balderdash

Honestly, I think it's tough to say without knowing: 1. The quality of your undergraduate institution. 2. The quality of the work experience. Providing that both are good, then I think you'll get into 2 or 3 of those. The GPA is low but can be overcome with the few years of professional experience. The problem is, if your work experience isn't directly relevant or if it's just support work or something, then it won't really go to bat for you.

Absolutely true... I found that my Jamaican professor enjoyed a really nice bottle of rum (the Ron Zacapa 23, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Zacapa_Centenario ) and I gave another one a nice bottle of champagne. Looks like it's a good thing I did that since I'm now applying for PhDs and they've agreed to write letters again.

Yeah, I took care of that, no worries. I actually thought "who would neg this? It's so true!" and then laughed out loud when I saw your post.

Well I start a really intense one-year MPhil on October 1, and on September 1 I move to a new country and see my girlfriend for the first time in 3 months. So I don't think I'll be too keen to work on it much during September and early October. I also made the excel spreadsheet, and most of my documents are ready to go. Good luck to you all as well!

Well, I'm sure I'll be corrected, but this seems to be the first school to put up the 2011 application. Is anyone else working on it?

Yeah, I'm interested in the 4.02 thing as well... And what developing country are you in right now/what NGO are you working for? Sorry for being nosy, I'm just an Africanist and former employee of a major government donor so I'm curious.

Thanks for the resource, I clicked through the entire thing last night and found it pretty enlightening.

Unfortunately, what works one way isn't necessarily true for the opposite. A great academic record isn't overly ruined by poor GREs, as it's just one test from one day and really isn't anything to do with skills professional scholars need. But great GREs do little to mitigate a low GPA (yours isn't bad, by the way, so don't undersell it) for exactly the same reasons. I think you can expect the same look as someone with a 3.5 and dual 700s would get, but obviously that's really subjective.

Well done, man. There were about 1.5 million tests taken over the last 3 years, says the ETS. If that's true, then only about 2,000 of them got an 800 V. Combine that with the knowledge that not all 2,000 got an 800 Q but more did than they would have at a 400 V (just guessing that if you're smart enough to get 800 V you are more likely to get an 800 Q than at a lower V score), I would guess around 500. Of course, AW throws it all off... I would guess a very small group of people actually get a 800/800/6. But honestly, once you're in the 750+ range for both, I don't think it matters. No school is going to go "800/800/5? Idiot." or "780/770/6? What a twit." Edit: Yeah, so I just read that thread that you posted after I began doing the math.

Yeah, there's no hard and fast rule (and certainly no word counter). What you have to understand is the average grading time is 1 minute per essay... so obviously they're not reading them closely. What you have to do is make sure someone who skims it would think it's insightful even if it isn't a good essay. This entails good topic sentences, good conclusions, tight transitions, 5 paragraphs with 3-6 sentences per, and good vocabulary words that jump out to the reader. Whether or not you actually write a convincing argument doesn't matter as much as making it look like you did.

Actually, the only WTF moment I had was because I forgot what was actually a really simple rule: if one triangle has sides x, y, and z, x has to be somewhere between z-y and z+y (obviously that's not mathspeak but that's the basic idea). For some reason this was completely foreign to me.

instant romance

I would also think Stanford, with guys like Sagan and such.

Relevancy wins out. Waiting tables is admirable, but I think everyone will have done some sort of work on the same level (I worked cash register in a grocery store, pulled pints at a pub, and made sandwiches in a deli). Much more important are the work experiences that give you experience, knowledge, and preparation for your intended field of study. Whatever makes you a professional ________ (for me, political scientist) is what they're looking for. That said, if it was something really prestigious or something to which you had a continued commitment, it's probably worth inclusion. Since you said you didn't have a steady job throughout, the latter doesn't apply. But if one of your jobs was, say, interning in the White House, then put it even though it's not relevant.

Actually, I was wondering if this hard and fast rule changes for a few awards. For instance, consider the award "National AP Scholar." It's not exactly prestigious, but I don't think it's something that can be thrown away offhand. Or how about something that doesn't necessarily yell "this is from high school," like Morgan Stanley Young Leader Award. If your CV just lists them like Award X, 2005 Award Y, 2004 Award Z, 2004 and you started university in 2004, I don't think it's a problem.

Haha this is kind of all over the place. However, I'll do my best with it: 1. I think a bit of both matters... I do know that if you're placed on the list of accepted foreign service candidates, you're ranked according to a bunch of factors, one of them being your ability to speak a 'critical' language. But that said, I do know a few people who had past stints in the CIA who were hired because they were good with languages and promptly asked to learn another one that was completely different. So with diplomacy and the like, it's not really important. I think, though I'm not 100% sure, that it's the same for business. I know at least 2 people who graduated with degrees in the Classics and got a job at a Morgan Stanley type -- anybody can learn how to run a discounted cash flow model, but far fewer can analyze it, you know? 2. I think one masters will be more than enough. When I worked for the UK's Department for International Development, a lot of the learning (even for mid-range managers) was done on the job. I don't think many employers expect the master's to get you 100% trained for the job... but that said, you'd certainly be helped out by a bit of work experience first. 3. Master's? No. I'd be surprised if you found such a program, unless it was abroad. 4. I really don't think I'm the person to answer this, and I would suggest elections observing and such but your languages aren't really the type to aid you in watching Nepalese elections, you know? So I'll leave this question to someone else.

Same here, it was an identified quant section at the end.

over/under

Yeah, just to give some examples of the negatives I've heard back from 3 different sources: "I do not like your last paragraph." "This sentence is gratuitous editorializing. " "As for the Personal Statement... it is not winning." "Above all be more humble and less preachy." And my personal favorite: "You sound like you already understand and condemn current policy and aim to redo it single handedly. If so, you are wasting your time at School X... just proceed to reform the world in terms of your superior views and moral judgements." Well, academia requires a thick skin, so we have to get started somewhere.

True. When applying for undergrad, I paid all of the fees up front then submitted the apps, so on December 31 I had one application left (after submitting the others in October) to do for which I didn't want to write the essays. But since I had paid the $70, I wrote them and submitted. I ended up going there. This year, for my master's, I applied to 2 schools in October and was waitlisted, so I applied to the third on a whim and was accepted last-minute. I'll be starting this fall. So I think it's tough to judge which schools are worth the effort and which schools aren't, especially when "fit" is so important.

Well thank you for the praise, but I think it's much more to do with tenacity before and luck during the exam. I just meant to impart that it's not impossible to raise scores drastically in only a few weeks if one works really hard and has a bit of help.

7, all PhD, all in the US. Total cost of applying: $635.

Although I'm currently going through the process, not reflecting back with oodles of wisdom to pass on, I can add to this a little. One of the best reviewers has been a person in academic advising at my school who helps students for scholarships (Marshall, Truman, Rhodes). He spends a lot of time reading personal statements and seeing how well they fit the program and the student. Granted, he's a particularly awesome individual, but I think that most people who are applying should see if their school's advising office has such a person.

Definitely retake if you're thinking top 20, even if you're an international student.

I decided I was going to take it mid-June and scheduled it for 3 weeks later. When I started studying, I was getting around 1300. After spending about 3-4 hours per day studying after work, I ended up with a 1570. So if you're willing to work at it pretty consistently and thoroughly, a few weeks is enough time.