mockturtle

I've felt that in general, the sentiment among graduate students is one of stress and negativity. While obviously our career track is not an easy one, I just wanted to share the fact that I am really, really enjoying graduate school. This isn't to diminish anyone's frustration or pain or anything, but merely to add another perspective, especially for those who are still unsure of applying. I did lots of research beforehand to make sure I wanted to go down this path and carefully considered my options, and I think that led me to making a great decision. I get along extremely well with my advisor, genuinely love my program and my school, and am having a great time (and I'm now halfway through my third year, so this isn't still that first-year optimism). Grad school has felt like an academic playground where I get to test really interesting questions and work with really smart people. Like seriously, I love my job. 

You may find these links helpful. They definitely gave me things to think about and guided my writing. Also, go to the Statement of Purpose forum on this site, read some of the statements others have posted, and pay attention to critiques so you're given more examples of what to do and what not to do.
One thing I'll tell you off the bat though: discuss your research. Past experiences, current interests, how they fit with the school(s) you want to attend.
http://www.uni.edu/~gotera/gradapp/stmtpurpose.htm
https://mcnair.wsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/169/2014/08/StatementofPurposeApril2011-2_000.pdf
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/969/01/
http://www.nextscientist.com/statement-of-purpose-for-graduate-school/
http://www.fasttrackadmission.com/how-to-write-your-statement-of-purpose/

You are not required to list every accomplishment you've ever had. Sometimes you want to be selective so your best achievements are showcased and easy to find, instead of being drowned out by small/trivial things. My goal is always that each line makes me look stronger and more suited for whatever I'm applying for. Especially as the CV gets longer, some parts will get skimmed, at best. I want each line the reader happens to skim to be an important one. I don't want them to land on things that waste their time, and ignore important lines. 
It also depends on the stage of one's career, what the application is for, and what other documents are submitted with the application. At some (early, in my opinion) point, graduate students shouldn't list their GPA on their CV, unless of course the application asks for it. It's not like listing the GPA is a big misstep, just makes you look a bit out of touch or young. If languages and computer skills aren't relevant for the current application or degree the person is pursuing, they can easily look like padding. So, as a linguist I definitely have a 'languages' section, but most linguists do not have a 'computer skills' section, and that's perfectly fine. But again, if you want to say you are proficient at Word or whatever, go for it. That's probably not what's going to (not) get you the job/grant, because it's most likely just not relevant either way.
 
I think the chance that they would see your self-report and ask for an official one is exactly 0. That said, I would probably not include it, but I don't think much will happen if you do. They don't want to see the scores because they apparently don't think they are a good indication of success in their program. Therefore, having a good score is not an indication of anything they care about. If you want to report something they don't care about, you could. They will just go ahead and ignore it. Some might be secretly impressed, others might wonder why you think it matters when they told you it doesn't -- both reactions seem equally likely to me, and both will likely not have a meaningful effect on your admissions chances. 

This will be another vent about grad school application anxiety. I'm applying to linguistics PhD programs, with a focus on sociolinguistics, language contact, multilingualism. 
It is November 8th. My first deadline is December 1st, for one of my top choice schools. I feel like I'm so behind. From the start I am not the best applicant: my GPA is OK (87/100 because we don't do 4.0, but I calculated it and it's like 3.53). My GRE is not so good (Q: 149, V: 162, AWA: 5.5). I can't retake it. This is the best I can do in math. I'm doing a 3 year BA in linguistics in Tel-Aviv university, currently on my last year. I'm applying to PhD programs in the states (I'm an American citizen so at least I have that going for me). 
My thoughts where that if I have a kick ass writing sample and a kick ass SOP, I have a good chance of getting into at least one program. For my seminar class I wrote a paper that I wanted to be my writing sample because it is research that interests me. I asked my prof, who is a post-grad and the only person in the country who is doing sociolinguistics pretty much, to review the paper in terms of how good it would be as a writing sample. He sat on adcomms before, and graduated from one of the programs I want to apply to. He gave me very negative feedback. Very constructive, but very negative. Very. He questioned if I'm even ready to apply now and what's the harm in just doing an MA in the meantime. This just crippled me. I mean he basically told me exactly what to do to make it better, and I'm working on it, but my confidence is totally shot. Like if I can't make this writing sample, then wtf am I even doing? This is a topic that I love, and want to continue with!
And in the meantime I still don't have a 1st draft of my SOP. I am so screwed, but every time I sit down to write it, I question everything. Not my passion, not whether or not I should pursue a PhD: I know I should, and I know I would succeed. I question whether I'll get in. After received criticism on most things I wrote on that paper, now I'm  questioning the wording of everything I write on this SOP. It doesn't help that many of the subjects I'm interested in weren't even taught until this year. But of course I need to get a first draft out ASAP to send to my recommenders, so that they can write their LORs, because time is ticking. But of course this prof says that unless I give him a better paper....well it will negatively effect his recommendation. Although he's just a post-grad his recommendation is important because my other recommenders, while very well known and very senior, research other areas of linguistics. 
Also I'm taking like a million classes (oh and also working two jobs) so finding time to sit down and actually re-write this paper, and write my SOP is very limited. And the clock is ticking. 
 

