fuzzylogician

No, it's not impossible. But it is going to be harder than usual. There is nothing much you can do if some institution or other refuses to even look at your application because of your GPA, and as you say, that may happen on occasion. All that means, though, is that you'll have to apply to more diverse programs and to a larger number of them than a conventional applicant in order to get your foot in the door. If you're serious, you'll eventually get your break. The best way to get into a summer research program is to make connections with your professors during the school year and impressing them into hiring you, lower grades in your previous degree or no lower grades. You'll want to make those connections anyway in order to get the strong recommendations you'll need to get into tier1 universities. You can't change your past, but you can change your future--and that's what you should be worrying about. If you have a clear game plan - get good grades, do some research, get to know the professors - you should be able to overcome your low GPA. Your application will show your dedication to your topic, and you'll have the higher grades and the research experience to back it up. As for applying after only 1.5 years at your new institution, my suggestion would be to see what happens when the time comes. If all goes according to plan you would have already made a good impression on faculty and have had some research experience. Apply and see what happens.. worst case scenario, you'll have to apply again after you graduate. For now, I think you should concentrate on getting your credentials in order, and not worry about things that are out of your control.

Some places have rules against professors accepting gifts from students, especially before they have submitted all their grades. If you're not depending on your writers for grades, then there shouldn't be any official trouble with your giving them a gift. Regardless, though, I personally think the best thing to give is a thoughtful hand-written card. I know a lot of professors who keep those cards for years. Same goes for a class you enjoyed - it's heart warming to get a thank you email from a student. I don't think anything more than than is ever required, or even expected. Of course, to some extent it depends on the kind of relationship you have with the professor, but again, I always opt for a card and it's never failed me so far.

If all your credentials are good then I can think of one of three main reasons: - Luck: you applied to a very small number of schools; maybe you would have made it another year but this year money was tight. Or maybe you made it to the final list but then didn't get chosen for a random reason...these things happen. - SOP: I understand your lit professor says its a "kick butt essay," but is that really the right person to ask? Did you consult with people in the field you're applying to in order to make sure you're communicating effectively--getting across everything adcoms in your field want to hear, using the right lingo, talking the way they except about you post-graduation goals? Applying to professional programs is very different than applying to a MA/PhD in a research-oriented field, so you might not have been getting good advice if you were relying on a research professor in another field as your mentor. This point extends to your CV and any other essay you had to write for admissions--look at them again critically and ask yourself whether or not they effectively got across who you are as a person, what your goals are, what your strengths are, why you chose to apply to the schools you did, etc. - Age/experience: I'm no expert but I wouldn't be surprised if professional programs like the MSW prefer to admit people with a little more life experience than just highschool-->college-->grad school. Maybe your volunteer experience just wasn't enough, or wasn't what they were looking for. Sometimes younger applicants can be very naive about what they will get out of their education and how the world looks outside of school. You could spend this year getting a bit more "real life" experience and correcting this problem (if you have it). Good luck!

There are several threads about this topic in Officially Grads that you might want to read. In general, here are some tips: - Current students will be able to recommend areas you should concentrate on and areas you should avoid; they can tell you what price range to expect and how long a commute you can expect to your school. Ask them! - If you can find a roommate through your department, you have good chances of doing OK. Maybe a current student is looking for a roommate or has a friend who is looking? Maybe another prospective is able to look for an apartment in person and is looking for a roommate? Ask! (departments usually have a grad students mailing list which you could use, find out what it is) - Find out if it's really that bad to wait until August to find a place. In many places it's entirely possible to find a good apartment within several weeks in the summer, though I understand that it's very stressful. - Get a letter of endorsement from your department (in case you will receive a stipend). Show it to potential landlords and to realtors. Landlords will know that grad students with a steady income are usually good tenants. - Find out if your university has its own housing website; most large universities have one which is only open to students and will help you avoid scams. - Spend some time learning the do's and don't's of renting. If this is the first time you'll rent, you'll want to avoid as many mistakes as possible. For example, consider getting in touch with a current grad to have them go look at apartments you are considering renting. Renting sight unseen is usually a bad idea. Good luck! ETA: what I did last year was email my department's graduate student mailing list to get some recommendations about locations and ask if anyone knew of an empty room. I was in touch with a couple of people who were looking for roommates and I ended up deciding to live with a student who was then a 1st year and was looking for a roommate for an apartment she was going to rent. We exchanged a few emails, talked on skype, and decided that we have similar preferences and would make good roommates. I took the room sight unseen (not a good idea in hindsight, but I was lucky and it turned out OK). I got a letter of endorsement from my department and was approved by the landlord without any trouble.

