waddle

Chillax, db2290. The OP's just trying to get some advice regarding his application. I understand your vigilance for trolls, but I don't see any indication that the OP is anything troll-like. Hey, at least the post is (mostly) grammatically-correct, and we really shouldn't sound like we're driving first-time users away from the forum. (I know you try to be helpful, but your tone comes across as slightly bitter--could be an artifact of the Internets, but nonetheless ...)

Georgetownhopeful, I have no advice I can give (sorry!), as I'm not in your field. I'm sure others here will have much better advice, especially if you could give a few more details as to how this "verbal confirmation" was worded.

waddle

P.S. For the record, db2290, I canceled out your -1 rating.

Chillax, db2290. The OP's just trying to get some advice regarding his application. I understand your vigilance for trolls, but I don't see any indication that the OP is anything troll-like. Hey, at least the post is (mostly) grammatically-correct, and we really shouldn't sound like we're driving first-time users away from the forum. (I know you try to be helpful, but your tone comes across as slightly bitter--could be an artifact of the Internets, but nonetheless ...)

Georgetownhopeful, I have no advice I can give (sorry!), as I'm not in your field. I'm sure others here will have much better advice, especially if you could give a few more details as to how this "verbal confirmation" was worded.

waddle

P.S. For the record, db2290, I canceled out your -1 rating.

I can't tell if some of these posts are jokes or not. I am trying to be helpful but what other insight do you think forum members can give? How can we give better judgement on your application than the director of the program?

I don't think you need any ego stroking from anyone here, you are clearly a highly qualified applicant.

I hate to be "that guy" but I think the reason you have gotten a -3 rating and no replies is because your question lacks a lot of insight and it seems like you want others to do research for you.

Have you tried looking at those colleges websites and seeing if they require, strongly recommend, or not require the subject GRE? Its unlikely an adcom member from those schools and departments will be on here ready to answer such a specific question. You seem to have good credentials and I'm sure you can conduct some great research if given the chance. However, lacking some basic understandings of the graduate school application process cannot be looked upon favorably.

I cannot believe I am responding to this post.

I was snacking on wasabi peas when I read your post and one pea fell out of my fingers and my mouth remained open as I felt the shock of this question run through my thoughts. While I am not going to respond with the actual answer to your question, I will respond with two questions and ask what conventions are you using in your research and why are not going to the convention's rules to look up the answer instead of posting the question on here?

Hi,

Can you rank or comment on the following schools in terms of their overall reputation and quality. I am applying for Physics phd, concentrated in condensed matter and statistical physics.

Also, do you think it is possible to get an acceptance without a physics subject test. (I have a MSc degree in physics, published two papers in phys. rev., have a GRE quantative score of 800)

The schools I am applying are:

Brown
University of Michigan
Carnegie Mellon
Rice
University of Florida
Duke


Thanks!!

note: i am an international student

*Looks at transcript* "Huh, Cairo University? Is that even a real school? We have no idea how strict or lenient their grading system is, but her GPA isn't that high and her record is spotty. Graduated in 5 years. Her GRE scores are average, too." *Looks at SoP* "She says she wants to study contemporary Egyptian lit, but she barely passed her Arabic courses... And what is this crap about France in the 60s? We have like 10 other applicants who want to study that!" *Sees LoRs* "Who ARE these people?!" *And now for the writing sample* "I... I have no idea. What is she even talking about?"

hello folks,

i am doing an important reasearch in my class , and i would like your help on some of the question:

1- compare and contrast realism with liberalism

2- accordin canada and art

3- does hegemony , proponderence or balance of power creates better peace .

4- the biggest international coaportaion problem

5-according to the alliance theory , what are possible problems witha possible military alliance between russia and canada today

6-which level of analyis and theory describes the best explanation for the causes of the first world war .

thanks

Accordion art in Canada has long been one of the most important modes of Inuit self-expression. During the Iqualivittnutyflavin War of 1877 (known variously as the Hoser-eh War by English speakers and le Conflique Mirepoix by Francophones), the Inuit used accordions to drive the polar bears, and pretty much everyone else, out of Nunavut.

