fuzzylogician

+1. Ask. Most schools won't care, but you don't want your app to be considered incomplete and thrown out because you didn't send this transcript.

Yeah, it's not a good start. You really don't want to be telling your potential professors what their field is all about. It doesn't say anything about you as an applicant either. There are two common ways to start an SOP: Some, more I think in the humanities than the sciences, start with a "hook" - a story, usually about how you first got interested in your field. The other way is to start with your current interests - a research question you're interested in, or maybe just the subfield, and an explanation of why. Personally I subscribe to the no fluff approach - get right to the point. If you want to do something different, you could start with the fit paragraph -- that's what adcomms are most interested in. Since you say you just started writing -- don't work on the intro yet. That's one of the last things you should write, after the rest of the essay is done. Try working on the body of the essay first - your preparation for grad school, your current/future interests, fit. Then you can start thinking about an intro and a finish.

Yes.

Generally, state universities tend to accept more US citizens than internationals because (a) state rules require them to, and (b ) it's cheaper. In some states (e.g. California), US citizens can become state citizens after living there for a year; they will therefore pay a considerably reduced fee, compared to internationals who will pay a higher fee throughout their studies. Other states don't count the time you're studying towards establishing residency in a state, so there it doesn't make a difference even if you're from the US, if you're from another state. In private schools everyone pays the same fees, so it costs the same to admit an international and an American. Many schools like the diversity, so they admit more internationals. One good way to know if schools you're interested in tend to admit many internationals is to simply check the "people" page on their website and look at the current grad students. That will pretty much reflect the school's policy for the last 5-6 years, and should therefore be a good indication of how things will look next year as well.

It sounds like a mistake.. but if it doesn't change back soon, contact the schools and ask about it. If there's a problem maybe you can have your writers email their LOR directly to the department. Common knowledge has it that LORs can be somewhat late without damaging the student's application. Anyway, didn't you get a notification when the letter was submitted? If you did, I'm sure it is all OK. Even if not, it sounds more like a problem with the website than anything else. ETA: it's also possible that the status changes when administrators start manually entering other parts of the app (transcripts, etc). But check to make sure.

It depends on the discipline. It's actually not that common in linguistics, solairne. It surely can't hurt you, though, and I agree that it's not too late until you get an admissions decision. So if you're worried about it, why not go ahead and make contact?

Even if there is no word limit, you don't want to write something so long that the committee won't want to read it. Try to keep it below 1,000 words or three pages, preferably two. For the 500 word SOPs, I think the best approach is to choose your most important experiences and elaborate on them, rather than give less details about everything in your 1000 word essays.

You only quoted half of my post but let me reply regarding all of it. I'm not sure what the point of your post is supposed to be. Of course people with more responsibilities have less time to devote to studies. BUT to go from there to having no time to study, well, I don't buy that. I studied for three months; the reason for that was that I knew in advance that I would have very little time to devote to studying, and so I stretched it over a longer period of time. I carried my flashcards with me everywhere and took them out whenever I had five free minutes - waiting for the bus to school or work, on the bus, between classes, during lunch, in line for whatever. You can easily get an hour of studying a day that way. It's about planning and putting in the extra effort, and it's harder, but it's far from impossible. Honestly, the time crunch only gets worse when you get to grad school, so if you can't manage your time before you'll have a big problem when you get there. Sorry if this offends you, I am sympathetic to hardships, but I believe in making it work with what you have. Really, if you don't have time to study for a test, how will you have the time to write the SOP or edit the writing sample? I found both tasks to be more time consuming than studying for the GRE or TOEFL. I also don't think it's mostly about the reading comprehension. For three of the four tasks (=everything except the reading), vocabulary is key. You won't get anywhere if you don't know the words, which honestly I think is most unfair to non-native speakers than to anyone else, if you want my opinion. For the reading part you obviously also need the words but there are some tricks that can ease the task. For the others, not so much. As for the math, well, too bad for you if you don't remember what you were taught in school. Get a book and study. It seems to me it should be much easier to improve a low quant score than a low verbal score. Not to mention that everybody says that humanities programs don't care about quant anyway.

I'm international; I probably didn't know 80-90% of the words on the GRE when I started studying, and I've been reading in English since I was 12 (apparently not the right books, haha). I simply made myself flashcards and spent 3 months memorizing them. I got a score in the 97th percentile. The math was high school level, so no need for a course there either. Why waste the money? I don't see why anyone with internet access should be disadvantaged, though I grant you that taking a course could make life easier. But it certainly doesn't entail that whoever can't afford a course can't do just as well or even better.

In my experience, the first notification of acceptance came in the form of an email or a phone call from someone in the department. After that you get the official acceptance letter, which includes the terms of your acceptance (=funding, TA responsibilities), and that can take some time to arrive in the mail, especially overseas.

