mraig

Perfect 800--I was shaking when the score came up on the screen! Unfortunately, my programs (MFA) don't seem to put a great deal of emphasis on the GRE. Not that that helps me any with the 20$ per school reporting fee.

A few years ago, I was flown out what sounds like a similar visit for a major university's Classics grad program, and we stayed in the same hotel rooms with the other finalists. It was a good way to connect and bond with the other students. Assuming you get into the program, some of them will be your friends and colleagues for at least the next half decade or so. Anyway, if Emory's program is anything like ours was, you'll have dinner out at restaurants and at professors' houses, see the campus, sit in on a few seminars, meet the other finalists, meet the other grad students, meet the professors, get a chance to ask questions, be asked questions, and enjoy it a lot (but every once and a while feel this weird sense of panic that your every move is being evaluated and compared with the others. Just remember--they're also trying to impress you, to keep you from going to another school.) Likely if they're willing to invest enough in you to fly you out and put you up in a hotel, they're seriously considering you, so it's yours to lose. Be authentic and friendly. Don't try to act like you know more than the other students and professors. (common mistake with candidates: you try to prove that you're knowledgeable, but you end up coming off as smug and condescending.) Be prepared to having to answer the same questions about three dozen times. Especially: What area are you interested in doing research in? Have a good answer ready for that one. Of course, that's assuming that Emory's interview weekend is anything like the one I went to.

If a professor gives you permission to read what (s)he wrote, it's fine, of course. But surreptitiously reading a recommendation that was written about you in confidence is horribly unethical, and it's unethical in exactly the kind of way that is anathema to honest academic work. If we're to expect our students and peers to be academically honest when it comes to questions like avoiding plagiarism and cheating during testing, how can we seriously consider breaking into our own private files? Of course it would be easy for anyone to obtain extra copies of your recommendations (e.g. by telling a prof that you need a copy sent to you to include in a folder for a school you're not actually applying to). But I would hope that most adults (especially those who want to spend their lives in academia) are better than that.

Wow, it really sucks that what is, for most California out-of-state students, a *benefit* (that they can become citizens and the school can charge them less) becomes a disadvantage if you're international. Since a good portion of the UCLA Classics faculty is actually from the UK, they certainly appreciate the value that broadening the base to include international students would bring. I was in the very program that you're talking about (UCLA Classics) and I remember having to fill out this silly form where you have to pretend that you're going to stay in California for the rest of your life, and it's only a coincidence that you happen to have arrived there at the moment you began graduate school. Oh, and, just out of curiosity: I think I recognize the writing style of that email you quoted. It wouldn't happen to be from a professor whose initials are AR would it?

I think maybe we're more on the same page than it may seem. I totally agree that if someone is passionate about academia and committed to your subject, past issues shouldn't discourage you from continuing to do go higher.

Hey, if anyone wants to go to grad school and gets into a good program, all the more power to them. But, having completed a graduate program in one field (and I'm currently considering trying for a second degree in another, so I'm not down on the idea of grad school at all), I've given this matter a lot of thought. I've seen lots of people come and go through my own program and others in related fields, and had lots of long discussions about this with fellow graduate students. My perspective is that probably half of people who start grad school end up not finishing, and a good portion of those who don't finish end up feeling frustrated, disillusioned, and like they wasted a lot of time with nothing to show for it. Is this everyone? No. Is this the majority? No. But, from my observations, this group represents a significant fraction of people who start grad school.

Obviously, you're responding to my comment above. Read it again. You'll see that I say several times that I don't know this person, and am not trying to evaluate him/her. I'm not trying to beat up on the poster, and I'm not trying to make myself feel better, and I'm not a nerd who feels insecure about my application. I was making a general statement; I was asking, not telling. Hrcharron goes on to say that (s)he has no doubts that grad school is right for him/her, and I don't quesion that. But I think it's good advice for anyone who's thinking of applying to school. I wish someone had sat me down five years ago and said the same thing to me, and I bet there are plenty of current/ex grad students who feel the same way. But I stand by every single word of what I said. Graduate school is for anyone who wants it? No it's not. Plenty of people get into graduate school, spend a couple of years there, and either can't make it, or decide that it's not right for them, for any number of reasons. You get a more realistic view of the world of academia, and that's not for everyone either. It often involves putting other parts of your life on hold, including big things like starting a family or settling into a community, which are important to many late 20/early 30 year-olds. It involves entering a very competitive job market (depending on the field), where (for those intending to become professors themselves) it can take years to find a tenure-track job, and can involve shuffling around the country from place to place taking one-year appointments. If you're in a top 10 program in your field, surely you have seen that many students around you end up leaving the program without completing it for various reasons. That doesn't mean that grad school can't be a great, rewarding, intellectually fulfilling experience. It's just not for everybody.

