gughok

I'll be lurking around this channel, I do appreciate real-time commiseration.

I'm afraid this speaks some truth. I've heard from past members of admissions committees both that a. some applications that simply don't meet basic GRE cutoffs are discarded before the first round, and b. a large proportion of first-round losses are applications which demonstrate poor command of English. Even if you're in a heavily mathematic field, strong English is required for successful study at an English-speaking institution, so applicants who seem very disfluent are unlikely to receive consideration.

Don't know what to tell you - my advisors just mentioned this as an option to me when I was agonizing over which program to apply to.

If you chose to at any point, I think it's also generally possible to switch departments within a university (with an application), so that's probably open to you as well.

I think this paragraph in particular is very telling, pending some clarification: when you say you're "not really invested in any of these schools", what exactly do you mean? Do you mean that you'd be alright not going to these grad schools, that you wouldn't be particularly upset if they didn't work out? Or do you mean that you really don't care about their departments at all and figure "I want to try studying anthropology there maybe". The former is a lot more conducive to a successful graduate school experience than the latter. You needn't have some specific and focused research idea at this stage. That's definitely not a requirement. What you need is a sufficiently vested interest in the field itself and the passion to support years of intensive study - and crucial to this is feeling comfortable with the idea of spending half a decade at a particular institution. So ask yourself this: are you obsessed at least with the study of anthropology, modulo what specifically you'd want to study, are you obsessed enough that you'd be willing to dedicate an insubstantial period of your life to intense engagement with that study, and moreover can you picture yourself active in this study at the institutions you've listed? If yes, yes, and yes, then at the very least you meet the basic criteria for readiness (in my opinion). If you're unsure of how dedicated you can be, or ambivalent regarding the universities, you might want to think more carefully.

I'm going to second this. Percentile-wise, the difference is not significant. However, AW is generally much less important than V & Q, and perhaps more importantly, admissions committees have a lot of applications to go through in not much time: even though 160 is just one more than 159, it looks much better by virtue of being in the 160s, and this probably will make a stronger impression.

I just feel it's important to note that a step before studying for the GRE is figuring out what (and whether) you need to study. Ideally, some months before you'll be taking the actual test, take a practice test. Are you content enough with your scores that you wouldn't much care to improve them? Great, you don't need to study! Would you like better scores? Now figure out where your weaknesses lie and work on improving those. There's no use studying for the GRE if you don't know what it is you need to improve. And there's even less use studying for the GRE if you could take it right now and get perfect, near-perfect, or some other score good enough for you.

Masters' admissions tends to be more forgiving than PhD programs, to my understanding, and the degree of expertise assumed varies by program, but now I'm getting into things I don't really know that much about so I'll refrain from opining too much. In any case I did not, by any means, intend to insinuate that you didn't have a chance at getting into grad programs! You are not stuck in business forever, far from it: my message was rather that if you apply spontaneously to a bunch of graduate programs for which you have no preparation at all, that might not be the best idea. You can get out of business, but as fuzzylogician ("That could involve anything from straight up applying now to taking a few extra courses or getting some research experience to doing a BA in the subject") says, it's probably not going to be as simple as applying to grad school straight out of a business BA when you've no familiarity with the subjects to which you're applying. That's all I meant to say =) You ask how to find what you like best, given your education hasn't exposed you to it - really the best way to get an idea of what a field, at least in STEM, is like, is to read textbooks. If you want to know whether you'll like astronomy, I'd advise reading through some books on it (I don't have my actual cosmology textbook with me, but as far as the underlying physics goes, look through introductory mechanics textbooks e.g. Kleppner & Kolenkow, some introductory electromagnetism e.g. Purcell & Morin, look through Lang's assorted mathematics books, expand from there).

This is fantastic, thanks!

Thank you - it makes sense now that her letter would be stronger on multiple fronts than a letter from the in-department professor. Could I just confirm what I suspect is meant by LORs genuinely strengthening an application: is the principle generally that a letter should add qualitative information instead of mere corroboration to be useful? More sharply, if I already have three letters saying "he's a good student" (among other, much more significant things), would a fourth letter that can't say much more than "he's a good student and I'm pretty impressed with the one semester I've had him" and doesn't add any new information be therefore superfluous? Does the repetition of this information help at all, or is it rather the case, as it seems to me, that this would just bore admissions committees?

