TXInstrument11

That's a good idea. I'll try that. The amount offered is $1K, so I probably wouldn't be too short on funds, but it can also be used for personal expenses (more like a scholarship), so why spend money when I don't have to?

I really don't know. Half of the things grad schools do in this process don't make a lick of sense to me. Were these other folks waitlisted via official school email or did they receive waitlist notifications from their POIs? I think, for some programs, waitlists are created lackadaisically by profs on an individual basis, so no waitlisted students are notified unless the prof's first choices refuse the offer. Faculty in these cases usually don't bother contacting waitlisted students unless previous contact was established. Some of this may be because they would feel awkward contacting a student to say, "Congrats, you're waitlisted" only to turn around the next day and say, "I'm sorry. You've been rejected", when all of the admitted students decide to go ahead and accept the school's offer. This seems to be the model for many programs who have high matriculation rates and admit no more students than they could handle funding. I wish admissions practices were more standardized across schools. It's a very unpredictable process. I sympathize because I just saw a wave of rejections for U Oregon, which I had written off a month ago when I realized I hadn't been selected for an interview. Now, I'm filled with (probably false) hope that I'm hiding away on somebody's informal waitlist.

Also, guys, I think this comic routine kind of summarizes the applicant-grad school relationship. They rush you and rush you to apply and then immediately go silent once you submit your app. It's right down to the detail that some folks get fed up by how School A treats them and instead opt for 2nd choice School B (in this case, we'll call it "Brian").

I ended up not applying to any master's programs since I heard back from UIUC while I was considering Brandeis's MA, but a POI there was picking students a week out from the deadline! O_o I guess some places move damn fast. I guess I have to admire the efficiency!

So, I may be able to get some funding for my survey-based project so I wouldn't be stuck with a convenience undergrad sample. How much would an hour to hour and a half of a survey go for? I want US participants only, so is Amazon Turk a no-go? I haven't run paid participants before so I don't really know where to start. Thanks in advance.

Ouch. A professor actually said that? That's harsh. I think mine said to worry if nothing by March, but with it being just two weeks off what you were told, I guess there's not too much of a difference between the two estimates.

No,because it is highly dependent on the program, unfortunately. When this happened to me, I simply called the grad admissions coordinator. If they don't pick up, write a very succinct (1-2 line) email. Try calling first though because you don't have to leave your name unless the ask. I'm sorry because I didn't really answer your question, but I think this is the only definitive way to know. Anything else is just anxious speculation.

This is a good point. Especially when you have to reapply next year, it would be really helpful to know so you don't reapply to a bad fit.

I don't need a personalized rejection letter and honestly don't give a flip if it hurts their feelings that they have to reject me. Obviously, it hurts mine worse and is money down the drain. I'm not looking for a letter the size of an epic poem, just some reasonable speed in this process. I mean, it's life. It's like job hunting and you don't ever hear back, but it doesn't mean it doesn't suck and that I can't complain about it. I'm also really thankful to the four schools who have been relatively open and quick in the process - Illinois, Wyoming, UPenn, and FSU (criminology only; psych has been annoying). *Kudos to you for answering the question from admissions perspective anyway. I'm just frustrated.

This is true. If I were in their shoes though, I'd want to make it was quick and obvious as possible.

No, I mean the actual admissions website. Oregon and Baylor do this for their programs.

It is for programs where the interview is required. For others, I emailed POIs directly. Some even have statements on their websites now about how all students to be admitted were invited, but still refuse to send actual messages out for God knows what reason.

I understand waiting a bit on acceptances in case interviews go sour or 1st choices turn you down, but for the people who don't even make this invisible "cut", why wait? Keeping up on here and sometimes directly contacting these schools, I already know a good half of the schools I applied to have rejected me [not all though, so I'm not gonna cry a river] and would appreciate it if they could just send the letters now and be done with it. It doesn't even need to be a nice form letter via snail mail. Just "Rejection" or "No" in the subject line of an email would do quite nicely. And on a related note, some transparency on why we were rejected beyond the "many qualified applicants" BS would also be greatly appreciated. I don't need anything beyond simple yes/no checkboxes, but I know that's asking for too much, even if such a simple system does seem easy enough to implement. It's better for them if unqualified fools like me continue to pay application fees.

