HistoryMystery

This thread almost prevented me from contacting POIs, but I did anyways. 4/7 replied back with kind and overall awesome e-mails that really made me feel good about my chances. The other 3 didn't get back, but I imagine it's because they are big shots and/or were on vacation. I say you got nothing to lose. If your e-mail really does piss off a potential POI, they would have been a bad match anyways.

True, many of the TAs I had as an undergrad were older (~26-31) and already had life experience. That being said, if you feel ready don't stop yourself from applying to PhDs right off the bat. The biggest thing I can think of is to establish a relationship with a professor or two. Everyone can get three LORs, but what you really want is a professor who WANTS to write a LOR for you. Also one that is aligned with your research interests. I applied to 2015 programs so I don't know if I got in yet, but the POIs I've talked to all know my undergraduate professor advisor and thus it was an easy way to make a connection/ give them an idea of what my research interests are. Oh, and take more than one senior capstone class if you can. That's how I cultivated professor relationships, and how I was able to do some independent grad-level research with one of them as a senior. Also consider taking history courses in unrelated fields to show adcoms you branched out a bit.

First off, hi everyone. Also, yeah, only two of my apps asked about financials, and that was only a box to check that I wanted to be considered for fellowships. Other than that there was just some standard stuff on the history pages about filling out the FAFSA eventually and what not.

Some majors don't get interviews as said above and even if you applied in December programs are painfully slow and probably won't get back till ~ Feb 14th. You can always check the results and see when the schools you applied to started making contact with applicants in the past.

Based on how you describe it it could be an interview or they might just want to tell you you're accepted in "person"..

Jedi Knight

Order up

Light Saber

I've been running and lifting weights. Watching Friends on netflix. Trying to find work for some pocket change.

I don't know what it's like for neuroscience, but my POIs actually seemed pretty thrilled to get e-mails from me a couple weeks back. Can't hurt!

They go through so many of those, they aren't going to care unless it's an obvious trend that severely cripples whatever message you're trying to send to them. Plus they skim. Typos will barely register on their minds, they're looking at how much potential you have (and the big picture, overall).

Don't look at your stuff after you submit it. Everyone will have a few minor errors (lol case in point I had a typo in this before editing it), it's no big deal. Just look at old threads on the subject. You're still going to make it!

I think it depends on the specific area of the specific major you applied to. Some need to interview people to get a handle on them, others don't. It's a mixed bag based on what I've seen on these forums...I guess the best you can do is just wait and see if you get an e-mail asking for an interview!

This is a good way of looking at it. All the POIs I've emailed have been SUPER positive and most are interested in me and the work I did as an undergrad. And like I said above, one even told me he's excited to meet with me in the Fall :X. It's really hard to temper expectations now but I guess we all have to so we're not disappointed or anything lol. I've gone from thinking I'll get rejected by everyone to thinking it's a given I get accepted to most places (and back and forth). My God, waiting it out sucks! And now I'm overanalyzing again.

Basically from what I've heard on GradCafe and from my undergrad advisors is that contacting your POIs is a crapshoot. Sure, it can't hurt, but judging anything from your interactions with them is pretty much impossible.

I think they should reward early app submissions with an early response. I can't imagine waiting until mid-February. It's like medieval torture, but worse.

Some want it others don't. Actually none of mine wanted a header on my writing samples, but one wanted it on my SoPs. Like others said, a lot of schools put their own headers on your work to keep things organized.

When you realize a week after you turned in an app that you wrote down a POI's name incorrectly in your SoP. Not mispelled, just out of order, since they have two last names (I wrote it "A"-"B" instead of "B"-"A") and I guess I had a dyslexic moment when writing down all of my potential POIs. That's the worst thing I've found so far. Praying nothing else comes up Hopefully it was OK to bump this thread.

I don't know man, the waiting game is tearing me apart, especially now that I turned in my last PhD application yesterday. Word to the wise: for the love of God, DO NOT re-read your writing sample or statement of purpose after you turn in your apps. All that will happen is that you'll find little minor issues you couldn't see before (for some reason or another), and you'll get a minor panic attack (when in reality it really won't make or break you). The worse part is thinking back and wondering if you could have done something better, or if you could have done a/b/c if you had waited another day to review your app. Ah well. What's done is done...best of luck to everyone!

I doubt they care about minor typos, since even Professors make tons of mistakes in everything they write and require peer editing. In one of my SoPs I realized I wrote a POI's last name incorrectly. It was like a mild form of dyslexia or something because they have two last names (way to make it difficult) and I wrote "Professor B-A" instead of "Professor A-B." Hopefully the adcom skims quickly enough that they put the two names together correctly (they're pretty unique names so there's no chance of getting him mixed up with another Prof). But yeah as you can see we all have our worries. Don't worry, we're all human!