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I think this depends entirely on the field. In my psychology department, hardly anyone works aside from research hours because you're expected to spend most of your hours in the lab. In my public health department, I would say a significant proportion - but not half - of the doctoral students work. Many of the master's students work, though, either to gain experience or cover living expenses (or both) I do worked and have worked in varying capacities since my fourth year (I'm in my sixth year). Sometimes, I have worked two part-time jobs (like TAing and serving as a GA - when I did this, I was easily working 30 hours a week on top of my schoolwork). I also need to be insanely busy to get anything done and feel productive - I consider this an "easy" semester because I'm writing my dissertation, working 10 hours a week, and volunteering for one organization (average of 3 hours a week). I feel lazy, lol. In some programs, outside work is discouraged anyway, but in other programs part-time work during a program can help lead to full-time jobs afterwards, or at the very least research opportunities for your thesis. But if you know you can't work, then don't take on the extra work - your first priority is doing well in school. However, do realize that you will be in competition with these students for jobs and that people who are hiring MPPs are looking for people with good grades AND experience.

But this is simply bad advice. In general, PhD program applicants should not contact professors with a laundry list of their achievements - that's what the application is for. Contacting potential advisers is best for finding a research fit and inquiring whether advisers are taking in students that particular year (in programs where the adviser primarily funds the student, or where an adviser has to be available to advise the student before they can get accepted). The OP can certainly contact professors to express an interest in working with them as a philosopher, and talk about how their interests overlap. But anything like "...but by the way, my supervisor and my second reader won't give me a recommendation to your program." as an explanation is going to raise a red flag, no matter how eloquently it's stated. What the OP would be better off doing is finding other professors who are willing to recommend them to programs, and see if they can get in that way. Also, 1000plateaus - It's good that your confidence has been boosted. I caution you, however, in taking this piece of news as license to believe that your adviser was just being a mean old curmudgeon and that nothing he said applies to you. A mean adviser can still be a correct adviser, and it's very possible that your adviser's reservations about your abilities are partially warranted (especially given that you took an extra year to finish a 2-year program and had to start your project over basically from scratch). I would take this more as proof that there are many students who gain admission to doctoral programs without the enthusiastic support of their advisers. While it will raise a flag, it is still possible to get admitted without their letters if you have superb recommendations from others.

Depends on how influential your supervisor is and how strong a student you are. If your supervisor is starting over as an assistant professor at his new institution and you're an average to marginal student, the new school might resist it. If you're an outstanding student, or your professor is a distinguished chair or other endowed professor or bringing a lot of grant money, the new university may welcome you - especially if your professor is going to fund you. Your supervisor could ask them to fund you as a condition of moving, but whether he's likely to do that depends upon how badly he wants and needs the new position. Also, the policies of the institution may differ - some schools require students to pass qualifying exams in their department or even take some required coursework. Can't your supervisor just advise you from a different institution? You can select a new sponsor at your home institution who is charge of managing things on the home front, but still work with your supervisor remotely/electronically - perhaps with some travel if close enough. A lot of students do that if they are in the dissertation phase when their advisor moves; it's what I would do if my advisor moved, since I am less than a year from finishing.

The best way to banish fear is to get familiar with the test, so that it feels old hat to you when you walk into the testing room. Download the PowerPREP program from the GRE website; it has two practice tests on there. Take one as a diagnostic, and see where you stand. That will let you know how much studying you need to do and in which sections. From there, you can buy a prep book (they're typically about $30, and you can find them on Amazon; personally, I prefer Barron's and Princeton Review). A 142 verbal is in the 15th percentile. I think if you are hoping for an MA in English, you should aim for at least a 60th percentile score (the closest is a 154, which is the 62nd percentile). Getting into the 160s, where the 85th percentile is, would be better of course - but I think with a strong application you still stand good chances around the 60th percentile. I'm not going to go out on a limb and say that you won't get into any respectable programs, as some programs are GRE-optional and some put less weight on your GRE than other factors, like a writing sample or recommendations.

