kismetcapitan

I have only applied to one school - Harvard. However, I did start (but did not submit) applications to U Mich, Vanderbilt, and U Penn. Recently, I have been receiving a spate of emails from all three schools, ranging from "we're happy you've started your application, if you have any questions in how to finish then ask..." to "congratulations! you're almost complete with your application!". It does seem somewhat late this year to send in a masters application (although they are all in some form or another rolling admissions). For example, Vanderbilt has a deadline, but "will accept applications after that date on a space-available basis". It would seem that they wouldn't be going through the trouble if they had already been swamped with applicants? Is anyone else getting the same sort of solicitous emails?

Columbia Ph.D, that's very, very significant!! You didn't get the Ferrari, but your consolation prize is a Lamborghini More stress. Lots of applicants this year? Yet at the same time, I just inked a deal that will double my school's campus as my enrollment just shot up at the last minute (the Korean school year starts in March); I'm beginning to worry if I can even take the time off; I'm scrambling for qualified teachers, and things have to be stabilize so that my school can run on autopilot/videoconferencing if/when I'm in Boston. Nerves fraying; time passes like continental drift...

my college roommate (and I for that matter), had WELL under 3.0 GPAs. He worked his way through a hyper-expensive Tier One school, while I was dying from severe depression and undiagnosed ADHD-PI. He's now at Harvard, Engineering Ph.D, thanks to a stellar resume of work, and God-willing, I'll soon be there as well after teaching for 13 years for a mid-career Ed.M!

take no classes. The GRE quantitative is more or less based on an older type of IQ test (I'm a member of Mensa; when I joined I started look at, and seriously questioning, IQ test formats andwhat they actually measure, if anything of real value at all). The logic "skeletons" that each "math" question is based on, has nothing to do with school-taught math at all. The actual math skills - the average American 8th or 9th grader has been taught what they need to know in terms of the calculations and math concepts. The difficult questions simply require knowing what train of logic to follow, or in the case of questions that seem to ask you to do a ridiculous amount of arithmetic (like adding 500 numbers of a sequence), only require you to know the shortcut. All of these can be easily taught; unlike the SAT, the underlying logical structure of the GRE has not changed in ages, and any GRE test-prep teacher worth his/her salt would have reverse engineered the test before thinking they can actually prep students.

I do, and it does. Once in the morning when I wake up, does the trick. My particular medications works best when taken regularly. Some can be taken on an as-needed basis. Of course, there were years of CBT to work on my brain's thought processes and get rid of various hangups and other detritus picked up from a lifetime of living with ADHD, without knowing you have it. Medications don't help unless you make them help, if that makes any sense. Theoretically, CBT alone, or massive self-discipline, can also mask the symptoms (or characteristics of the condition), but a double amputee can also learn to move around without a wheelchair or prosthetics.

