grotesqueidols

A discussion without facts is fair? Sans facts, I continue to not believe you. You've brought no facts to the table. Suffice to say your words on objectivity made me giggle but your rants aren't worth responding to at this point. I've got an insanely cute monster to knit. Goodbye thread! Goodbye annoying, ranty, attention seeky person in the internet box! Hello purple and green knit monster!

And PS, if one of the schools you are referring to as having sent you an email is Brown, they do begin holding their meetings in Jan. If you got eliminated at that point, it was by the committee. I can't speak for any of the other schools on your list however.

Haha, you've clearly never visited Cambridge. Perhaps your definition of "top" is different than mine. I feel like people tend to tumble into a Cambridge PhD. I sure did. A motley lot with diverse backgrounds, quite an age range, many/most of whom distinguished themselves in other ways than marks. My GPA was, ehh, alright...nothing to write home about. My GRE was TERRIBLE but thankfully unneeded in the UK...and heck my masters dissertation had not even been accepted yet when I was admitted to the PhD program. I did quite well on it but there was no way for them to really know that. I am just one of a very small number of people who study a very interesting thing that generates a lot of press; I am also good at what I do. Nothing else really matters if your work is solid and unique. This is getting long and annoying. You are using numbers as a crutch. If you would like to specifically list the Universities that took your money and emailed you directly to tell you that your application would not be reviewed by the committee because of your undergraduate GPA, perhaps we will believe you. Somehow I don't imagine that list will appear.

Oh man, I am so not willing to have a flame war tonight...I have a pumpkin to cook and a dissertation to write One thing to note, I said that I do not buy cut-offs EXCEPT in the case of the TOFL. Please see my original response. Schools and departments will always have a hard TOFL score that they don't admit below unless, perhaps, you have a demonstrable learning disability like dyslexia. The reasoning behind this should be obvious. Did departmental administrators email YOU directly and tell you that your application would not be considered by the committee due to your low GPA? Not be considered at all? Or did they email you and tell you that your application had been denied by the committee due to your low GPA. If the first happened, I am honestly surprised. Departments/Schools usually publish their TOFL cut off score so that people who score below that mark can choose not to apply and waste their money on an automatic reject. Should they apply anyway, well, they had been warned. If you were told that you were automatically rejected without any committee review by an admin due to an unpublished undergraduate GPA requirement you should be asking for your money back...you could not have known that you were not able to even apply...which is why departmental admissions does not work that way. The committee might internally set some sort of cut off score (maybe) but they will be the ones that make the cut. Again, the reasoning behind this should be obvious.

There is nothing I hate more than the GRE for Archaeology PhDs! Grr!!! If you are going to retake it you might want to invest in a class. Expensive, yes, but it seems with scores at your level (*ALMOST* there) you could really get a boost. I would try to get them up, though. I used to work grad admissions in an unnamed american archaeology dept and, although it wouldn't have kept you out entirely, your score would have been marked as low by the committee. Do you have any publications or conference papers under your belt? If not, GET ON IT! Present at wherever...TAG...grad conferences in the UK...wherever. Make posters for everything. Bulk up your CV. Oh! I see you have one paper... More! Be a conference slut We've all done CRM and field schools...can you get an actual position on a project for the summer? Maybe not paid but you have to be NOT paying to be there. Something like a lab director role or a trench supervisor position. You should be at that point if you want to be equal or better than your competition. Also, make your statement of purpose sparkle...present your idea for a phd as a well thought out endeavor to answer a specific problem. Make sure it is focused towards the work of the specific person you want to be your supervisor without it being TOO close. Contact the person you want to work with in the department before you apply.

That is absolutely not true. I've posted this same rant other places but, as someone who has worked admissions in a variety of schools, at times as a secretary, they do not have the power to discard your application. Only the committee can rule you out. If it makes you feel better to believe that an un-specialized person tossed your application rather than you having been denied by the specialist admission committee, keep telling yourself that. While the committee MAY have thresholds, the secretary does not. I don't buy the threshold argument for anything other than the TOFL, by the way. To be honest, my boyfriend had as low an undergrad GPA as you, has no masters degree (even though he is foreign...) and was admitted with full funding, stipend, etc to a few of the schools that you list as either having rejected you or having not given you a response yet. He did get double 800s on the GRE but, in reality, everyone has told him he was admitted on the strength and creativity of his previous work and his recs. No one even mentioned his undergrad GPA. Indeed, one school that you list as having not responded to you yet offered him a named scholarship on top of the stipend before even SEEING his undergrad GPA...the transcript was lost in the mail. I'm sorry to be harsh but your information is flawed and discouraging. If you are unhappy with the results of your applications I suggest you revisit and rewrite your statement of purpose (most people actually don't realize what a good statement really is), consider finding out how detailed and personally involved your recs were (how well do these people actually know you, did your recs glow?), and ask yourself if your research interests and goals are actually a fit with the massive number of schools you applied to (which seems impossible). To the original poster, don't give up

Thanks for the advice slifty and congrats! My fella didn't apply to any of the groups you listed so, you know, there is still a chance. Suffice to say it is all "in the works" so to speak. He is back in Boston meeting with folks!

