St0chastic

This is obviously a very personal decision, so there's no blanket statement that I can give that will apply to all people and all situations. Generally, I agree that fit should trump (ooops can't use that word anymore) program prestige for the reasons you list. As for who determines prestige, I would argue that prestige is determined by faculty who are in charge of hiring as well as funding agencies. They are the gatekeepers that determine who gets to be a part of academia or not.

Yeah, that's definitely true. All else being equal, it's better to work for a well-regarded PI at a less renowned institution than a less well-regarded PI at a top 10 institution. That said, chances are faculty who are at a top 10 institution are probably well known in their field. Also, the prestige hierarchy will vary depending on your specific field or even subfield and is probably only loosely correlated with undergraduate rankings. A lot of public schools that are ranked in the 20s or lower, for example, are top 10s in certain research areas (e.g., UCLA, UC Berkeley, UNC, etc.).

I don't have much else to add that others haven't already said. As already stated, at most places the GRE is used as a way to winnow down the number of applications. Unless you are scoring perfect or near perfect it probably won't help too much, although a below average score will hurt your chances. You can definitely improve your GRE score with practice and study, perhaps as much as a standard deviation or more. There are tons of resources out there that can help you achieve a good-enough score. My favorites include Magoosh, Khan Academy, the Manhattan 5 lb Book of Practice Problems, and all of the official review books and practice tests produced by ETS. Good luck!

My understanding is that graduating from a more prestigious program will give you an advantage when it comes to securing coveted faculty positions. Academia is very hierarchical, unfortunately. However, I would personally weight other factors (e.g., fit with advisor and program) more heavily if you're making a decision about which school to attend.

This happened to me as well last year. I just ended up rescheduling an interview (as it turns out, I'm now attending the place that I rescheduled). Most schools are probably willing to work with you if you cannot make it to the official interview weekend. That said, if you already know that you are not very interested in attending a certain program, it's probably best to send a message politely declining the interview offer.

Hi there, A few thoughts: 1) As a Junior you have an opportunity to pull up your GPA. If you can graduate with >3.6 that will help quite a bit. 2) Although cumulative GPA is what is looked at most, some programs may inspect your Junior/Senior year grades more closely. So if you can finish strong that may also give you an advantage. 3) Research experience and letters of recommendation count for a lot. Since you are strong there you may have an edge over other applicants with a higher GPA. 4) Most people know that pre-med classes are tough. Professors may cut you some slack for a few low grades. 5) The GRE can definitely help you here. If you can score well (>90% on verbal and >80% quant), you will demonstrate your aptitude. To really stand out, though, you'll need a top score (>95% verbal and >90% quant). If you are a decent test taker this is achievable if you use the right study strategies and put in the time/effort to master GRE questions. Best of luck and don't lose hope!

Depends on the university. I heard from one school later in December but most early in January.

@FacelessMage It might be worth asking if the letter can be submitted via email or uploaded. It's a bit bizarre to me that a school would require you to physically mail a letter in the year 2016.

Yup, this is what I did. Honestly, I'm kind of shocked the quant GRE is setup the way it is. It just seems so trainable. The test is supposed to assess your ability to problem solve on the fly, but almost all of the problem types have some kind of "trick" that makes them almost trivially easy to solve. For instance, arithmetic series/sequence problems. When I first encountered these I didn't really know how I could solve them in under 60 seconds. But it turns out there's a trick that the brilliant mathematician Blaise Pascal discovered centuries ago that makes them one of the easier problems on the test. If I ask you what's the sum of all the odd numbers from 3 to 105, your gut instinct might be that there's no easy way to answer this question without a calculator/program or extensive pen and paper calculations. Through Pascal's trick, however, we can work out the problem in just a few steps. If we pair the highest and lowest numbers, you get 105 + 3 = 108. If you then pair the second highest and lowest numbers, you get 103 + 5 = 108. So you can do this iteratively to keep getting pairs that sum to 108. Now we have to figure out how many pairs we have. Well, how many odd numbers are there from 3 to 105? Let's think about the odd sequence from 1 to 11 (1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11). If we calculate the range of this series we get 11 - 1 = 10. Divide that by 2 and you get 5. But there are 6 rather than 5 odd numbers in the odd sequence 1 to 11. This is because you have to count inclusively (refer to this blog entry: http://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/inclusive-counting-on-the-gmat/). You then divide by 2 a second time to get the number of pairs in the sequence. So the formula to find the number of pairs of odd or even numbers in a sequence is simply ((range/2) + 1)/2. Now we multiply this number by the sum we calculated earlier to get our final answer: [(105-3)/2 + 1 ]/2 * 108 = 26 * 108. You can find this either by plugging into a calculator or with mental math (25 * 100 + 25 * 8 + 1 * 108 = 2500 + 200 + 108 = 2808). In the programming language R, you can verify this answer in two lines of code: odd_sequence <- seq(from = 3, to = 105, by = 2) print(sum(odd_sequence)) The first time you solve a problem like this it might seem a little bit tricky and you probably won't be able to do it in under 60 seconds. But after practicing ten problems like this, they are a piece of cake. To get a score higher than 165 on quant, you just have to put in the time to learn all of these tricks and develop your pattern recognition ability. One thing I will say is that in my opinion it's better to mix up your practicing of different problem types rather than blocking them together. That is, don't just do a bunch of problems of type A followed by a bunch of problems of type B. This is technically known as interleaving in the learning literature and has a lot of empirical support for enhancing long-term learning: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-interleaving-effect-mixing-it-up-boosts-learning/ Blocking can be helpful when you are first learning how to do a particular type of problem, but to attain true mastery you have to follow this up with interleaved practice. I don't want to sound like a shill for the website Magoosh, but in my opinion it is one of the most effective ways to boost your quant score in a relatively short span of time (1-2 months). Free alternatives like Khan Academy work pretty well, but they are not as tailored to the GRE as Magoosh is and they don't cover test taking strategies. Once you've learned the different problem types on the GRE, the next step is to solve a lot of practice problems. ETS writes the highest quality practice problems. Those can be found here (for free) and here (not free). For even more practice problems that are almost as good, I would use Manhattan's 5 lb. Book of Practice Problems. I hope that helps and good luck!

