jacib

Assuming your two statements were pretty similar... I doubt this is a problem. I had my old man, a professor who used to chair his department (which has a graduate program) for twenty years read my letter. Even my own flesh and blood barely said anything the second and third times. I think professors know its ultimately supposed to be your voice, and if they futz with the SoP too much, your voice will be lost. The second time, it was probably just a check that you were still focused and there were no glaring grammar/usage mistakes. Don't worry.

$750 - Application fees (let's say 10 at $75 a pop... but I'm not sure I'm applying to one or two of those) $180 - GRE $120 - GRE score reports (including schools that I didn't end up applying to... shit I realized that its +20 because I'm applying to a different department in one of my schools... that means I have to send them a bunch of things QUICK... good thing I realized.) $50 - GRE test prep book (my coworker had other books I could borrow, luckily) $0 - Postage (because I am abroad in a semi-developing country and I don't trust its postal system, all my schools have allowed me to email them writing samples, etc., even if they don't normal accept them electronically, thank God) $0 - Transcripts (apparently I paid some sort of lifetime fee as part of my graduation... but I don't remember) _____ $I'll find out for sure when the credit card bill comes.....

Wow, an aircraft loadplanner AND a librarian. Quite the life. Oh yeah I should put out that that was me.. but it's more like I've lived in this country for two years and I should presumably be much more competent than I am in the language. I didn't say "I know this language FLUENTLY" but I put down "have lived here for two and a half years teaching English and learning Turkish" and let them infer that I spoke it very well, rather than just enough to get my point across... so not a lie per se, but you know.

Could you elaborate on these MacGyver type skills?

What if your first sentence, instead of reading: My fascination with international affairs started as a rather casual interest in foreign languages, which appeared at an early age and was spurred by my natural curiosity and desire to make sense of that abundant flow of information from abroad (primarily in English) that flooded Russia after the fall of the Iron Curtain. read a little more like this: My interest in foreign affairs started young: when the Iron Curtain fell, formerly censored information suddenly flooded into Russia. Though all this information flowed freely into Russia, it really wasn't freely available to me because only those who spoke foreign languages could access this exciting new knowledge that was hidden in plain sight. I wanted to be able to make sense of this (blah blah blah) Don't skip the first paragraph, but make it count. Give it a hook, make it catchy. You've got a really cool, unique story. Put it up front, because you want the adcomms to remember you and say "Oh, yeah, what about that girl from Russia who learned English after the fall of the Iron curtain? She sounds interesting."

Sure there is. Columbia sociology, for example, had 290 applicants for like 11 spots. Let's assume be generous and say 70 of those applicants (roughly 1/4) got a fee waiver. It's still like... what 75, 85 bucks to apply (I don't want to think about it) so 75*220= 16,500. That's not chump change, I'd hope it was enough to cover all the costs, but it's probably not a ton left over (maybe enough to fund travel to a conference or two or three). It works out to 1500 per admitted student, minus fixed costs (or perhaps a fixed amount out of each application) paid to a place like embark, minus the grad school assistant, minus all the paper used etc. I have no idea if the adcoms get paid, but if that is it, its even less per admitted student. I think the cost is in more way a deterrence than anything else so that they only get applications from students who really want to go there. "Serious word" that came up a lot while talking to sociology departments. My old roommates got a common app fee waiver and applied to 32 colleges for ungrad, which he would never have done if he had to pay for each. I think he got into more than half of them. (For the record, he had legitimate reasons for applying so widely: he was the only kid to go out of state for college that year from his high school so he got next to no guidance from his counselor, she just didn't know. Not many people from his high school had questions about private university vs. private liberal arts college). At a place like Harvard, where the application for the Committee on Religion is $105 and they have tons of applicants (including many more from abroad who cannot get fee waivers), it's more lucrative, but still, it's not like they're making mint. Though it might be enough to fund one more student for one year. Do admit rates matter so much in grad school? Both USNWR and NRC seem to rank only based on reputation. It seems that they want higher rates perhaps for some indirect prestige rather than an actual, immediate bump in rankings... Some schools have awful attrition rates, and awful year-to-degree rates, so perhaps that's what they're more worried about being generally known. Also no school publishes an average GPA, that I've seen at least (this is perhaps because most use some sort of curving mechanism, either formally or in formally, so a Harvard undergraduate GPA is worth more than one from East Podunk Teacher's College... and this doesn't even consider graduate vs. undergraduate GPAs. As a side note, during one affirmative action law suit, Berkeley Law School released all of this data, exactly how much it curves for individual undergrad schools, you can find it online, but law schools make much more quantitative assessments than graduate schools because law schools don't worry about "fit".) Anyway, I think Swisnieski is right: they'd rather wade through a bunch of crap in order to avoid possible getting rid of a good candidate. That said, there are clearly some minimums at play. If I apply with a 1.9 GPA and 800 GRE, you know... I like that the UC's post 3.0 minimum GPA. Toronto (at least for Religion) says that it's mainly based on your grades from your last year or two, and most, but not all, people admitted have A's or A-'s. Likewise, Harvard Religion says only a "rare, exceptional candidate" is admitted without a masters. Even though those aren't strict cutoffs and minimums, it's a good deal being able to know you at least either do or don't meet this minimal guidelines. That said, Swisnieski, I think some people with 1000 GRE's are surprised: I was reading a forum somewhere, a college administrators forum (where the hell was it? I got a link to it from the board), and one graduate student adviser was complaining about the people who are rejected then call indignantly, demanding to be let into the program... she said these almost always tend to be the least qualified people who just have no idea about the process (she administered an education program at a public university in California, if I remember correctly).

