LIMeqCMB

The email is a bit misleading, but I think the interview takes place during a four-hour window but is probably only about 30 minutes long. i.e. your interview could be scheduled for 8:00-8:30 or 10:30-11:00 for instance. Just throwing that out there in case you would want to interview!

I think you should, if anything to let her know you are still interested. You might want to wait until next week though in case she was just at the conference to give her some time to get back in the swing of things. (But I also get nervous about sending important emails on Fridays in case they get lost in the recipient's inbox over the weekend or while they're in crunch time before the end of the work week....)

I'm one of the people who heard back (in October), but I had been in contact with my POI for over two years before applying, so don't worry!!! And good luck!!!

First off, congrats on the Princeton offer! It looks like there hasn't been a whole lot of activity for Caltech, with offers trickling in. I received an (unofficial) acceptance on January 4, but I also had extensive contact with the POI, including meeting him in-person when he visited the university where I'm doing research. The program administrator told me that I should receive the official letter of acceptance by the end of the month, which leads me to believe that there are still offers that need to be sent. Not sure, just guessing!

Perhaps you should email your POI(s), say something along the lines of "Thank you again for the guidance you gave me while I was preparing my application. I have submitted my application, and in the meantime, I have some more questions. [Insert questions here.]" I had ended up putting off the application process for a year. So my biggest concern was that, after 11-13 months of having absolutely no contact with POIs after the first couple of emails and not even telling them that I decided to wait on applying, I'd look like a total jerk/idiot/whatever-you-want-to-call-me. I swallowed my pride, told them (8 months after they never received my application) that I had decided not to apply for reason X, thanked them for the help they had given me, and came up with some new question to ask them to show I still had interest. They all responded favorably, and I had gone a year without saying anything.

I've heard the same things (I'm chem but still) about the GRE, that it is perhaps the least important factor when you have research experience, strong personal statements, and great LORs. But it can still be worrisome and I'm guilty of fretting over mine too. Whether you submit these scores depends on the programs to which you are applying. Across the board, the sciences place more emphasis on the quantitative section (at least that is what I've heard from faculty and other students; whether you want to believe this is up to you!). Moreover, because your AW also went up, it shows an improvement in a score that is supposed to reflect how you reason and can present an argument. Both quantitative skills and reasoning are more important, I think, than verbal reasoning. Does your application reflect that Spanish is your first language? (All of my apps asked about language skills.) To me, the jumps from 48th to 60th and 38th to 80th are much more significant than the drop in the verbal. Therefore, I would say that because you have improvement (especially below 50th to above) in the most important or interesting aspects of the GRE, submit! Also, in hopes of alleviating some stress... I scored low (below 35th percentile) on my GRE subject test for chem, but I still got (unofficially, hurry up official letter!) accepted to Caltech. Evidence that the GREs can't be that important when you have strengths like research and LORs. Good luck!!