emmm

It is worrisome if your only academic reference is lukewarm at best. And by colleagues, I hope you mean supervisors.

Yeah, the new system evens things out. Pretty low V scores used to have great percentiles, with the opposite seen for Q.

The program accepted you -- presumably they know how old you are. They think you can do it. It's not easy going back to school full time, and I don't have the same stamina I used to have, but I'm keeping up and (mostly) enjoying it. However, I'm sad to report that exams have not gotten any easier. If anything I stress out about them more than ever.

Don't say anything about it in your SOP. Save the space to present yourself as positively as possible. As long as you met the requirements for your program, it should be good enough.

I'm not as old as you are, but I am the oldest in my program. No one's made me feel that it is an issue in any way at all.

Maybe people didn't pay as much attention to the percentiles with the old scores, and figured 5XX = average, 6XX = pretty good, 7XX = great. With the new scale, the numbers don't mean anything to anyone, so we have to look at the percentiles. And it's often a bit disappointing to people who were used to the old scoring system.

Virion, Sorry . . . here's hoping you get better news soon. The rejections are tough :-(

I'd think a crummy recommendation from a well-known prof would hurt even more than one from an unknown prof. WHY would you ever want this kind of recommendation?

But it might be good enough -- see if any of the schools you are interested in , or others at a similar level of selectivity, publish their average GRE scores. I think Duke and UW have this info available online.

At this point, he may or may not send the letters -- he has given you no reason to think his word is reliable. You need to find a backup writer asap. If he does end up sending the letters, fine; you'll have more than you need. Better than being one short. Find someone you think would be willing to do you a BIG favor, and go see him/her. At this point, it doesn't matter if this person is in the right field, a part-timer, whatever -- just that he/she will write and send out the letters.

That seems sort of sad.

In my experience, it is professor dependent, and what's printed in the syllabus is generally what stands. I did once have a professor change a class from C-centered to B-centered because our scores were apparently higher than usual overall.

I just started a grad program with an average time for completion of just over 6 years. This doesn't bother me, though, because being here is much more interesting than what I was doing before. And even though I am the oldest student in my program (over 30 grad students total), I don't feel out of place. It has been an adjustment being back in school fulltime, and it can definitely be stressful, but I'm very glad to be here.

I wouldn't contact them again -- first year is tough. They might be too busy/dealing with their own issues to respond.After you get an admissions offer, you might be contacted by a student who has volunteered to answer questions. I'd wait until then.

That is pretty bad -- my LOR writers and I all were submitting right at the deadline, Good thing I'd been able to send them all the info months ahead of time and either meet with them personally or discuss via email.

It seems odd that with your GPA and GRE scores you were not able to gain more research experience. It may be sending up warning signals to the programs you've applied to -- perhaps indicating a lack of interest? It seems as though you need to get some research experience now, perhaps by working as a tech in a lab? I have friends who have done this on a volunteer basis -- sometimes they are even able to transition to paying positions after volunteering for a while. It's generally not easy to get a foot in the door without experience, however. The only person I know who had an easy time of gaining a lab position without prior experience was switching from CS to genetics, His programming skills were in high demand. Still, other friends were persistent and managed to find lab jobs, though it took them much more time and a lot more rejection first. You haven't given much info to use in evaluating your chances. Unless your profile has changed, if you continue applying to schools at the same level, you're likely to get similar results. DId you only apply to PhD programs? A master's program might be more forgiving of deficiencies and give you a way to get the research experience you're lacking.

Do they specifically say you have to be a minority? The way it's worded, it sounds like it's not restricted in that way.

Ha,ha -- wait 'til you're my age!

I don't think it's a big enough deal to worry about. I'm sure they are used to letters where the writers have some details that are not quite right -- they could be writing letters for lots of students -- it's hard to keep us all straight, after all. Also, you waive your rights to see the letters (right?), so you shouldn't really even know what's in them. They have your records. They can figure things out. I think the only time you'd get in trouble is if something you were telling them directly was incorrect, especially if you are trying to give yourself credentials you don't have or hide something that reflects poorly on you.

I think people used to say 750+ for computer science -- so now try to be 90th percentile or above? Whatever that equates to -- 163? Higher?

Saying you did it by accident, thanking him for pointing it out, fixing it so that he's back in the system, and apologizing seems sufficient. Mishaps are not all that unusual.

You probably already know this, but I'd be worried about institutional cutoffs with those scores. I agree the GRE was not a fun experience, but compared to other things I've done in my lifetime, it really wasn't that traumatic. You sit in an ugly room in an ugly building for 3-4 hours and then you leave. Nothing much changes. In the grand scheme of things, it's pretty much a non-event. I'd suggest retaking.

If you submit something, you may be considered for fellowships/scholarships that you might qualify for. If you don't submit it, you definitely won't be considered. What exactly is the question, again?

I actually did communicate with my letter writers several times. I thanked them shortly after the applications were all in -- precisely for writing the letters. It is not a trivial task. In fact, I think it's probably a pain in the neck, and I was grateful I had professors willing to go through the trouble for me. I also wanted them to know that I appreciated their support, advice, and encouragement no matter what the outcome of my applications was. Then, when I had good news to report, of course I let them know! I doubt any of them minded being thanked more than once :- ) I also let my recommenders know when I had not-so-good news, but I was actually pretty close to all my LOR writers, so it felt natural to keep them updated. IF I'd had more formal relationships with them, I probably would have only sent notes in January and updates (probably just by email) around March/April.

Regarding the CC comp sci classes available to you -- I agree with the recommendation re: C++ and Java, but don't discount C#. If that is the best option available to you, it is not that hard to apply the concepts learned in one language to the others, especially for the intro level classes.