I think MathCat was just disagreeing with OP's "you get what you pay for" argument, and the weird chest-thumping authority that's supposed to be behind it. It is a bit strange to suggest that self-prep is a bad idea. For many people it's perfectly fine, and MathCat used himself/herself as an example to show that. I basically did the same thing with similar results. If OP uses his strong score as evidence to offer advice, MathCat's allowed to use his/her strong score as evidence to disagree, yeah?
 
Also, for the record I'm the person who suggested The Economist to improve on reading comprehension. And I stand by it! 

Congrats on the scores, and overall this is probably good advice for people struggling with the GRE. But what you said here bothers me. I think the GRE is generally a pretty good measure of how well prepared you are just by your education and lifestyle, really. Somebody who reads for pleasure and has good critical thinking and numerical reasoning skills should score pretty well (probably not as well as you) without too much prep. Thus, it's not worth the time or money for this person to prep as you did. In that situation some of this time (and money) could be better spent on other aspects of applications - e.g. SOP, writing sample, or researching schools. I don't say this to brag, but rather to illustrate - I prepped for verbal on and off for about a month (learning vocab, as part of daily routine), quant for a few days, and practiced a few essay topics over two days. I paid less than $20 on prep materials - I just bought the official guide for practice problems on Amazon. I scored 170Q, 166V, 5.0 AW. I don't think I needed to spend any more time at this, because as a math major the quant is a breeze, and math hones your critical thinking too, which helps with verbal. People in other majors may need to spend more time on quant, though.
 
I think in general the GRE is given too much emphasis on webpages like this. It can certainly hurt you if you bomb it, but I'm not convinced it gets you into a top program unless the rest of your application is at that level. In that case, you're probably somebody who can score well enough on the GRE without too much stress, at least on the sections most relevant to your major, which is what the admissions team will care most about, I think. I could be wrong here, and I'm not counting people who get test anxiety. It is worth some time for anyone to learn the tricks of the test, though.\
 
edit: I also spent a couple of days doing the official practice tests (2 online, 2 in the book). That's definitely time well spent.

I think if I keep working 12 hour days every day of the week I'm gonna have a mid-20's stroke. 

So, this is more of me letting my thoughts out/ranting, ...here goes. 

I work in a certain lab at MIT, my official title is "technical assistant" and boy if things could not be more true and vague! My work is within the realm of cognitive neuroscience and thinking back on everything, I can't imagine how difficult my first year in a graduate program in cognitive neuroscience would have been w/o the experience I've had. 
 
What I'm in charge of as a technical assistant....I run fMRI experiments as the "primary" person in charge at the moment of data acquisition, this means I'm in charge of setting up the scanner, getting the participants in and out, running the experiment and everything in between. The above also applies to an MEG study I'm part of. I'm also in charge of various types of analysis, and while I may have hoped to say at the start of my work , that this would only be simple t tests, this couldn't be more far from the truth. I've been handed the tasks of doing everything from simple correlations and t -tests to full, from start to finish analysis of fMRI data. We're talking directory structure set up, preprocessing, post processing, PPI analysis, ICA, PCA, & MVPA analysis. I've had to learn python, R, javascript(and consequently html, css, & php), matlab, & the unix shell & so much statistics!. I'm not a programmer, in fact my undergraduate degree was purely in psychology. I trouble shoot for pretty much everyone in the lab, other techs, post docs, grad students, the under grads, you name it. I've created and implemented analysis pipelines which are now widely used by my members of my lab, I've written a good number of the scripts we use to make life less of a pain (when you're dealing with fMRI data, programming skills are a must, else you'll hate yourself for spending so much time on button clicking). 