Yikes, can you offer a memory rundown of what I may have missed re: the wait list?

You're scared of Atlanta? Jeeze. Atlanta is awesome...maybe a little less awesome now that last call is so early, but if I have had amazing times anywhere it is Atlanta. Round about 2003/2004 I think I didn't actually see the light of day for 3 months straight, I was too busy being out all night. If you like sunshine and a social life choose Atlanta. I've never once had a problem there with crime. I've had my bike etc stolen more times in the years I have lived in Cambridge, UK... If you are the kind of person who is visibly afraid of being robbed all the time, you clearly look like a mark and are going to get mugged anywhere. Pick the school you like, don't go on unsustainable city reputation.

You really just need to go with who can provide the strongest commentary on your research abilities. It sounds like any undergrad prof probably isn't the right person for you. My boyfriend was in industry for 10 years before now going back for a PhD. All of his recs were non-academic. In two cases he has been offered more money on top of stipends based on "the strength of his recommendations"...one of these from a school that specifically mentions getting academic recs. Granted the recommenders, while not currently in academia, were well known to the profs who accepted my fella. Also his work has always had a research element to it. Straining to scrape together references in academia really isn't needed provided your industry recs can go on about research and creativity.

Are you a PhD or a Masters applicant? I cant speak for the other universities but with regards to Northeastern's PhD program you may want to find out if you are on a waiting list or something. As far as I know the accept notifications and the funding package information have been sent out, even to international applicants. The open house is next week.

It is lame, but it is how it is. If at all possible you should try to take a GRE prep class. I imagine if you are in Istanbul or Ankara something like that should exist...although it might be quite expensive. If a class really is not available, order a number of GRE Verbal books off of Amazon. Don't just take a pile of practice tests, you need to get to a point where you can deal with unfamiliar words and attempt to figure out what they mean. Memorizing 1000 words only works if they give you those 1000 words. Also make sure that all of your application material, resume, statement of purpose and everything else has been checked by a native English speaker. Make it spotless grammatically. Don't give them an excuse The best way to find out what GATech is looking for is to directly contact the person that you wish to work with and find out. This should be done after this admission cycle and should be done politely and carefully. Do ask "what are you looking for in an applicant". Don't ask things like "What is your minimum GRE score/GPA/etc" or "This is my profile, do you think you will admit me." Present yourself as confident and interested in his/her work. Don't be too discouraged if they don't respond.

I'm sorry to say that my boyfriend worked in research in industry for 10 years and got a 800/800 GRE score and was still told by one school that they couldn't admit him due to his low undergrad GPA. Granted, that was just one school that did not admit him, he got into others. The point is that one thing is not going to fix a poor undergrad GPA and it is impossible to hide it. You pretty much have to prove that you can do research and a Masters is a very good start: do very well. One other thing to note is that even if you had a high GPA I (and everyone else) would be telling you to bring up the 320 and the 3.5 in your GRE. Both indicate unsatisfactory English and English writing skills. Departments will be worried that with scores like that you might not be able to communicate with students in a classroom setting or produce high end written academic work in English. In studying to bring your GRE score up, I'd expect your TOFL score would rise as well...you might as well take that again to see if you can do better.

Ha ok! Admit today, the day after tickets were purchased

I totally agree. The other thing I would suggest is directly address your prior grad word and your marks in your statement of purpose. Don't pretend it isn't there and hope they don't see. Frame it as a learning experience: a way through which you gained experience and developed your true research goals. Any chance of doing a transfer of departments within the school you are already at? That might be less painful in general...

My boyfriend is international and he has received results, both positive and negative, from everywhere he has applied (besides two that seem to have released no results as of yet according to the results search here). That said, he didn't apply to any of the places that you did...they might be later? One thing for you...and everyone else. Turns out that one of the schools who would really very much like to have him didn't receive his transcript. This only came to light when the prof trying to admit him pushed the graduate office and they admitted they didn't have it...thus my boyfriend didn't get the official notice of the missing transcript until after he had been informally admitted by the department, offered money and so on. He was lucky to be so desired that the prof hunted up the problem, but one wonders how many other transcripts go missing without anyone being notified. It is worth saying that his transcript was marked as 'received' online when it wasnt. Anyhow, moral of the story is that if you have heard nothing and you suspect something may be wrong it might be worth confirming that the school received everything that they should have. Boyfriend mailed another transcript (from the UK) that day and that school rejected him...what if they did so because the transcript never arrived?