re: the new test, this is the article that I read about it, there's probably more info out there. It will be less vocabulary on verbal, but harder math (presumably... you get to use a calculator at least). I guess it starts in 2011 so in August 2010 you'd still take the current one. They've been testing new questions for a while now, but haven't really rolled out the changes yet (the new questions seemed much easier than the old but presumably the curve will make up for that and that's why they've been testing them for so long). And you almost definitely can't send scores to school a year before applying... but it never hurts to ask (plus it shows an interest in their program so who knows it might even help). There's a discussion in the GRE/GMAT forum about this, but it's mostly just a poll... and a lot of people lamenting that they had to study useless stuff. I like the old GRE personally and think the changes won't necessarily be a change that makes the test a better indicator of grad success... if anything, it will become more of a "minimum" score, I feel, like the math section already is for the sciences.

I've been teaching SAT/GRE/GMAT for a while now and of all of those, GRE is the most frustrating to teach because it is the hardest to study for. In the Verbal section, other than memorizing words, there are a limited number of strategies (there are a few good ones in the sentence completion part. a few decent ones in the analogies, and a few things that make reading comprehension easier), but overall, it is not a test like the SAT where I can regularly improve scores 200+ points (granted some of those score improvements are because these students are non-native speakers so learning words that the SAT loves like "bewildered" helps them a lot). The thing is, the GRE is "fairer" to those without access to study materials than some other tests are because it is harder to study for. The only student who really significantly improved her score did so through two months of solid work, during which time she memorized a significant portion of the Barron's 3500 word list. The majority of the words she'd never seen before. I think if you study very hard and raise your score significantly, that in-and-of itself means something--presumably you would put the same amount of effort in to your actual work at graduate school. This is one of the reasons that I don't like the changes--whatever the old GRE did or didn't test on, it was at least hard to study for. The GMAT, however, is RIDICULOUSLY easy to study for. The more practice tests you take, the better you do. I don't think the GRE is the best possible test, and it is better than the alternatives. And I do think there needs to be some sort of standardized test, but I certainly don't think it should be everything. Luckily, I don't think it is. One of my friends said, your GRE scores don't matter... unless they're really low or really high. I think that's as it should be. High scores indicate a certain kind of aptitude, low scores indicate perhaps the lack of it. The former should not be an automatic acceptance (it's not), the latter should not be an automatic rejection (it is apparently in some places... though my father's colleagues say often other aspects can make up for one low score... but perhaps that's just in the social sciences). The graduate process in general is way too opaque. I like Northwestern's pages and pages of stats, showing exactly attrition rates, acceptance rates, etc. My alma matter is not nearly so good. During college, one of my friends worked in the biological sciences division (top 5/10 in some subfields, top 25 in the rest, I just checked). Part of her job responsibilities included doing the first round of graduate application sorting. This undergraduate would get rid of about half the candidates... now if an undergraduate could do it, it's probably pretty much set limits (GRE scores below y, no research experience, wrong major, GPA below z). Those are the kinds of things that should be posted on the website... but rarely are. I wish I could remember more about how she actually did the sorting (we've fallen out of touch) but it's ridiculous that if so many people were gonna be eliminated so quickly by a non-expert (she wasn't even a bio-concentrator... she just got the job through work-study), I think the department as a moral obligation to discourage people it will never accept from applying. Edit: Now, a lot of those people were grossly underqualifed and many also didn't meet clearly marked minimum standards (TOEFL for example) or had trouble expressing themselves in English. I don't mean to scare you. And I think someone else did double check all her rejections. But still.

