burgundywave

Not an admission offer, but I received a request for interview at my top choice school 1 month earlier than expected the morning of my birthday! Best birthday gift ever.

Hey there! I'm going to visit 3 schools in the same area all at once. They are my top 3 choices so I don't think I'll go visit the other 3 I applied to in order to save everyone's time and money. Plus I'm already missing a lot of important school stuff (still an undergrad trying to graduate) to go to these visits so I don't want to miss any more days of school!

Hey y'all, I was lucky enough to be accepted to UCSD (Scripps) and Caltech and invited to visit Stanford for a prospective student weekend . I haven't been officially accepted to Stanford yet but if I am I want to be prepared to make my decision! I will be visiting all 3 schools in February. If I could I would attend all of them as they are all very good research fit, I could see myself living in each city and they are offering similarly generous funding packages (assuming Stanford would offer me a similar package). So, in your opinion, which school offers the best overall grad school experience? I'm applying to geophysics PhD programs. Thanks

@Miner 49er Also applied to the Geo curricular group and the Scripps Open House is Feb 18-19. Good luck

Yes, same here! So far my two acceptances came under the form of informal emails from POI. I wish they would still send nice letters like in the movies.

@magnetite I had the same issue as you and I just got accepted to their geophysics program so it doesn't matter. I think they do have it, it just doesn't update on their checklist.

Thanks for the advice! My interview was yesterday and I initially thought it went ok. But the more I think about it, the more I think I screwed up. I shouldn't have answered that, I should have mentionned that, etc, etc. Hopefully it wasn't as bad as I remember it!

Any suggestions of good questions to ask the POI at the end of the interview?

Glad to hear that! Hopefully mine will be similar!

Yes, having specific papers to discuss sounds like a good idea. Thanks

So I just found out that I will be having a skype interview with a POI at Stanford for a PhD in Geophysics. I'm pretty stressed out about it and don't really feel prepared for it. Do you guys have any advice, tips and experience with this kind of interview? Any help is appreciated! THX

I'm glad to hear that. Thanks for your help!

Alright, I think I'll stick with 3 LORs then. Thanks @fuzzylogician: no, he knows me pretty well. At first he said he didn't have time and when I insisted that a letter from him would really mean a lot he said that I should have told him that I didn't want to do grad school with him. If he had known he wouldn't have given me the research position. He never asked what my future plans were when he interviewed me. Anyway, we're in pretty bad terms now so I can't really ask him to co-sign the letter. How bad does it look though to have a postdoc writing your letter without the prof co-signing it?

My original plan for my recommenders was as follows: Recommender #1: Current research supervisor & professor (pretty well-known in my area of research) Recommender #2: Summer research supervisor & professor (famous in his area) Recommender #3: Professor & Dean of my program. However, I just asked recommender #2 for the LOR and he said no. It was a definitive no, there is no way I'm getting a LOR from him. In substitution of Recommender #2 I will ask a post-doc I was working with in that research group. It's a good thing because he's in a way better position to evaluate my abilities than the prof. However, he is not a prof. Because Letter #2 will be perceived as a LOR of "lesser" quality by the admission committee, I'm thinking of submitting a 4th letter to compensate for that. The 4th letter would be from a prof I've been TAing for for nearly a year. However, his area of expertise (finance) and the course I'm TAing has nothing to do with what I want to research/study. I know for a fact that he would ask me to draft the letter for him because my friend asked him for one before. So, what do you guys think? Does anyone have experience with submitting a 4th letter? Thanks!

Alright, super! Thanks