MathCat

Well, the deadline has passed. Good luck to everyone.

Is every part validated? References in?

Did you ask him/her if they would, and they said they can't, or are you just assuming? One of my LORs is coming from a prof who is on sabbatical, but he was still happy to write one. Since it's your only research (listed here anyway) in neuroscience, I think it would carry a lot of weight to have a good reference there. edit: I didn't see your previous response when I wrote this. It sucks, but there's nothing you can do about it, so there's no use worrying about the impact of what you can't change.

I would worry about coming across as bragging about it by putting it in the SoP. That can really hurt an application. I would just put it in the financial section.

I dunno, but I did a similar thing. I feel dumb about it, but in my case I think the only damage done is in showing I failed to read the instructions correctly - not something I want to draw attention to by asking them to ignore it. In your situation, I would hope that they would have the sense to place much more weight on your more recent courses. If you took it in high school, they will see the dates are much longer ago. They often place little weight on first and second year courses - I can't imagine ones that you took in high school would have much influence either. I wouldn't stress too much about it.

My only suggestions are to take the practice tests in timed conditions to try to reduce panic, and do lots of practice problems to increase speed.

Check with the specific programs websites, but all of the schools I am applying to explicitly state that it is fine if your GRE score arrives after the deadline, provided you have written it early enough to list the unofficial scores in your application. It might depend on discpline; it could be this way for my apps because of the required subject test, which people don't get scores from until the end of November...

I would only mention it if they have a place in the application for such information (and the place to list fellowships and external funding is not such a place). For example, the Berkeley application has a spot to enter things like personal savings, family support, cost of relocation, etc.. I believe this information is used for determining need-based funding. Another example would be that the University of Washington application (at least for Math) has a place to indicate your need for funding: (1) Will not attend without, (2) Preferred, or (3) Not required.

Also, answer ALL questions, even if you have to go through and quickly guess on the last few. There is no penalty for wrong answers on the general GRE.

If you want more practice problems, I would recommend buying the official GRE practice book written by ETS. It's only around $20 on Amazon, and it includes a lot of practice problems with explanations, as well as two full-length paper based tests. If you are taking it as a computer based test, also try the practice test available on ETS, so you are not surprised by how the system works. I felt very prepared having used the ETS book. I was originally practicing with other (free) resources before the book shipped, and the questions were really a lot different. On actual test day, I felt that the book questions were representative of what they really asked.

Depends on the school. Some explicitly ask you not to send updated transcripts after their application deadline.

Have you done the practice tests by ETS? Is this a matter of you not knowing how to do the problems, running out of time, or panicking? Or something else?

I got a reminder e-mail from NSERC to submit my application (which I did, after my last reference came in). It said "Past experience has shown that many applications not submitted in time were lacking the required reference reports. If your application is still missing the required reports we urge you to take steps to ensure that they are linked to your application well in advance of the deadline. We will not accept late applications." So no, it is not unheard of, but you'd better prod your reference to get that letter in.

If you're worried about it, I would just put <Your degree title> (now <new degree title>) or something.

In the US it is very common for Master's students to be entirely unfunded, not even eligible for TAs (I believe). However, in Canada, it is typical for Master's students to be fully funded. The answer depends a lot on the country you are in.

I feel like this is something you should ask your professors. They would probably know a lot more about your particular field and how this might be viewed than us.

I do not think you will have any problems. Your verbal may be slightly low for some top programs, but it's still not something I think you need to worry about.

I would say it's better to just specify after. Say the official name of the degree, and then under, be more specific. For example, say PhD in Public Policy, then Emphasis in Science and Technology Policy, or something like that. On my resume, my degree is just a Bachelor of Science, with no mention of it being in math, and I add that after.

I don't know why I didn't think of that. Thank you! For anyone reading this: it looks like Toronto makes first round offers late January-mid February, UBC more like February-March.

I think that most schools probably wouldn't look at an online Master's as being very rigorous. I don't think it would serve you well for later PhD applications.

I submitted my application for the Master's program at UBC just a couple of day ago. On their website, it says "Each year we welcome 30 - 40 new students from over 200 applications. Thus, although the official application deadline is January 5, 2015, we strongly encourage interested students to apply as early as possible in the new year. " Does this mean they can start making offers before their deadline? Or, does anyone know when they usually make their decisions? Similarly, for Toronto, the deadline is in December. Does anyone know when they typically send out their decisions?

I think this is highly dependent on your program. It is not this way in all areas. On topic: it certainly helps, but does not guarantee anything. Don't go buying plane tickets just yet or anything.

Every university I have applied to has required me to provide an official institution e-mail. They explicitly state that e-mails like gmail, yahoo, hotmail, etc. are not acceptable. I assume it is precisely to avoid this sort of thing.