[2018-2019 Application Thread]

I just heard back from the graduate coordinator at Cornell. She said admission decisions should be out by the beginning of next week. Cornell's my absolute dream school, so.. fingers crossed!

[2018-2019 Application Thread]

Congrats to the admits! Do you think it's safe to assume that I would get rejections from NYU and UChicago if I didn't hear/see anything yet? All the decisions seem to be out, I guess.. Also, anyone heard back from Cornell at all? It's so hard to keep it cool when I have this weird feeling of imminent doom of rejections  Well, good luck to myself and everybody here! Fingers crossed so hard they might just snap 

[Faculty perspectives]

Thank you so much for all your valuable information and insights. They definitely helped me figure out what to focus on throughout the application process.

I have a question about getting in touch with the professors I mentioned in my sop. I usually don't freak out over something out of my reach, but I have been so occupied with the results in the past few weeks. I can't stop thinking about what I can do to increase my chances after receiving 2 rejection notifications last week.

I am an international student with a Bachelor's degree in political science from one of the Big 10 state universities. I have solid GPA, Letters of Recommendation, research experience, statement of purpose, and a decent writing sample, but I am really concerned with my GRE score. Even though my English is fluent especially in terms of writing and speaking, I couldn't get my verbal score as high as I'd like it to be--153, with the writing score of 4.0... I think that's mostly because I couldn't finish the sections in time. Well, I should have figured it out, but that's what it is now.

I really don't want the admissions committee to assume my English is not good enough to pursue a PhD degree, which might hurt my application, resulting in another disheartening rejection. I have a reason why I couldn't make a good GRE score though. Not to mention that I am a non-native English speaker, I needed to get a job first to maintain my visa status, otherwise I would have been deported. There were so many rules around the work authorization, like "your job should be directly related to your field of study," which made it even more difficult. Finding a job directly related to political science was just... hard. I graduated in May last year and found a job in September after doing approximately 100 interviews 

I really want to contact the professors with a video of me explaining these circumstances. Would it matter at all? I think it's worth a try, but I just want to ask the faculty here if they would even watch it... or at least read my email.

Thank you for reading my whiny jibber jabber. I am just so desperate for getting into a good program this year..