I've presented a poster at SFN, & I'm proud to say that on a handful of papers that have been published, by members of my lab, the primary fMRI analysis was done by me. I've definitely had a love / hate relationship with this job. Never have I been challenged to such an extent! Thinking back, I realize just how much faith was placed in me! & I must admit I'm a bit baffled, one by the fact that the faith was actually there and two that I was  able to get the work done. Which leads me to a conclusion I had not considered before. Often I see people say "it is the work you do that defines you" to undergrads partaking in research before they apply to grad schools. But for you to do great work, you have to be afforded the opportunity to do so! This means that a lot of trust has to be placed in you, and your PI / post doc has to be willing to take a big chance on you. If the demand for great work is not there, it seems difficult to supply it, simply out of pure will and desire. Therefore, if I have some advice for undergrads looking for research opportunities, find a place that is willing to give you big tasks, I'm not talking about scoring behavioral responses(although that may also be a part of your job), but rather coming up with experimental paradigms and implementing them, handling the full spectrum of data analysis, drawing conclusions from your results, etc. Essentially a place where your supervisor is willing to say "hey X, I'm going to essentially treat you as a colleague and not a cog in the wheel towards the end goal of getting my grunt work done" 

This entire experience has changed a few of my outlooks of graduate school. The most significant change being my view of prestige, I now care far less about where I go, simply because I know I have a bit of a start and know how on how to use the tools in my field which are necessary to do great work. Perhaps people may say this is obvious, and that really only pretentious people would think otherwise but I suspect this may be an implicit bias as to why we so often gravitate to more prestigious institutions  when it comes to the application process. 

To reiterate my sentiment at the start of this, I can't imagine being a grad student with little experience of the technical side of things. And trust me there are plenty of those in every program, regardless of program rank. Why can't I imagine it? Well simple, you're expected to do well on all of your demanding as heck course work while learning the ins and out of the technical side of dealing with fMRI data. I surely wouldn't be able to pull it off! 

This experience has been great, and I owe so much to my PI & post doc & lab. I'm now very much excited to tackle graduate work in the field I've been working in. Before this, I would probably say that having "research experience" was simply a check on a list of things one should have before applying to grad school but now I see carries a lot more value. 

I think my brain is mad at me for having it work so hard these past years, but my future is smiling(maybe lol) at me for taking on the challenge. ;]

The end. 

P.S..... There is always free food on campus...like always, there's actually a myth that someone was able to go a full year w/o having to buy any food on / around campus because of this. 

There are plenty of people who combine neuroscience and EEB; so I wouldn't go as far as saying it is a rare combo... ...just not as common.  At the very least you would not have too much competition on the job market and will have more flexibility in terms of employments.
As far as previous experience is concerned I don't feel it is as much about past experiences as much as it is about current passions and future desires as long as neither is "high paying job", among other things.  That is why it is so important, and a near absolute must, that you contact profs and PIs; they want assurance you are on board with the realities and that this is something you really want to do, or else they are not going to waste their time.   
EEB programs take in students from a variety of backgrounds.  Like medical school, for EEB it is simply a matter of having taken the required pre-rec courses for many of the programs and not necessarily having majored in a specific subject. 

I was thinking of adopting a master's student as a pet in January - I'll let you know how it goes 

I have been known to eat grapes for dinner, eat ice cream straight from the carton, drink the orange juice from the bottle, eat dinner at 12 midnight, wake up in the middle of the night and eat candy...I do so many food-related things that make me not-an-adult. But hey, I live by myself, no one cares. LOL.
But I pay my bills! I drive a car! I get to work on time!
 

 
 

You just have to look at the small things. For example, when I was a kid, I always thought an awesome thing would be to make fried chicken but with crushed Oreos cookies instead of the regular batter. However, now that I have the money and ability to make such a thing, I think it sounds super disgusting. That's how I know I'm an adult.

It may come down somewhat to the individual people running your test center, but my experience was perfectly pleasant! Check-in took 15 minutes tops, so I started early. They had lockers for bags, and the only things I was allowed to bring into the test room were: my driver's license, the key to my locker, their official scratch paper, and a bunch of unwrapped cough drops on a tissue (of all the times for a cold to strike....)
 
