kaykaykay

Interesting approach./you are brave. I wonder how universities will consider your NS.....

In most fields adcoms do not care about the AWA score the tiniest bit. Before you get too bumped check whether anyone cares about that score at all. I think you will be fine! Best of luck.

I am getting angry with the long line of posters who demand to see their LORs. I think complaining about the content of a good LOR is just completely on another level of being spoilt. I am really not a mean spirited person but you have to let go the things you cannot control(and you are not supposed to control it only with your excellent work !) and have to concentrate on the things you can. And I would thank my coworker the effort he/she made for me.

I am getting confused in another thread you said that the recommender did not show you their LOR. My first thought after reading these two posts was: what is wrong with you???? I will write it here even if I will get negative points. -you are NOT supposed to see your recommendation letters. it seems to me you pressured someone to see it. - the letter of recommendation said nice things about you and you cannot stop whining. frankly you would be the last person I would show anything after this reaction. -if for some reason you would not get into a program you found someone (something ) to blame. congratulations. it seems to me that you are playing an unfair game and you are trying to coerce people to obey you. I am shocked you want to get into councelling.

It is much better to be a year older and be in a decent program than being a year younger and do not get in at all or being in a lower level instituton. that will hurt your job prospects more. You can try your luck but do not get too upset if you do not get in this year!

Rad : no matter what your approach is the math score will be important in poli sci especially in a top 5 place. I do not know the new ok points but earlier below 600 was sort of bad and around 700 was acceptable. normally the competition in poli sci is really tough, you should read some of the earlier posts of adcoms in the poli sci forum. if you want to study something historical though, have you looked around in other social science/ interdisciplinary programs? I mean you could take poli sci classes and have a poli sci bent in your dissertation in various fields such as anthropology, sociology(although math is important there too), history, area studies, geograpphy ,philosophy etc. Some of these put a bigger emphasis on the verbal GRE vsQ than poli sci.

There are a lot of good applicants in poli sci, so unfortunately I think unless you did something truly exceptional(hence my reference to an article at APSR) I do not think your points will cut the mustard.

your Q will be way too low for any decent place.Your GPA (or lack of it ) will not even matter (I am not sure how departements are dealing with this problem . Surely they must have a way to evaluate your application - the GPA is very important normally) . You can ask Michigan whether they would accept your points if you took the GRE after the application deadline. Some places accept points if you test fairly close to the deadline (the form will say something like when did you take or when are you planning to take the GRE)? If they do not accept late points in my opinion you have to wait a year for that school anyways.(British and Canadian schools do not require GRE) Good Luck! p.s. of ourse there may be circumstances that change the equation, e.g. you have a solo article in the APSR or something. .

I have just read a couple of SOPs . Of course if you have some very special issue you may need all the three pages but I think 2-2.5 pages is about the limit where you can be interesting and informative.

Even 3 pages sound waay too long. Maybe you could ask an impartial (and cruel ) friend to help to edit the SOP. It is hard to cut great sentences you worked hard for but when the adcoms have to read 600 essays you want to stand out for the right reasons. (maybe you can shoot for 2-2.5 pages)

wow now I am seriously confused. Anyways good luck. I have the feeling that you would like Toronto, it is not the typical American city but you know what you prefer.

Canadian programs may be more appealing to you than American programs. Check out for instance York.

you should be ok. if you are in doubt check with the departments, but as far as my experience goes the programs understand that GRE scores and recommendations may arrive a few days late, because they are out of your hands. If you do not know your scores yet, put the date you took the test on the application form.

Lokyar your publication is impressive if it is really in a good journal. If somebody is still considering your GPA they will consider you undergrad GPA along with the grad one. but you have a really good grad GPA. and I guess you have good recommendations. good luck! secondarydefinitions, I think it is clear from some of the adcoms' comments here that your application will be read by several people. The low GPA though counts if there are a lot of qualified applicants.

-she takes students -she gave the green light for you to put her name on the application( it will be then probably sent to her along with all the others who want to work with her) do not read too much into this, the competition is tough for each individual spot and there are so many factors playing in admission decisions. But this is a quite good outcome at least you are one step closer to having your application in the consider pile.

