fuzzylogician

I included a cover sheet that included my name and the program to which I was applying, just in case the grad school bureaucrats threw away the envelope and didn't know whose materials they were processing. I generally had my name+program printed on top of every page of every document I sent in (WS, SOP, CV...). And, in the case of transcripts, I also wrote my name on the (sealed) envelopes themselves. Paranoia indeed. But better safe than sorry.

Seriously? You put this ad here? In a thread that's about how linguistics isn't just about learning languages? Huh.

It depends. If he is on an F1 visa then she'll get F2 and won't be able to work. If he is on J1 then she'll get J2 and will be able to work. That's the way things usually work..-maybe the Americans are nicer to Canadians than to other foreign students, I don't know.

They probably won't care. I'd even go as far as saying that there's no way they could know if you didn't send in the transcript, but that could be considered dishonest. Ask if you want to be sure...9/10 schools will tell you not to bother.

How do I add a photo to the little info display that appears beside the posts? I've already uploaded a photo to my profile but I can't find the setting to make it visible on the forums. Thanks!

It sounds like you're handling it the right way. You want to say that academia is the place you want to be in order to pursue your research interests, and at the same time not say (or imply!) anything negative about the military. So, you want to construct your SOP in a way that starts with: "the positive thing about the military is: it sparked my interest in X", which naturally leads to "the positive thing about academia is: it will allow me to develop my interest in X and also do Y and Z". I'm not reading anything negative into what you wrote, so I think you're doing a good job.

Is the poster is for a class you're taking or something you applied for and got accepted to present? I wouldn't put anything on my CV that's simply a class requirement. In any case, you can put it under "poster presentations" - a section a lot of grad students will have on their CVs and more advanced academics will probably omit from theirs. You could also conflate this with the "papers" section so they both don't look so small . When I added RAships to my CV for application season last year, I included this information: the institute I worked for, project name, supervising professor, my job title, and a short description of my duties. Made it fit in 2-3 lines for each position I had. I put this under "research experience" and had it followed by "teaching experience". Do you know this site? It has good examples of successful application materials and some very good advice. I'm not a big fan of the CV format there, but it does give you a good idea of the information you need to include in a CV.

The easy part is: YES, definitely mention any paper you've submitted for publication, even if you haven't heard back yet. The trickier part is exactly how to mention it. This may differ from field to field and you could try spying on cv's of, say, grad students at your potential departments to see what format they use. I've always found grad students' cv formats the best to copy. I think I would write "submitted to Journal X for review" or some such.

I don't know if it's common in your field to contact potential advisors and get their consent to mentoring you before applying; but you should at the very least have one or two professors (preferably more) in mind at each school you're applying to who you would like to work with and who could be your advisors. This is part of the basic research you do about every school you consider applying to - who there would I like to have as my advisor? Maybe that's what your current advisor is asking about.

The ickiness of the GRE notwithstanding, just because two schools have the same requirements doesn't mean they evaluate them the same. Larger programs that get hundreds of applications can't afford to carefully read all of them and therefore have to use GPA and GRE scores as cutoffs to weed out the influx of apps. Smaller programs might get fewer apps and read all of them, and therefore care less about the scores. Programs can be looking for different kinds of candidates and as a result can have different ways of evaluating the same application. After all, people get accepted and rejected from different schools with the same app, so obviously schools are placing emphasis on different things. I've read that financing decisions are sometimes based on GRE scores, because it's really the only "objective" criterion that you can compare all candidates along. GPAs from different schools isn't always comparable and you can't productively compare lors, sops or experience. So maybe it does make sense to have some test that everybody has to take. But, I agree, the GRE in its current form doesn't measure potential success in grad school or anything else relevant, costs an outrageous amount of money because the organization running it is a monopoly, and majorly sucks.