People were entering and leaving individually, and there were never any lines for bathrooms, but there were short lines for the check-in/check-out desk. The security process isn't super long, but it's definitely not something you'll want to go through when your test time is ticking, so be sure to make good use of your pre-test time, and your break. I ended up going over my 10 minute break time because I was waiting in line for the check-in desk, but someone was actually able to go in and stop my computer's timer. I'm assuming that's allowed 
 
Honestly, the worst part was the cursive writing!!

It may come down somewhat to the individual people running your test center, but my experience was perfectly pleasant! Check-in took 15 minutes tops, so I started early. They had lockers for bags, and the only things I was allowed to bring into the test room were: my driver's license, the key to my locker, their official scratch paper, and a bunch of unwrapped cough drops on a tissue (of all the times for a cold to strike....)
 
People were entering and leaving individually, and there were never any lines for bathrooms, but there were short lines for the check-in/check-out desk. The security process isn't super long, but it's definitely not something you'll want to go through when your test time is ticking, so be sure to make good use of your pre-test time, and your break. I ended up going over my 10 minute break time because I was waiting in line for the check-in desk, but someone was actually able to go in and stop my computer's timer. I'm assuming that's allowed 
 
Honestly, the worst part was the cursive writing!!

But my God is Dr. Atkins...

Well, I just got back home from retaking the GRE, and I got 166V and 159Q! I'm very happy with this improvement, of course.

Lots of great advice above !
If I may include my 50 cents:
Initially my quant score was around 150 but I ended up with 170 at the test after 1.5 month prep.

First, I familiarized myself with different types of questions that can arise. Not just the different sections but that sometimes the same type of problem can appear in dofferent sections. McGraw and Hill book identifies those well. You need to master these standard questions to do them fast.

Second, I identified areas where I lacked formulas and learned them. Here I used the standard learning techniques I use for any type of memorization so pick whichever works for you. And of course applied formulas to lots of exercises. It is important to outline every step, not take shortcuts during the phase when you initially learn the material. That s how you learn math . Once internalized, you will be able to take shortcuts to solve things faster. I do not agree with the advice above that GRE is not a paper test. It s whatever you find easier. Personally, writing almost all questions and drawing figures was essential on test day.

Third, since I had time, I identified the remaining areas of weakness and forced myself to get them through analysis, formulas and exercises. It may be hard but let me tell you that some of these things were brand new to me or had always posed problem. I thought I d better skip them but in the end turns GRE just adds formulas, not conceptual difficulty to what you might have learned in high school. No integrals, after all.

Overall the GRE tests attention to detail. Many times the error is that you solved the equation but the question asked for 5x not just your x. Yet one of the answers is x and you eagerly pick that. That s why it s important to write things in detail and write 5x and circle it at the top if you set up an equation for x.

A research-based MS will certainly allow you to be exposed to more research topics. But it's not the only way to achieve this, and it might even be a bad way to get this (especially if you have to pay your own way through the MS).
 
As fuzzy mentioned, some fields might have rotations or something similar. In my program, we don't have lab rotations but we do work on two distinct research projects in our first year and don't commit to a thesis topic until the end of the second year. What most of us have been saying above is not that you have to get enough experience to decide on a specific topic before applying, but to be more open-minded in your application. 
 
For example, you should identify the sub-field (instead of sub-sub-field) and then take a look at the best schools in that sub-field (or maybe even the best schools in your field). Usually the top institutions will have a lot of interesting stuff going on and there's no reason to stop yourself from applying to the best schools in your sub-field just because they don't have exactly the work you want to do. You can use conversations that you will have with scholars over the next year to determine what else you could be interested in and thus the best school for you when you pick your grad school next spring.
 
And as fuzzy hinted at, there's a lot more to picking the best program for you than simply best research fit. I have also said before that I think it's much easier to change your own interest than to change your advisor. Your time in grad school (and potentially your future career) can be influenced by your relationship with your advisor so I would never sacrifice good working relationship for the sake of pursuing a particular topic. 
 
Overall, what I (and I think others) are trying to say is that:
 
1. Apply to schools in your chosen sub-sub-field but don't limit yourself to that
 
2. You don't have to try out everything before getting into a PhD program. Use the school visits and the process of picking a school to find out what else is going on. Apply to the best schools in your field / sub-field and find out! That is, maybe you will pick a specific topic/sub-sub-field when you pick which school to attend, but it's better to make this specialization in your school-choosing phase, not in the application stage.
 
