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IR1995

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Everything posted by IR1995

  1. One suggestion I have is to find a university press book (or an article, but books are better for this) that is about your interests. Read through the literature review, and you should be able to get an idea, based on which scholars are being cited, as to who does work similar to what you want to do. Then google their names and see if they're at universities you could see yourself going to. Also, if you know any faculty that have interests close to yours (even if it isnt *that* close), ask them which departments they recommend.
  2. GREs can definitely be important, but I don’t think this alone means you won’t be able to get into one of your preferred schools. If you have a professor that’s willing to vouch for your ability to complete graduate level methods courses in their recommendation letter, I think that goes a long way—especially if you mention the obstacles you faced with the test in your statement of purpose. I’m also curious about what ranking you’ve viewed; USNWR has Wisconsin in the top 15, and Urbana, Bloomington, Minnesota are all at least top-30. I think it will benefit you to look very closely at each school and try to select programs with faculty doing work similar to what you want to do. You mention that one school is weak in your subfield, and if this is the case I think you should strongly consider looking at other schools instead. Hope this helps.
  3. I think it depends on what your long-term goals are. The placement records at both schools would concern me.
  4. It looks like you have impressive research experience, which I think will really help you! I do not think a 154 will keep you out of all of those programs, especially Northwestern.. I'd encourage you to check out their GRE stats (they publish them on the website). With a lower quant score, you really want other parts of the application to be top-notch. From everything I've been told, the statement of purpose is very, very important. If you haven't already, you should ask your recommenders to take a look and give you feedback. Personally, I would not apply to Amherst or JH.
  5. I would really try to narrow down schools a bit. 13 is a lot..both in terms of money and effort (your recommenders may also not appreciate being asked to submit that many letters). In terms of your admissions chances, a lot of aspects of your application look strong to me. As you'll find on this forum, much of the admissions process is idiosyncratic. I think you should focus on reviewing literature in your field and determining which academics are doing work you're interested in. Try to get your school list narrowed to 6-9 schools with multiple faculty members doing work at least tangentially related to your main interest, and preferably at least one that is doing work very closely linked to your interest.
  6. I have not yet been accepted to a program (I'm applying this cycle), so definitely take my advice with that in mind. I would send both. I have also heard that the writing score is incredibly unimportant, but it is possible that a 4 is below departmental minimums and that the admissions committee would have to use a waiver for you to make it to the final round of decisions if you were to only send the most recent scores.
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