einalemjs

Rejected from my dream school (UPenn). That's nearly a wrap on this season, except for a post-bacc program at Columbia I'm waiting on. I only applied to 4 actual MS degree programs, and I have only gotten into one of them (my safety school PSU). Honestly, I don't really care. We're in a pandemic. Silver linings: My emotionality of this is very, very much filtered through the global crisis. But I know that somewhere, I am disappointed--in myself and in this situation. And I'm not really sure what I should do next--go to my safety, which is ranked abysmally, and apply to dreamy schools for a PhD, aggressively doing my best to publish, hoping my GRE skyrockets after the prereqs I want? Should I just go through the cycle again, applying to programs that make more sense? These aren't rhetorical questions, I would love answers here. I want the chance in this lifetime to go to a school where I feel surrounded by a structured and challenging intellectual environment that goes beyond anything I know, and I don't think I've had this chance in life yet. I want this someday, still. And I want to remind everyone here that academia is a flawed system. It feels like a cop-out critique since I'm doing it after a rejection, but I've been doing my best to remind myself of this in these weeks leading up to this decision, because I knew I wanted this so damn badly. Much of this process has to do with pure luck, and does not measure your potential, the capacity to which you can be as good as you might have felt if you'd gotten in. It's also kind of horseshit that we can't meet demand for people who want to educate themselves at the highest level possible. Everyone should have the opportunity in life to be as challenged as they want to be. Hopefully someday the process of making that happen is not as demoralizing. Wishing everyone calm and forgiveness.

No, it was delivered fresh into my mailbox without me having to ask.

#rejected from Johns Hopkins and Boston University. Feels bad man. More so the second one--that was a target for me. #God'splan

Hm. I've thought about it, and unless someone can change my mind, I won't be one to change that pattern, even with you telling it to me. Not because I don't want to--I've just decided to take what I find meaningful from thinking about this and having written the more personal "personal" statement and submit my more straightforward essay. Even though I have much to say about this and find it rather unfortunate, I'm not willing to take the risk. I will however be using the personal personal statement as a part of a separate scholarship application, so I most certainly will come back on here and write about the outcome there.

Hi guys, The last question I have before I send out all of my applications with a big kiss is how strong discussing personal struggles are in personal statements. I just found this article: https://psychology.unl.edu/psichi/Graduate_School_Application_Kisses_of_Death.pdf which is specifically for psychology graduate programs, but gives a good overview of things you can do to put off app committees. The relevant bits to my question are here (both from page 7): "Personal mental health. The discussion of a personal mental health problem is likely to decrease an applicant’s chances of acceptance into a program. Examples of this particular KOD in a personal statement included comments such as “showing evidence of untreated mental illness,” “emotional instability,” and seeking graduate training “to better understand one’s own problems or problems in one’s family.” More specifically, one respondent stated that a KOD may occur “when students highlight how they were drawn to graduate study because of significant personal problems or trauma. Graduate school is an academic/career path, not a personal treatment or intervention for problems.” "Excessive self-disclosure. Promiscuous self-disclosure characterized another KOD in personal statements. An example of such disclosure was “a long saga about how the student had finished [school] over incredible odds. Much better to have a reference allude to this.” However, one committee chair noted that graduate admissions committees do not always view this type of information negatively if an applicant has written it in a professional manner that is appropriate for the context of a formal application." The difficulty for me is that my personal struggle is very personal, although definitely qualifies as an external struggle. It is very powerful stuff. Reading this article kind of scared the shit out of me for even thinking of sending it. But let's keep in mind it was written in 2006, and mental health has seen a nearly unimaginable upswing in perception change since then. But I do have another version of my personal statement that doesn't talk about it at all, and I'm leaning pretty heavily toward sending this one to be safe. In sum, my question: based on what you know, what you've experienced, is it good to write about struggle (for graduate program admission SPECIFICALLY. I can't believe I'm even asking this question...)? In any case, I've taken some useful advice from the above article. When discussing my future academic goals, I should talk engagingly but professionally about my background and what inspired me and what kind of experience I have, and then mostly about what kind of research that I want to do.

Hi guys, I did reach out to admin and I received a response, this is the meat of it: "On 13 December 2019, approximately halfway through the validation process, all emails to the applicants stopped, as there was no further action that could be taken by applicants.The validation process is complete, and all validated applications have been forwarded to the panel. You won't see any additional status updates beyond 'Submitted' on the application until the selection is made in April 2020, at which time all applicants will receive a notification of their selection status.If additional materials are required for your application, we will contact you directly to request them. Please note that the panelists will not contact you for any reason." It calmed my nerves quite a bit. It basically sounds like there was a technical limitation after December 13th of some kind that meant applicants could no longer access the application portal. I was nervous that I wouldn't be able to rectify any unintended application discrepancies because I didn't receive that second email, but the last line: "If additional materials are required for your application, we will contact you directly to request them." Best of luck to all of you, and Happy New Year!

Did you receive an initial email when you submitted, and then this email on top of that? I only received one email. I'm worried now that my app wasn't sent thru the eval process, but on the website portal it reads "under evaluation." I'm going to email admin after the holiday.