+1. Except in unusual cases I believe the SOP should always concentrate on the positive and not dwell on the negative. In your case I don't think there is any reason to mention the bad grades at all, but if you do want to address them say 'I had a rough time adjusting but ever since my sophomore year I've consistently made the dean's list' and move on. Personally I think spending even one line on this is too much in this case (there is a clear upward trend in your grades, the low grades aren't in your major).

For what it's worth my cohort didn't even do the introductory-email-thing before we all arrived in town in late August. No FB contact, no meetings in the summer--the first time I got to know my classmates was during orientation, a week before classes started. Everyone turned out to be really great, friendly people(!!). It turns out everyone was busy doing their own thing--wrapping up their lives elsewhere and getting ready to move--and didn't want to create an awkward situation where we would have to keep an artificial email conversation between 8 people alive for 3.5 months before we could actually met each other. I think that's a fair consideration, and I'm sure it would have become awkward once we got past the first "Hi! my name is Name and I work on Topic" round of emails. So, the moral of the story is: don't get disappointed just yet, your classmates may turn out to be nice people after all.

Honestly you shouldn't be worrying about picking schools right now, or even about picking fields. You have 3 more years of college ahead of you and though I know it's annoying to hear this said again and again, your interests are likely to change during that time. From surfing the forums here I can tell you that it's that not uncommon for people to change their specialty between applying to schools and hearing back (in 1-2 months, after spending a considerable amount of time thinking about grad school and researching the schools they applied to). At the very least you don't need to worry about the specifics before you're in your junior year. In the meantime, if you want to be proactive--and it seems you do--concentrate on keeping your grades up; since you know what interests you more-or-less, make informed course choices and try and expose yourself to as many of your potential interests as possible. Make connections with faculty so you'll be able to obtain strong letters of recommendations. Even if you end up getting a letter from a professor who is not exactly in your field--though your interests are related, so it's not like you'll get a letter from a chemistry faculty for a lit phd--what's by far more important is that it's a strong letter that can speak to your abilities as a student and a researcher. Some time in your junior or senior year you can think about taking an advanced seminar and spending considerable time writing a strong paper that could serve as a writing sample with minimal revisions. But seriously, for now all you need to do is find out what you enjoy the most.

Contact the schools and ask. Some universities will indeed insist that you submit an official transcript for every course you ever took at an academic level. However, many others will tell you they don't care about the odd course you took at a community college you took when you were 16, or that if those courses are listed on your BA transcript then that's enough. Also, if you took a class in a foreign country not for credit, how will a school ever find out? Do what you can to obtain everything the school requires, but I personally wouldn't let such an issue stop me from applying to that school.

I know it's usually considered a no-no but staring at a now-unnecessary 60K debt for your degree, I think you owe it to yourself to try and make this opportunity work. I think the first thing to do is tell school B you're interested but have already accepted another offer, so you need some time to try and figure things out before you can notify them whether or not you accept their offer. The next step is to contact school A, tell them that you just received a funded offer from another school and try and use it as leverage to either receive a funded offer from school A or to have school A release you of your obligations so you can attend school B. I think that financial considerations are something people will understand and not hold against you - you made the best choice you could based on the offers you had on April 15, but you now have a chance to not go into substantial debt. If you stress that you would still very much like to attend school A, but cannot afford to just pass up an opportunity like the one school B is currently offering you, that shouldn't upset anyone.

