FeelTheBern

THIS! One of my SO's recommendation writers is highly respected in the field and many of the POIs were familiar with his work and contribution to the field. Those most familiar with my SO's recommendation writer (either personally or professionally) were the professors that invited my SO to interview weekend and also ended up admitting him. In fact, my SO's advisor now at NYU was actually advised by my SO's recommendation letter writer while he was getting his PhD. I feel like this in particular is super super super important and in my mind made all the difference in where my SO was ultimately accepted. This, I believe, is also why some people are accepted by top-ranked schools and denied by much lower-ranked ones. Furthermore, I imagine this process is going to be fairly similar when it comes to applying for post-docs and tenured positions. Connections, connections, connections!!

Good luck to you all! I know how stressful this process can be. My SO went through it last application cycle. I noticed that @socrate4se & @Azsy16 applied to NYU. My SO is a 1st year doctoral student in the C&P program and he is loving every second of it! I assume you both applied to Cognition & Perception, so if you have any questions at all about the program/professors. Feel free to ask on here or PM and I would be happy to talk with you! Best of luck

Hey @caribe! My boyfriend and I are having a pretty difficult time as well. If you want to be on a lease, it sounds like you are going to need a guarantor. Unfortunately, most landlords in NYC require pay stubs and a W-2 from a current job that shows that you make 40 times the rent. I believe guarantors are required to make 60 times the rent. At this point, my boyfriend and I are just trying to find a room to rent where we are not required to be on the lease. We don't have a guarantor and even though we will be making 40 times the rent between the both of our salaries, landlords won't accept us unless we show them pay stubs and W-2s, which we do not have yet because I am starting my job in July and my boyfriend is starting in September. Frustrating...but hopefully after the first year we will be able to have our own place and a lease. NYC apartment hunting is so stressful!! TL;DR: I would recommend renting a room from someone who does not require you to be on the lease for your first year. Although it isn't ideal, if you aren't going to be making a decent salary and you don't have a guarantor, I'm not sure you would be approved to rent your own apartment and be on the lease. Also check out the NYU Housing Registry site! There are some great places on there and a lot of them are month to month, so you wouldn't need to worry about dealing with the landlord, just the person renting out the room.

Hi @neur0cat! I think that higher quant. scores are definitely appreciated in most Cog Neuro programs. Honestly, I think that my SO would have been invited to many more interviews if his had been higher (he was invited to three out of 10). However, it just so happened that the most quant. heavy program that my SO applied to accepted him and no questions were ever asked about him scoring in the 38th percentile on that section. I will say that the schools that he received interview invites from really didn't seem to care about the GRE at all, which is why I think it may be possible that he was eliminated before the interview stage at some schools because of his score. The idea, in my head at least, is that once you are invited to the interview stage they have seen you on paper (GRE, GPA, publications, conferences, etc.) and now want to see if they want to work on research with you for the next several years and if your ideas/plans fit with one another. To answer your second question, he received interview invites at 3 of the 10 schools he applied to and was accepted to all 3 - Northeastern, Tufts, and NYU. He ended up choosing NYU! Good luck this upcoming application season!

@lovemc Don't be disappointed! You got into a great school where I am sure you will be very happy Lol yeah, housing is making me really nervous too! The problem for me, being the planner that I am, is the fact that you really can't sign a lease in NYC until you are 100% ready to relocate. Apparently, landlords don't take people who say, "I would like to sign a lease to move in in 1-2 months", very seriously. So my SO and I are going to be stuck looking at apartments sometime in late July to move in in August. Although, I guess I am okay with it since we will have the summer to just relax and enjoy a good 2-3 months of our last bit of freedom before things get crazy! Luckily, we live in New Jersey, so we can just take a train to NYC when we are ready to start looking, I can only imagine not being able to see the apartment before signing the lease! I hope everything goes well though!! @EveryDay omg what are you talking about?! You're going to BU, that's wonderful! I definitely don't think that makes you an underachiever! Congrats to you!!

I am also curious to see what awesome schools everyone ended up at! Great idea @Gvh I'm sure you are really excited about UChicago! My SO just got the the list of all of the people who will be in his cohort (8 total) and who they will be working with...it's all happening so fast!

This is so great, I kept seeing them in your signature and I was really hoping you would get an offer after the interview! Congrats, you must be so happy! Woohoo!

