onerepublic96

Submitted Yale's app 10 minutes late. Whoops. ?

Must be some universal good luck kicking in for us all, because I just got the first confirmation emails saying my final recommender has begun uploading letters!

Ahhh, sorry to hear you’re in the same position. Fingers crossed for both of us!

Starting to freak out a bit seeing as it's 5 pm and my final recommender is still MIA. ? Reading the recommender horror stories on this forum last night definitely didn't help...

Solidarity with anyone experiencing recommender issues ❤️ currently hoping and praying that my last recommender will upload the 6 letters due tomorrow... no response to my reminder email from earlier today

That is... bizarre. I'm sorry. I realise shit happens, but to say 'find someone else' when the due date is tomorrow (and considering, as others have said, that in the time it took to send that email she could have uploaded the remaining recommendations) is really a dick move.

For what it’s worth, a couple of my schools have emailed me their ‘deadline approaching’ reminders and specifically said it’s okay for recommendations to come a few days after the deadline. But of course, best to check with your schools directly.

Having some second thoughts and hoping ya'll can help me out. If I mention a POI or two using their full names first in my SOP, is it alright to use just the last names for subsequent mentions? Or does that come off as disrespectful? Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but I'm conflicted because to think of it, when writing a paper, last names (after initially using the full name) would be just fine, but I'm not sure if the same logic applies to SOP, as it's... uh... a unique genre...

I think that sounds reasonable. Though honestly I feel like it won't be a really big deal either way. Also, may I just say - those 500 word SOP limits? Ridiculous. ?

Desperately trying to polish 6 applications due on the 15th as we speak.

I feel this strongly. I keep thinking of things I'm not 100% happy with and which ought to be changed, but at this point I'm so exhausted that I no longer have the energy to go through with any more rounds of edits. Props to you for the impressive momentum! haha

To second what has already been said, you're in a good place as it stands. However, about the writing sample: I would caution against writing a wholly new work on your own (unless you'll be able to get feedback from a professor or faculty advisor from your institution). Perhaps it might be a better idea to expand & strengthen one of the research papers you've already written (and presumably received positive feedback on).

Same! Unfortunately nearly all of my schools require (or 'strongly recommend') some kind of diversity essay/personal statement, and so far it has been the weakest part of my application. I'm trying to improve it for the next round of deadlines but I can't for the life of me come up with anything coherent and meaningful beyond the absolutely banal '[insert somewhat challenging life situation] has taught me the value of hard work, resilience, etc. etc.'

Nope, I got the same exact email. Pretty weird, but since you still got official confirmation, maybe just call that an early holiday present? Haha

Hmm.. I got prompted to pay. Did you receive an automated confirmation email from the graduate school after submitting?

How close are your deadlines? In my experience, some letter writers will submit on the day of, even a few hours before midnight.

As of last night, I’ve got 3/15 submitted. Oof. Felt so victorious last night but now reality is setting in, and 12 more to go... ?

Nice! That must be such a relief, haha. I studied at Hopkins as an undergrad, and it's got a wonderful English department. Best of luck to you!

Anyone here still working on those Dec 1 apps? I'm aiming to submit it all by 5 pm and finally have an evening off. ?

I've just been fitting one or two POIs into the part of my SOP where I talk about how I envision my research progressing during my PhD. 'Having done such and such, I'm keen to explore such and such related thing, and for this reason I'm particularly intrigued by the work of POI in whatever it is they are doing.' And then a few sentences explaining how my own potential work dovetails with what they've been doing/methodologies they've been using/current project they're working on. I've had some feedback on several drafts of my SOP and no one has expressed any concern about how I've handled this part, so I think as long as you can articulate why this person is your POI and give some reasons for why you'd be excited to learn from them/work with them, it likely won't sound like you're just name dropping.

Same thing here. I've been corresponding with one of my recommenders about my SOP this weekend, though, and he assured me he'll have it done by the 1st. The other, though... ? I sent an email on Friday evening with a reminder about the deadline, but haven't heard anything back. For what it's worth, though, this second prof was a recommender for my MA apps, and although it was super anxiety-inducing, he did submit all of the letters on the day of. So I'd advise just trying not to stress about it too much.

Hope certainly isn't a bad thing, and ultimately you are the best judge of what you need or what feels right for you. All anyone else can do is advise you. That being said, a few things about what you're saying here strike me as odd. It's good you appreciate the fact that not 100% of your potential PhD is going to be spent working on things that excite you, but I'm not sure what you mean when you qualify that with 'yet grad level exploration is naturally something different.' The workload you're expected to take on and the depth of critical engagement you're meant to accomplish in graduate school is very different from your undergraduate, but the experience of taking classes that are 'not your thing' is still likely to be very similar. And though I understand that some of your difficulties during your MA were due to depression, the fact that you had a similar issue in undergraduate because, as you say, you don't believe in working very hard on such uninspiring tasks is questionable. Will you be able to work through your feelings and opinions anyway in order to produce quality work and carry on your PhD? I think that's a very important question for you to think about clearly, remember your undergraduate situation, and be honest with yourself. If you're confident that this time you'll be able to do it differently, then great. You haven't mentioned what your goals are for after your PhD (forgive me if you have and I've blanked on this), but whatever they are, I'm not sure if simply choosing a programme that doesn't require you to keep up a high GPA is a way out of the issues you describe. For one thing, I'm not sure how many schools out there will consider anything below 3.50 to be in good standing, and what happens if you slip below 3.00?

Thanks for responding! I think that’s what I’ll do, as well.

I really don't think there's any way to work the system. I've been given a lot of (conflicting) advice about specialisation, all of which together makes me feel like choosing a specialty based on the market trends should probably be the least of anyone's concerns.

Does anyone know the right way of calculating major GPA? My overall GPA is considerably lower than what I approximate my major (English) GPA must be because I started out as a science student, and I'd like to draw attention to my major GPA on applications, where it's asked for. I'm confused though, about how to actually calculate that. Do I include all the tangential courses required by my major (various humanities courses, foreign language, etc.) or focus just on those in my department?