sadiem

I PM'd you.

Got an email from one of my POIs at UVA. Neither of my POIs took any students this year so I am getting rejected (not a shocker -- I knew going in that both their labs were full but now I'm all set for next year's application cycle -- woo hoo!). The email said they took 4 students total in social psych, so I guess decisions have been made. I don't know how recently that was though, or whether the accepted people have all been notified.

Hey, I don't know about the others but I live just down the road from GW and everything here is under ~3 feet of snow. It's so bad today that the city actually had to call off plowing the roads! That's gotta be a first: too much snow to run the snow plows. Schools (including colleges) have been closed since last Thursday and probably won't reopen until Friday at the earliest. Then we're getting another snowstorm on Monday. So don't take the lack of any word from GW as a bad sign. It may just mean that no one can get into the school to review applications right now and they're probably going to be a bit later than usual this year with their decisions. Hope you both get in!

Wow that's depressing. You know, if that person had to cheat their way into a PhD program by stealing other people's ideas, chances are that'll bite them eventually I think. If that person is going to succeed in research, they will need to be able to think for themselves and come up with their own ideas. It'll be hard for this person to get by just on stealing ideas...at least I hope that's the case. I bet eventually this person will either get discredited, lose allies (and the all-important networking connections that come with them) because of their behavior and the way they treat others, or simply not advance due to a lack of good ideas of their own. And btw, even if you don't have an acceptance yet, and even if you don't get one this year, the fact that you're an honest person means that when you do get into a PhD program (and I'm sure you will, even if it ends up being next round!) then you'll know that you worked hard and deserved it (and you'll be able to sleep at night knowing your achievements are honestly won!). Plus since your efforts are your own and you care about treating other people well and fairly, people will recognize that in you and want to work with you, which will help you succeed in the long run and probably even make you feel especially good about your successes. That's my prediction anyway, fwiw.

Hehe, I don't know if that's a statistical anomaly for those of us who've been out of school for a while and haven't been practicing quant. I got a 710V without studying, which is not like your impressive 800 but is still 98th percentile. For quant I got a 650 the first time, so I studied for 3 days and got a 760, which is 85th percentile and probably good enough for my goals. My verbal score was the same both times. If you're thinking about retaking it, I wouldn't worry about your verbal score going down. It could drop 100 points and you'd still be in the 97th percentile, and in any case, I'm sure that your 800 will catch their attention even if you get in the 700s the second time. My reason for taking the GRE for a second time was that the school I'm really interested in attending doesn't look at anything over 10 years old, so none of my undergraduate record (including many stats and other advanced math classes) was going to be considered. I do have one stats class from grad school, but from their policy of ignoring older grades I figured that they don't consider older grades to be indicative of current knowledge, so I wanted to show that, no, I haven't forgotten *everything*. So I guess my advice would be to take the GRE again if you get rejected this year, since it sounds like you can do better on the quant section for sure (probably with minimal effort even, since you obviously have the requisite math ability). A higher score can only help you, and your verbal score is pretty much guaranteed to stay very high since you did so well the first time. That would be my approach, anyway. Hopefully you get in this year though and this decision becomes unnecessary!

I'm in your same age range and similar situation. Personally, I wouldn't mention anything about family in an interview, unless it's somehow relevant to your qualifications for the program. I think of a grad school interview like a job interview: the interviewers already know that you have other responsibilities in your life outside of their program, and it's really just up to you to determine how best to balance those. You might ask them questions related to the program's flexibility in terms of scheduling required classes, lab meetings, etc., but I would save specific questions about family life (such as family housing or child care facilities) for after you're admitted. I'd say the interview is about why they should accept you, based on your qualifications and interests, so I wouldn't give them any reason to think that working with you might get complicated. Just my opinion.

I'd be interested too, if you don't mind letting us know. And congratulations! =)