I think the point is that the intangibles outweigh the tangibles in the decision process. Still, if you made me choose, I'd wager that the GPA weighs more than the GRE because as you point out it says more about you as a student than the GRE does. But both of these are not as important as a solid SOP, research experience and strong letters of recommendation. I'd also bet it's much more common for programs to admit applicants that have extensive research experience and strong LORs but below average scores than it is for them to admit someone with perfect scores but no research experience and average LORs. Grad school is about conducting independent study, not (just about) studying what others have done before you. Undergrad grades and GREs aren't necessarily a good indication of a person's ability to do that, whereas proven prior experience generally is. Enthusiastic endorsement from a well-known professor (whose opinion is respected and trusted in the field) will also indicated to the adcom that an applicant will do well in the graduate program. So, I'd guess the requirements importance scale (which I've just made up, mind you) looks something like this: Research experience, letters of recommendation >> SOP, writing sample >> GPA >> GRE. It could be a tie all the way down to GPA or different fields could place emphasis on different part of the application, but generally I think the picture is going to be one that has scores at the bottom and the other things on top. Since not everyone can be lucky enough to have a superstar recommend them (and anyway the letters are really out of your control) and since research experience is something you will have probably acquired before the application season - the writing sample and sop are the main places you can influence the decision process in your favor.

That's not an explanation as to why universities have applicants take the GRE in the first place, or what they do with the scores once they have them. It explains how applicants can use the scores to estimate their admission chances, and even then only in case the school is generous enough to publish both the average scores of admitted applicants in recent years and the standard deviation. I'm a little skeptical as to the accuracy of this advice because of the third paragraph, which seems to be backwards of what we usually think - that is, that the GRE and GPA are the least important parts of the application. I don't know the site and the person who wrote the article doesn't reveal their name, so I'd be a little wary of taking it too seriously and devoting less time to the sop and ws and more to the GRE.

It's probably supposed to make you cave in and use their get results by phone service, which costs extra money. *sighs*.

True, but my reply addresses this specific thread, whose is opener is applying to psyc programs. Obviously it won't be true for all posters in all fields. It may not even be true for this poster in this field. Maybe I should add "YMMV" to my signature .

I'm not in psyc but I think it could be a serious kiss of death to be too revealing about your own mental health, or that of a family member or friend. I'd also guess it's not an all-that original reason for wanting to study psychology in the first place. You can disagree, of course.

The best bet is to contact the department and ask if the adcom would be willing to accept a writing sample. You should probably be content with just the SOP, but if you feel that your writing sample significantly strengthens your application, go ahead and ask. I wouldn't sent it without permission though.

Glad to help!

This. Take the GRE but don't automatically send your scores. If they're high, send them. Otherwise, don't.

This is what ETS say about canceling your scores: "At the end of the test, you will be given the option to cancel your scores. You cannot cancel your score for one section of the test and have the scores for the remaining sections reported. Although you have the option to cancel your scores, consider very carefully before doing so. Your scores will be reported to GRE score recipients only at your request. If you cancel your scores, they will NOT be reported to you or any score recipients, and no refund will be made. Canceled scores are not added to your permanent record. If you wish to take the test again, you must reregister and submit another test payment." I take it from this that canceled scores do not show up in the report.

I'm of course only guessing what the OP had in mind, but I'll speak for myself and say that finding a TT position in my early 30s, competing against 25yr olds, is something I've spent some time thinking about. I certainly think it's possible - or I wouldn't have started grad school in the first place - and I think I am soooo much more prepared for grad school now than I would have been if I had gone straight out of undergrad (and I also didn't go straight from highschool to college). But I think it's a legitimate concern.

Thanks! and thanks for putting in all this effort trying to improve the site for us users!