Though they call it a personal statement, the prompt reads like the usual SOP. You can preface your SOP with some personal experience, if it's relevant, but I'd suggest devoting the bulk of the essay to the questions asked. Which means, concenrating on your research interests, your future plans and goals, and fit.

You seem to have a good practical approach to all this, which is very admirable! Since that's the case, I wonder about two things. First, re: advisors. I don't study anything remotely resembling vertebrate paleontology so maybe I'm just wrong here, but what is it you actually need in an advisor? Obviously someone with the same specialty and interests as yours is best, but what do you really need? Someone with the same knowledge? Methodologies? Relevant research projects? Maybe suitable advisors could come from slightly different subfields or methodologies, as long as they're open minded? Second, re: SOP. Have you submitted it already? For a very organized person, it doesn't make sense that you would submit something that's not truly representative of your abilities. There isn't much more to say except that if you haven't submitted yet, try rewriting it again. Have a friend look it over, go to the university's writing center, even post it here. You'll get important feedback. A large part of the process is selling yourself, as you say yourself. Don't just resign yourself to saying it's not a strong suit, work on improving it. I've also read and commented on several community member's SOPs who asked me to, though I'm not sure if I'd be able to help you, since I'm in a very different field. But seriously, give it all you've got, don't submit something that you say yourself doesn't do the best job representing you. Lastly, regarding the MA. In your place, I'd seriously consider doing a project with one of the current professors in your school. The project might not be the most interesting, but a degree is a degree. If you think one of them is a good advisor, personally I think that's more important than having an interesting topic (at the MA level). There's a thread right in this subforum about choosing an advisor over a thesis topic for a Masters. I think it's worth it, and you still have enough time. But, obviously, that's up to you, since it'd mean a serious workload increase. Adding about the DGS: You just need a person to sign your forms. They don't have to control any decisions to do that, do they?

Wow. I admire all of you guys for doing all this work during the break. I usually spent my breaks doing nothing. Even now I'm slacking off more than I should, then doing everything in the last minute (it seems that's a common predicament among linguists; a professor told me I was early when I submitted a paper only one week late before leaving for winter break!). I'm not usually like that, though, I think it's the snow and grayness getting to me, heh. My advice is -- use the break to read something non-school related! You won't have time to do that again for at least a year after you start grad school in the fall.

Sounds like you're in a tough situation. It's admirable that you're so understanding of your current school, I'd be pissed. Here's what I think about your situation, for what it's worth: First of all, this business of not having an advisor who can sign documents for you is beyond rude. If the school fired your advisor, it should make someone available to take his place, at least in this regard. Can't the DGS do that for you? The chair? It's ridiculous that you can't make needed changes to your curriculum for that reason! I'd contact someone about this right away, if I were you. It should be easy enough to fix. Secondly, it really sounds like you don't have any other choice but to leave the school and reapply. I suppose the school can force someone to take you on as advisee, but that can't be good for your relationship. If there's no one who can guide you on a project that's reasonably within your interests, you don't have anything to do at that school anymore. Is there a way you could at least get an MA from your current institution? You will have been there two years when you leave, and that's enough time and work to earn you some recognition. I assume you're applying right now and your SOP should be more or less finished. You should be able to talk about your past/current projects at your school, and say that you are leaving because your advisor left and there is no suitable advisor to take his place. That fully explains why you're back reapplying and doesn't reflect poorly on you. Consider saying this either in the SOP or in a supplementary letter, so schools don't look at you suspiciously. You could talk about how your interests no longer match your current institution and how you've decided to make the hard decision of starting over because your passion for your research is that great. I'm sure there's a way to spin the situation so it paints you in a favorable light. Re: credentials. You say you have good letters, so that's no problem. The drop is your grades doesn't seem large enough to raise red flags, so I wouldn't worry overmuch. Programs know that the first 1-2 years in the program are more about coursework than research, so you shouldn't be too worried about not having done too much research. Simply explain what you've been doing - courses, whatever projects you have worked on, etc. I'd apply to more than 6 places if I were you, to increase your chances in this year with its bad economy. Fit is crucial, so don't choose places that don't have advisors for you. If there's anything to learn from your experience, it's that one potential advisor at a school is not enough. Try finding departments that have at least 2, if not 3, potential advisors. Re: interviews. That's something you have to work on. If you're not confident that you can succeed, no one else will be. You could maybe post your SOP here or on LJ for feedback; consider going through resources for interviews on both communities (I just posted resources in a different thread today, you could look it up in Applications) - go over the questions you could be asked in an interview and script answers. Rehearse them until you're confident you know them well enough. Say them out loud - in front of friends, or even your cats. Maybe take a public speaking/leadership course, if they offer one at your institution. I know I benefited from one I took a few years back. Selling yourself is a skill you'll need in academia and outside it in the future--for grants, for getting hired later on, even just to be confident in front of a class as a TA, so it's worth it to invest the time in improving that skill. In the mean time, fake it til you make it. Everyone on this community has their doubts, but the application shouldn't reflect that! It should be as positive and confident as possible. Honestly, in your situation I don't know if I'd go to a school that didn't offer any funding, but I think that's looking too far into the future at this point. You should be concentrating on applying right now. After you receive offers, then you can worry about their conditions. Good luck!