Slee, I think you'll be fine; you write plenty well enough here, someone will snap you up, regardless of the GRE. In my case, I can read about two paragraphs into a long passage before my brain literally shuts down and won't look at the passage again. If I overcome it with willpower, I burn so much energy (and yes, thinking consumes a surprisingly large number of calories) that I'm toast for the rest of the test. I've taught SAT test prep for years (although that is NOT what I'm about as a teacher, my classes work around creative interdisciplinary approaches to learning difficult subject material - teaching AP subjects to Korean middle school students, in English of course). I attribute the success of my SAT classes and students to the workarounds I've come up with for each question type, which also help people without ADHD as they all revolve around efficiency. And familiarity breeds ability - at this point, I have little difficulty reading a passage straight on. Medications can help, if you work with the psychiatrist who will really get to know you and pay attention to your physiological reactions to various drug cocktails. For example, if you are ADHD comorbid with any anxiety disorders, jacking you up on Ritalin will focus your mind, but you'll get nothing done because your nerves will be fried as your anxiety becomes exacerbated (a smart psychiatrist who has a patient that responds to the above methylphenidate but reports jitteriness and is still getting nothing done, will add a beta blocker to calm down the sympathetic nervous system). I find the side effects of most ADHD meds to be too much to tolerate, so I went outside the box. After reading up on some work done by Dr. Joseph Biederman@Harvard Medical School, I went with modafinil. Took a few months to find the right dosage and dose interval, and how to work my benzodiazepenes around them, but when all was said and done, it was a home run. Oh, and when I was an undergrad, it strangely didn't occur to me that I was depressed, although I'd wake up every morning and as soon as I'd come to, realizing I wasn't in dreamland anymore, the bell jar would fall; felt like molten lead being poured into your chest. That was no fun. It's easy to pick up a DSM-IV and start attributing every weakness you have to various disorders, and ADHD is definitely overdiagnosed, but having any disorder is a right pain in the ass. Anyways, I'd recommend: - find a psychiatrist certified in cognitive behavioral therapy who is willing to really personalize your medications and not just blindly prescribe meds from a pharmaceutical company's sales literature. Meet him/her as often as possible until you find a drug combination that works. Keep hourly logs describing what you feel on each one, or combination. The doctor will then be able to correlate the dosage with the medication's half-life in the bloodstream, and adjust accordingly. There was a recent paper done by a Tufts University med school professor who opined that medication dosage should factor in body weight; this is certainly intuitively true for drugs such as antibiotics, but there may or may not be validity when it comes to psychoactive medications - there's less variation in brain mass, although the number of dopamine receptors can vary between individuals. Keep in mind that dopamine agonists (more accurately, reuptake inhibitors), will start to fry your dopamine receptors; oftentimes, less is more. - find a GRE tutor, preferably one who also has ADHD or significant experience working with ADHD students. They're out there; I'm one. Develop a personalized "toolkit" that fits the way your brain works. If you find a set of meds that help you work (and I really recommend a CBT-certified psychiatrist, as medications are like a cup - you still have to fill it, i.e. learn how to work with, not against, your brain), roll with it. Without years to do a full neurological workup and to self-train your brain through CBT, go with what works. Even if you have nothing, this isn't the Olympics; you don't get your urine tested for nootropics after taking the GRE. And write, write, write. None of this will matter if your writing portfolio isn't up to snuff!

kind of ironic reading this, I do undergrad interviews, yet am an applicant myself (didn't apply to Tufts, no fit in the graduate schools for my needs). The cognitive neuroscience program at Tufts, from what I remember, is strong. Some of my friends were doing research in that department as undergrads; the work they were doing was quite advanced.

kind of ironic reading this, I do undergrad interviews, yet am an applicant myself (didn't apply to Tufts, no fit in the graduate schools for my needs). The cognitive neuroscience program at Tufts, from what I remember, is strong. Some of my friends were doing research in that department as undergrads; the work they were doing was quite advanced.

I hope it's mid-March as usual; I can handle two more weeks but more than that will probably drive me crazy!

does verbal really count in engineering? especially if English is not your first language? But quant really does need to be 800 or close to it I think. My 710 quant was only the 73rd percentile. I would have retaken but I don't think quant matters as much for education grad school as it does for applied sciences and mathematics.

anyways, take heart in that in any fine arts program, it's portfolio, portfolio, and portfolio. quick fix: work with a psychiatrist to find the best stimulant to calm you down. Then go on benzodiazepenes for anxiety. long-term: I've worked with psychiatrists for over a decade, and I find cognitive behavioral therapy to be the most interesting, the one where *you* as a patient need to take an active role, and the one with the most permanent results.