When I was a hall director of an undergraduate residence hall, I lived with them on the floor. I had juniors and seniors. It wasn't bad. My hall was known for being for people who wanted to be away from all the partying and noise and be kind of quiet. Even when they did throw parties, they were pretty reasonable and usually over by midnight (when they dispatched to go to the real party dorm on campus, or a bar in the city). We also did not share bathrooms or kitchens; I had my own bathroom and my own kitchen within my studio. As time went on, a few of the students realized who I was and I would have chats in the lobby with them about graduate school and stuff. It wasn't bad. My second year I moved into a building that had communal bathrooms and kitchens, but my hall director apartment had it's own kitchen and bathroom. That hall was also fine because even though it was mixed sophomores through seniors, they lived in singles, so they couldn't really throw parties. I would say it is a bit strange for graduate students to be housed with traditional undergraduates. I've never been anywhere where that was the case. Now I live in university-owned apartments that are just for graduate students and non-traditional undergrads, and it's much better - very quiet, mostly families and older very studious people.

There is no way if you are applying in Fall 2014, because quite frankly, you don't know that yet. You're assuming that you can pull your GPA up to a 3.0 for the last 60 credits, and you probably can - but unless your application deadline is after when your school returns your grades for fall semester, you can't show them that. But seriously, stop agonizing over it. You can't change your GPA right now; it is what it is. Don't let that deter you from applying - apply anyway. You never know what will happen. And if you do get declined, you can apply again for Fall 2015. But don't shortchange yourself now over .05 of a point. Unless that's a graduate school minimum, most departments have a little flexibility in their requirements.

There may not be a point that Princeton or Harvard tosses applications. By all accounts you have an outstanding record otherwise, so unless you score abysmally on the GRE I don't think you should worry. Do you have reason to believe that you are just going to completely bomb the GRE? If you think you can do decently, then don't worry about it. The GRE is just 4 hours long. If you test reasonably well, I would self-study with a $30 book for about a month and just do it. Don't let one 4-hour test keep you from being able to consider two top schools in your field. Personally, I would not pay for a PhD. That includes having to borrow money to pay for 100% of my living expenses. Only you can decide whether it's worth it to borrow the money - especially considering your past debt and how much debt you'd go into at Oxford or Cambridge.

I have two LaCie hard drives: this 1 TB portable one, and this 2 TB desktop one (or it may be 3 TB; I don't remember). The desktop one lives on my desktop and I use it as my Time Machine, along with some extra storage space. The portable one is mosty storage; holds some movies and music and I use it to bring with me on trips if I want to bring along work that's not stored on my MBP or entertainment. Both of them work like a charm; I've had no problems from either and I really like them. They are also sleek in design and look like my MBP, which is a plus. These particular designs begin at 500 GB for $80. The 1 TB one was $120 (which is about standard) and 2 TB was $130. You can go up to 4 TB for $240. I've also heard good things about Seagate for Macs. I had a Toshiba Canvio when I had my PC and it DID NOT work on my MBP. I was so upset because it was a 1 TB HDD; I ended up giving it to my husband who has a PC. I'm also not really a fan of Western Digital; I've had a couple of hard drive failures and other issues with them. But I know some people swear by them and they have a relatively affordable line for Macs.

