hinesaj

Obviously this varies program by program, but I think the general rule is that as long as you take the GRE before the application deadline, you should be okay. That said, you should indicate on your applications that you will be taking the test on that date, and follow up as soon as you can with your department. If you're taking the CBT, you can call and tell them the scores you received that day. The only thing that concerns me about this is that many schools are comfortable with receiving scores post-deadline because even though they may have a December 15 deadline, they don't really begin evaluating materials until after the winter break. (first or second week of January). The programs you're applying to all have January deadlines, so I imagine they begin evaluating materials shortly after those deadlines. I would suggest calling the programs that you're applying to and ask them how they will handle this situation. I would also be sure to include your old GRE scores so that they won't view your application as incomplete.

Mine says that too. I think that's the default "not available" statement. Do people think that they will post our scores on this when they are available to pick up by phone? Or will they wait, forcing us to spend the $10 (or whatever it is) to acquire scores before they are mailed?

You should be fine. I contacted a few programs about this, because I'm waiting on GRE Subject test scores and wanted to include them with the submission of my electronic application, but didn't want to not send the supplemental materials for fear they would be late. Some departments actually prefer that you send in supplemental materials first. I realize that you've already sent it, but as long as you included your name and some other identifying information with the supplemental materials--maybe an applicant ID number, if there is one, etc.--they should be able to set your file up without any problem.

I don't know if this will help, but I'll pass it along anyway. A close friend of mine from undergrad was applying to several PhD programs. He had set up his 3 recommenders and they all had successfully turned in their letters. A faculty member in the department got wind that he was applying, and decided to send an unsolicited letter to several of the schools where he was applying--this faculty member had previous affiliations with those programs, both as grad student and faculty. As far as I know, this was not a problem, and I'm sure helped him. I would tell your professor that you've already set up with other faculty your recommendation situation and wouldn't want to offend anyone by telling them to rescind or not submit their letter, which they've already spent time on, to this particular program. You can tell the professor that you're okay with him/her sending the letter, but making him aware that the letter may or may not be accepted. I'm sure the professor will understand this, and, from what you have told us, will probably still write the letter. I don't know how the Admissions Committee will treat the letter--to ignore it, or to acknowledge it--but, I don't think that it will hurt you in anyway.

I may be able to help you with at least one of your "maybe" schools: University of Michigan and other members of the CIC (basically the Big Ten schools + the University of Chicago) have a Fee Waiver program for all of their graduate programs (http://www.cic.net/home/Students/FreeApp/Introduction.aspx). There is a priority deadline of November 15, which has passed, but I still received a fee waiver from Michigan when applying after that date. It does vary by department. The only other issue is that it requires a 3.0. I don't know if they're looking for a GPA with hundredths or just tenths, if its the latter you do qualify--so you may just want to check it out. This works for Michigan State too, but I don't know if you can apply it retroactively (i.e., use it to get a refund). For those trying to get a bead on the process next year, I'm applying for 10 schools, and haven't contacted any professors. For my field, however, I don't think that contacting faculty is essential or necessary. Depending on what you're applying for depends on whether or not you should get in touch with faculty.

I've mentioned specific works, but only ones that I've read. If someone has written a book that I'm truly struck by (and maybe haven't read yet...), I tend to mention it, even if just saying I'm really interested in reading the work of Professor McProfessor, because it seems like it might fit within my interests. Of course, the book may not fit with my interest, but in my mind, I'm still showing the adcom that I'm interested and plugged in to what their faculty is doing and willing to be a part of that conversation. [i, too, am on my way to completion 5/10, did all of the December deadlines, and in a week or two will do all of the January ones! Let the waiting begin...]

I'm listing all of the schools I'm applying to. I honestly don't think that a school will accept me (or not) based on this list, though I was told by a professor close to me who was on the adcom at a top 10 school last year that they do take a look at the list. He told me that they use it to try to determine where else you may be getting in to figure out their yield. For example, say you're a really stellar Victorianist and you apply to X, Y, and Z universities. X and Y are the top two Victorian programs in the country and you are clearly the cream of the crop and will get in to those places. Program Z only has one Victorianist on the faculty. Program Z may not accept you because they'll say to themselves, well this person is going to get into those schools and would most certainly choose them over us, let's open up this spot for someone who is a better fit for us. At the same time though, University Z may think the best way to strengthen their Victorian-era scholars would be to lure some top grad students so they may accept you and try to give you a really attractive package that will encourage you to go to Z over X and Y. I would say, however, don't intentionally omit programs. The community is frighteningly small, and there's no reason to give the adcoms any reason to be suspicious about your application. Colleagues between departments will chat about applicants, and say someone from X mentions to Y that you'd be great for Y, and Y is surprised that you applied for X that may not be so great. I don't think schools are going to judge you based on your list either, so there is no reason to list top tier schools and not lower tier schools. Be forthcoming.

I did sort of an option three. I sent in a heavily revised version of my honors thesis from undergrad. I cut my thesis down from 40 pages to a 25 page and a 15 page version. Cutting it down to twenty five actually wasn't that difficult, found that a lot of the stuff that at one time seemed incredibly important could easily be cut. I actually think that all of the cutting made my writing sample much better than had I sent in my full thesis and asked the committee to read a specific section.

Stanford and Duke. December 8!!

I don't think it should be too much of a problem. I, too, have a W on my transcript, but I'm not worried about it because it is in a course from my freshman year completely unrelated to my major. As long as it isn't directly or tangentially related to the program your applying to (i.e. if you're applying for English program and the W is in a Philosophy or History course, you may still want to explain why you withdrew in your statement--whereas if the W is in a Chemistry course, you'd probably be fine) you should be okay. If you do feel like the W warrants explanation, I'd recommend doing so either in your statement of purpose, or, some schools have a application field for this issue.