If any of those lecturers don't have a PhD, don't ask them for a letter. As a rule, you want the person who endorses your application to be someone who has successfully completed the (same kind of) program that you are applying to, not someone who doesn't really have the experience to say who will or will not be a successful candidate. Other than this, if you think that B will remember you--and write you a strong letter--then pick her. Option C also sounds like a reasonably good one; was the course you took with her an advanced course? did you write any papers? if you only took one intro class with her that is obviously different than one advanced seminar. If you think you can get a strong letter from your online instructor, then that's your third letter. I'd think about asking the famous prof for a 4th letter, which at least some schools will accept and which will set you up with a nice backup in case one of your original 3 writers flakes out. That happens more often than you would like to think, so it's always good to have more options. Warning: if all you're getting is the basic "did well in class" letter that has nothing inspiring to say about you then it's OK as a supporting 4th letter, but you shouldn't use it as one of your main 3 letters. The situation improves if you wrote a good paper for that course that you could show the professor to remind him of your work. In any case, you should meet with this professor in person so that he get can to know you; bring with you a CV and samples of your work so you can show him in case he is interested, and be ready to have an informed conversation with him about your research interests and your goals. This is true for everyone who you ask for a letter - make it as easy for them as possible to write you a good letter. A letter from your employer is indeed irrelevant to your field; that should be your last option.

I don't know if this is helpful but I can answer this from my own very narrow perspective. I am studying a field that is less than 60 years old. My specific subfield is maybe (just maybe) 30 years old, and part of its new and most exciting directions have been around for less than 5-10 years in some cases. My program is based on concepts which have trained some very successful linguists in the past, but has not been revised to take into account the accumulation of new information that is rapidly entering the field. We are thus basically required to "know" much more about our field than our professors did when they went to grad school, but we don't get more time to do it in. Breadth requirements are extensive, while at the same time one needs much more specialization to make a significant contribution to the field than one did 15-20-30 years ago. There does seem to be a disconnect between the students and faculty when it comes to what should be reasonably expected of a graduate student to achieve while in the program, for obvious reasons it's more pronounced with faculty who are nearing retirement than with newer faculty. I should mention that the situation I've just described is true not only for my school but more or less for every leading linguistics program in the US. So that, for us, is one major concern. I can imagine that some version of it is true in fields that rely on technology that might not have existed in the past as well. Aside from this, to give more conventional answers to your other questions - my program is very strong in one-on-one interactions and feedback. Courses are a good place to gain general knowledge, and are required for obvious reasons. Where I pursue projects that will hopefully get me published and help secure me a job, however, is outside of the classroom; I rely heavily on individual meetings with faculty, as well as on discussions with my incredibly smart cohort. I think I have available to me all the resources I need in order to succeed, both in terms of available knowledge and guidance and in terms of funding to go out and obtain data, present, attend conferences, etc. As for technology, on the one hand certain aspects of it are certainly conducive to research - tools for the analysis of phonetic features, statistical analysis, eye movement/reading time/brain scanning technology for experiments, presentation tools. Generally, though, linguistics is sort of a backwards field that likes to rely on handouts and blackboards more so than presentations and high-tech gizmos. Certainly, the possibility of taking my laptop and writing anywhere I want, and having accessibility to almost all the resources I need online via remote access is different than the experience my professors had when they went to school. I do think, though, that aside from the convenience of modern technology, our experiences are not that different in the end. In a way that's really a question for faculty who wrote their theses on typing machines.

Just like the school told you, I think a wait-list really means "here are some great people we want to accept, but unfortunately we don't have the funds to admit them right now." So on the one hand it definitely means the school wants you, which is very being from being flat out rejected. On the other hand I guess the question is what makes a school decide who goes on the wait list and who gets the admissions offer. I suspect, as you say, that many outside factors creep into the equation, not the least of which being luck. Other possible factors could be place with a specific advisor or subfield, a personal connection someone made with a professor, a more persuasive SOP, an unrelated outside factor you happened to mention somewhere on your application (=in my field, for example, you speak a language that a faculty member is interested in; you have an unusual background that some faculty is interested in using for some experiment/theory; you happen to work on a topic that someone is considering going into; you are a pastry chef; etc). For all these crazy reasons, I think that one important aspect of a good SOP is being focused and thoughtful about a specific topic/subfield but at the same time leaving as many options possible - for changing interests within the subfield, for working with different advisors, for thinking about different methodologies. The more attractive you look to more people, the higher your chances of being admitted. You could--and should--follow up with the schools, but my feeling is a lot of times it'll be impossible for them to give you a principled reason for the decision, in the end it's a crap shoot.

