm just going to walk to my labs/classes. I know it's not something which will make me super buff, but it should help keep excess weight off.

My experience is from moving from one state to another, so it's sort of different. But for the portion of the year I lived in the previous state I could easily file the EZ form, I just didn't have to report any income I earned in the other state. You'll probably have to file federal taxes, taxes for Arizona, as well as taxes for Michigan since that's where you're earning your income. I would imagine that this is already fairly routine, not just because of students, but because there are many places in the country where somebody can live in one state and work in another (most obvious one that comes to mind is somebody in New Jersey working in NYC).

double post

My understanding is that the big changes were that the scoring system changed and that the questions are no longer adaptive (ie if you answer right the question gets harder and is worth more, if you answer wrong the question gets easier and is worth less). But I'm not sure that the nature of the questions changed much.

I applied with a BA, but I had some classes from a community college. As far as I know they counted as much as any other undergrad coursework I had completed. Hell, some community colleges now offer bachelors degrees so I don't know why a graduate school wouldn't count them.

Isn't that what Reno and Merced are? And I never said it would be easy, just that it's possible.

I don't know how useful those books are because I didn't use any of them. But, I doubt that the content of the questions has changed much in the last few years. Personally, I went the cheap route and used this site for my preparation, which was mostly on math. The questions there did help me and seemed reasonably close to what was on the GRE itself.

Verbal score is low, but the quant score is fantastic. Doing a MS shows that Octopus can handle graduate level coursework so the lower undergrad GPA is less important. I wouldn't rule those schools out, the SOP matters a lot. I'm not saying Octopus will get in, but they have a competitive profile. I checked out UCLA on the results search and found that somebody with a 3.8 GPA and a 160 V 153 Q got into their biochemistry program for this year. Somebody else got into their biomedical engineering program in 2013 with a 3.4 GPA and 156 V 154 Q. I do agree that most of the listed profiles are higher, with GREs >160 for V and Q and they have undergrad GPAs >3.8. It's hard, but what you need to do is not be some perfect number you have to show you have potential. I think Octopus has potential.

The only one I can think of off hand is Washington University in St. Louis.

What you do is take a deep breath and sign up to try it again, there is still plenty of time. It sounds like what you need to do is find a way to counter your nervousness, but that is not something an internet forum can answer for you.

I added my final school to the list when I took the GRE itself so I could send the score to them for free. Turns out that it's the school which I was most interested in attending when all was said and done.

Pick who will give you the strongest letters, both combinations are good ones assuming that your job is related to your field of study. Generally it's the same letter, or at least the same template where they switch the name of the school for each program.

I can say that I personally took a calculus and a statistics course in undergrad and didn't run into any problems during application season last year.

Here is what I would do, I wouldn't take the subject test as you have a respectable gpa. Due to the schools you ate after I'd look into spending a little more time studying verbal and just enough time on quantitative to maintain my score. Your gre isn't bad and even if you don't retake it I think you'll still be competitive but for all I know one of those schools has a cutoff at 160. If possible I'd look to see what the gre scores were of previous years. If your scores fall into that range don't bother.

I have a suggestion, because you already seem to have a interest in the research at each school calculate how much each one's stipend would be corrected for cost of living and apply to the ones in addition to your selected five where you will live best.

I don't think undergrad professors would be a problem, at least as long as you don't get letters exclusively from them.

Huh, I did not know about a rainy season that's interesting.

With weather I would think that the high temperature in Arizona wouldn't be as bad as a high temperature in Maryland because of humidity. But I've pretty much just lived in the upper Midwest.

For your gpa and depression did you Hades increase as you went through undergrad. Because it shouldn't be hard to spend a couple sentences saying that you suffered from depression early in undergrad and as you adjusted and got treatment your grades improved and you now have it under control so you have full confidence in your academic abilities.

That's moving very, very lightly. You won't be able to move much more than some clothing, a computer, important papers, and some odds and ends. What are you doing about a bed? I'd be a lot more inclined to rent a truck of some sort and tow your car behind it. That way you can full the car to the brim safely and actually take some furniture.

That's a good point. I can say that where I applied the programs provided funding to all grad students but it can vary based on specialty.

You're actually ahead off where I ess a year ago as I did my gre in August and I never did the subject test.and as has been said you can get into a PhD with a bachelor's alone. I got into one with a BA and a year of industrial research experience.