lmiscellany

My math scores were absolutely dismal (less than 20th percentile) and I don't think it harmed me in either round of applications. For M.A. I got into 10/10 schools I applied to (some with funding) and for PhD I have offers from several programs strong in my field. If a school even tells you that they don't care about your quantitative score, I don't think you have anything to worry about. My verbal was high and my writing perfect, but even those scores probably don't have much weight in an adcomm's decision. As many people have noted in this forum, it is the statement and writing sample that count. Professors on admissions committees that I have spoken with tell me that GRE scores are generally the last thing they glance at (despite the widespread impression that they are the first, and used as a weeding out mechanism - it seems more typical to weed out the people who aren't ready for grad school by reading the first few sentences of their SOP).

That is a good point. Judging from the results board, they have not yet sent out their decisions to those who applied only to the M.A. program. I would read the "invitation to apply" as somewhat encouraging but not a definite indication that you are accepted. They probably want to find out whether you are interested in the M.A. before making M.A. offers to help them determine whether it is worth their while to make you an offer, and which applicants they will make partially funded offers to. Rochester's M.A. program, to take my admission to the program when I was applying for MA as a guide, will offer to remit half the tuition for a select number of M.A. candidates. My acceptance letter to the M.A. program last year offered an $18,200 scholarship. So, yes they are not wholly unfunded, but even with half the tuition shaved off it is an extremely expensive program. Maybe they offer certain students full tuition remission sometimes, I don't know. If you are in any position to fund a Master's at Rochester, certainly it can be very helpful to stay in academia if you are intending to apply to PhD programs next year. But funding over 18K tuition (potentially twice that) plus living expenses seems impossible without a stack of external scholarships.

I can't figure out how they pull it off in the Village, or in Morningside Heights for that matter. And yet I know people who live on similar funding and seem to be able to go out all the time as well as cover basic living costs. Must be their grad student ingenuity. Or they have secret funds I don't know about.

In the same boat. The DGS sent me an encouraging email saying I have high spot on the waitlist and so have a hope of getting an offer. But, judging from the number of people at the interviews, it is a lengthy waitlist. I do not know if they have it organized by field. I'm waiting on NYU and my longterm partner is waiting on Columbia (our top choices, respectively), so we have the additional anxieties about the possibility of having to live on opposite sides of the country for 5 to 6 years, enrolled at schools we are less enthusiastic about. A couple of the other schools I have offers from are very eager that I accept or decline before April comes so that they can make offers to their waitlisters, so I'm feeling pressured but I'll wait it out as long as I can. It's a shame they don't have more spots; everyone at the Open House seemed like interesting scholars and wonderful people. Many people I happened to speak to were leaning toward NYU (at least at that point in the process). Painful waiting, but good luck fellow waitlisters (at least you know you all deserve offers & that it is now coming down to the amount of money the dept has rather than your abilities)!

Notre Dame is looking for an incoming class of 10 I believe. They do have a waitlist, which I think has already been notified of their status (?), but there may be a hope that they will expand the waitlist dependent upon the number of candidates who decline.

Since they started paying for teaching (a change in effect for Fall's incoming graduate class), it seems like NYU is going to outstrip Columbia's funding. Both schools offer fellowships of about 23,000, and though Columbia will fund a 6th year, NYU allows you to "bank" the earnings from one year of teaching to fund a sixth year. (But you don't get the money back if you finish your dissertation in the fifth year and are ready to go on the job market then). However, the NYU teaching money will come only in the later years, so the first two years of study will be at the same 23,000 as Columbia. I think the total teaching load is four semesters spread out over the 3rd to 5th years. The 22k is the total amount possible to earn for four semesters taught over those 3 years, so it seems doubtful that there would be one year approaching total funding of 50k. Some years teaching it might only raise your funds by $5,500, but it is still a pretty good deal. And it's nice to be paid for teaching rather than simply be doing required "service." I hadn't heard about the possibility of summer funding. The faculty and students I spoke with left me with the impression that summers would likely remain unfunded. But getting by on 23k in NYC must be possible, because so many students do it - right?