That seems pretty pricey to me. My SO will be attending NYU in the Fall and they waive the registration and service fees every semester, so I am not sure if it is common practice for universities to require their funded grad students to pay fees (possibly?). However, even so, I just checked the service fees at NYU and it is approx. $1,000 per semester for 9 credit hours. $2,500 per semester just seems like a lot to me, especially since NYU is known for being a ridiculously expensive institution to attend. At the university that I am attending now, international students have a $100 "international student fee" tacked onto their bill, but that is the only additional fee that they have to pay compared to other domestic students. I would definitely get on the university website and see what all of these fees are for. $5,000 a year seems like a ton of money to require a grad student to pay when they are supposed to be funded. In regards to providing financial documents, federal regulations require schools to make sure that the student will have enough money to pay for the academic year, so it makes sense that you will have to show that $5,000.

@lindsey_elizabeth at the university I work at, the I-20 Coordinator issues all of the I-20s for F-1 students (degree-seeking students coming from countries around the world to study at a US institution). The I-20 document is basically their ticket to get an interview at a US Consulate in their home country. By issuing them an I-20, it means that our office has determined that they have been accepted to the university and that they have sufficient funds to study in the United States. However, even after we have issued this document for them, the Consular Officer could still deny their visa based on whether or not they believe the student has plans to return to their home country or other inklings, but mostly a student will get denied if it seems like they have ulterior motives besides schooling for coming to the US. It's a really fun job because I get to talk with and meet people from countries around the world! NYU has SO many international students, I would love to work in their office! *crossing my fingers that there may be an opening this summer! Btw...if you get an MPP and if you are interested in international stuff, you would be a great candidate for a position as a Foreign Service Officer thru the US State Department! That was my dream for like a year, but in the end, I decided it would be best for my SO and I, and our future kids to not have to move to a new country every two years! If you are into traveling and don't have kids yet, it is a really amazing opportunity!

Thank you! Bernie supporters are so awesome and nice! Please make sure to get out and vote for him in California, a win in that state would be YUGE (as Bernie would say)! Also, on a side note, your program of study sounds really interesting...International Development. I haven't met anyone in that particular field before! In my current job, I work at a university with international students as the I-20 Program Coordinator. I would like to eventually become a recruiter or an International Student Advisor because I really love the work I do now! International development sounds really cool though! Keep feeling and spreading the bern!

Thanks so much @lovemc, everything has been very happy lately, it's been exciting sharing the news with everyone! But, YAY this is such great news for you! Congratulations!! I have ALWAYS wanted to visit Montreal, partly because I've heard it's awesome and partly because I love hockey and I feel like Canadians would appreciate my love of hockey more than Americans do. If you have never been to a hockey game in person...do it! Like right when you arrive in Montreal, buy tickets to see the Canadiens play, it's really fun! Such a great energy! That's seriously so exciting that you're heading to Canada though. I feel like people always say winters are rough in Montreal, but who cares? It's Montreal...totally worth it. I have several friends that have visited and they came back to the states raving about it! But yes, come to NYC, apply to PhD programs in the city after McGill...plus it's a 1.5 hour plane ride which is super close! Seriously so great to hear this, YOU GO @lovemc!

oh! Just noticed you are from Portland...haha so funny! That girl was from Portland too! Is this a thing now, people are leaving Portland and moving to Austin?!? Now that I know you are from Portland, I have to tell you that I'm pretty obsessed with the liberal, progressiveness, and natural beauty of parts of the Pacific Northwest and I have never even been there. I dream of living in Portland or Eugene or Bellingham someday! I may or may not have suggested that my SO should limit his job search (after PhD) to that part of the country Anyway, I too would be curious to know if Austin has that same vibe as Portland...I feel like the people are going to be a little different for sure. For what it's worth, I've been to Houston a couple times and people were really nice, like really nice. Strangers kept telling me howdy and calling me partner, people were holding the door for me, and asking me how I was doing...some wanted to know where I was from and how I liked it there. It was so different!

Congrats! Austin seems like it would be a very fun city to live in, and I believe the program is very well-regarded as well Random...but the murder of that freshman girl was awful! Sorry, I didn't mean to ruin the celebration, that was just all over the news recently, so when I hear UT Austin that's what comes to mind! Anyway, good luck, it sounds like you made the right decision!!

@joshw4288 oops, sorry about that, I'll take my (simply) silly arguments elsewhere.

I think it's a bit unfair to tell someone that their argument is "simply wrong" by citing one article that states the contrary. Also, if professors and universities truly believed that these test scores determine a student's future success in graduate school, my SO would not have been accepted anywhere.