I'm just adding to agree with fuzzylogician here: you really need to be sure of and prepared for what you want to study if you're going into grad school, and you do not sound as though you are either. Your interests are extremely spread out and you seem ambivalent with respect to most - this is not good if you're planning on spending maybe five years of your life or even more studying one thing intensively. That is absolutely exhausting to even those extremely passionate in their fields, so if at best you're "interested" then you don't seem ready to commit to graduate study. I will offer my story, though I know the plural of anecdote is not anecdata: I entered my undergraduate studies absolutely dead set on becoming a cosmologist. Unfortunately the physics classes turned out much more boring than I expected. Now I'm aiming for graduate school in philosophy. I was certain of one direction and ended up heading somewhere quite different. How can you be sure the topics you find "interesting and fun" will remain so when you reach a deeper study of them? Astronomy, talking about planets and stuff, is cool, but have you ever derived Jean's mass for the collapse of a gaseous cloud, or the density profile for a hydrostatic equilibrium in a star, or used special relativity and Hubble's constant to determine the distance of a receding galaxy? You say you're interested in astronomy - have you ever done astronomy? Likewise for archeology: it's fascinating to discuss how the cuneiform tablets of Sumer are mostly preserved through accidental fires, or how decyphering Linear A could prove massively fruitful to ancient anthropology, or how one might trace Dineh material and linguistic history to the older Athabaskans, but have you ever studied any of these things at an advanced, near-research level? If not, how can you know whether you would like doing so for five years? I understand astronomy and archaeology were just examples - but you need to ask yourself the same question for any interest you express. And this is not to mention that many (most?) programs don't accept students with insufficient background into their graduate programs. If you want to do astronomy in grad school, you should know and understand the linear algebra behind Einstein's field equations for general relativity, the statistics and algebra behind elementary quantum mechanics, and have a mastery of Newtonian mechanics. I don't know how the situation is for archaeology, but I would be very surprised to hear that they simply accept students who express interest. The point is that you don't go to grad school to start learning about something - you go to deepen your existing knowledge to incredible detail, and you can't deepen knowledge you don't have. So indeed, I agree with fuzzylogician that I don't know what to tell you, other than that it seems you need to figure out what you actually really really want to do (and acquire the necessary foundation in that subject) before you can even start thinking about graduate school.

I'm applying to philosophy grad schools, where it's important to have recommendations from people who do philosophy. For those programs that only permit a maximum three recommendations, I'm torn on who I should ask as my third: there is an experienced full professor who is in the philosophy department, but has only known me closely for this semester (I've had him for a class before, but didn't interact very closely then). I can expect a good recommendation from him, but he just doesn't know me enough to speak to much more than my performance in his one class. He also specializes in a very different subfield than mine. Alternatively, I could ask my (officially) philosophy-affiliated advisor who is an assistant professor, and who has known me for around a year and is a great deal more familiar with my academic work. Her expertise also has greater overlap with my intended area of specialization. Between the two, who could provide the better recommendation as far as graduate school committees are concerned? If this isn't enough information to tell, what other factors should I be weighing? And, secondarily, is my current plan of providing recommendations from both when the programs permit more than three letters a good one?

In its original use "triage" refers to emergency hospitals assigning priority to patients depending on how seriously they were injured - someone on the verge of death would be rushed into operation while someone with a broken limb would have to wait. In the context of the GRE, it's the idea that you need to be able to tell quite quickly whether a problem is difficult or not. If it's easy, you get it over with. If it's hard, you set it aside until you've taken care of easier ones. This way you maximize the number of problems you're able to answer in the time allotted, by saving the most time-consuming problems for the end, if you have enough time left over.

I think you're in agreement: nonexistententity's report was the statement that "from non-US students, judgment of GRE scores is mediated by the awareness that these students are less accustomed to standardized tests" i.e. "they're judged less harshly", in concord with thatsjustsemantics' suggestion that "the same scores would be more impressive coming from non-native speakers of English." And I'm not part of any committee but intuitively I agree.

Important fact about the graduate admissions process: committees hedge the number of acceptances they send out against the proportion of matriculation they expect. So suppose a university wants fifteen graduate students for the next year - but usually only half of admitted students matriculate. Then they might accept around thirty applicants with the gamble that half will turn down the offer. What if, one year, around twenty students matriculate? "No problem", they say, "it's only one year". The next year, however, another twenty matriculate. Now the program is in a position where they have ten more students in a five year period than they had planned. This is bad. For their next few years, then, they will likely send out fewer acceptances, probably still with the expectation that only half will matriculate, but now forced into the position of aiming to have fewer matriculations, too. Of course, this is just one possible explanation - but looking at the numbers, they fit the theory: there are consistently between 12-18 new students every year, around the 15 mark. Then, two years in a row, we see a huge excess of 19 and then 21. The 7 students the next year might reflect the department's effort to rein things in. Again, this isn't necessarily what happened - but it happens a lot.