while medical histories are indeed very private, when someone comes out in public, they tend to be more open to discussion - else why would they post their medical condition online and in public? I have taught for 13 years, and have seen every learning disability under the sun. I myself have ADHD-PI, comorbid with performance anxiety and depression (the latter two have been sorted out years ago, ADHD needs a far more long-term approach. Ironically, I'm in the opposite boat - I test extremely well, but my undergrad and high school grades were stunningly weak (2.0??), while I took the SAT without outside prep and nailed a 790 verbal, 710 math (the math reflects ADHD - every question I missed (checkable if you get the Q&A Service option) was due to a simple error when my brain would drift off at exactly the wrong moment in the chain of logical thinking required to solve them tricky questions. I was not diagnosed with anything until after I graduated college, so this leads me to hypothesize a few things: - I believe that one can make ADHD work to one's advantage, or at least level the playing field on these exams. For example, on a paper test, when you've eliminated an answer, you don't just put an X on the letter, you SCRIBBLE the entire thing out. Brain can't see it, less distraction. I read critical reading passages "with a pencil" - using the pencil to keep my eyes from wandering. I rarely miss a CR question (my GRE verbal was 690, 97th percentile, two weeks self-prep before taking the thing). - Paper-based is also available in Japan, and Korea...here, there's a split paper test. You take the AW on one day, then the verbal/quant on another day. It's only administered once a year, and ETS feels that it's necessary here due to rampant cheating. Regarding the paper test, I just did a bunch of practice tests (out of books, hence on paper), which allowed me to use all my "tricks" to keep me focused. I'd either get all of them right, or miss at most 2. On the actual computer-based test (I flew to Tokyo solely to take the GRE), I bombed (relatively speaking), got a 710 math, and ran out of time with 9 questions remaining (I think there was a question counter at the top, I was rather unsettled at either the different patterns in the computer GRE, or the fact that I couldn't scribble directly on the question took away my main weapon?). AW was 5.0, I think 6 is impossible for me since my writing style is so stream-of-consciousness. - and in both my personal experience with ADHD-PI, as well as working with innumerable students over the years with learning disabilities (I once worked with a guy who had a laundry list of diagnosed issues, ADHD among them, ETS gave him a split test SAT - half on one day, untimed, half on the next day, also untimed). There are ways to teach a student how to work around these standardized tests - he went from 750 combined to 1210 combined. So little is understood about the human mind even in this era, that it's a mistake to pin everything on a single, simplistic diagnosis. There are different types of ADHD, and even within those types, ADHD patients present their symtoms in different ways. Medications work differently in different people, and broadly generalizing, what works with ADHD with hyperactivity present, doesn't always work so well with ADHD, predominantly inattentive (not hyperactive). ADHD is often comorbid with other disorders - I never thought I was a nervous person until I started reacting badly to methylphenidate with panic attacks, but turns out I had an anxiety issue deeply buried that even I wasn't aware of, but affected my performance in nearly everything that mattered. That had to be completely treated before I could work on the ADHD. Or ADHD could be a SYMPTOM of something else, oftentimes depression. Even if one isn't "classically" depressed, they might be dysthymic. There are visual and auditory processing disorders. Are disorders singular, or always comorbid in a Gordian knot? Do you medicate? Group therapy? Cognitive behavioral therapy? Lots of questions, and a lot of self-analysis plus good psych workups (always, always with a second or third opinion) can help you get to the bottom of a learning "disability". And I hate that term, "disability". Having ADHD hasn't prevented or handicapped me from learning anything. Sitting still for more than five minutes, yes, that was a problem. But certainly not disabled. Getting good grades, or doing well on tests, ok, there's a handicap there. But in terms of the mind actually learning, I don't believe that ADHD handicaps us from that. I'll find out more for sure, if Harvard lets me into their Mind, Brain, and Education Ed.M program!!

I certainly hope so, I have a somewhat similar profile!!

jeebus, has anyone who has applied **only** for an Ed.M. hear anything yet? I also logged in, in a bit of a panic - no change, still says "submitted". I'm gunning for MBE, Ed.M...still have NOT sent out applications anywhere else, so I'm totally committed! Committed as in, when rock climbing a serious cliff in Yosemite, there's a point where going down, or bailing onto a different route, is not an option...