I agree with you generally. Like, I would be a lot more comfortable right now if I had scored a 160, and that was my goal, but I hit a bit of a wall with studying, and now deadlines are upon me and I can't take the test again. I will mention that my score in quant went up from a 153 to a 158 in just a month, which could help me. I also have an A in my relevant math course. I guess my best bet now is just to pour it all into my personal statement. Undergrad for me was difficult because I wasn't embracing where I was and what I wanted to do. Engineering for me is how I've overcome that. Studying for the GRE SUCKED but it felt right in every sense of the word for me to be out here pushing to change my career. Last edit: Oh my composite score is also a bit higher overall, 166V and 158Q. So, I like to think that my test results show, overall, I'm critically-minded (Verbal DOES matter, in general), that I will work hard, diligently and quickly, to make up any initial discrepancies in my grades, and that once I get going I will be able to see success. I think it's ridiculous how one score can be used to evaluate students, and some Universities do know this.The literature is not even 100% on this test predicting success. Some top programs are even starting to do away with the test, but I expect engineering will be one of the last to do that simply because it's so competitive. A quote from a study that explores the GRE's limited predictive success for doing well in grad school, commenting on the effect of grad school on underrep'd minorities: "Although underrepresented minorities had lower first semester grades, GPAs, and lower odds of graduating with a Ph.D., with academic and social supports, undergraduate science and engineering programs have been shown to improve minority graduation rates [29,30], a finding supported by preliminary data on our own graduate population. " (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5226333/)

The recommender came through, amazingly. My proposal writing was really interesting, I got the chance to go back to the literature after being away from it from some time, and the position I'm applying from meant that I got to be a bit creative with it. It was about cognitive modeling. I think that the RP might be more important that the PS on this one, because of application advisors specifically discussing relevant research interests in the review process! I'm sure it was fine.

Hi all, Do you guys think that any systems engineering MS program will admit me with these scores, even though they are the opposite of what is usually competitive in terms of sections? I have some research experience in my field but no publications. 3.56 GPA. I'm also a returning student that has great essays about what it's like to be a minority in STEM. Thanks!

At least yours is over. I have a recommender who still hasn't submitted, and it's partially my fault for not sending the request early enough. I'm going to be woke about this until midnight tonight. I have her cell phone number, and I just texted her pretty much begging to send it. Grad school apps are so dignifying. This week I'll be sending out every single possible recommender request I can for all of my other apps. Best of luck to all of you and good work if you've finished it!!

I believe we are restricted to those BAAs; I think I remember reading something that the criteria is specifically for those BAAs. But perhaps the administrators would be able to answer that better by directing you to someone who would know better--I emailed them about what discipline I should be applying under because it wasn't directly listed and they replied pretty readily ( ndseg.pmo@sysplus.com).

I think you could put previous research experience in the "Other Info" tab under "Relevant Experience." Just include your title as URA/RA/etc.

Does anybody want to chime in about going over the word limit for the personal essay? I simply have a lot to say. I'm about 100 words over right now and everything seems too important, either for literally answering the questions in the prompt or for providing important narrative structure. Like is that an automatic rejection? Or should I just leave it at ~600 words? Also, solidarity to all of you for the research proposal. I'm writing a systems/civil engineering proposal and a part of me straight balked at those military docus.

Hi, first of all, really glad I found this website. Hello all. Graduation year: 2017 Undergraduate major: BA in Experimental Psychology GPA: 3.6/4 Extracurriculars: Vice President of an e-board, membership of various other clubs Relevant courses: A in Statistics, Calculus I credit from high school, currently self-studying a college-level Linear Algebra course Research experience: 2 years as an URA doing cognitive and dev. psych. research, gained statistical analysis skills in SPSS Work experience: Non-technical, but have plans to start programming projects this month My question is, would I have any fleeting chance at getting into a technical Master's program with this rap sheet? I do think my story is rather inspiring--I'm a female that's decided to reorient my career toward engineering because of how inspiring I find it--but I'm not blinded by my own idealism. I'm studying hard, but my GRE quant is not a 170. I know there is a slim chance of admittance, here. I've been graduated for two years, so I'm sort of stressed about the timing of it all, but I know this is not more important than getting the requisite education to study what I'm most passionate about. I knew this was going to be a lot of school when I made this decision, and I'm not about to back out just because it's difficult. So, what say you, internet friend? Should I stop thinking for 20-21 matriculation into a Master's program until I have maxed out my GRE quant as far as it can go, and completed things like technical work experience (I found some programs willing to work with someone with no background, remarkably) and/or a postbac in math/physics? I know that realistically, I'm very young, and even if I finish a PhD after 30 it's not that big of a deal. I don't even know that I want to do a PhD, but it is a good option--and a part of me also is really, really freaked out by that number. (PS: There's actually a Master's program at Boston University for non-engineering majors to get an MS in engineering. It's just very, very expensive [I should do more research about possible funding for this] and for some reason I think it's too good to be true, even though I think it's actually my most time-sensitive option. Tell me to do this one.)