Hello everybody; this is my first post here!
Looking forward to having a group of people to anxiously rock back and forth with until April.
Program: Ph.D. - HDLT GRE Score: 164V, 154Q, 5.5AWA GPA: 4.0 overall (B.A. undergrad) Work Experience: Several years as a part-time writing tutor, science tutor, and community outreach composition instructor. I'm also a nontraditional student and I've been working full-time (45-60 hours a week) since 2002, when I was seventeen; needless to say I've got a bit of work experience ranging from health care, to casino surveillance, to technical writing, to working as an electronics technician. Undergrad Institution (Public, Private, Ivy, etc..): Public, state school. I think most people around here would call it "third-tier," but I've loved it. What Other Schools Are You Applying To: CMU, Brown, Columbia, and a few others.
I feel confident about my LORs and GPA/transcript. I took some difficult courses and managed to balance it all with work and life. I'm also feeling okay about my SOP, though who isn't a bit worried that they didn't say the right things? 1000 words to sell somebody on your life history and future trajectory? Challenge accepted.
What I'm concerned about is:
My low quantitative score (I'm not terrible with math, it's just that my humanities background didn't really prepare me for the GRE quant, and I wasn't able to find a lot of free time to devote to practicing). I'm worried this will be a blemish.
My lack of real-world teaching experience; sure I've been a tutor and an outreach instructor, but I have no real, verifiable teaching experience. Though my program is more focused on research and policy I'm terrified that my lack of education experience will hold me back.
I dropped out of my first attempt at undergrad back in 2005. I finished about a year's worth of credits, but I had some major family issues (parents' health) that made it impossible for me to continue. I also left with a sub 2.8 GPA. All of that disappeared when I transferred to my current school, but I'm quite afraid that my old transcript will be a disqualifying factor.
Anyways--thanks for sharing your journeys. It's a lot of fun to see everybody's varied walks of life.