I'm going to begin by agreeing with the above two - I don't think you should transfer, but rather that you should investigate the possibility of a collaboration. Or at the very least, maybe this is someone to keep in mind for a postdoc. But the rest of this is geared toward if you absolutely want to transfer. I doubt that a professor would be asked to sit out of the admissions process because he was in contact with a prospective student. Most professors ARE in contact with prospective students; it's part of the game. In fact, knowing or having worked with a professor in the department before can be a significant factor in admission to the department. And while no one committee member will dominate the entire committee, an influential professor may be a very strong ally in gaining admission into a program. I advocate just being straightforward. Tell him that you are currently a second-year student in X Department at Y University, and you've heard of his project and it excites you. Tell him that you'd really enjoy working with him on this project, and that you are interested in getting the PhD in X at his university and have applied there before. Then ask whether or not he's taking students in 2013-2014. You may even add a line about whether the department would be amenable to a transfer application from you. Attach your CV to the email. (A lot of students don't want to, because they think it's presumptuous. It's not presumptuous at all - if he doesn't want to look at it, he won't. But he won't be able to make a good judgment without the CV, and this saves him from having to ask for it - or worse, just waving you off because he doesn't want to bother asking for it.) Keep it short and simple. If he's not taking students in 2013-2014, then it's a moot point. If he's insightful (or if you include the last line about transferring), he'll give you a short statement about whether or not the program takes transfers or whether they'd be interested in him. Some programs rarely if ever take transfers; some take tem, but require them to start over. Think about whether you would want to start over after completing 2 years somewhere else. I wouldn't necessarily go to my current supervisor first; I would put out feelers to see whether the opportunity is even there. No use in sending up the alarm if the new professor isn't even interested.

Given that you already have an MA - and assuming that it's in the same or a related field - I think that you can do either, although it would probably be preferable for you to finish your current MA and then apply for PhD programs in your second year. If your program is a terminal MA (rather than a PhD with an MA component) it's not unusual to apply to other schools in your second year, and I don't think your advisor will necessarily expect you to stay where you are for your PhD unless you've already discussed it. In fact, your university's PhD program may be very competitive and maybe not even all of the current MA students get in. It's impossible to tell if you will get a GTA elsewhere if you transfer with an MA, but in the humanities funding is always limited.

Don't be too specific unless asked otherwise. You should give a broad area of research (or maybe two areas) in which you are interested, but not a specific project necessarily. For example, I think I said I was interested in the impact of the media on Black adolescent sexual behavior - something in that realm of specificity. Nowadays I might write that I am interested in the impact of prejudice and discrimination on the mental health of African Americans. Nobody expects you to have a fully realized project yet.

Apply by the priority deadline, and when your new transcript comes in if it's as a good as you think it is, update your admissions file with the new transcript. You can do this by mailing it to the school with a letter enclosed, and emailing the department secretary for a heads up.

This is such a specific question that you may want to ask the departmental secretary of the department to which you are applying if he or she knows the answer. Most graduate programs look at all of your GPAs, although some may weight last 60 or major GPA more heavily than cumulative. A 3.2 is not that low. I always say the only person who can shut you out before you even start is you. Just apply and see what happens.

Even if your question were answerable, your dilemma doesn't match up with your question, as Georgia Tech is not a "weak uni" - it's one of the top research universities in the world, and definitely one of the most recognizable names in engineering and technology. Their biomedical engineering program is top-ranked, so speaking as objectively as possible it's probably "more difficult" to get into GT's program than Yale's. But given that grad admissions is based on fit, a student who doesn't fit well with Yale's department but fits very well with GT's may actually find it harder to gain admission to Yale. And you definitely shouldn't select your grad schools by which one you think is easier to get into. Grad school has to be your choice, not your parents', especially since you are the one who knows your field (unless they are also in it). Your parents are going to be wowed by the names they have heard before - my mom was very impressed with my Yale admission without knowing that Yale was lower ranked in my field than some of the other programs I got into.

No, it's not worth it. The best strategy for the analytical writing is to come up with a basic structure/format for the essay, not to brainstorm examples or sides. If you practice, coming up with 2-3 examples in the 5 minutes you have for pre-writing will come more quickly and easily to you. I do think the idea of a mental "example bank" of examples that apply to a wide range of prompts is a good idea.