UC Santa Barbara is in an absolutely beautiful location. Davis is....not so pretty. Ann Arbor is fairly meh as well, but I can't be objective - I'm from that area and in fact still own a house in Ann Arbor despite the fact that I live in Seoul Korea. U Mich is my second choice; my application is done, and I'll click send if Harvard doesn't work out.

argh, I've been holding this back, but I finally want to garner some opinions regarding my Ed.M application I am a teacher, 13 years experience, two years with a school I founded - designed to bring the Harkness system and Socratic pedagogy into Korea, all taught in English. Seems like I've got the experience thing covered. Not worried about my SOP - I'm a good writer, so I'm told, and I'm satisfied that I sufficiently conveyed my intent and message in my essay; although, being a specialist in teaching writing, it can always be better and there are plenty of edits I'd still like to do after the fact (despite the 10-12 drafts my SOP went through). I have strong reasons for applying to the specific program I applied for, and I believe I'm a good fit - although "fit" seems to be a more important metric at the Ph.D level. Strong LORs, two from well-known people nationally in the education field (one is on Forbes list of fourteen "Revolutionary Educators"). These are people who know what I'm trying to accomplish in terms of making impact and change in the troubled Korean education system, and think I'm on the right track. Graduated 14 years ago from a Tier One university (at which, to everyone's surprise, I was accepted early decision despite a 2.9 unweighted high school GPA). GRE verbal is 690 - 97th percentile, AW 5.0 (quant was 710, total nightmare there, I took two pee breaks, losing time, and couldn't finish the section). Pretty colorful history - service in both the USAF and US Army, used to be a serious rock climber, did B.M. coursework at New England Conservatory in classical piano and jazz improvisation, and I build and tune big-power turbocharged engines and race sportbikes....and teach classes on weekends in tuning engines (practice and theory - there is a lot of thermodynamic theory and a fair bit of mechanical engineering understanding required to squeeze a tousand horsepower out of a sub-3 liter engine) to car enthusiasts. But my undergrad GPA, brace yourself....1.98. It'd be closer to 1.0 if it weren't for my strong junior and senior year grades. I suffered from severe depression in my first two years and despite being a member of Mensa, have ADHD-PI, which was undiagnosed at the time. If you factor in all undergrad work I've done (post-bac classes at UC Berkeley), it's closer to 2.5 (by then, I had beaten the depression and had learned to manage my ADHD). I wrote two essays explaining these factors in detail. I've been told that, as an old (38) mid-career applicant, that my work experience and extremely clear goals would work strongly in my favor, and that undergrad grades 20 years old wouldn't matter much - something like bankruptcy, your credit clears after seven years But if I were an adcomm (and I do alumni admissions work for my undergrad institution), I would be so shocked, stunned, and prejudiced by seeing the lowest GPA of anyone applying, that I'm not sure I'd be able to even read the rest of the application before tossing it into the reject pile. And even if I did read through, it would be through eyes that would not be able to objectively measure the rest of the application. So, what do you think? I had long thought that my GPA was so stunningly low that grad school would never in my lifetime be an option. But with the work I've recently done and the focus I have, I thought that might make a difference. Did I just waste an admissions committee's time? If I get rejected, I'll know why. With education masters program acceptance rates in the 55% range at top schools, GPA is the only thing I can see that's weak in my application. And I simply cannot go back in time to change that. Hence, if I'm rejected, wouldn't that strongly imply that adcomms would simply never be able to get around the D's and F's I had gotten two decades ago?

I will admit that applying to Harvard was in some part based on name value. My overall intent for my grad studies is to help me really launch my private/alternative school that I founded into the limelight (hopefully) or at least grow into an institution that will outlive me. Since the school is in South Korea (although 100% taught in English - has to be, I don't speak Korean well enough to teach kindergarten ), I had to factor in that Koreans absolutely worship Harvard as the end-all be-all of universities. When I try to expand my campus, I will have to lobby the government, or private donors, and simply put, I won't get in the door without HARVARD stuck on my resume. Stanford? Columbia? Just as good if not better academically (in terms of schools of education), but they literally carry half the weight that Harvard does in this society. That being said, if Harvard didn't have the program and fit for my educational goals, I would not have applied. I don't believe in attending a big-name school simply to collect a trophy; it's an insult to the school, a mockery of the true intent of education and being educated, and a disingenuous method to get ahead in society.

yep, fine arts is definitely a different game. I was undergrad at NEC, and the audition wasn't the main factor...it was the ONLY factor! (got rejected for M.M.@NEC way back then, but my juries (classical piano) were always pretty shaky so no big surprise there).