While accordion art in Canada has recently lost precedence to other art forms, such as pouring fatty foods on french fries and complaining about America, it remains an important means of communication in northern areas, where nearest neighbors live farther away than a voice carries. A visitor to Yellowknife in the spring will tell you that accordion art remains alive both as an artistic form and means of political comment, similar to hip-hop in East St. Louis.

I will address your other questions as time permits.

You all have a lot of energy to apply to so many schools, as others have said!

I am applying to two PhD programs. This has been the source of a lot of anxiety but there are only two schools that will support me in my (albeit narrow) interests. I agree with those above who don't follow the "I will get a PhD anywhere" philosophy. To me, it seems that the education you get during a PhD program is as important (if not more important) than the degree itself. I am also keeping in mind that I will be spending the next couple of years of my life in this program (and will likely be turning 30 there), so I am not applying places just to "get in." (not to suggest that this is what people applying to 10+ are doing...)

Somebody very wise once told me that hell is not being rejected from all of your grad schools. Hell is only getting into the ones you don't want to go to.

Good luck to everybody!

I think international applications, in general, take the cake for me. I tried to fill out the general application for music schools in the UK, and after finally figuring out the weird navigation and terminology differences... I could not figure out how to input that I received a bachelor's degree. Literally... the option was NOWHERE. I went to the study-abroad department at my current university, and they couldn't figure it out either. I found out how to input an ASSOCIATES degree... so out of frustration I asked the web development people.

"Oh, you're right. We don't have an option for that. Just input 'other.'"

No option for a bachelor's degree, eh? I would think that is something they might want to fix? I mean, they had an option for an Albanian certificate of maturity...

May I direct you to http://www.poliscijobrumors.com/

You'll get better responses there.

My understanding is that the "tier" of a school has as much to do with funding and number of slots as anything. For example, one of the places I applied to for PhD was Iliff School of Theology. It's considered second tier, primarily because few if any students receive full funding and they accept a relatively large number of PhD applicants each year. On the other hand, Southern Methodist University, where I ultimately accepted, is trying to become a "Tier 1" school (or so I understand) and they only accepted 6 PhD applicants in Religious Studies and offered full funding + stipend to each of us.

I'm sure that there are other criteria, but more often than not, when I hear a school's tier mentioned, it has to do with what level of funding they're able to offer.

PS I also think that as far as religious studies are concerned, the "tier" is rather informal. "Tier 1" schools are usually the ones with extensive, state & federally-funded research programs in the sciences.

Chumlee, if you can get access to a Windows computer, download and run PDF Split and Merge--free. Use the 'burst' option; it should work to split up your PDF file into single pages, without changing total file size or quality.

Frankly, I think the reasons people are troubled by the AW section are different from those they cite. Let's look at some common criticisms:

1) "The AW section does not test any real-world skills! How often in your academic life will you need to write a 5-paragraph essay in 30 minutes? Never!"

This is equally valid for more or less any standardized test. How often in your academic life are you called upon to complete an analogy "upbraid : reproach :: ? : ?" picking from 5 different alternatives, without the help of a dictionary? Certainly you must agree that, prima facie, the "write an essay in 30 minutes" is more connected with skills you will actually have to use in academic life than completing analogies. And yet, people do not complain nearly as much about the verbal section.

2) OMG, I got 800 on the verbal test, but only 3.5 on the AWA, the AWA must be bonkers!

a) It seldom crosses people's minds that it could be that the verbal section is bonkers.

b ) More seriously, really, AW and verbal sections are meant to test two very different skills. There is really nothing that says that a person with a good vocabulary and reading comprehension must be a good writer. It's kind of like saying "OMG, I got 800+++ on verbal, but only 320 on quantitative, the quantitative section is obviously rubbish", but nobody does that, do they? And while I agree that you should expect a higher correlation between verbal section and AW section than between quantitative and verbal sections, say, that correlation certainly is not high enough to make "800V, 3.5AW" statistically unexpected.