I would recommend using a combination of Magoosh, Khan Academy, and the Manhattan 5 lb. Book of GRE Practice Problems. If you spend 20-25 hours/week for a month or two practicing GRE problems, your score should go up pretty dramatically. There are only so many types of math problems tested on the GRE, so once you master them all you should find that the test isn't all that difficult. Like you I found the hardest part was learning how to consistently solve all the problems quickly, but after extensive practice this was no longer an issue.

When applying I also found it frustrating that many programs didn't post admissions statistics. If you are scoring in the range of the posted clinical GRE scores (>160 verbal and >155 quant) I imagine that should be good enough assuming your other stats are solid...of course that is unsubstantiated speculation on my part. Unless your scores are much lower than that, in my opinion it's worth taking the gamble and applying. Nothing ventured nothing gained.

Do you want books that are mostly informative or entertaining? If you want fun reads, anything by Steven Pinker, Oliver Sacks, V.S. Ramachandran, or David Eagleman is worth a read. Other noteworthy authors include Robert Sapolsky, Daniel Kahneman, Daniel Levitin, Antonio Damasio, and Michael Gazzaniga. For a more philosophical take on neuroscience and biology, I like Daniel Dennett. Another name that I see on online lists of neuro books is Norman Doidge. Eric Kandel is a luminary in the field of the neurobiology of memory and is worth reading, too. There are tons more recommendations online (e.g., http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/new-titles/adult-announcements/article/69641-popular-neuroscience-books-about-the-brain-for-2016.html). If you just want to learn a lot, however, nothing beats a well written textbook in my opinion. EDIT: I also highly recommend checking out the website edge.org if you want some first-rate brain fodder.

I would say it's probably worth applying to at least a few schools if you can spare the money for the application fees. Your letter writers may want to provide some support of your intellectual aptitude, however, as there's quite a discrepancy between your near perfect GPA and middle-of-the-road GRE scores. How have you prepared for the GRE in the past? With the right study approach you should be able to up your score by at least 5 points and potentially a lot more if your math skills are rusty. There are tons of helpful resources to train for the GRE. Here are my favorites: --Magoosh (subscription) and Magoosh blog (free) --All official ETS materials, which you can find on the GRE website and Amazon.com --Khan Academy --Manhattan 5 lb. Book of Practice Problems (Quant only) --For vocabulary development: Vocabulary.com, Quizlet.com, Magoosh vocab app, Magoosh Youtube vocab videos, Word Power Made Easy

Here are some links you might find helpful: https://sites.google.com/site/gradappadvice/application-essays http://neoacademic.com/2014/01/09/grad-school-how-do-i-write-a-personal-statement/ http://lauraemariani.blogspot.com/2008/12/applying-to-graduate-school-statement.html

@TakeruK I think it's great that we're able to have a civil, thoughtful discussion about this. I consider myself to be socially liberal, but lately I've found that when I suggest that certain practices adopted by the left in the US might have downsides (e.g., affirmative action), I receive resentful looks. It's as if what I'm suggesting is blasphemous despite the fact that I have the very same intentions as the people I'm arguing with (to maximize the well-being of all members of society). Jonathan Haidt gave an interesting talk about this recently: https://youtu.be/Gatn5ameRr8 Anyway, sorry for derailing this thread.