Taking in August seems completely appropriate. Scores are generally good for five years (there is a new version of the test... make sure you know when they start giving that version, and think whether you want to take the new or old version and study/plan your date accordingly) so taking it in advance won't be a problem. If you're on a very strict budget, as Randybobandy pointed out, you get to send four schools reports for free. Most schools won't have their applications open yet in August (when they DO open their apps is another question, ask schools) so you won't be able to utilize your four free score reports, and since every score report is 20 bucks, that's like swallowing an extra 80 bucks, but maybe it works out best for you to take it then and the marginal cost is worth it. A lot of people on the board changed their GRE date which is like eating 50 bucks, so I mean ANYTHING you do with ETS is going to be expensive.

I am no art student, but if it is exactly two words in a long booklet where images, not words, are of paramount importance it does not seem worth the time or the effort to redo it all. I might make a professional looking photocopy (you can even use fancy paper if it will put your mind at ease) and stick it saying: Due to a printer's error, the caption on page (43) is truncated. It should read in full "Blah blah blah blah". Again, I don't know the standards of the field, the costs, etc, but for two words it doesn't seem worth it to reprint an entire book... I think the adcomms'd understand especially if you attribute it to a prınter's error. When is it due?

My writing sample is a section of my undergraduate thesis, which uses Chicago style citations (the standard in my undergraduate major). Double spaced seemed wise, but what are they gonna do, look at it and say "Oh single spaced, what a d-bag this guy is?" I certainly hope not! Check for clear guidelines... I didn't notice anything for the first set of schools other than page limits, but Yale, for instance, wants two inch margins on top! Northwestern I think wanted something else screwy. But if they don't say, it's cool. I think double spaced is standard, with 1' margins. I put a summary on the first page on the cover page to give it context but it certainly wasn't a formal abstract. I mean, it's a writing sample, not a formatting sample...

To put this in perspective: 18 years ago I was eating boogers in a sandbox and giving myself cooties shots. I could spell the word "the" and if I recall correct had recently learn how to spell "cute" (you just take "cut" and add an "e"! Thanks Ms. Barsosky!) If you it was a pattern of bad grades (a full semester or something) maybe, but I don't really think the committee will be overly concerned about one course from that period.

Someone mentioned Northwestern, but check out the intense level of statistics they offer for every program: http://www.tgs.northwestern.edu/pgm_stats/ Its almost too much information; it not only gives you admission statistic but attrition rates, placements (even listing the school name), years to degree, etc.

Gazelle, call. Seriously. Both my parents regularly write recs, and need to be reminded.

Oh and I'm an SAT teacher, here's a good example paragraph I show my students. It's a little different (they can use examples from literature, for example). I underlined all the transitions. Write more complex sentences than these (my students are all non-native speakers of English), but this should give you the idea of the kind of structure they want. Notice how most of the paragraph is explaining the relevant parts of the example. The thesis is "The past effects the future". Sorry I can't quite get it to be all the same size. The next example comes from World War II. In 1944, in order to punish the Dutch people for their support of the invading Allied forces, Nazi Germany stopped grain shipments to the parts of the Netherlands that it still occupied. This had serious effects, not only on the people who were alive in 1944, but also those who were born after. The winter of 1944 in the Netherlands was one of the worst famines in Europe of the 20th century. To this day, it is still called the “hongerwinter” (“hunger winter”) in Dutch. During the famine, more than 10,000 people died directly from malnutrition and many more thousands died from related causes. However, the effects did not end with the end of the famine. Instead, there have been lingering affects throughout Dutch society. One important and obvious effect is that women who were pregnant during the famine gave birth to malnourished babies. In fact, vitamins are more important to adults than children so these children carried the effects of the “hunger winter” throughout their lives—for example, on average they are short for Dutch people. All of these are predictable effects of famine. However, one interesting thing is that the hunger baby’s children are also shorter than average. This result was surprising for scientists and clearly shows how events in the past, even temporary ones, can affect a population for generations. This is the basic formula for a body paragraph: Ourfirst/next/last example comes from (Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare/World War II/World History/the history of science). (In World History, blah blah). (Romeo’s actions/Ataturk’s actions/Alexander Flemming’s actions) show that [my thesis is correct in this specific example]. Explain relevant parts of your example clearly, giving all necessary information (We can’t assume that the reader knows the story of Romeo and Juliet). Therefore/Clearly/Certainly, this shows [how my thesis is correct in general].