3) "The SOP and writing samples are much better judges of writing capacity anyway, so AW is positively useless."

This is true to some extent, were it not for a fact that it is way too easy to have someone else heavily edit your SOP and writing samples, or indeed write it for you completely. The AWA does not suffer from that. And I this a glowing SOP and writing sample combined with a low AW score will raise some eyebrows, as it should.

4) "The type of writing required on the AW is nothing near anything you'll ever need to write in real life. They just require a long, dry 5-paragraph essay, with lots of stock transitional phrases. Nothing like the style of a good writer."

a) I'd like to see some hard data on this. It seems to me that this is the kind of myths that companies like Princeton Review perpetrate for their own benefit ("There is a secret formula that guarantees a 6 on the AWA, go to our classes/buy our books to find out!")

b ) As people have pointed out, good writers should be able to adapt their style depending on the circumstances.

5) "But how can people adapt, if ETS does not publish what criteria they use to assess the essays?"

a) See a) above. Also, if ETS have never said anything about what they want, how come there is such a strong consensus on these boards and others about the type of essays that will earn a high score?

b ) Admissions committees seldom publish what they want to see in the SOP. And yet nobody complains. Commercial publishing houses rarely make explicit what kind of texts they want. And nobody complains. People just seem to be able to figure out anyway, just like they do with the AWA.

6) "Not to brag, but I'm a truly great writer, and yet I got a low AW score. The AW section is just crap.

a) See 4b)

b ) I think that more often than not, people are bad judges of their own writing abilities.

c) Even if there is anecdotal evidence of great writers who don't get high scores, this is statistically expected for any imperfect test, just like there could be great mathematicians who receive a bad score of the quantitative section. Anecdotal evidence like that does not prove that the whole test is invalid, only that it does not have 100% validity.

7) The test is scored by a e-rater. Computers don't know jack all about wit.

I agree that this does hold some merit. But

a) See 4b).

b ) There is still a human grader too. If you get a low score on an essay, at least one human grader has assigned it a grade within 0.5 of what you received.


So, going out on a limb here, I think the real reason people complain so much about the AW section is because it is subjectively black-box scored. This makes it very easy to start rationalizing away low AW scores by declaring the whole process to be invalid. Which we all do, because of our human nature. The reason that we don't see as many posts similarly complaining about the other sections is that the scoring is much more transparent, which makes it harder to come up with those rationalizations.

But what many people forget, in my opinion, is that there are two parts to whether or not a test measures what it claims to measure: validity of the test quations, and validity of the scoring. I think that, compared to the other two parts of the GRE, the task the AW section sets us is in fact closest to anything we will need to tackle in real life. The scoring on the other hand, might or might not be completely rubbish, but I do not see hard data either way.

Especially for someone who has been out of school for a while, there is no need to spend a whole paragraph on undergrad. You have more life experience that you could reference.

I like a structure that is more or less like adaptations suggested:
1. Intro - what you are interested in and why (I'd save the "why you are applying to school X" for the fit paragraph later on). List 1-2 specific questions that interest you. For a Masters they can be not-quite-worked-out, but the more specific you can get, the better.

2. Expand on specific interests. How did you develop them? Why do they interest you? Give any relevant background you have that has prepared you for studying these questions in grad school.

3. Fit. Why are you applying to school X? You may want to include - specific professors you would like to work with (and why), any special resources the school provides (classes, certificates, access to libraries or other physical resources, location may be important - e.g. for access to think tanks, internships or whatnot that is relevant to IR), unusual aspects of the program - collaborations with profs or students, social atmosphere - if you know anything about it.

4. Goals. What would you like to with your degree? I think this could be a good concluding paragraph. Otherwise, you should have an additional paragraph for the conclusion.