I hate hate hate EndNote. In fact, I hate EndNote so much that my advisor actually started a Zotero account so that I could sync our libraries and he could see mine (he doesn't mind). I don't have any rational reason to hate EndNote so much except that I found it difficult to use and enter my information. I am currently trying to decide between Zotero and Papers2. Zotero I really really like because of the online synchronization of all of my articles, which makes it easier for me to access my information from multiple computers; because of the ease of entering new journals and books into my libraries; and because of the easy organization of the articles into collections and subcollections that make sense. Papers2 I like because of the ease of finding metadata for journals I already have; the ability to read, annotate, and highlight PDFs right in the app; and, most importantly, the synchronization with my iPad through the Papers for iPad app. Zotero requires an add-on and a $10 app for my iPad to properly sync and I have yet to decide whether it's worth it. What I want to be able to do is read, highlight, and annotate papers on my iPad, save them, and then be able to read them on my computer with all of my notes and highlights intact (and thus use them when I'm writing my literature reviews). But I'd also like to be able to see them if I am using the library computers for some reason, and I'd like to be able to easily find them within my library and be able to find the PDF for a citation I have. So right now I am leaning towards Papers2 because it has more of what I want but I rarely use other computers aside from my own. I also know that Mendeley is FREE and has an iPad app, and it seems to have everything I want, but I just didn't get it. Perhaps I should try again.

This kind of information is very easy to find out, so I would go ahead and submit the transcript just to be safe. You can very briefly explain that you got a very serious illness that caused you to withdraw and transfer to another university. If you did well somewhere else, this shouldn't be too much of a blip.

Panabtl, I think #2 is out. I would be choosing between #1 and #3, and that will depend on who you think will give you a stronger recommendation. The undergraduate professor may be better, depending on how long you worked in his lab (is "a little while" 3 months, or 1 year?) and also how long you've been working with the psychiatrist and how much "much" is (does she meet with you ever? Does she directly or indirectly supervise you?) charlies1902, they want you to describe a project that you intend to carry out during your tenure (theoretically). But in my research proposal, I also included a paragraph in the beginning about how my previous research logically led into my current interests. Then I wrote about 2 paragraphs of background - giving a theoretical framework to my research and positioning it within my field. Then I described the project, and then I used about a paragraph (a long one) to describe the greater impacts of the project and why it was important to do. Then I had a paragraph or two at the end about how my university and my mentors were the perfect place/people for me to do my project at/with. I remember looking over the statement a few weeks ago and wondering at how little I actually wrote about the project itself - I think the actual project description was like 3 paragraphs.

Can you? Yes, of course you could, technically. There's nothing stopping you from doing that, unless the program has a specific clause about it. Should you? That's a different question. I would personally say no. Academia is a small world, and word may get around that you started somewhere in the spring just to start somewhere while you were still waiting on other programs. I think you should either apply to programs that all have the same start time, or you should decide whether you would rather begin in the spring at your #2 or #3 choice than wait to hear back from the fall programs for your #1 choice.

Your verbal isn't significantly different from the average at that program. So the 150 V is right around where they want you to be - I don't think it will matter much, especially if English is not your native language. Your 170 quant is definitely good, but I think it's quite common for engineering students to get perfect quant scores (almost all got 95th percentile and above on the old GRE; the new one's recalibrated so it's more difficult to get a perfect score, but engineering hopefuls still get high scores). Anyway, this isn't really enough information to predict chances. Not that we could, even if we had all of the info. We definitely can't say that you have a 100% chance at any of these schools; we're not on the committee, and although engineering is not my field it's my understanding that these are competitive MS programs in that field. A lot will depend on your personal statement, your letters of recommendation and other intangible factors (your fit with the department, the strength of other applicants, the size of the program). You seem like a pretty average applicant. When people say "top 10/20" they are usually referring to general rankings of programs in their field, typically either by the U.S. News rankings or the NRC rankings, or sometimes by some other ranking that may hold weight in their field. Usually when people speak they're not necessarily referring to any one of the rankings specifically but just the "general notion" of a program in their field. UIUC, JHU, and UT-Austin are roughly top 10 programs by the NRC rankings (which are based on PhD programs, by the way, but can be useful for MS programs). Looks like UCSD and UW-Madison are roughly top 20 and Maryland and Cornell are roughly top 30. The U.S. News rankings have a different methodology; by their rankings, UIUC & Cornell are top 10; UW-Madison, Maryland, UCSD, UT-Austin and JHU are top 25.

