dobzhansky

I would've had no idea that results were released today had someone not texted me. Email went to the "promotions" folder in my inbox (gmail); didn't even know that folder contained separate emails. E/E, E/E, VG/VG, awarded.

If I go to UCB, my first choice would be the graduate housing at University Village. Does anyone have any idea on how availability is? I'd be moving in with a spouse and I have "priority" through a Berkeley fellowship.

What about leadership and honors? Do you think you could do well on the GRE? What coursework have you done? How well respected is your college? Top 10, 50, 100? Are your letter writers prominent in your area of interest? Without knowing more, I would say that this is not too bad of a list, although obviously the first 4 are reaches. Realistically, your GPA and research experience will pass muster, but pretty much every competitive applicant will have similar stats + papers + awards + recs from famous advisors. Your way into those institutions will be to find a really good research match, read all their papers in the last 5 years, and contact them ASAP to start a conversation. While @rainestormis right that prestige/ranking is overblown, it still matters. Prestige exists because the school has top tier faculty, resources, and networking opportunities. Remember, one of the main factors that go into grad school rankings is the number and impact of publications coming out of a department. That's something that directly impacts you, as a grad student.

oh cool! are you a recent graduate? I'm a graduating senior. maybe we know each other.

No, I'm currently at TAMU. My advisor is in EEB (not Derr or Hamer though). Why TAMU over UT?

Which labs at TAMU are you interested in?

what are everyone's admits so far? EEB is a small community and i'm interested to see if i might bump into any of you.

As an international student, it won't really be held against you. But if you can, visit your school's fellowship office and see what might be on offer for international students. Anything that indicates your dedication to research counts. Like others have said, you're competitive for top 10 schools as it is; this would just be an extra leg up.

Research/Internships: Make sure you have something to show for your research; if necessary, take on smaller, more manageable projects that can be feasibly wrapped up by the end of this year and published. Apply broadly for internships and REUs; target universities or national labs to stand out from the "I interned at google analytics" crowd. This will also help net you better recs (a rec from a well-known prof or researcher is better than a rec from your team leader at some FAANG internship). Awards: Work on narrowing down your research interests and apply for more fellowships. You should specifically target the Goldwater and Astronaut (if offered at your institution). Fulbright or Knight-Hennessy also good. These are not only good exercises in writing about your research interests, but will hopefully help you get a better sense of the type of research you want to pursue. Otherwise, your academics seem pretty stellar and you should be competitive at basically every top 10 stats program. The differentiating factor will likely be how coherently and engagingly you can talk about your research interests and projects. Start following big-wig academics now and get a sense of their research so you can hold an intellectual conversation with them if they happen to interview you.

I didn't start looking at places until the end of summer, which was a bad move, imo. So it's good that you're starting now. Start by asking your advisor what the top programs for your interests are; you can use USWNR or similar as a rough guideline. Don't take the rankings as gospel. Consider what locations you want to live in too. Once you have a list of ~20 programs, start looking at faculty you'd be interested in working with and make sure to note which ones have rotations vs direct admission. Take your time with this. Open up google scholar and check out their rate of publication and h-index. Look through their lab page and see how lab alumni are doing. Use ProQuest if lab website doesn't list alumni; you can also use ProQuest to check out who your prospective advisor's advisor was. Finally, ask around about quality of life factors - stipend, insurance, RA funding availability, advisor's mentorship style, etc. Now make sure that these programs are realistic for you. Ask your advisor's opinion, look at previous year's results, etc. Narrow your list down to ~7-8 programs with 2 "safeties", 3 "targets", and 2 "reaches" and start applying.

I think many grad programs have to phrase it this way because after applications are approved by departmental adcoms, they have to be signed off on by the dean of the graduate division (or equivalent). I've received several such emails and they've invariably resulted in official letters a few days later.

If you already sent, don't sweat it. Adcoms are paying less and less attention to the GRE. Unless you're confident that you can raise your score by 10+ points, I'd focus on other aspects of your package and potentially getting in contact with advisors.

No offense but it's right around average. And your quant is significantly below average. Are average scores available for the programs you're applying to? If you scored higher than average then go ahead but otherwise I wouldn't risk it. It's doubtful that submitting would have anything better than a neutral impact on your app, imo.

My main interests are in computational and theoretical eco-evo. I could be more specific but I'm just looking for general perspectives. Hoping to go into academia. Thanks all!

are you all sure this isn't just standard form for every year? it sounds like a "let people down easy" tactic...no offense to anyone.