Also, if you can try to make it to a big general conference in your field/sub-field this year, you should do so! Come listen to what else is going on in your field/sub-field. A big annual professional society conference is probably one of the best ways to get a pulse on what kind of stuff is happening all over your field/sub-field.
 
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As for questions like "What are you doing in XYZ lab then??", I'd focus on the transferable skills. One of my undergrad research was in medical imaging lab. The research questions and topics are unrelated to what I'm doing now, but the technical skills are the same. I learned useful image processing techniques in medical imaging that I now apply to astronomical imaging.
 
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It might be more field dependent but I see most faculty moving away from their grad school work as they mature beyond their PhD. Many postdocs will do their first project as an extension of their PhD work and near the end of postdoc #1 (or starting postdoc #2), they will branch out more. My supervisor is a new faculty member and my project is one of the major branching out away from their PhD's sub-sub-field. Also, as I said in the last post, being flexible and having a lot of different research interests is important as it will allow you to be more productive. When you complete a PhD, you are expected to be a super specialist in that one research question. But when you are looking for jobs, departments want faculty who can be experts in their sub-field, and have many different lines of research in many different sub-sub-fields. And as fuzzy said above, diversity of research even at the grad school level is important in case the unexpected happens (lose advisor, get scooped, funding cut, etc.). 
 
I would not be too worried about straying away from your original ideal project. Even if you never get to do that sub-sub-field, how do you know you won't find another sub-sub-field you would enjoy just as much or even more. In general, I think to be a successful academic, you need to be able to identify the interesting research questions in your field and jump on them at the right time. You can't do this if you constrain yourself to a single sub-sub-field. 

Hmm, I have a slightly different perspective than some of the comments here. I do agree about flexibility, and I do think that you should - in an ideal world - go into a PhD program where there is more than one person you can work with potentially. But I also think 3-5 is an unrealistic expectation for most departments. 2-3 is a good sweet spot; if there are more, that's great, but you don't have to look for more.
 
The other thing is that you have to think about those 2-3 people broadly. It's unlikely that there are 2-3 people working on the exact same thing in a department, but they may be working on similar enough things that you can approach your interests from different angles. For example, there may be the Perfect PI who is working on evolutionary neuroscience in marine mammals, and then two other PIs - one who is doing evolutionary neuroscience and the other who is doing sensory neuroscience, both in humans or other non-marine animals. If you are okay with the prospect of working with one of the other two, then you're golden. How far afield you are willing to go also will influence that.
 
Beyond, that, though, I think you should follow your passion. I think it's okay to be interested in a sub-sub-field now if you are open to change (which it sounds like you are). When I first started grad school I was interested in a sub-sub-field as well, one that I eventually ended up straying away from. Having that passion and fire doesn't mean that you will be uninterested in other things or unwilling to change, but you can frame it a certain way in your statement. For example, I used two connective statements in mine that emphasized my larger interests (HIV prevention in ethnic minority adolescents and young adults) and then my sub-interests (how sexual media consumption influences sexual behavior in African American adolescents). I got picked up by a mentor who did the former but not the latter. There are ways to indicate flexibility in your statement without abandoning your sub-sub-area.
 
And yes, there's always an inherent risk in attending a program with just two or even one person with whom you can work, but we assume risk in everything that we do. Meet the PI beforehand and have a good chat with them about their mentoring style and work style, and chat with their current graduate students. Of course you can't find out everything from a one-hour meeting, but things can go south in a department where you have lots of people who can mentor you too. Only you can decide if this is a risk you want to take, particularly if that PI's research is just peeerrrrfect. (Also realize, though, that I firmly believe a good mentor who is a bit further afield from your interests, but is willing to support you, is far far better than a bad mentor who does exactly what you want to do.)
 
Honestly, in your case, I would go for what lights your fire. What point is it doing the grueling work of academia and graduate school if not to do exactly what you want to do?

Just something to remember, a PhD doesn't have to be your ideal project. It's a training project. So, as long as it teaches you the skills you need for your later career you'll be in good shape. Ideally, it should be something close to what your ideal is, of course.

A few thoughts, some of which have already been expressed above. First, I don't think deciding this early on on a very narrow sub-sub-subfield is a very good decision. It's still very early in your career and interests often change with time and experience. You don't want to put yourself in a situation where you can't grow because you've not left yourself any room to do so.
 
