Marst

I was in the elevator with a bunch of my co-workers and friends, when I just randomly decided to check the web portal. I blurted out my acceptance as soon as I saw it, then we all started screaming and jumping up and down, which caused the elevator to stop. We were stuck there in panic for a bit, then the elevator eventually moved and the door eventually opened and we ran off the elevator.

Grad school admissions are hard to predict, and I don't think I'd find out if I got in because of some detail on my SOP or because of 2 extra points on the GRE. Either way, getting a 170 is something I can do to maximize my chances.

Is the actual wording then "The number of the integers" as opposed to "The number of inetgers" ?? 

If you are applying for a degree in math, or in a program that is math heavy, then yes, absolutely, retake the GRE and do everything you can to get as close to 170 as possible.  

I have got this one 'friend' who keeps posting pictures of herself and other people's kids. I suppose she is a nanny, but I think it's plain weird. Had she been a guy, she would have been reported a billion times already, but because she is a girl it must be cute or something?

Some states don't have an income tax, other states take everything (not just money) from you (California). You have to look at your state and their tax laws as well as federal taxes.

Not really. Highly depends on the discipline. 

Oh my god I'm glad I switched to STEM. o__o

Who wrote that? Don't send it out.....sounds embarassing and I don't think they will care

Because it's not a black and white situation.
 
For one, it's actually quite easy to qualify for fellowships once you are inside a program. You could actually end up getting funding right off the bat.
 
Secondly, it's not that difficult to find RA or TA positions.
 
Thirdly, there are a number of internal and external funding options for people who go to resource and research rich universities.
 
Fourthly, getting your tuition waived is fairly easy.
 
Fifthly, some people have other streams of income available to them and aren't poor students.
 
I had a prof who accepted to go to an unfunded program over other funded options because it was a better ranked program and a better fit. They ended up getting all their tuition waived anyways and fully funded. Sure they had to go through a bunch more hoops than someone who got a fellowship off the bat but the result was the same.
 
Personally, I have been accepted to my top choice program and its an unfunded offer. I put some emails out and already have a RA interview in line with the open house which would offer a stipend + half tuition waiver. I also have a bunch of savings to fall back on if it doesn't work out. Why wouldn't I strongly consider this offer?
 
People get so hung up on the entrance fellowship on this site its ridiculous. Obviously it's desirable to get that but there are countless ways to fund yourself through graduate studies.

Agreed.

I can see where someone might get confused if you're a single person inviting a single person of the opposite sex out for dinner or drinks one-on-one...

I want to expand on my point a little. I assumed that the professor thought about what the student/s were doing and made the decision that although the students are using past notes, they are still learning what they need to and the "soul" of the class is still preserved. 
 
I do not think that the most important point of a class is evaluating students, but providing them context in which they find interesting things to think about. In my mind, cheating is an act that undermines this context. If I felt that the students were clearly not thinking about the things they were supposed to, ie not putting together ideas, not redoing experiments, then I would consider that cheating. On the other hand, a lot of lab work is busy work, and I personally see no problem with expediting that. 
 
I agree its a grey issue, but I also think a student's education is up to them: they are clearly degrading the quality of their education by choice. If education is a glass of water, you can provide the glass, and the water, but they must drink. They aren't children.

She's not cheating because the professor said its ok, and its up to his discretion. What you consider cheating isn't important, as you do not define the rules of the class. I personally find this ok, as long as they are learning the things they need to. 

I disagree, I do not think it is cheating. If she did not pass the course then obviously not all her answers are correct. If this helps her learn, so what? Her team will be at a disadvantage when they don't really learn the material and others (who had to work for it) do. Still I can understand asking her not to share her answers with her peers.

I'd definitely say this is cheating - it is VERY unfair for the students around her, and most especially for the students in other lab sections. I'm very surprised that the professor decided to let this go! If it was in my undergrad school, this form of cheating will 1) get the student an automatic F in the course, and 2) even a suspension from the university for an ENTIRE semester! (all the cheating penalty warnings were probably why I was SO paranoid about not being accused of plagiarism whenever I was completing my lab reports, even though I never cheated haha). 
 
Speaking of which, a friend of a friend actually tried this form of cheating once during my fourth year of undergrad. She was repeating a course after failing it the previous year. While completing one of the weekly problem sets, she decided to refer to the old problem set solutions from the previous year to speed up her progress in her assignment. The result? The TA who graded her problem set didn't write a total score on the top, but instead wrote "It is obvious that you have copied from the previous year's solution set for these questions. Please go see professor X about this."
 
I guess the professor is leaving up to you to decide on whether to discipline this student or not. If I were you I'd give the student a grade of zero for that lab report, or if you are feeling really generous, possibly give her only a half credit and warn her not to do that again.

