jetlag

wow, that's strange. but it's possible that you're admitted and waitlisted for funding, maybe that's what they meant to say. good luck!

in my experience applying, at least one professor will procrastinate and ignore all your friendly reminders about deadlines. so knowing that, i had 4 people to write me recommendations this year, but guess what, two of them still sent theirs late. one is a very busy professor so it's almost understandable, but the other decided to wait until he came back from christmas vacation to write it (he previously told me he'd write it as soon as my grade for his class is finalized, which would've made it in time). for my first choice school i begged the program coordinator not to throw out my apps and assured her the letters were on their way. i had the busy prof email his letter to her and luckily she accepted it even though it was almost 2 weeks past the deadline.

Yes, Minnesotan is right. I guess I should mention that the schools I am interested in are mostly public institutions. Like I said, I got this information from international grad students who attended public universities (late postal mail arrival isnt an issue since notifications are sent by emails nowadays), so it's pretty accurate. I've also recently confirmed this with the grad counselor at UCLA, who personally told me decisions for internationals wont be finalized until some time in march. Meanwhile I'm very well aware that the American students who got in have already been notified since late Jan - early Feb and the school is holding rounds of recruitment weekends right now. One exception though, UC Irvine has notified their international admits and rejects as of Feb 24 (for my program of course).

Any international applicants here with experience in applying know how much later we should expect to receive decisions compared to domestic students? I have friends who are international grad students in the physical sciences and they both told me they didn't get interview invites until late in march or april when they were applying a few years back. For schools that rejected them they received the decisions pretty early, in january or february though. So I was just curious if this is a pretty common trend in the physical sciences, if not across the nation. The two friends I have got their interviews and acceptance in California and Arizona. I've noticed a few exceptions to this rule just from looking at the results page, so I'm interested in hearing from more people. It kinda sucks if it's true because some schools enforce earlier deadlines with their international applicants (eg. late Nov or Dec, as opposed to January for domestic applicants in my field), so I dont understand why we shouldnt be hearing around the same time if not earlier than the domestic applicants. Do you think it could be that the department can only offer us the spaces left from American students turning down their acceptance? I dont mean to scare other intl students, but from being tortured by the wait I feel like the sooner I know about the truth the better I can come to grips with reality (ie. not going to grad school)......or not, i dont know...

I know how you feel. I applied to 4 schools but my only hope is pretty much in U of Arizona. The other 3 are not exactly Ivy league, they're roughly in the top 20 and 30s for my field, but still they accept less than 2% of their international applicants every year, so chances are super slim for me. My former boss is gonna be a newly hired faculty at UC irvine but I doubt she'll have much of an influence on the decision since she hasnt even started assuming her position. In Arizona I have corresponded with one professor who is my 1st choice advisor because I'm very familiar with his work, our research interests match really well and he's responded positively. I personally see us as a perfect match but who knows what the admission committee thinks. I get really nervous when I think about it. This is my 2nd time applying and if I dont get in this time I'm not sure if I will apply to grad school again, ever. It might be time to move on, get a master's degree instead, get a job, etc, etc. Hey, best of luck with the thesis defense. You seem to have prepared yourself well for a PhD program so I'm sure you'll get into some of your top choices.

that is a good question and one I've been wondering about myself. kittkat, you mentioned some interesting factors affecting the ability of professors to influence decisions. some of those things are hard to gauge though, unless you know somebody who's a grad student in the department who can tell you about track records of certain profs. so far i have 2 tenured profs in 2 different schools who seem interested in taking me. both of them will graduate some students so they'll each have at least one space open in their labs. other profs i have contacted were more lukewarm in their responses, and some never replied back. so i'm really hoping for those 2 to be really influential in admission decision. i'm in biochem by the way.

i dont know much about your field, but i personally think you will have a good chance at those top programs. having a master's degree already gives you an advantage over people who just applied straight out of undergrad. it shows you know what graduate school is like and having a 3.8 gpa surely means you have what it takes to succeed. strong recommendations and really high gre scores are big plusses too. i dont know how admission committees judge these things but you would think that your graduate work is a better indicator of your potentials than your undergrad gpa right? that's all i can say, if you're still not confident then try to apply to as many schools as you can.

Hi, I figured somebody here must know the answer to this question. You know how when you take the GRE they let you choose up to 4 institutions to send your scores to for no charge? Don't they also send one to your undergrad school? Because I remember when I took the test your undergrad institution was one of the first things you have to indicate before starting the test, and in the official score report your undergrad school is indicated as one of the score recipient. So I was wondering, can you use this score that they send to your undergrad school to apply there? So in a way you're getting 5 free score reports, 1 for your undergrad school + 4 others. I'm asking because I originally thought I was gonna apply to 4 schools, but if I get to send another GRE score for free might as well apply to 5 schools.

i'm actually taking 2 undergrad classes and 1 grad class. i have to take the undergrad classes to make up deficiencies. i dont know if that's a good thing though, in terms of grade value considerations. and the master's program is 2 years, i believe some people take 3 years to finish. it kinda depends i guess. i am definitely gonna re-apply, but i'd still like to weigh out my chances of getting in so i can make good choices of schools to apply to. right now i'm thinking about applying to schools that have both MS and PhD programs in biochem, then apply to both programs (if it's allowed of course). so if i dont get in to the phd program but at least got into the ms, i can transfer to a better school and maybe change my degree objective to phd-track later on at some point... of course problem is a lot of the good biochem departments that have plenty of overlap with my research interests only offer phd degrees, no ms. so far i only have u of arizona and uc irvine on my list of schools to try. so, i'm trying to decide if applying to just those two would be enough. i know there's really no easy solution in my case, but thanks for the advice. i really wanted to hear some opinions on this.

biochem

well, i didn't get into any of the phd programs i applied to last year. i did get into my safety master's program elsewhere and decided to attend. so far i really don't like being in the program, don't like the curiculum, dont see a good match between my research interests and the faculty's, etc... so i am seriously considering transferring to a better MS or PhD program. if i wanna transfer before going in too far with my thesis research i have to apply this year. but then i figured my application and resume wouldn't have changed that much from last year. I can see myself working hard and getting a 4.0 gpa for this semester, but probably the admissions committee will not really take that as a good indication of performance since this is only my first semester, and i'm not doing any research or ta-ing, just taking 3 classes... (although a 4.0 would be a big improvement from my overall undergrad gpa) before i started my master's program i was working as a technician in a research lab. i did a lot of work there and some of it will get published eventually, but at the rate my former boss is going now writing the papers i dont see me getting published anytime soon. so that won't help the grad school application either. i feel like the one thing i can improve drastically would be the gre because i didn't have a lot of time to study for it before as i was working full-time. but yeah, like you said, gpa usually counts more than gre scores. so i think i'm in a lose-lose situation here. of course if i don't get in anywhere this time i can stay in my current master's program and finish it, but right now the thought of having to do that that is really depressing.

has anyone heard of someone getting in to grad school based solely on gre scores...? i'll tell you why i wanna know if i get any answers.