Two things come to mind. One is that physical proximity can be helpful if you are the sort of person who can make personal connections easily, or if you can get summer internships. This is especially important if you already know what part of the country you want to get a job in after you graduate; it's probably easier to find a job if you're already in the area and make an effort to get to know potential employers. Another thought is that some schools have active alumni networks, and belonging to one can in some cases help you get a job even if you studied in a different part of the country. Aside from these points, I suppose the answer is probably "it depends" - on field, on location, on particular firms - so who knows.

In general your advisor will be the first person to talk to about course selection. Another good source of information in every department is peers from more advanced years, but the catch here is that to some extent you have to know who and what to ask. Yet another potential source of information is the DGS, who should know what other students with related interests have done in previous years. If you make unconventional decisions you might need to have your curriculum approved by more than just your advisor, but going to your advisor is certainly a good place to start and you should not feel at all stupid to bring it up.

My load speeds have definitely improved quite a bit, and I'm always logged in (and using FF, if that makes a difference). Thanks, bgk!

Picking up on what everyone above me has said, writing the SOP is really a revise and repeat sort of task. Don't feel like you need to start with the introduction; I think the first sentence of my SOP is probably the last one I wrote, right after I decided how to conclude my essay. Those parts are very hard to write, but you should first concentrate on the contentful parts of the essay. Your essay should tell the reader who you are in terms of your interests and (to some extent) past training, and should have a clear emphasis on the present and future - what do you currently find most fascinating about your field? What aspects of those interests would you like to continue on pursuing in graduate school? How will the program you're applying to help you achieve your goals? I found that in writing the "fit" paragraph(s) I was forced to reevaluate my choices of schools. Reading the websites more carefully, in some cases I found I was having a hard time coming up with convincing reasons for applying--which was a clear indication that I should not apply to those schools. Other schools had very exciting programs and I had an easier time writing for them. Before actually sitting down and writing, I found it useful to have a spreadsheet with all the strengths of each program listed in a way that made comparisons easy: how many POIs teach at a given school, what kind of work were they doing and how would it support my own work, what other resources were available, what collaborations/certificates/whatnot were possible. I later used that file both to reassess my school choices and as the basis for my fit paragraphs. If you're stuck with your writing, perhaps it would be useful to take a step back, do some research on the schools and regroup, which should help you write a more informed essay later on. I should add that the process of reading up on schools also provides an important opportunity to rethink one's own goals and interests. When you read up on potential advisors and research programs you get an insight of sorts into how your life will look during your time in graduate school and beyond. You'll find that certain topics and methods are more appealing to you than others--even at the basic level of reading about them on a website. Embrace those intuitions and spend some time thinking about what they mean. It's very hard to introspect and define that thing which makes you tick. The more time you spend revising your SOP, the closer to that notion you get. There's really no way around that process, with all the hard work and time that it entails. But in the end, on the other side of writing the SOP, you'll have, in a way, a better understanding of yourself as a researcher which you will find useful when it's time to choose which program to attend.

If the department says you're still wait-listed, then you're still wait-listed. Sounds like the university has some regulation forcing departments to make a definitive decision by some date (April 15?); for some reason the system doesn't allow the department to choose "wait-listed" as a decision, and they can't accept you yet, so they had to choose "rejected." If that was their only option and they made it clear to you that it's not a real status, I wouldn't take this as a fishy move on the part of the department, it simply sounds like a complication of university bureaucracy.

I'd suggest coming ready to talk about your research, which is really the whole point of the interview. In your place, I wouldn't bring up having AS unless it somehow became relevant and I felt comfortable doing so. You must have experience in telling people, so you should know when the time is right and if the person you're talking to seems open. Personally I wouldn't want to work with someone who didn't accept me for who I was, but I also know it sucks to be rejected for reasons that are both irrelevant and out of your control. Anyway, I think it's unlikely that the professor will bring up your AS directly, rather--much like in any other interview of this sort--he'll be looking to see if there is potential for a mutually beneficial working relationship between the two of you. I think most people think of social inadequacy then they think about AS and if that's the case, then there's no need to flat out ask you about that, that's something one can observe quite easily. Now, a lot of academics are socially awkward, AS or otherwise, and you seem to have developed good connections with your current advisors -- so I really think you shouldn't be worrying about this at all.