When I say "not as functional" I mean that there are several features in the old system that I can't find in this new system, or that I find not as useful. For example - I'm missing the possibility of jumping to the last unread post from inside a thread. I usually like to read the opening post in a thread and first 1-2 replies to remind myself what a discussion is about, then jump to the end and see what's been recently added. I can't do that now. Same thing for quotes - you can only select something and quote it when you open a reply page. But I haven't found a good way to add a quote mid-way through replying except for manually adding the poster's details and copy-pasting what I wanted to address. Adding multiple quotes is especially annoying to add that way. There's the posts not being marked as read, but hopefully that'll be fixed soon. One of the main things that bother me is that this site seems to rely on working with icons instead of click-able text links, but I can't always guess what an icon is for and where to find the one I need. I do think the site looks much better now, but it'll take some getting used to.

There are really two separate issues addressed in this thread. One is - am I too old for grad school? Answer: no. People can even finish a degree in their 90s. For sure they can do one when they're 25 or 30. Or 40. Or 50. The other one, which I think is implicit in the OP's post, is - am I too old to have a career in Academia? That one is harder to answer and I haven't seen it addressed in any of the posts here. I'd venture a guess that those people other posters mentioned as having done a degree in their 40s-50s-60s didn't try to get a TT position afterward. I'd be very interested if you know someone who successfully did that.

I scored very similarly to you last year, and also seriously considered retaking the test--especially when I saw my AWA score. Fortunately, friends convinced me to spend my time on things that would make much more of a difference, like my SOP and writing sample. That turned out to be a great decision. I also applied to two ivies, and to six other high-ranked programs in my field, and I can tell you for sure that no one even mentioned my GRE scores so they were enough to get me past the cutoffs and they really weren't what the adcoms considered when it came down to deciding whether to accept me. So, spend your time working on the more important parts of the application and be confident that it's not the GRE that'll be the deciding factor in the decision process.

I counted over 30 points you want to address in your SOP. I don't see how you can be concise, but still seriously discuss all of that. What's more, many of the points you have there are not things I would either discuss at all, or at least not discuss directly. I think your schema is not concentrating on the right things. The SOP should be about your current and future research interests and intentions - what you want to do, how, why X university is the place to do it in. It should be future oriented, focused, concise (as you say). That means not giving a lot of anecdotal information, but rather focusing and expanding on the few ideas that matter. You have to choose them wisely. Here are some thoughts about your template: b isn't at all relevant to an SOP. a and c can in some cases be conflated to one point. Personally I'm not a big fan of the creative opening, but it does seem to prevail. b-e are really derivatives of the same point. At this point, or at some previous time, you should give some description of your own interests. That's the best way for the school to tell if you fit there. You might also want to include some other factors that make X a good fit for you - e.g. course selection, lab/library facilities, intra- and inter- departmental collaboration, etc.. maybe that's what you mean by a. Personally I'd be wary of having a designated paragraph talk about your character. These are really things you want to demonstrate through example(s), not tell. They'd also be more convincing coming from recommenders. You need to do more than just list your accomplishments. Show how they're relevant to what you intend to study, put them in context. If these experiences are not relevant, they should go on your cv, not your SOP. I can't imagine more than 2 or 3 things out of the first 5 being relevant to your SOP (depending on your current and future research interests). The last two items definitely don't belong in your SOP, leave them in your cv. Of the rest, I think you really need to choose which you want to concentrate on, otherwise your SOP will look like a list of facts, not like an essay. The SOP is for expanding on relevant facts, not for repeating facts the adcom can find out from other parts of your application and that don't contribute to your argument for "why I'm the perfect candidate for this program". Applications always have a place for you to put your GPA on. Unless you expect a significant change for the better, why mention your projected GPA? b and c sound kind of like excuses, and I think it would be ill-advised to say something about both the GRE and the GPA. Maybe if one is particularly low, address that (or explain nothing, if there's nothing extremely deviant). a+e: Your choice, I'd definitely not do a, and be wary of not being all that refreshing in e. You don't want to be taken the wrong way. I'd leave b out, unless what you learned is how to focus your research interests, some new skill, or something along these lines. Good luck!