Second, even if you are absolutely positively sure that this sub-sub-subfield is the way to go, putting yourself in a situation where there is just one person you could possibly work with is very dangerous, for several reasons. You may discover that the two of you don't get along on a personal level or that you have different needs from an advisor than this person can provide, or the advisor may at some point leave (be denied tenure, or be hired elsewhere), or may have health issues, etc. Putting your entire education in the hands of one person gives them too much power. What if there turns out to be some messy politics behind the scenes? You absolutely don't want to get caught in a power struggle where there is only one person on your side, or alternatively one person with all the power who is acting not in your best interest. 
 
Even if it all goes well, at some point you'll need to form a committee and you will therefore need to find other people with some reasonable overlap with your interests, and similarly when you go on the job market (academic or otherwise) you will want to have LORs from multiple professors. Which is all to say, being only able to talk to one person is not a good idea.
 
Finally, I think this idea that the PhD project needs to fully match your interests is not very realistic and not very helpful. You want to develop at least some relevant skills for whatever job you want to have next, but frankly I would choose a good advisor with an imperfect match in interests over an advisor who I don't get along with very well with very compatible interests any day. Sometimes it's hard to know ahead of time who you'll get along with, so it's very important to have several options that could be a reasonable, albeit perhaps imperfect match.
 
 
As far as being too specific in your SOP goes, I think a good compromise is to choose schools with one expert in your particular area and 1-2 other people who are imperfect but reasonable matches. In your SOP you could then elaborate in more detail on how this one person really matches your interests very well, but you should frame things in a broad enough way that makes it possible to also demonstrate fit with these other potential advisors. This is part of a general strategy of demonstrating fit with each department you are applying to, which generally requires showing how your interests overlap with more than just one person. I'm not too familiar with your field but if there is anything like rotations, you may have to identify more than one lab you could join before you make your final choice, so you want to make sure it's clear that such options exist for you and you've thought them out.

As I thought about my response, I realised there are really two entangled issues which I will attempt to separate in the following:
 
First, I think having a sub-sub-field in mind at the graduate school application stage is way too narrow. It sounds like you have thought about your goals and I'm sure that you made a well educated decision to specialize in this sub-sub-field. So I feel a little bad saying this, but I also think it might be important to keep in mind: At this stage, even with a couple of years of experience under your belt, you might know what you like, out of the things you've done, but you still have only scratched the surface of your field (and even sub-field). Deciding that your chosen sub-sub-field is the only thing that will make you happy may be premature.
 
I'm saying this because I got the same advice. I did a co-op work program during my undergrad degree so when it was grad school application time, I already had almost 2 years of full time research experience (in a variety of subfields too)! I thought I knew exactly what I wanted to do in grad school and beyond: study the physics near-Earth asteroid orbits, which was what I was doing with my undergrad thesis. My advisor said the above to me and basically told me there was a whole giant world of planetary science out there and although I know I love asteroids, there could be so many more things out there that I would also enjoy that I don't even know about.
 
Now, I don't work on asteroids at all because I did find something fascinates me a lot more: giant planets around other star systems! I'm still using a lot of the same skills and expertise I learned from asteroids (the laws of physics are the same in our system as other systems!). I'm very happy that I followed my advisor's advice and tried more things. Asteroids still hold a spot in my heart and I keep up with the literature and even attend some sessions on asteroids when I'm at planetary science conferences. Also, even though the whole point of a PhD is to become an expert is a very very narrow thing, it's generally to your advantage to have strong foundational knowledge across many fields. It will help you understand more talks in your field, and eventually, it will be a desirable trait for hiring committees.
 
So, I'm suggesting you keep a more open mind when it comes to grad school. Again, I know you probably have a lot of past experience and have thought about your goals a lot in order to come up with such a well defined and concise sub-sub-field, but being this narrow can really limit you: not just at applications but also your own development as a scholar. Grad school is just the start of your academic career and why begin it by closing doors on all the other sub-sub-fields? Most scholars do work on many different sub-sub-fields over the course of their career so I would suggest you just find as many areas of interests as you can find and explore. People do change their areas of focus over the course of their career--most faculty members I know are not doing the same sub-sub-field as their PhD work. And in the current job market, it helps to be flexible and able to fit into as many job descriptions as possible. If the opportunities for grad school in the sub-sub-field are limited, it doesn't bode well for postdoc and permanent position openings.
 