How many schools are you applying to? Your GPA is not that bad, and your GRE scores may be average but there's nothing wrong with average. I have a friend who just finished the SLP program at my university who openly admitted her GRE scores were bad. Is it possible that you need to cast a wider net?

When you report your research experiences, you report actual time served. Most people don't volunteer in the lab every day - even every other day is more than most people volunteer (I think I went in 2-3 days a week when I did my research). So you have 2 years of research experience. I think a conference presentation or 2 is expected, but not necessarily a paper. However, not having one doesn't totally exclude you. I don't know enough about archaeology to determine the importance of an excavation. Your thesis research definitely counts. Find a way to relate it to your current anthro interests, but even if not, it shows that you know how to carry out a project from beginning to completion independently. Theoretical papers also help because they show that you can carefully treat a scholarly theoretical issue in a serious way. (Why are you second author on your own theses? There's something wrong with that, IMO. But still, second author is good.) Honestly, it doesn't sound like you need another MA. You have 2-second author publications (most applicants are lucky to have one at third or worse), at least 2 years of research experience, and 2 independent projects that you can talk about, and you've done an excavation. You can apply for some MA or MS programs for backup just in case, but I think your experience is fine!

That sounds like a fancy way of saying "no money." If this is an MA program, that could mean various things: maybe some professors are leaving or are not teaching some of the public history courses necessary; maybe they are downsizing the program because they don't have the money to pay for the resources all the students need. Maybe they need the money to pay for a new program staff member. It could, as has already been pointed out, be a vague reference to an ongoing debate over whether to continue even offering the public history specialization there. It's hard to tell from the outside. If this program really appeals to you, then go ahead and reapply this year. If you do get accepted, then you can visit and/or investigate the stability of the program.

Quant score is a little low for epidemiology, but if you have a decent math background then it shouldn't be much if an issue. It will be if you have little to no math, though. For epi, you should have at least calculus I and a statistics course; having 2 semesters of calculus and linear algebra will make you more competitive. You say your name "will be" on the publication - is it likely to be published (or at least submitted) by the application deadline? If not, then it doesn't hold any weight. Taking those graduate classes will help if you do well. You may even want to take more (3-4) in interim years between now and your app. We can't tell you your chances. But to improve your likelihood of getting in, you need to put some distance between you and that undergraduate GPA. Assuming that you just graduated in May 2013, one year may not be enough - you may need 2-3 years off, and some full-time work experience, to offset the effect of the 2.5 - particularly at Boston U, GWU and maybe Drexel (higher-ranked SPHs).

People in joint BS/MS programs usually have extended eligibility under the "extenuating circumstances" clause; I'm pretty sure that NSF deals with this specifically in their printed materials. But a person in a joint BS/MS program would wait until their 5th year (the final year) to apply for the NSF, unless their MS counted as a science masters they could apply the NSF to. You cannot defer your NSF in your first year unless you get an approved military or medical deferral. I think a medical deferral would be if you suddenly got sick and had to defer the beginning of a program that you were set to start in August/September of the year you are awarded the NSF, but not having been admitted to a graduate program is probably not allowed - so if you're planning to reapply to graduate programs in Fall of 2014 for Fall od 2015, then you should probably wait until next fall to apply for the NSF. As to whether you would be compared to second years - well, that would depend. You probably would be at least to a certain extent; the reviewers would expect your proposal to be of the same caliber as other second-years', and would expect your recommenders to evince a knowledge of you and your capability to complete graduate-level work in the same way. They would also want to see your first-year grades in your program. I don't think they would compare you to college seniors, who are two years your junior in experience essentially. I think you can mention the ADD if you want, but those things are better mentioned if you already have them well-controlled and can evidence that. If you've just begun working with the coach and don't know if it will be successful, that will add little to your application.