I must say I heard that some universities have suspicions about applicants from certain countries.

For political science your quant score is pretty low.And the quant score is important. But your verbal score will be very good. Maybe you could ask the same question at the polisci sub forum, some adcoms sometimes chime in there.(also it would be helpful if you would say more about your GPA) Good luck!

1.You do not necessarily need anyone's support at your curret place, you have been there for just a few months, but you need your old recommenders write letters which tell that you are not faling. I transfered without anyone knowing my plans. 2. I would also recommend talking with your MS advisor but it really depends on your relationship with him how you frame the issue. I agree with teh consensus here emphasize the career aspect (too) not the personal. 3. If your fiancee feels the way you feel you should probably both make a new round of applications. If you did not get into her school last year why do you think you will get in this year? Fit matters beyond ranking. If yu both apply you can maximize the chances of getting in to the same place. If she is less willing to do that for you , than you for her -there is a problem. 4. I am not sure about your field(s). if it is research based you are fine. but if it is in teaching you will have the same problem when you will want to find a job. In that case one spouse can sometimes make a deal for both of them. And for that probably you are in a better position if you graduated from a higher ranked university.

I think Kaplan had a service like this the last time I saw their offer. It costed an astronomical amount of $ but you can check it out. (Maybe other prep schools also offer this service)

I would not worry about trying to find out what he writes in his recommendation.If he agreed to write you a letter trust him. This one is out of your hand. With the other prof- some of the professors have like 5 email accounts and they are very busy. I would try to set up a meeting but if he actually does not want to write you a letter I would not push it at all (see that letter would be probably bad!!!).

I do understand the meaning of lack of resources. I just do not think that considering the trade-offs this is the best item to cut corners. What does it worth to spend all the application fees if you do not get in? If you have to do the whole process next year too? I f you do not get a fellowship? This is what I meant by that I do not understand the lack of resources. I am not a native speaker, but getting some of the practice books , and going through them(20$ each X2) raised my points by 300 on verbal and 200 on quant because I understood how the test worked. This is without any fancy prep course. GRE points are accepted usually even if you just put on the test date on yoir application even if you do not have your points yet. (even if you are just planning to take take the test!!) All the best for you in any case. The advices above are all great although instead of travelling to visiting weekends and spend the money that way you may want to consider retaking the GRE, if you think you can do better, that is.

Those points are sort of indicating that you have not prepared at all (if you are a native speaker of English you may have even chose randomly I do not know!). Maybe with some preparation you can rock the test. I am not sure what you mean by that you do not have the time or the financial resources to retake the GRE. If the trade-off is to apply a year later, retake the GRE sometime during the year (because you did not make the cut off) would it be still worth not to do it? or of course you can give up going to grad school. Competition is quite big for grad program spots, especially if you want to get some fellowship. As an alternative you could possibly look into options which do not require GRE, like schools in Canada etc.

Transfers because of bad fit are fairly common. I have been in that situation. If you do not feel at home somewhere it can really kill your interest in the subject and can make school feel like struggling. if this is the case try to change as fast as possible(because inevitably you will lose credits and time). However, I agree with everything what was written before: fit of research method is more important than fit of region. Also if the department accepted so many of students with interest in the Middle East maybe they are looking into hiring someone with Middle East expertise? In any case if quant and American is not your cup of tea maybe even that would not help.

If your letter writers have already written you there is a huge chance the letter is in their computer- it will take them 1 minute to pull it up and send it online. It is much less bothersome than you imagine. The online thing is also email verification- most of the time you need the institutional email address of the prof or an email address the school can find them.

the application is generic: in some programs (history etc. ) you have to submit a writing sample. The request of the department is written in very plain English. As most applicants will undertand this (I guess 99%) I can see hardly any chance that anyone will look at your writing sample, as it would be unfair with the rest of the applicants. + if you send one anyway that may reveal some upsetting information about your reading skills and about how carefully you read their website (although there is a chance that noone will care).