Well... speaking of misinterpreting someone else's post. I apologize if you thought my comment was somehow attacking you, Lantern. It wasn't. It was simply meant to give you (and the other readers of this thread) a bit of the perspective from the other side. Given your new post, I still don't think your situation is all that unbelievable, but good for you for not going to a school that's so not on top of its game that it accepted you after you clearly stated no interest in the project they offered you and without a clear project+funding decision well after the magic April 15 deadline.. If it wasn't clear to you that they'd accepted you after you said you weren't interested, then something is clearly wrong on their part.

In general it is possible to be rejected by lower ranked schools and accepted to higher ranked ones. It's all about fit. And to some extent the luck of the draw. Don't worry about this too much. In your specific case, I'd suggest you contact whoever sent you the unofficial acceptance email and check with them what's going on. Usually the department will make its recommendations to the graduate school, and it's then the graduate school's responsibility to make sure that all the applicants meet the university-wide acceptance requirements (including GPA) and to send out the official acceptance letters. This process can take some time, and in the vast majority of the cases the graduate school approves everyone that the department recommended (probably in large part because departments don't recommend students who don't meet the basic requirements). However, if for some reason someone doesn't get approved by the graduate school but had already gotten an unofficial email from the department, that would probably count as a case of what you called "a false acceptance letter," and those cases do unfortunately exist. They are extremely rare so you shouldn't be losing sleep over this possibility, but as I suggested, it might ease your mind to write the department again and inquire as to your status. Good luck!

Honestly, I find it a bit difficult to understand the outrage in your post when I keep in mind that you had already accepted another offer a month before this email exchange ever took place. Your not informing this department of your status quite possibly made funding decisions harder on the adcom and as a consequence on other waiting applicants. Money has been tight the last two years and funding decisions sometimes rely on outside factors like state funding, university-wide allocations and the like, so they have tended to be decided later than in previous years. Now, it's possible that your department is simply full of lazy people who couldn't decide on time what the funding+projects were going to be (and aren't you glad you didn't end up deciding to go there?), but it's also possible that the delay is not (wholly or partially) their fault.

To add to what socialpsych wrote, it's probably a good idea to cut back on the extracurricular activities and extra jobs before you start the first year of grad school. Sometimes it's a big adjustment (and sometimes not so much, as I'd suspect will true in your case after reading your post). Have as much free time as you need to get on top of your coursework and research, and start adding back the extra activities after the first semester, or even the first year, is over. That way you'll know what the requirements on your time are going to be and how much you can invest in other things. For your well-being, however, I would suggest keeping at least one of your hobbies or extracurricular activities. It's vitally important to have something going on in one's life besides research.

We could give you general rental advice, but you'll get the most accurate advice for the area you'll be moving to from the current students in your department. Try writing them and asking how long it usually takes to find a decent place and where they would recommend looking - both location and website-wise. Ask how fast apartments usually go off the market and when is the best time to look; if they recommend you come look for an apartment in advance, then do that. Otherwise in many places it's entirely possible to find an apartment within a few weeks before the start of the semester. FWIW, I rented my apartment sight-unseen. My roommate was then a first-year in the department and she did all the looking; she used a realtor and it took her about a month to find a suitable place. I don't have a US credit history (which I suspect made the approval process take longer than they otherwise would have, even though I had a letter of endorsement from my department stating how high my stipend would be); from the time I filled in the application to the time I faxed the landlord the signed lease about two months had passed, which the realtor said was due to bureaucracies, not any particular problem with my application. They did have a lot of time--I filled in the application in mid-May for a September 1st lease.

I understand the feeling but I don't think it's warranted. I know that there are several students in my cohort who were admitted off the waitlist, but: a. I don't even know who they are (nor do I care), and b. I'd never be able to guess based on the way the faculty treat us all. As others have said, admissions is not an exact science and people on the waitlist are no less qualified than admitted applicants. Don't worry about your admissions status, you'll all start on a level playing field when the year starts and no one is going to care who was admitted when. What will matter is how well you do once the program starts.

Another possibly useful activity to pass the time: get on googlemaps and get to know the area your university (and apartment, if you have a neighborhood in mind) will be in. Find out what buses and trains stop near your university and where they will take you.