I got 6.0 using the below strategies. I've been teaching SAT/GRE/GMAT so I have a good idea of what they're looking for. Make each paragraph in your opinion essay (other than the introduction an conclusion) about one specific example. It sounds stupid, but seriously, use one example per paragraph. That's what they want. Number each paragraph "Our initial examples comes from....." Explain how the example related to your thesis in a specific way. Then explain why this is the case. As a last sentence, clearly explain how your example proves your thesis. Use your best vocabulary, but only if you are using it correctly. Use TONS of transitions (Nevertheless, however, on the other hand, in addition, moreover, furthermore, as a result, etc.) and conjunctions (while, whereas, although, since, because, by, rather than). Vary your sentence structure (using although at the beginning of a sentence per paragraph is a great way of doing this). Use "For instance"/"for example" before every example, to make your point clear use "if... then" constructions. For the argument essay, the argument is always wrong. Summarize the argument in the first paragraph, then say something like "though perhaps initially compelling, the argument is unsound for several reasons." Number the next three paragraphs, "Firstly," "secondly," "lastly". The first paragraph can always be a confusion of causation and correlation. The second is usually based on the assumption that past performance predicts future performance, without taking into account other factors. I couldn't find a third thing that's in almost all of them, but there's usually one other thing clearly wrong. For example, if there are any numbers, question where they're from (shoddy poll data, etc.) Then finish up with a conclusion which clearly says, "In conclusion," perhaps saying "if the author had considered (all the things i said above), her point would have been more convincing. As it stands, however... blah blah blah" Use words that the computer will recognize like "will not necessarily", therefore you should also use the key words from the actual question (remember computer).

Am I the only one who feels like they don't really know? I applied to tough schools with a random subject... but I feel like I might be one of a very small number of applicants asking to work with certain professors which makes me competitive? I know one of my LoR is out of this world, I think the other two might be average. I feel like I could get into almost all of them. None seems unlikely. But there are no "sure things". Of the Religion programs, Northwestern small chance because of fit, I didn't apply to Harvard in the end, of the other 4-5, I'd guess 1-3 I'll get in/be waitlisted. Of the Sociology programs, I have NO idea. I feel good about all of them, the most competitive ones I have the best fit so that should help me. I don't think i'll get in to Princeton, but I have fair odds at the rest of them. But who knows what fair odds means these days. So we'll see! Kismet.

Oh no! He was nice and pretty helpful... very German though. Luckily, I was more interested in Malika Zeghal anyhow. Ha, I totally didn't even consider retirements a fact--especially with someone like Riesebrodt who I didn't think was that old!

I'm going to work on making sure I speak Turkish as well as I made it seem like I do in my SoP....

Kid, are we the only two applying to Berkeley here? What are you studying? And where else are you applying? My next dates are all Dec 31/Jan 1.

Religion and politics. Hoping to teach, though it could be in sociology department, near east studies department, or a religion department.

Also an American living abroad. Also looking forward to coming back to America. Definitely looking forward to people not noticing my accent/that I'm clearly not a native speaker of the language/that I can't really speak the language. Also looking forward to MEXICAN FOOD. ALSO DIM SUM!

This happened to my sister in Art History and she ended up staying until she got her Masters (it was a PhD program). She entered the museum world for a while (Like I said, art history degree), and is now working on her MBA, originally because she wanted to be a museum director but now it seems like she might do a more traditional post-MBA get rich or die tryin' thing.

My undergrad university will send out unlimited free copies of my transcript for life.... I don't even have to pay postage. It made it so much easier because I'm living abroad, I didn't have to organized any of that stuff in advance. That's what schools should real do, if not go digital! I mean we all paid enough for an undergrad education that we should at least be able to prove what we did.

Just to confirm.... after you upload your supplemental information to the department (scan of GRE scores, scan of transcript, + writing sample) there's no like "submit this information" button right? I just have to upload it, that's all right? So paranoid.