So, the focus is more about the present and future and less about the past.
There are different opinions about addressing weaknesses directly in the SOP. The best thing would be if you could have a LOR writer address any issues instead of explaining them yourself. Otherwise, the question is really what the weakness is and what kind of explanation you have (you don't have to tell us anything here). You don't want to be making excuses but if you think you need to explain anything about your background the common wisdom is to keep it short and to the point. Write just one or two sentences that end on a positive note - whatever the problem was, you want to convey that it's been dealt with and won't affect your performance in the future. It would be even better if you could attach this explanation as a separate note; many applications have space for you to tell the adcom additional information you think they should know that didn't come up elsewhere.
My personal preference is to let one's record speak for itself and not try to explain away any blemishes (which everyone has, btw), except if there are unusual circumstances like a serious illness, death in the family, etc.

I do think there is some field-to-field variation. My sense is that it depends on how cohesive a research group usually is in that field. In the experimental sciences, groups tend to be highly cohesive. (When you have an array of specialized, expensive, difficult to use techniques at your disposal, it is very much in your interest to keep using them.) Therefore you see generic SOPs in the vein of "I want to study explosions. With Prof. Coyote in fuse dynamics and Prof. Nofingers in grenade construction, Boom U is a great place. My research experience is..." If somebody likes your background, then it's a question of whether they have a project to match; it's not in your interest to pretend your interests are more defined than they are, because then it's harder to match you.

For the humanities, and to some extent in theoretical science, I get the impression that groups are looser. There might be a shared theoretical approach; maybe the advisor is doing Marxist histories, but the topics range from 16th-century basket weaving to 20th century theme parks. In that case, you really do have to come in with a project idea, because nobody's going to hand it to you. They don't want you to sit around for half a decade trying to come up with something.

I'm closer to experimental sciences, so I kept it fairly generic. Of course, I still had to convey that I knew what I wanted, and that I had enough exposure to know what a good research question looks like. I mentioned some ongoing projects as examples. But I didn't come close to writing a thesis proposal.

What I did do was include my NSF fellowship proposal as a writing sample. It had a cover note saying what it was, and that it was intended as a sample of my ability to design a research project. Maybe that would help split the difference?

You forgot Charlie Parker and J.J. Johnson.

Yes, you've got a point of course. But please don't forget that this forum is for people to help and support each other, one for all and all for one, etc. (Yeah I know it's sappy, but it's important!)

And in the 60's Miles Davis, Coleman, Coltrane, etc made it up on the spot and it was all brilliant.

I'm just messing with you!




These threads are all the same. If we get a good writing score we want justifications that we are great writers and that adom committees will care. If scores suck we want justifications ad committees do not care.

I actually had a dream recently where I received a rejection letter in the mail, where the committee had written in HUGE capital letters (I kid you not):

OH MY GOD! HOW COULD YOU EVEN THINK OF APPLYING TO OUR SCHOOL?? A DISGRACE!


Talk about paranoia!

Found an interesting article on one Douglas Prasher [link]. Poor guy, looks like he had a pretty bad falling-out with luck. What a waste of talent, going from characterizing GFP to driving a car for a living.

Are there any postdocs/post-docs on this forum? If so, do any of you regret attending graduate school?

Hello everyone,

I am new here and could really use some honest advice. I really want to apply to UCLA MSW program for Fall 2012.

I am a Communication Studies major at Cal State Northridge, graduating Summer 2011. Enlightened by much of the coursework I have taken (i.e gender studies, sociology, intercultural studies, anthropology, performance for social change, etc) I have decided that I want to pursue a career in social work-helping those on the margins.I've arrived at this decision after much thought. If I knew a year and a half ago that social work would be my career choice, I would have chosen a different major. However, communication studies has been a very broad, theoretical education and I've learned a lot.

Heres my stats:
GPA currently 3.93 with 90 units in. I seriously doubt, with the 30 units I have left, that it will dip below 3.8-3.75.
Non-Traditional student: 43 years old, 18 years work experience (unrelated to social work-I was Director of Retail for a famous women's apparel chain, so I have lots of mentorship/leadership experience) Went back to community college at 39.
GRE not taken yet, but I will do everything I can (Kaplan course, etc) to insure a competitive score.
Will produce strong personal statement and solid LORs. Also, I believe I can show compelling reasons why I'd be a good fit for this kind of work.
I also was awarded Outstanding Junior in the Communication Studies dept for the 2009-2010 year.
I have volunteered at my daughters elementary school for the past couple years, but thats about it.

