acciodoctorate

Congratulations and welcome!

If you have any questions about Boulder, let me know! I finished my MA there last year.

Seconded! We had a fantastic time talking about the program and meeting all the prospective students. Feel free to message me as well if you have any questions!

To those of you waiting to hear from UNC (and I say this as both an undergrad alumni and a PhD reject) I'm sorry to say you might have to keep waiting. I didn't hear from UNC until decision day last year. I accepted an offer from my current program and assumed it was a rejection before that, but it was difficult considering I still love the school and the city from my time there as an undergrad.

And in general, if people have questions about Columbus/the program/the visit day, I'd be happy to answer them!

So I know this is an old post, but just to chime in--I live in Hilliard, which is a little South of Dublin. Still about a 17-25 minute commute if you're avoiding rush hour, muuuuch cheaper than Dublin, and I feel like it's sort of up-and-coming. Lots of new construction and amenities. I've really enjoyed living here and I'm staying for the foreseeable future. Feel free to PM me if you have questions!

Congratulations to everyone on their acceptances! If anyone has specific questions about OSU's program that they don't want to post publicly, feel free to message me.

Just to add another opinion, I bombed the subject test my first time and took it again. In retrospect it was unnecessary since only two out of the fifteen schools I applied for required it, and the school I've chosen to attend does not, but at the time I was panicked about my chances of getting in anywhere at all and decided to retake. I did not study for a single second between my first attempt and my second. I thought I would have the time, but it was the middle of a very difficult semester, and the subject test took a low priority. I almost didn't show up on test day because I hadn't studied any more, but figured I had already paid and might as well give it a shot. My score improved by over 20 percentile points, which brought me into a much more respectable (though by no means very impressive) score range. I agree with what everyone else here is saying about the scores being the least important part of your application and the test itself being useless, outdated, and ridiculously expensive, so don't retake it if you don't want to and I doubt a poor score will seriously mess up your chances anywhere if you're already a strong candidate. But with that said, I think what version of the test you get can really raise your score just because one version might happen to have more works you're familiar with or more material related to your specialty or something you happened to cover in a recent course/seminar--another reason the test is completely bogus and arbitrary, but I did benefit from getting a "better" version of the exam the second time around. Your score could possibly improve with very minimal effort, if you're in the position to throw down money on it.

Has anyone else still not heard from UNC either way? I emailed the department and never heard back. I know acceptances, waitlists, and some rejections went out weeks ago and decision day for the programs I'm admitted to is Friday. I'm assuming it's a rejection, but it would be nice to know for sure.

Wow. I hate to bad-mouth a program, but this is ridiculous. I have a school I prefer over Penn State waiting for me to accept their offer, but thought I should wait until I heard from every program I applied to just be be safe. I emailed Cheryl a week ago and have heard nothing from them. I figured an official rejection (or a reply to my email) was sort of the least they could do, since we're all paying applicants. Honestly, this gives me a very bad feel for their program, even if I were accepted.

Hey there! If you have any questions about Boulder, let me know! I'm finishing my MA here in May.

While I can't say for sure what you should do, since you've already had several internships, I'm currently finishing my MA at CU and knew several people who plan to go into publishing. No, Boulder isn't a publishing hub, but it's very close to the publishing institute at UDenver, so several of my friends chose to do their summer program between years to beef up their publishing resume. You mentioned being a professor is still on your radar as well, and I will say that every MA student here had at least one semester of TAing, and every MA who chose to apply to PhDs was admitted to more than one top-50 program--and still have more schools to hear from. We had excellent support during the application process. Feel free to contact me for more specifics!

Hi all, just wanted to let you know I will probably be declining my offer from Buffalo in the next few days. I'm not sure if they waitlist by field or not, but I can say I am pre-1800. I know a friend of mine will probably decline soon as well.

Hi all, just wanted to let you know I will probably be declining my offer from Buffalo in the next few days. I'm not sure if they waitlist by field or not, but I can say I am pre-1800. I know a friend of mine will probably decline soon as well.

The link should be on your ApplyWeb, which you can get to through your recommendation letter confirmation emails, if you haven't gotten a "Admissions Decision Is Available" email yet. Between "Print Receipt" and "View Checklist" will be another box that says "View Your Decision Letter."

Haha, luckily most programs seem to know we don't have complete control over the LORs! One of mine was late too, hope it doesn't affect me.

Congratulations!!!! That's a great program! Was that for comp lit or English?

At least we're not alone! I know I should be happy that I got one acceptance so early, but it's driving me nuts that five other programs have notified and I've heard nothing from them. But I'm sure Disneyland will be amazing, and you should at least have a better idea of what you'll be doing by then!

Anyone else still in the crippling anxiety stage of waiting? Six of my programs sent out some sort of notification this week, and I only heard from one.

From my experience with other subject tests, it's best to take it as many times as you can. Some versions will be more to your strengths than others, so the more times you take it the more likely you are to get a good score, in addition to the practice it gives you. As the previous commenter mentioned, you can send individual scores if you do it online, not at the testing center, so if you do poorly once your schools will not see it. In my opinion, it's only a matter of finances. If you can afford to take it multiple times, I think it's a great idea.

Hi, Most applications will ask you to self-report, but it is optional. Schools are usually aware that you might not know your exact scores and are more interested in the official score report. You'll probably be asked to enter the date you took the GRE, so they should be able to see how recent it was. Unfortunately, if you don't know it, you're going to have to leave it blank. If the box will allow you to enter text, you could try writing "unknown." Otherwise, you could email the departments to let them know. Engineering programs are probably most interested in your quantitative score, anyway. Hope that helps!

I'd say that since you have another year to take it, you should take it again. Spend some time with some GRE study resources (there are plenty of good ones for pretty cheap on Amazon) and give it another shot. You can take it in October and still have time to get your scores in before your apps are due (assuming they're due in December). Don't spend too much time and effort on verbal or analytical, since it looks like you're doing well in that regard, and for a computer science program quantitative will be most important. In general, GRE scores aren't as important as the rest of your application, but for top schools, you'd probably want to be at least above the 80th percentile. Check the schools you're considering applying to--a lot of them, but not all, will give the average scores of their accepted students.

To everyone who's been accepted, and everyone still waiting to hear.

Congratulations everyone! I was accepted to Ohio State's PhD program last Tuesday. No word yet on how many people were accepted! From what I've seen, more should start rolling in around the end of next week.

They actually accepted me before they contacted me about the mistake! It was pretty mortifying, though.