Sriram: you did not provide your GRE and your TOFL score (if you are a non native English speaker). That said, cold profile evaluations are essentially meaningless: you are more than your numbers. How are your recommendations...are they personal and glowing? Do your clearly and expertly conveyed research goals match with those of the universities that you applied to? etc etc. I'm really not sure what the people here can tell you beyond the nice advice that they have offered.

You all are a lively bunch...I was wondering if any of you had ideas about acceptance timing methodology at schools. See it seems to me that quite a number of universities wait until quite late to sent out both admits and rejects. Do you think they are trying to clean up on good people who happened to not get into the pie-in-the-sky dream school? Or is that putting too much thought into random tricks of scheduling? Risky business if you ask me. Ideas?

Is it just me or are they wicked late this year? Have any of you heard anything at all? We are currently planning the ol' US tour of admits and could pop down there from Chicago but there seems to be a curious silence from Bloomington.

Well, if you and your adviser mutually agreed that you moving on was the right step there probably wouldn't be too much spite in any recommendation letter, however I am sure the other schools would wonder what was "wrong" with you so to speak. You'd have to be very open to talking about your problems to the new school and really that would be a hindrance for admission. Remember they have plenty of people applying who do not have a history of leaving schools. All I can say is take the visit days very seriously and spend some time talking to other students at the school. I just don't see a transfer working.

Mr Roboto, did you specifically enter and complete a masters program or did you technically start a PhD program and leave with only a masters? It appears as if the original poster is contemplating accepting a PhD offer, pretending to do a PhD for two years including the masters step along the way, then try to pull out and go to a different school for the remainder of the PhD. Is that correct? I cannot speak for computer science, but within my discipline that would be considered extremely suspect and dishonest. Pretending to be doing a PhD then suddenly leaving will not really net you a very good recommendation from the person who thought they were supervising your continued research (Seriously, are you going to say nice things about someone who is clearly taking your money and using you to get into somewhere better?). Your willingness to insincerely take money from one school then run to another when you get a chance will not look good to school #2 anyway. In my field, the masters-along-the-way requirement is there so that the department can kindly ask someone to leave if they don't appear to really be PhD material: the person leaves with a masters so not empty handed. It isn't really thought of as a point where you potentially go elsewhere. That is unless you are enrolled as a Masters student from the start. Now I could be totally wrong, it may not be like this for computer science, but based on the structuring of the MS to PHD CS degrees I've seen I would think long and hard before I made lying about my intention to stay at a place my life plan.

kdilks is right re the underlying core issue. Before you completely discount a university, especially one that you would accept had you but one body, you need to contact your potential supervisor with the issue quite directly. If they want you super duper bad, something may be done about your other body. If you don't contact about it, you two will never know. If you are going to contact, I would say do so before the open house so they have time to discuss...or indicate you are coming to the open house, but your final decision is based on body #2, and suggest they interview #2 there, in person. It is worth a shot, no?

Understood...guess who the only female at Pure Maths Social Hour was? I'll remember to try CS Theory lunches though...quality pizza is worth it.

*outside* your subject area though? Your talking to a seasoned veteran of Pure Maths Social Hour (insert oxymoron jokes here), and I study modern Bolivian identity politics. They have the nice beer.

BKMD and DJLamar: wow and congrats. Very helpful indeed! I am starting to see how this works. This is very different to my funding in the UK...which is not from the department at all, rather a combo of money from my College (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colleges_within_UK_Universities, a college isn't the University, it is a weird semi-separate thing. Think of the Houses in Harry Potter) and a magical pot of money for foreigners that is "trusteed" (ack did I just type that?!?!) by Prince Charles who hosts a nice luncheon every year for us. That money covers tuition. When and if teach I am paid by the hour depending on what I do (small group teaching, tuition, or lacturing)...same with research assistantships: that is how one is meant to put bread on the table and they are not guaranteed upon admission. I have to secure my own funding from various other money stashes for fieldwork and things like that (I got 2000 pounds once from one that can only be used for "historical research in a Spanish speaking South American country.") Long story short, I think you guys have it pretty sweet! You won't be attending evening lectures and receptions just for the cheese and crackers after