fuzzylogician

It seems unlikely that you'll hear before the holidays. But regardless, are your 1st choice and 2nd choice really that far apart? It seems to me that it's always better to have a choice; you never know - you could have a change of heart by April. An advisor could leave the school, you could not get enough funding, who knows. Since I assume you've already done most of the work and it's just about the money, go ahead and apply if you can afford it.

Include where? Put everything on your cv and consider choosing 1-2 experiences and elaborating on them in your sop. What to choose? That depends. Is there one experience that you enjoyed more than the others? that made you decide that academia was where you want to be? that you go a publication out of? that you work on with someone influential?

The WS is mostly about your ability to make a cogent and coherent argument, but part of making that argument is supporting it with previous studies, examples, background, etc. - which makes for a longer essay that also shows your command of the English language. I think it would be a good idea to work parts of your nsf application into your sop, specifically the parts where you describe the research you'd like to do in grad school. You should submit something longer as a WS, 10-15 pages is a good estimate if the school doesn't give guidelines. 2 pages are not nearly enough and will not make a good impression, regardless of how well written they are.

This is not from experience, but I figure I'd do the following: (i) write a version I'm happy with and doesn't mention having previously applied. (ii) write a version that does mention the previous application - probably have this point towards the closing, with a short mention of the improvements I've made, while making sure it doesn't sound like I'm making excuses. (iii) give people both versions to read, compare their strengths, and decide which to keep. As you say, they are going to know you applied before and it might be wise to just confront it and say you're doing better now...but not at the expense of actual content, so if you need to cut things out, that would be one thing I'd consider. So, well, it depends. I really think you need to sit down and try both version, and see which works best for you.

I'm guessing here but: 1- It never hurts to say thank you. It should be totally fine to send an email to the DGS. Also, if you know the students' names you can probably find their contact info in the "people" section of the department website and send them an email directly. 2- That's a tougher call. I'm leaning towards - no need to contact them. Even if the adcom contacted these people (which I doubt), it'd only be to ask for their general opinion of you. As long as they know who you are, that should be fine.

I got departmental envelopes from our secretary and used those. Knowing my writers, I was sure they'd just print the letters on plain paper, so I thought it'd be nice to have something official.

I had a few interview last year, if you have any general questions.

Several of my colleagues who applied for grants a few weeks ago only got references from professors in our current program. We're in our first semester, but still that somehow didn't seem to cause a problem. I don't think any of them got references from former referees because (I assume) those people are not going to be the ones who advise on the project for which you are seeking funding. Have you tried asking your current adviser what's customary? I'm sure they can tell you if they still write letters for former students.

I assume you've already been accepted? I always have the dates on the left on my CV and so I simply write: 2008 Blah-di-blah 2009 Blah-di-bloh (expected) Awesome Title Conference of Awesomeness, University of Happiness, Date. You could adapt this to your format. And congrats! ETA: the formatting got messed up, imagine indenting and nice columns instead of single spaces. But you get the point.

Did you try checking the results page on here? It could give you a pretty accurate estimate of when other people heard back in previous years. Most of the programs I applied to last year had data updated going back two or three years, and I found it was remarkably accurate. Notifications for practically all of my programs went out the same week they did in the years before.

I think this differs from department to department and the emphasis that is placed on diversity. I guess the main advantage internationals have is, as you say, diversity in culture and research. Most, if not all, do indeed have their masters and they're usually more mature than some Americans*. The biggest disadvantage in my opinion doesn't have anything to do with the things you listed - it's having less funding resources. This is mostly true for public universities, where domestic students pay a different rate than internationals. One California school I was applying to last year could only afford to accept one international, the rest had to be Americans. There are of course also the issues of less familiar grading systems and lor writers, but I've found that every place I applied to did understand how the grades at my university worked and knew my recommenders (at least by name). I think there's more diversity in grading systems even within the US than you might think. As far as the gre goes, to the best of my knowledge schools treat low verbal scores more leniently when the applicant is international. It's not a major part of the application anyway. A department's opinion of your credentials will also be affected by whether or not it's had students from your university before. If your university has a good reputation, then the departments you're applying to are likelier to want to accept students from there. The same is true for American universities, but I guess more foreign institutions will be unfamiliar to US schools than local universities. But it depends. *Yes, this is a generalization and has many exceptions. But all in all I think it's fair to say that +25yr olds who got their masters and moved halfway across the world to pursue their studies tend to be more mature than 22yr olds straight out of undergrads.