Ah, okay. Sorry, I think I was in full-on debate mode and went a little overboard.

And what is your point? You have provided an anecdote just as I have. All anecdotes do is indicate what is possible, not probable. Either way, our results say absolutely zip about the utility of the GRE. Only predictive validity can do that.

These are my principal concerns. If I were to rank them, dropout rate>placement rate>debt vs expected salary post-grad

Ditto on clinical. My school search was often very frustrating in this aspect. Sometimes I could only make it work when a clinical professor was also an "associated" faculty member of a crim or social psych area.

Hm. For me personally, I would investigate this aspect further. Placement is the # 1 factor for me besides fit. I honestly think that this is especially true for someone like you in the humanities. The social sciences already have a hard enough job market. It's even worse for you guys. Since adviser at school B is such a jerk, I would go ahead and see if you can get at least semi-official numbers on her student dropout rate. If it's not all that high, the ill treatment may be crappy but tolerable. All in all, if you think the crappiness of campus B's location and this lady's poor advising wouldn't outright cause you to drop out, I would go with school B for better employment. Also, according to a study discussed the psych forum, department ranking usually trumps the school's and almost always trumps adviser rep. Just wanted to put that out there so you could get some actual numbers to look at instead of hearsay.

Thanks for the advice. Did people give you feedback on career prospects at your school? Are you a sociology as well as psychology student? As for psych or crim being flooded, I guess it could be both since I haven't seen any stats. Alongside funding problems, I think social psych programs keep their admits so low to combat the current flooding problem. I'm also not sure if it's going to grow a whole lot over the next few decades. I love social psych, but I am much more passionate about violence research than anything else. While I am interested in doing stuff on social networks and the like, I don't feel like I would be doing as much societal good with that research, ya know? The only thing I could think is tying this interest with hate group/speech and cyberbullying research later on down the road. I thought about doing that with a project this year but ended up sticking with aggressive driving research.

Aww....I'll try to shift gears to think of some more uplifting songs too.

Test taking skill is of no real-life value. Also, a fake point of comparison is not helpful. It's like flipping a coin. And of course the system helps high scorers better than low scorers and if (I) "don't do well on the GRE, someone else will". Just what are you trying to argue here? Of course schools need a universal scale to combat rampant grade inflation. I'm not advocating chucking all standardized tests. They just need evidence to back up their use. Otherwise, that universal scale is pointless. All in all, I am very pro standardized test. For example, here in FL, the FCAT was nearly bashed into the last century by teachers and parents. I found some criticisms of the test valid, but not most. Two or three years back when we were still transitioning to Common Core, a majority of 3rd graders actually failed FCAT reading. Numbers had to be tweaked for many to pass, but it was ultimately a good day. The test did its job in finding an area where our school system needed improvement. Common Core math, as unpopular as it is, also appears to be superior to FCAT math. Rigorous study and a fervent willingness to improve our standardized test system will only lead to good things when all is said and done. I don't see the point in propping up the status quo when we can devise a better way. For the next few decades, it seems inevitable that standardized tests punish low SES students and merely measure soft skills like "test taking ability", but it doesn't need to be this way.

GRE success is probably a better indicator of an applicant's SES (a strong predictor of grad school success through no fault of their own) than tenacity. In fact, I have actually heard that very few people manage to improve significantly between testings, which has lead some to advocate preparing and taking the test only once. [actually, ETS aims for this very thing in the name of "accuracy"] It also appears to be the case that you have purposefully ignored my earlier post about comparison to the SAT. I studied quant for 3 months using the exact study schedule you put forward with absolutely no improvement to my score. There is nothing wrong, in theory, with using a standardized test. However, if the standardized test is not supported by empirical data to be a better predictor of success than other measures, it is a indeed a bad and arbitrary requirement. In fact, such a lack of support defeats the purpose of using a standardized test as a semi-objective measure.

Well, that sucks majorly and here I was all excited about being accepted.....

Oh, my bad then. Congrats! Did people think I was bragging with the way I worded my post?

Does anybody defending the GRE actually think it is a useful test or is this thread now just a giant pissing contest of "but I had it worse" stories?