Right, but as a grad student you're expected to build off of the work you do in one class and adapt and expand on it for other classes. That's not plagiarism. If she failed and is retaking, clearly she's not going to copy verbatim all of her old answers, so she's adapting and expanding off of her old work. Are you expecting her to throw out her old notes and not try to learn from what she got wrong last time? That seems like a waste of her time, and a waste of -your- time if she starts forgetting things she learned the previous semester.
 
I think it's reasonable to ask her not to share her notes with her colleagues, but if she's using them on her own it doesn't seem like it's cheating. Cheating would be if she had someone else's notes and was copying them. The best solution would to have different assignments each semester, so this couldn't happen, which is what happened in the situation the previous poster described.

I've said it before another thread, but if you applied to the school something must have appealed to you about it. Take the opportunity to try it there, and if you don't like it you can always transfer. You may be a stronger candidate after you've got some more experience under your belt for those top choices. Or you may find that those schools you weren't as keen on were a great fit in the end. Just remember, you aren't ever really stuck anywhere.

Shut out of Ivies?  Oh please, I don't feel sorry for you.

I am sorry to hear that you are feeling that way. I am sure that your loved ones would appreciate you reaching out if only they were not feeling so down at that moment. I am more or less like your partner and sister in dealing with negative feelings, but that does not mean I do not appreciate people reaching out and recognizing what I am going through. It just means that I appreciate it even more if people would give me a break after recognizing it. There is no reason for either of you to feel bad about this. You could tell them you recognize something is wrong, and that they should let you know if there is anything you can do to help (or something similar). That's your share of the deal. Now, by not bugging them or forcing your company onto them, you let them have their share. Letting people take their distance, is not the same as being pushed away. It only becomes being pushed away after you keep bugging them.

If their SOP was written like that, no wonder they didn't get in. Sounds like a drunken rampage through a thesaurus.

I had been following this thread last year and even though I didn't have a funded offer that I  can attend, I really enjoyed reading people's stories, so I thought I would bump this thread for this year too.
Also my story, I am from the middle east, so the usual working hours in U.S is around midnight in my country. anyway, I usually stay awake till 2 a.m but never check applications status before sleep ( last year I saw my top program reject right before going to sleep, it was such a disaster for me). I was speaking to one my friends in U.S around midnight on Skype and he told me he had an interview which is about the field I am very familiar with with a company in 4-5 hours. So we talked and we decided I would wake up in 2-3 hours to prepare him for the interview. I went to bed around 1 a.m and woke up around 3 a.m, I was all sleepy and tried to get back to laptop to begin the Skype talk with my friend, I called him on Skype but he didn't answer, so I checked my email and there it was, my first funded admission in 2 years and it was from Indiana University. I couldn't scream because it was midnight but I forwarded the offer to my best friend. and then called my friend again on Skype and told him too. We were very happy about the offer that we didn't talk about interview at all and he did awful on his interview later that day     
It was a wonderful surprise...

I wish that programs would quit beating around the bush so much and spell out directly the kinds of students they want. Yes, there are some cases where a student may intrigue and surprise them, but the truth is, any established program knows what they want and they know which POIs are going to be able to take on students. It just seems unethical the way that they hide that information in order to get more people to apply, so that they can wrack up more application fees and make their acceptance seem more selective. If you flat out know that Prof A isn't taking on any students this year, it takes less than five minutes to put one sentence stating that on his webpage.

Oh here's a good one:
 
Brown University, American Studies, PhD (F15), Rejected via email on 27 Feb 2015 :
Amazingly, my rambling SOP with its two blatant typos failed to impress them. Sigh. At least my dog still loves me!  
Maybe the key is to use a spellcheck if you are too lazy to read through your entire SOP for a final proofreading... 

Just how much time I am giving up.  I haven't seen my close friends in forever, and I just spend time studying and reading stuff and doing papers.  I suck at time management and I try to just balance going on dates, and writing papers and doing homework.  This semester has been really bad for me I haven't read anything lol I just kind of go with it. Other than that I wasn't surprised by much.  I think I went into grad school with a undergrad mentality, I thought it would be a ton of parties and mingling with people and having fun.... It's not.  People literally just want to do a bunch of work and be boring, everyone is married or in relationships... Basically grad school kind of sucks, don't do it if you don't absolutely have to! It sucks to watch all your friends do fun things with their lives like travel, go to Marti Gras, move to new states, have babies, get married, buy new cars, and just do FUN stuff and you are writing a paper about something that you will likely never use again.  I love grad school, I love what I am doing but I wish my life was more fun than it is.