You might find this thread useful:

I've seen people applying to about that many, and it's often recommended to try for about as wide a range, but it's unfortunately true as you say that the expensive is prohibitive. People are recommending to me somewhere between five and ten so far, though I still don't have a finalized list. From what I've heard my professors say, then, you'd be safe applying to just ten. But if the cost and time of applying to more aren't an issue for you, you've got nothing to lose and plenty to gain there (assuming they're good programs). Don't give up on the more competitive schools unless you're absolutely certain you don't make the cut - and I'd venture to say you can't make that determination yourself. My own professors have told me that every application cycle, people who seem like definite admits are shut out while borderline cases have unexpected success. You aren't on NYU's admissions committee so you don't know what they're looking for, and given how much luck seems to play into these things, you'd be ill-advised to try and guess.

If two candidates are completely equivalent save for their GREs then yes, those scores will likely be the deciding factor. You're definitely correct there. It just seems, to me, incredibly unlikely that out of those candidates who are competitive, the GREs will turn out to be the difference-making factor. But I've never been on an admissions committee. It becomes a matter of weighing how likely you think it is that for you it'll come down to your scores versus those of another applicant against the trouble of taking the GRE again.

I'm a little confused by this statement. You say "top programs seem to have no substantial reason to accept a student who has low GRE scores". What if the student in question has an outstanding application in every respect but their scores? Fantastic recommendations and a powerful writing sample? Do these not count as "substantial reason"? I can assure you that no admissions committee would hold GREs against an applicant if everything else on their application is strong, unless maybe if they've scored abysmally (and a 157 is not remotely abysmal). This is to say nothing of how tertiary GRE scores are to applications. The consensus from professors I've consulted is that they're much less important than the substantive parts of your application like, you know, recommendations and your writing sample. I've even been told that some admissions committee members simply don't look at an applicant's score report. At all. I wouldn't worry about it in your place.

Note the question asks which must be true - it isn't enough to plug one example in! You have to be sure that the answers you get will be true for any pair of a and b satisfying the inequality given. I would advise using straightforward algebra to find that (b < 0) must be true: a - b > a + b (subtract a from both sides) - b > b (add b to both sides) 0 > b (which is the same as...) b < 0 So, whenever the inequality holds, it must be the case that b < 0 is true. However, your a = 3 and b = -2 example shows that (a < 0) need not be true, and if you try a = -1 and b = -2, you will find that (ab < 0) is also not necessarily true. Therefore the only inequality that must be true is the one that follows algebraically from the original inequality: b < 0

Unhealthy passion in the field? Old enough that you're probably not victim to the head-in-the-clouds syndrome that plagues us young 'uns? Summa cum laude? 170 verbal? Proficient in German, educated in Latin, experience working abroad as a Fulbright? Okay I may not be an aged member of an admissions committee but all I can say is do it. To my eyes you've got an absolutely solid application. Disinterest in contemporary theorists is okay, I think - I've seen it in some of my own professors so you're in good company there. As for funding? You're a competitive applicant, and programs want their competitive applicants. I think you have a good chance of funded offers from somewhere. I don't know what to say about where. Your concern about how a continental background may be received by an analytic program is legitimate. On this, I defer to the more experienced folk.

Hm, thank you for this, you're raising important and interesting considerations for me. Professors with whom I've consulted on the subject have called Toronto's program "terrific" and opined that I should have no difficulty being productive there. One, to whom I conceded that Tufts' terminal MA is ranked better (top, I know), disagreed that "it may be the ranked best among terminal MAs, but once you bring in MAs within PhD-granting programs it might not hold up so well". So I guess I've been riding on their advice that Toronto would be a good intermediate step? At the same time, at least one has encouraged me to apply simultaneously to my top choice PhDs since the application materials would be similar - the implication I received being that I might have a chance as-is. Other than that, I have strong financial reasons in favour of Toronto - they're one of few strong MAs to offer full funding to all admitted student, not to mention a sizeable stipend, and I really don't want to be in debt before I even start a PhD. Being Canadian, too, means it's bureaucratically convenient and improves my chances of admission (at least for the MA). It's also just close to home. But when it comes what I'm looking for in a master's program: the only reason I'd want to do an MA is so that I can get to my ideal PhD programs - which, I realize, are very tough programs. I don't want to do an MA when I could be doing my ideal PhD, and I don't think I'd choose to do an MA (at least not next year) if it would not help my chances at a strong PhD. Which brings me to your "readiness" question: I do not mean "ready" as in "I feel like I'm at the right point in my life to be doing this"; I've already decided I want to study philosophy as much as I can. I mean it rather in terms of ability: could I get into the sort of program I'd want to attend if I applied right now? And if not, I suppose the assumption in my original post was that "going to an MA would prepare me in terms of competitiveness in applications", whether by direct virtue of looking good, or indirectly by giving me the environment I need to improve writing samples, get to know potential referees, et cetera. So those would be my general answers to your prompts. Thank you, again, for the shrewd inquiries! I'd give you a +1 but I'm all out today.