I have to disagree. At least in my field it's uncommon to contact professors before applying but it's expected that you mention professors whose interests intersect with yours when you establish fit. It's not at all presumptuous.

I'm in the week-before-last of the first semester of a very intensive PhD program and I totally understand where you're coming from. I moved from Europe and left my family, boyfriend, friends, cats and most of my belongings behind. I didn't know a single person in town when I came here and I'm not exactly the most sociable person in the world. Luckily I have an absolutely wonderful cohort, or else I'd be totally lost. The workload is hard, but you slowly learn to cope. You also learn it's OK not to produce your best work every week. I've decided to prioritize having a life above being perfect, and since I've come to this realization I think I've become a happier person. I think you should first of all get through this semester and use the break to go back home and see the people you love. The second semester should be much better, because you've already become familiar with your surroundings, you know the people, the expectations, things are becoming more or less predictable. As others have said, you're also learning to adapt to the requirements, so there should be some improvement there as well. You should at least give it a full year before you decide it's not for you. I can give you two pieces of practical advice that work for me, do with them what you will. Academically, use all the resources available to you. Make appointments with your TAs and visit your professors during office hours. Ask your classmates for help, even if you don't study with them now. Is there anything stopping you from sitting with them after class and talking about your work? I'm sure everybody is having a hard time even if they're not saying so, and all it takes is one friendly person to let you into the group. Have you made friends with any students from other years? You could try asking some of them for help or advice about their first year--the advice I've gotten has been invaluable. The one thing many have said and I'll repeat is - don't work too hard! No one will hire you because you got all As in your first year classes, it's the dissertation that counts. Plow through the courses and do enough to get by, but don't do everything perfectly. The interesting parts come later, you just have to hang on til then. Socially, make the time to go out, even if that means spending a few hours less on an assignment. Be active about going out and making friends, from your department or otherwise. If you're unhappy you're not going to do good work anyway. I seriously think that taking an evening off and doing something unrelated once in a while can improve your work. You need to remind yourself to take a break and relax when you start feeling overwhelmed. I'm sure it's a common feeling in your department, so that'll be a good time to find someone who shares the feeling, go out for a drink and complain.. I've found it very useful to work in coffeeshops. It gives me an internet free environment that I really need to concentrate on my work, and once I became a regular, I started noticing the same people sitting at the booths next to me. We got to talking, and so I met some people who say hi when they see me and ask how I've been. Not great friends yet, but it's a nice start. So I guess the point is be active and go out there even if you have to make yourself in the beginning. It gets easier with time, I promise you.

I had to send the letters to the department last year. Took them forever to update that they had received them.

That's what I did and it seemed to work fine.

In my experience it broke down to Americans/Canadians vs. all the others. Most Americans and Canadians I met last year during school-visiting season only had BAs. All the internationals had at least some graduate experience. The big difference is that in the US, undergrad institutions allow you a lot more possibilities to get research experience, which at least in my school was never an option; and it's 4 years, so you have more to show for yourself when you apply. My BA was 3 years and if I'd applied during undergrad I'd have only had 2 years worth of courses to show as experience, and of those only one was an advanced seminar - I'd have had weak lors, no publications, minor awards and no research experience. So it was a no brainer for me that I needed to at least finish my BA before I applied, and since that meant I'll have a free year, why not at least start my masters?

Also a good option. An informal email or a telephone call on your behalf can be much more effective than a letter. I am sure your professor is writing letters for many students this fall, but he probably won't call friends at every department on behalf of all those students. It's another way to stand apart from the crowd. Caveat: this will have a much better effect if this friend is on the adcom, or can influence decisions without being on it. Otherwise the adcom might never know of this endorsement.

I added an additional fourth letter. Most of my schools had online letter submission systems and only allowed me to register three recommenders. I sent the fourth via post. Maybe that's possible in your case as well? It's not easy to find this information but some schools have it in an obscure place on their website and for others you simply have to contact the grad school and ask.