First off, congrats on the interview! 1. I assume you know who your interviewer is going to be? If they are a potential advisor, it couldn't hurt to be informed about their work. For interviews after acceptance, I found it was a good way to gauge how passionate people were about their research. It's not expected of you, though, so you don't have to sit and read whole papers by every interviewer! Mostly you should concentrate on general questions about the program, which aren't obviously answered on the website. Actually, I've found that even when I asked questions that were answered on the website, I got more detailed and often more current information. So it's worth it to ask about the program curriculum reqs, funding, TA reqs, advising.. it's useful hearing it straight from the horse's mouth. Here are some resources to check out (and references therein): http://members.terra...ch/success.html http://community.liv...thread=35706541 2. You're overthinking things here, just go with the flow. Thank your interviewers for their time, say you enjoyed the conversation and that you are looking forward to hearing back from them soon. Good luck!

Yeah, MIT had their own annoying system and its "application status" page doesn't really tell you anything about the status of supporting materials, as far as I remember. At some point they sent an email saying my app was being considered which I took to mean it was complete, but the website never said that. It does sound like you have a bad URL, because the site did work--it just sucked. Maybe you could contact someone and ask about it, but I'm sure it doesn't mean you were rejected or deleted anything like that. It just sounds like a mistake.

Some of the schools I applied to never updated their websites with received materials. Others took *weeks* after the deadline to update my GRE score (and transcripts), even though I sent them out in July. Schools have their own ways of doing things, and sometimes it just takes time. I don't think there's anything you can do but wait.

We tried. We just broke up last week. But the stress it caused me since I left home and until I came back for winter break made it clear that I don't want to do long distance like that. It would have had to be 5 years with 5000 miles between us, and that's not how I want to live. It's hard, but I know I made the right decision not giving up grad school for a relationship. Hopefully next time the timing will be better.

Yep. Most grad students I know are in committed relationships. I've had eight addresses in three different continents over the last 27 months, but now that my next 4.5 years are pretty much planned and stationary, I don't see why I couldn't meet someone. Quite a few of the grad students I know met their partner during grad school.

+1 to both. I'd forgotten how annoying the phone field was. Seriously, international numbers don't look like American ones. Most of my apps wouldn't let me add the country code (I guess they could figure that out from the country field in the address?) and then I had to add zeros before my phone number to make it 10 digits so anyone who tried calling me like that wouldn't get through. And then you have to guess if they want spaces or brackets!

That is incredibly unfortunate! Isn't there a TA or a supervisor at work or anyone like that you could ask? Maybe you could even contact the current head of your undergrad department and get a letter from them based on your performance and the fact that the actual instructors retired and can't be found?

This. Get permission and have your writer email the letter directly to the department. Personally I had 3 Embark applications and none of my recommenders had any issues with the software. The only problem was that it behaved funky on Firefox, but it was fine on IE. Could that be it?

There's no way you could ask another professor for a letter? Even a "did well in class" letter? At this point anything that gets you past the required documents stage and into the deliberation stage would work. I'm sorry you have to go through this, your professor is a real jackass, but don't give up just yet!

It varies. I think in areas that have researchers with independent funding, professors may choose their favorites independently. Then they meet and make final decisions together. In fields where funding comes from the university, a committee meets and deliberates together. I guess some cases might be agreed upon easily, in other cases there would be a discussion. Who wins? Who knows. Could be the professor from the subfield that currently has less enrolled students, or the professor who is looking for new advisees, or the powerful professor, or the one who wins the coin toss. I doubt there's one answer that's true in every case.

Forward the last email you sent so it includes the original date you sent it and any attachments it had, and write a short relaxed reminder. Don't be too stressed, LORs are often submitted very close to the deadline or even some time after it; adcoms know it's not the applicant's fault. Try something like: Hello Professor X, Happy New Year! I hope you enjoyed the holidays. I just wanted to remind you that my first letter is due next Friday, on January 15. I have attached xxxxx. Please let me know if you have any questions, or need any additional information from me to help you write the letter. Thank you, again, for all your help! It means so much to me. Thanks, me.