If you're comfortable with your score, I would say stick with it. I know a lot of people--especially with the verbal section--who feel they had an 'unfair' section. The problem with the CBT is that if you get say a small collection of vocabulary words that you don't know in the first ten questions you're likely to be much worse off than you would be had you gotten those same words at the end of the section. Is this fair? Probably not, but it is how the test goes. For whatever reason, ETS saw some irregularity with the way your CBT was scored. Maybe you missed the first five questions and got the rest correct, and because of this the score you received is much lower than it should be. Whatever the case may be, it seems like ETS will replace your verbal score for this test with whatever you get on the retake, whether it is higher or lower. If you think the score you received isn't representative of your GRE performance, retake it, because you will almost certainly do better. Judging from your practice scores, though, it seems like you tested right about where you should be--maybe not the highest you've ever done, but still somewhere in your range. All of this to say, if it were me, I would probably not go for the retake.

The score report will have all of the pertinent information to make a report "unofficial," your name and personal information, date of the test, scores for math, verbal, and AW, and the respective percentiles--everything that the official score report has. The only caveat to all of this is that it states several times that this cannot be used as an official score report.

The score report screen only reports your raw score for a subject test, not the general test.

When I first started applying I had a close friend of mine who applied to Grad programs right out of undergrad send me his SoP so I could get an idea of the genre. (He got into almost all of the top programs that he applied to, so I figured it would be a good resource.) His was very long, almost 3 pages single spaced and it exceeded the word count for the program of the example that he sent me--to be more clear he sent me a statement for X university, and say x university has a 500 word limit, his statement was 1000). He got into that program. I guess what I'm trying to say, in a very convoluted way, is use discretion. I doubt that a school is going to physically count every word in your statement, but they know what a thousand words look like, so if you write 1500 they'll know. If you're +/- 100 words I wouldn't fret too much--though, I'm sure you can find places to cut if necessary. I know UChicago makes you put your statement in a dialogue box on the online application that refuses to accept it if its over 1000 words. So it may be a good idea to have a shorter version around for any other schools that have a similar system.

Nope. All you need is your registration number and $20 (paid by credit card) for each school that you'll be sending scores to. Go to http://www.ets.org/gre/asrsonline and you should be able to order score reports for tests that have yet to be scored/you haven't received scores for yet. Edited for hyperlink.

As long as you registered with the same name and the same address for both your subject test and your general test your registration number should be the same for both. Your registration number is a way for ETS to keep track of all of your scores and records, kind of equivalent to Social Security number in the US.

I would agree that it does feel a little silly doing a fit paragraph based on, for the most part, the short faculty bios supplied on each department's website. After writing my fit paragraphs, I think the exercise is almost more important for the applicant than it is for the department. When you're writing you pretty quickly get a sense of whether you fit or not. You can only do so much if no one is working in your field of interest. If you don't 'fit' somewhere there's no reason for you to apply there and waste the application fee, and you also save the Admissions Committee some time. That said, my approach has been really similar to yours--mentioning faculty members and what they've been up to that is relevant to me. You may also want to look into what Journals or special programs are housed at that University--for example, if you're interested in the novel and applying to Stanford, you probably would want to mention the Center for the Study of the Novel. The only time I've deviated from this formula was in my fit paragraph for my undergrad institution--students are often discouraged from returning to their undergraduate school for graduate study. I felt that I had to justify why I thought I could still acquire a rounded education from that particular program.

I could very easily be wrong, but I've been under the impression that ETS sends a CD of all requested scores to schools twice each month to reflect new tests taken and any updates to scores. I would imagine that percentile changes are somehow incorporated in this bi-monthly installment--even if its a disclaimer of sorts that specifies that x score is now y percentile instead of z percentile. I also would say that the changes in your percentiles seem pretty marginal--and it is likely that programs are used to seeing these minor discrepancies in the percentile between self-reported scores and "official" scores from ETS. Several schools I've applied to don't ask you to self-report percentiles, which I'm realizing is probably because of this phenomenon.

I, like some of the others in this thread, am including a couple quotations/ideas from other scholars when discussing works that have pushed me towards graduate study. I'm not planning on doing any formal citations--just making sure that I attribute the information to the proper author and title (and journal, if applicable). I agree with JerryLandis about this being a sort of "informal" academic discussion rather than a formal one with page numbers and footnotes.

Because of the online application format some schools, Yale for example, no longer require an official transcript to be sent to the admissions office. Instead, they only require that you send a scanned image of your transcript--at least until you matriculate. Almost all the schools have a place for this on their online apps but also require you to mail in a sealed copy of the official transcript. I'm trying to order my transcripts from my undergraduate institution so I can have enough to mail into the programs I'm applying. I'm still trying to figure out, however, if Duke or University of Virginia require you to mail in your transcripts in addition to including a scanned copy of an official transcript on their online application. I've emailed the departments but haven't heard back from either of them yet. Does anyone know the answer to this? If I don't hear by tomorrow, I'll probably just order official transcripts for them anyway to be safe. I would love to save a little money though! Don't want to wait too long, since Duke's deadline is on Dec 8, and the transcript will have to be mailed a couple times before it gets there. Best of luck to everyone as the first set of deadlines draw near!

I'd recommend finding a different program to apply to if they don't have any faculty members (or only one) in your area of interest. Beyond the fact that it will make your SoP difficult to write, the likelihood that you'll flourish in that program is low. Admissions Committees weigh "fit" heavily not just for the sake of the department but for your sake, as well.