flybottle

Thanks! It was a super pleasant surprise yesterday. I feel very fortunate to have the pressure taken off so early in the season.

Anybody have word on those Berkeley admit/waitlist/interview posts? I didn't realize Berkeley did interviews, even.

1. While there are surely some exceptions, the general wisdom, as far as I know, is that very few people look at the AW score closely. They have your writing sample, after all. So don't sweat that. 2. Don't add your V and Q scores: http://www.ets.org/s/gre/pdf/gre_interpreting_scores.pdf (second bullet under 'Revised General Test Score...'). Tl;dr: the percentiles for scores on V and Q are different, so a 165V/155Q is not the same thing as a 155V/165Q. 3. Especially as a non-native speaker, 84th percentile in verbal ain't bad. Especially when it's combined with a 98th percentile quantitative. UChicago, for example, says that their admitted students average 167V/158Q. So you're significantly below the average *admitted* student on verbal (which means a good chunk of students now at Chicago also did worse than 167V), but leaps and bounds above average on quantitative. The former probably doesn't help, and the latter probably does. So I think your scores are probably a wash, and maybe a slight plus (it's more likely that somebody will notice and make something of a perfect Q than a moderately subpar V). But those scores aren't definitely not going to sink your application. If this were June, and you had the time, money, and interest, maybe it'd be worth taking it again. But it's the end of October. Better now to hone your writing samples (since that's the writing they're really going to judge) and statement of purpose.

Has anyone admitted to the BPhil heard anything from the Clarenton or Ertegun scholarships? I know that we're supposed to hear back before April 4, so there is still plenty of time, but having a terminus ante quam just ups the anxiety a little as it approaches.

So one problem that folks to this point have noted is that you're taking these statistics as probability per use, whereas they are probability per year of 'typical' use. But you still might think: 'well, ok, but now wouldn't this mean that the probability of getting pregnant with 'typical' condom use over 5 years is 100%' So here's the other thing that's going wrong. You're thinking of the situation analogously to this, perhaps: I have a bag with 5 balls, 1 blue and 4 red. Each time I reach into the bag, I remove one ball and do not put it back in the bag. Over 5 pulls, the probability that I pull the blue one is 100%. But this isn't right, because the probability that someone gets pregnant on any given year is (roughly) independent to any of the other years. So it's rather analogous to putting the ball that you pull out each time back in the bag. (Another way of realizing that the probability can't be 1 over 5 years: probability of getting heads on a coin is not 1 over two flips.) How do we compute the probability for this? Let's say over five years. P(x) + P(~x)=1 That is, the probability of x (getting pregnant) plus the probability of ~x (not getting pregnant) is 1. So: P(x)= 1-P(~x) What is P(~x) for the five year span? Well, like we said above, it's like pulling out one of the five balls and replacing it each time for five times. So the probability of ~x (=pulling a red ball = not getting pregnant) is just a straightforward independent events situation, where we multiply. So it's (.8)^5. So P(x)= 1-(.8)^5, or about .67.