Do you think one year of solid social work experience before I apply will be enough to make me a competitive applicant? I'm going to find a volunteer opportunity asap. I also applied to be a peer counselor at CSUN in the Spring, helping young women with eating disorders/disordered eating/body image issues. I will also try to get a internship in social work/counseling, if the communication dept will approve it for college credit.

Honest input is really appreciated! I'm pretty sure I can get into a Cal State school, but UCLA is my dream. I'm hoping my age and life experience works for me instead of against me.


Thanks!

I'll second the post above. Conferences were a big wake up call for me in terms of encountering the "awkward" world of academia! My undergraduate institution was, I guess, in the minority. I could grab a beer or lunch with a professor, there were always really great parties thrown by professors to get all the students involved in research or the department in the same area to mingle, things were just really tight.

I consider myself somewhat diffident, but I've never had any problems giving presentations or teaching large classes. However, one on one I always get really anxious. Conferences always felt like middle school dances. People will walk by your poster, try not to make that awkward eye contact, some will read and not always acknowledge your standing right in front of them, you can address some of them and get no response. At some points even delivering a friendly, "Hello, how are you today?" resulted in some of the most petrified gazes I'd ever seen. At this point I should say I don't have any physical deformities, and by all accounts am a pretty decent looking and approachable guy. I guess the idea of exchanging dialogue, for some of the academics I've met, is something they just need to see in a journal before they actually try and do it!

Quixotically, dealing with academics more and more has actually helped to alleviate my social anxiety.


Seriously, don't sweat it. Just do it more and more.

Also, start talking to strangers every single day. Conversations can't be planned. As much as I've "planned" how I talk about my research it changes every time I have to do it depending on many factors surrounding individuals I am speaking with. The parking attendant, the coffee girl, sales clerks at malls, the construction worker outside, these people all have great stories to tell and are people too. I feel most of us walk around in a self-absorbed comma. We put our ipods in our ears or work out the nuances of a problem we are working on in our head and we miss the social world we live in. It's actually very tragic. However, if you talk with everyone you can you learn to work with what you get from people.

I'm not socially skilled in any way shape or form. On the other hand my father shows no signs of erudition but within 2 minutes of ANYONE he talks to manages to gather an entire life story from them. Just the other day I spent 5 minutes talking to the woman working at the parking garage after I paid my ticket. I learned all sorts of great things about her life. I might not ever see her again but it gives me a different life perspective. Doing these kinds of things are still very difficult for me. If I'm out and get approached it is hard to turn off my fight or flight response. However, I've worked on trying to get better in social situations over the last couple years. I could have done much more, and somedays I don't really want to talk to anyone, but with continued efforts I am getting much better at it.

A simple smile and a question that breaks social routine (eg., you look happy...how is your day going?) will go further than you think. When you can open up your ears and listen to details of what someone is telling you all you have to do is ask questions.

I know I was winded here and got away from speaking with academics, but being socially awkward is something you have to work on in all situations. It will get better over time if you want it to and put in the work. If you don't try and battle with this now you'll just remain as awkward as a gun rack on a Volvo!

I am also struggling with my personal statement. I would be willing to take a look at yours if you will look at mine, just let me know. I went to the career development center at my school, and they were able to help a lot.

Here are some websites they gave me:

http://www.wpi.edu/Academics/FS/personal.pdf
http://www.graduatingengineer.com/higher-education/20001106/Getting-Personal https://career.berkeley.edu/Grad/GradStatement.stm http://www.wpi.edu/Academics/FS/essays.html

I think you should give at least a week for a response. Who knows? She might be out of town (or out of the country!) and couldn't get back to you. Or she just has a lot of stuff on her plate and hasn't gotten to it yet.