I do wonder - on the one hand, my sister (an adcomm at U Mich) says this year was going to see a flood of applicants, as employment is down so more people are looking to go to grad school. On the other hand, does this mean that students who are able to pay cash up front for their programs have an advantage? Are grad school decisions truly need-blind?

I guess this is pretty out of the ordinary in terms of plans, but my plans are to...return to exactly what I'm doing now - running and teaching at the school I founded in South Korea. Grad school will hopefully equip me with what I need to grow the school to its ultimate goals, but even if it remains the tiny private/alternative school it is now, at least I'll be a better teacher, and even though I'm in my 13th year of teaching full-time, going back to school would get me out of any pegagogical ruts I might be in - it's very hard to objectively evaluate one's own teaching style and if efficacy can be improved upon.

Harvard will start emailing mid-March; that is their pattern historically. Three more weeks; I'm gnawing my fingernails in anguish

jeebus, a thousand applications for 50 slots. Assuming I get my MBE masters at HGSE, I was thinking of applying to the ED.L.D program while there. But wow, competitive. I'd have to be seriously amazing I think (which I'm not), and I wonder if they would take master's people out of HGSE, or if they'd want to look nearly exclusively outside of Harvard for fresh perspectives.

I'd go to TC just for the opportunity to work after school with Geoffrey Canada - his project in Harlem is pure genius, and being at Columbia means that the commute to volunteer at the Harlem Children's Zone would just be a few blocks. I didn't really find a personal "fit" with TC though, not as closely matched to my needs as a mid-career masters applicant, so that's why I only have one app in at Harvard.

yep, the time is getting close, but just like I thought, I'm buried in classes, now seven days a week. I had to hire another TA to unload some of the weight - so that I can literally zip out of class for 15 minutes and shove food down my throat! I thought I'd also be obsessively checking, but for anyone with a smartphone ( think I posted this earlier, oh well, I'll just repeat myself), I put an icon on my iPhone linking directly to the application website. So with push email, I'll see that results were posted, then hit the application icon, and then...it loads, and I'll know Regardless, I strongly recommend to prospective future applicants to NOT do what I did - apply only to one school, and Harvard at that! All eggs in one basket, oy. Although...it's going to be hard if I **do** get accepted. The money's lined up, but just leaving my school and my students for a "sabbatical", I feel like I'm abandoning them. I'm looking into webcam teaching software to stay in touch - does anyone have any good recommendations? What I'd love to have for an online software package would be a video screen, a whiteboard window, and a window where I can display a webpage for my students. But I need the growth and further development; how much research is available to master's students? I don't want to just take classes, there are educational projects and little research studies I'm dying to do. Thought I was going to leave my wife and one-year-old son in Korea while I'm at grad school, but I think I wouldn't be happy with the separation. Harvard does have good family housing available, last I checked. Will have to ponder that one; there's so much I want to do at Harvard that I may not have any time to see wife and kid anyways. Late night ramblings - cathartic

for M.Ed applicants...how long between when you submitted and when they answered (U Mich)? I have not, as of yet, completed my U Mich application. All my LORs, GRE scores, and transcripts were sent, but I've been dawdling on filling out the rest of the application. The deadline is June 30th (!), and Michigan is by far the most practical choice. I live in Seoul but own a house in Ann Arbor - so that takes care of housing. And being able to finally come home and live there for longer than a week for the first time in 16 years - one could say I am rather homesick! What's holding me back then? I think I'm just really hell-bent on the MBE program at Harvard. If I complete and submit my Michigan app, it will be for a totally different program - educational policy - because that's the one U Mich offering that's a fit for me at this point. And fit itself is just part of the equation - really dying to do a specific program probably contributes to that student succeeding at whichever university.