philapgirl

Did any one else get a call from a 213 number? No voice mail and when I called back nothing. Should I assume it's a telemarketer?

Same. I wrote a note saying which 15 pages were the most important.

I'm definitely doing stuff in line with a lot of what you guys are saying--reading, video-gaming, netflixing, and working (tutoring). Though, my job doesn't take much time out of my schedule and I only need to work a few hours to have a sufficient amount of $$$ to live off of. I think getting another job would be good. I'll probably start swimming more and pretend I'm training for something. It's been a while since I've read anything in philosophy that didn't have to do with my writing sample. Maybe I'll go through someone's syllabus or something. I've definitely also been meaning to read some history of mathematics and logic. I just adore the subject.

What are you guys doing while you wait? I basically spent the last million months focusing on grad apps and now I am just anxious, waiting for something to happen, stalking gradcafe too much. How are you keeping yourselves sane and busy?

My boyfriend actually works for collegenet as a web developer and Michigan is one of the forms they work on. He told me to say that it's always best to contact the company that runs the app sites if you encounter technical errors (and not the schools). In this case, find the contact for apply web help and they can check to make sure your form is correct.

Has anyone asked about UCLA's inconsistencies with their fill-out form and the .pdf you can check before submission? (One funny one is that it says my COUNTRY of birth is San Francisco.....) The one I'm a little (and probably unnecessarily) worried about is it asks in the form for (Jr/Sr) GPA and then on the .pdf it reports it as just the GPA. What have/will/would you all do about this? I feel uncomfortable signing the form which says that they reserve the right to withdraw my application from consideration if the information is incorrect.

ditto

Does anyone have any thoughts on CUNY's "approx. 4000-5000 words"? My writing sample is around 6800 words and is 20 pages, which seems a bit long but I'm not sure if it's fine because they say "approx." I would hate to cut down 1800 words since I've already reduced it quite a bit from its original form.

Yes, the student (talked about above) with the low quant score (Q152---48th percentile) got a 4AW score. There's lot of consensus that no one cares at all about it.

For what it's worth, I wouldn't worry about your scores at all. A ton of professors on the Leiter reports have said that no decision will be made based only on a GRE score and it only really works as a point against or for you if your scores are significantly low or high. Even if that isn't entirely correct, I doubt they would use such a high cutoff score as 160. (For instance, one professor noted that his department does a GPA cutoff at 3.0.) Last year, my friend applied to Ph.D programs and got into three top 20 schools (according to philosophicalgourmet.com), two of which were top 10, with a great writing sample, great grades, excellent work experience and letters, and a quant score of 152 (48th percentile). Before him a few years before, there was a student who scored about a V157 and got into a top 20 school. Of course, they were excellent candidates, but again, I would not worry about your score.