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The second thing I wanted to address was writing about your interests in your SOP (the first part of your post). This might depend on the field, but my advice would be to definitely not strongly express interest in only one very specific area or one lab/mentor. There are almost no benefits to be this specific and lots of negatives. If you appear to only have one potential PI and that PI is not taking students (or is taking someone else), then you might end up rejected. Also, having such strong interests may make you appear naive and unprepared/unknowledgeable about the field as a whole.
 
Also, the tone of the phrase you wrote ("temper that by saying you're willing to compromise and try other things, even if you think you'll be less happy") is not a good way to approach this in the SOP either. I know you will certainly write and present it in a different way in your application, but for the reasons I wrote above, I encourage you to not view it in this way and to not allow this perspective to subconsciously affect the way you write and talk about your interests and other sub-sub-fields.
 
Instead, my advice for discussing your interests in the SOP is to first identify your goals in graduate school. Tell the committee why you want to be there and what you hope to achieve. There are a few ways to frame your goals. I chose to frame it as a set of skills I wanted to develop in order to become an independent planetary scientist.
 
Then mention your specialized interest as an example of a way you can achieve these goals. This will show that you have put a lot of effort into thinking about what you want but it will also not limit you since you are saying your sub-sub-field is one potential grad school path, not the only one. I think framing it this way is also better than saying something like "I really want to do X, but will also do Y and Z" because then you just sound wishy-washy / eager to please. Stating one specialized interest as an example shows that you have thought about your goals but also signals that you are open to other projects without sounding indecisive.
 
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I hope this advice was helpful! I know some of this does read as if I am dismissing your passion for your chosen sub-sub-field because it's "just undergraduate research". But reading your post reminds me a lot of how I felt about graduate programs when I was first applying 6 years ago. Obviously we are not the same person though so maybe some of the above is too much of projection of myself onto you. But I hope at least you are able to get something useful that you can apply to your own situation out of this

I too have a "niche" research interest (epigenetics of animal welfare issues) and, like you, had a hard time finding PI's. I applied to three schools in Canada (I'm a US citizen) with one PI from each school that I would like to work with.
The thing is that you may have to work out a compromise and think, "okay, this is similar enough." If I didn't do that, virtually no one was going to fit my research interests. Even so, once you establish a relationship with a potential PI, hold onto it. What I did is that I spent a summer in my top choice PI's lab last year. When it came to applying, that PI chose me out of 20 candidates (according to him) that wanted to work in his lab. He also nominated me (I didn't ask him to do it) for a scholarship (and did receive it). I'm a research assistant in his lab until I start grad school in the fall.
As for the other two PI's, one went on sabbatical and the other accepted me, but there were issues with being international and the PI being able to fund me.
 
The point is, it's not necessarily a bad thing to have a specific research interest--you just have a couple more obstacles to go through to do what you love. As for not having an marine bio or evolution experience, I wouldn't worry too much about it (I didn't have any epigenetics experience). The point is that you can do research, which is what matters most when looking at research experience.
 
I'd say go for the schools that you would not regret moving to and that have 1-2 PI's with the same research interest. Some people might say different, and you may take my story with a grain of salt, but really, what do you have to lose (besides waiting another year)?

It seems silly to dislike something that doesn't hurt the people who subscribe to it and doesn't affect you or your quality of life in any way. However, since many people do this, I guess it qualifies as a popular thing I hate.

It may help at first to do a slew of practice problems, un-timed, while looking through Magoosh's math cheat sheet or something similar. Just search around until you identify the concepts/formulas/etc you're supposed to be applying to each question, and take absolutely however long you need to solve them. I honestly think that figuring out what a question is "really asking" might be the most important skill for a test-taker to have, and it should be pretty much intuitive by test day.
 
It might feel cheap, and it obviously won't recreate the reality of the test, but it seems like what you need most is to work on the foundation of your math technique, and adding a time constraint on top of that is probably just going to get in the way, right now. Once you've covered this, then you can start doing timed problems under the actual test conditions.
 
Seconding firewitch, I also found Number2.com helpful. I thought their practice problems were pretty difficult, but their little crash courses were spot on, and their breakdown of the quant section helped me to better focus my efforts. Kaplan's daily practice problems also helped me identify holes in my knowledge.
 
I received a 167Q, if that legitimizes my advice in any way.