I would assume this changes from discipline to discipline and possibly even from department to department. I can only tell you my stats and you can make of them what you will: I applied to a total of 8 departments. I was accepted to 5 without being contacted by faculty members before the decision was made (in my field it's not customary to contact profs before applying) - I did email and talk on the phone with at least one faculty member from each department after I was notified of the decision and eventually visited 4 of those places. As it turned out, the places that did not ask for an interview were in fact the places where I thought I was a better fit. The remaining 3 schools were more of a backup and less obviously a good fit for me--and they were the ones that wanted to interview me before making a decision. I talked on the phone with 1-2 faculty members at each school, but since I already had the acceptances from the other schools I withdrew my application so they would accept someone who'd actually go there. My guess would be that out of those three schools, one would have accepted me for sure, the other ones could have gone either way. It felt like they were feeling me out and would have soon after made a decision, not that they had a bunch of people to interview and only a few would eventually be selected and offered admission. It strikes me though that the interviewers were not looking to judge my knowledge of the program--that actually never came up in any of the interviews; or my interpersonal skills--maybe it's because I'm foreign and most of the interviewers were also foreign, and conference calls are a bad way to conduct such interviews, but "<silence> uh, I am sorry, could you repeat that sentence" was uttered repeatedly and did not seem to do disturb anyone. I should maybe point out that the interviewers were always all of my potential advisers in each department--my field is small enough that there are not more that 2, max 3, profs in my subfield in a given department. What I felt they were trying to gauge was exactly how I would fit in the department - what my interests were, what theories I would want to employ to investigate these interests, and whether the school had the resources to allow me to do my proposed studies. It's very much about giving your routine spiel--you learn to have one sentence-, two sentence-, five minute-, etc. versions of this that you give in different settings throughout the application process--that basically goes like "this is me and this is why I should be at your school", but slightly modified to accommodate each department. If you want to really sell yourself you have to know the department and its resources and make reference to them when you're presenting yourself (if you ever go on visits to schools you'll do this same spiel anywhere from 5 to 15 times a day..). It starts with introductory emails and your SOP but it get repeated later on in the process, if you get past the initial cutoff stage. So if that's what you mean by having knowledge about the program, then that's definitely something they look for in an interview, but not in the sense that you necessarily have to remember the course names and how many credits you take each semester. I am sure my personality also came through; I definitely asked in each interview questions about the department's personality - the atmosphere, student-student and student-professor collaborations and such like, but that mostly came from my side, not from the interviewers. I think the shortest interview I had was about 40 minutes, and these issues only came up at the very end, maybe in the last 10 minutes or so. So I would say that wasn't the main thing they were interested in finding out, at least not in a direct way. Well. This turned out longer than I anticipated. Hope it helps.

Best thing is indeed to contact the school and ask for instructions. What I did was write some ridiculously low amount (a few hundred dollars, if I remember correctly), and make it clear on the form that I needed full funding from the institution if I were to attend it.

I mentioned professors who I wanted to work with and talked about which of their research interests intersected with mine. I never mentioned any specific works.

It's fine for an opening sentence, but the rest of your SOP needs to demonstrate that you know this is a very broad research area and detail which parts of it you want to focus on. I'd suggest picking one or two narrower topics and expanding on them in a paragraph. It's fine that you also have other interests and it's fine if you end up changing your mind and studying something different than what you wrote in your SOP--what you write in your SOP is not binding. But you do need to show that you're focused and can ask coherent questions that can be reasonably answered in the course of a PhD.

That's how I handled it. I also set up a reminder system for the recommenders I knew I wouldn't be seeing too often.

Work on the paper that's in better shape until you have something presentable; submit that for the dec 8 deadline. Go back to working on the new sample after you've taken a few days' break from looking at it. The way I see it you gain the most this way - you submit the best possible paper for the closer deadline and you have that paper ready in case you don't manage to finish the new sample in time. So there's less pressure to finish the new sample, because you'll know you have something ready just in case. I think it's worth it to spend a week on the older paper and give it a try, and not just withdraw your application this late in the game. Good luck!

I'd venture a guess that it won't help you any to submit without contacting any faculty but probably won't hurt too much either. But if the application in not due in a while, why not try and contact someone and possibly improve your admittance chances? You've got nothing to lose - you already have everything ready for this app and you're just waiting for some profs to reply. If it get close to the deadline and you haven't gotten any replies, then you can go ahead and submit. You lose nothing by sending an email and waiting a few days (except some loose nerves, but you didn't need those anyway ).