Bukharan

I was notified of being awarded an IDRF fellowship on April 15, 2014. "Eighty provisional awardees, selected from a total of 1,081 submitted applications from graduate students at 131 universities." I am over the moon! The very best to everyone in this application season!

Speaking of Stanford, from what I understand, the Islamic Studies Program is more of an umbrella organization/forum for all Stanford scholars interested in the Islamic world. It's not a degree program. You would have to apply to one of the established departments: History, Political Science, Anthropology, Comparative Literature or Religious Studies, depending on your interests. The very best deciding where to apply. You have some excellent schools there! I would recommend you to consider less well-known schools in the USA but who may have excellent scholars in Persian Studies (I expect some UC schools, apart from UCLA and Berkeley, may be great at that). In the UK, for Iranian-related things check out Durham, Exeter, Edinburgh, St Andrews, maybe Manchester. U London contains many semi-autonomous schools now, so I guess you're looking at SOAS.

I just presented for the first time as well. It went well, and that feels great!

I am flying into Cali on 9/15. Now need to book a room in some hotel near SFO. Will be at Stanford on 9/16. So excited!

As much as I like your name and the overall advice you gave, I respectfully disagree with that phrase. Absolutely not.

The answer is too obvious to spell out. ... NO? Why would you? Ask your best friend(s) to read your SOP. Or someone you know already in the Ph.D. programme or in academia. For free!

I sort of see your point. However, LGBT people throughout U.S. and world history took so much sh*t from numerous 'Christian' groups that you can't really blame some LGBT people from having a negative reacting whenever they hear the C word. If you really didn't like what you heard, you could have spoken up back then, in that room. Everyone's free to speak up. As for discussing political opinions, I'd say that if you believe you have nothing to be ashamed of in your views (your views are not biased towards and do not discriminate: people of different race, different socio-economic standing, different gender or sexual orientation), then you could and you probably should make your voice heard.

Similar situation. I got a 2-year visa only. (The maximum I could get considering my citizenship... EU, mind you.) The length of the visa, from what I understand, depends on reciprocal agreements between the USA and one's country. That sucks. However, hopefully, this does not change anything. I plan to visit my parents every summer anyway, and once in a while I would have to reapply for a visa then. Good to luck everyone who is still waiting for their visas.

I agree with bhikhaari. It is a good idea. I also thought it was rather standard. I attached CV to all my 'introductory' e-mails.

I'd put its importance like that: 'It can't get you into your dream school but it can keep you out'. I don't think it matters much after the 'screening' process. Unless it's a public school and it plays some role in funding applications. But... yeah, schools and departments are different. E-mail your school.

Check Harvard and University of Chicago.

Don't worry too much. You still have 3 weeks. The only advice I can give (and that really should be given) is focus all your efforts over the next few weeks on studying Maths! A lot! Do Maths exercises several hours a day every day. Keep track of your results, analyse what you are good at and what not, review the weaker themes, go online and do as many exercises there as you can, then study some more. Study until you are sick of Maths. 3 weeks should be enough to improve your current preliminary score, so don't worry!

No one cares about that score. 5 or 6 makes no difference whatsoever. Surely, 6 will 'impress' adcoms but this 'impressed' feeling will last 1 second and will probably (I really want to say 'definitely') have no impact on admissions or funding. The only applicants for whom it may carry a wee bit more weight than to the rest of us are, perhaps, those doing Creative Writing. But even then, this is debatable. Congratulations on your score!! 5 is awesome!