You only get the sends for free if you choose them immediately after you've finished your test at the testing centre. If you want to send the scores anywhere after you've returned from the test, you'll need to pay the sending fee. You choose departments, not just schools, e.g. I picked "PRINCETON" from the "school" list, then "PHILOSOPHY" from the "department" list, and had that as one of my free sends.

I'm in Philosophy, where recommendations from within the department are crucial to graduate school applications. My position is a bit weak: I started out taking philosophy classes, but for the latter half of my second year and the entirety of my third year I was in no philosophy classes because I was busy switching majors a bunch and had a lot of scheduling conflicts. Now I'm back to my true academic love, as it were, with two graduate seminars this semester and plans on three in the spring. My advisor for the major is an assistant professor in the department who has known me for quite a while - I took a class with him my second semester, a graduate seminar of his my third semester, did well in both, and was in infrequent contact with him until this semester when again I'm in his seminar and am meeting with him as frequently as I can (without being annoying, I think). He's definitely one of my letter-writers, and while his word may not carry the inherent authority of a senior professor (he's only been at the university about as long as I have), I'm confident in his knowledge of me (and he has confirmed this confidence). I only know two other professors in the department, for the reason that while I've taken seven classes so far (if you include my current two seminars), they've all happened to be taught by my advisor or these other two professors. One of the other two had me in his introduction to ancient philosophy in my first semester. I did well and he remembers me from then, but I did not much distinguish myself. Now I'm in his seminar and am keeping as much contact as I can (again, without being annoying). He's complimented my performance in his seminar in my personal meetings with him and offered, without my solicitation, to write me a letter when I mentioned my graduate school plans. This is a good sign, but I'm concerned that as far as deep interaction goes, he's only really known me this semester. He is a senior professor, not in my AOI but respected in his field. The other professor had me as his student in an introductory survey of modern philosophy, and later in a graduate seminar. I'm not sure how well he remembers me from then, though I did well in both classes - again, I don't think I distinguished myself back then beyond being "just another good student". This semester I got in back in touch with him to discuss an honors thesis I realized, over the summer, I wanted to write. He is easily the best-informed in our department on the subject so I got readings from him to help get my mental gears rolling. Unfortunately his other obligations have limited how often we can meet - I only saw him for the third time this semester last week. On the other hand, that day we had a long discussion about the material I was reading and he got excited about one of my ideas (evidently it was a coherent explication of a vague difficulty he thought existed for a certain theory). When I asked for further readings to inform my suspicions better, he said my idea was already mature enough to make into a paper challenging the aforementioned view and that I should definitely do this. He further suggested that this would make "a fantastic writing sample". Yes, it was his suggestion that I start, finish, and polish my writing sample between now and mid-December. He also offered to write a letter for me, and encouraged me to apply to PhD programs, not the MA programs I was considering. He is senior and very respected in the field, so I did not think to question him on this advice. Sorry to have dragged this out so far, but I thought the background was important to my question: will it necessarily count against me that two of my letters are from professors who've really only known me one semester (basically two months)? Or is it possible that, given the enthusiasm my professors have seemed to express, they may be able to assuage any concerns among admissions committees that they do not know me well enough as referees? Moreover, if I work hard enough, is it possible for me to turn this to my advantage by impressing my professors enough in this short period that it shows in the recommendations and possibly counts further in my favour? TL;DR - I've only been in close contact with two of my three referees for this single semester, but they seem to like me. Can I beat the problem of how short-term my relationship with them has been in the eyes of the admissions committees?

I don't have the experience to answer your question on if and how to deal with your withdrawal, but I think I can assure you that your situation, particularly with regard to moving around in what you're studying and not having directly studied "general" linguistics, is actually not an uncommon one at all among successful linguists. I'm an undergraduate at a university with a pretty strong linguistics program, and here are some examples I can give you: one of my professors did his BA and MA on the literature and linguistics of a specific language, but then got his PhD in linguistics at UConn. One of our grad students studied English linguistics at what was in his own words a university "one step above community college", and here he is now. My major advisor earnt her BA in linguistics and philosophy from a QS-unranked school and went on to study linguistics at Rutgers. In my conversations with both faculty and grad students in general, I've been told that the state of linguistics as a field is so interdisciplinary, small, and often unknown, that it's almost par for people to segue into it from other undergraduate fields of study and/or unremarkable undergraduate programs. It's the sort of subject one often stumbles upon in their undergraduate years and subsequently pursues with a passion (my brain hadn't touched linguistics until I took an intro class in my fourth semester). So as far as you having studied sociology and currently doing your MA in Japanese linguistics goes, I wouldn't be concerned at all. It would probably be sufficient to address your jump as a newly discovered interest or a desire to study more broadly what you've so far gotten tantalizing hints of.