Are you sure graduate school is for you? There will be a lot of similar situations in grad school where you'll have to choose between "life" and studying. I'm not trying to be mean here. Graduate school is not for everyone. It's not for 99% of people. It takes a really huge commitment of time and energy, and involves a lot of sacrifice of other parts of your life. I once heard a professor say something off-handedly to a group of us grad students: "You know, you don't *have* to do graduate school. There's nothing wrong with you if you don't." I think professors ought to remind students of this fact more often. But, having spent 3 years in graduate school myself, I have seen lots of people who were very smart and very good at lots of things who just weren't cut out for grad school, who more or less wasted several years of their lives and didn't have anything to show for it at the end. I don't know you at all, of course, so maybe that's not you. But this comment about the GRE class, plus the 3.1 GPA, lead me to believe that you're not someone who has given up a lot of time to single-mindedly studying at the expense of everything else. I apologize if I'm wrong. But even if I am wrong, this is what the people looking at your application are going to be tempted to think. They won't know you any better than I do. As for your question about GWU: look at it from the point of view of the people who will be evaluating your application. Your GRE scores are bad. Your GPA is borderline. There had better be something else really spectacular to keep them from tossing that application in the bin, because there will be plenty of other applicants with higher GREs and higher GPAs, and the evaluators will be looking for people to cut. So your SOP, recommendations, writing sample, and whatever else they ask for can't just be good; they have to be so stellar that they'll make you stand out among the crowd.

It seems to me like it would raise some concerns that you aren't including references from the program you are currently attending. You don't want to create the impression that you have something to hide. It seems inevitable that some of the faculty of XXX State would have friends/colleagues among the faculty at U of XXX, and, if your application were under serious consideration, would contact them, if only to see if there's something you are trying to conceal. Maybe the best course would just be to be honest with your current school. Assuming you have done well there, you might be able to get better recommendations that carry more weight, and increase your chances of getting into the new program. Having been in a somewhat similar situation myself, however, I understand how that's easier said than done; you don't want to burn any bridges if that's where you end up staying, and bringing up the subject for the first time can be quite awkward. But for the most part professors are adults and professionals and understand that you have to do what's best for you and your career. And, if they're going to find out anyway (from School 2's faculty contacting School 1 to ask about you), wouldn't it be better for your current school to hear about it from you than to find out from someone else? (Especially if you end up not getting accepted at School 2 and have to go back to School 1 with your tail between your legs.)

By the way: does it seem a bit dishonest to anyone else that programs withhold information about their cutoffs to give applicants false hope? Certainly schools get plenty of applications that they can toss immediately, that they can instantly tell don't have a prayer of getting accepted; many applicants who spent a good deal of time, effort, and money putting together their submission aren't even looked at. Obviously the schools want as many of these as possible, as they make thousands of dollars off of these poor saps' application fees. Maybe the money schools make from this is the only way they have the resources to process the rest of the applications, and you could argue that many of these applicants should have known better anyway (if they have low scores or bad references). Still, it all seems a bit cruel to me, that such a large part of the system is taking money from people without giving them any serious consideration. If the schools were more honest about their standards, it could save a lot of people a lot of heartache.

That thread goes on to say they never use grad GPA, due to inflation. I'd have a 754.8 (764.4 if I combined in my grad school scores!), but I'm applying for an MFA program this time round, and I doubt they use any such formula. Most of them either don't use GREs at all, or, if they do, only use them for funding. I am really curious how MFA programs do their initial cull. The programs I am applying to (for creative writing) generally get anywhere from 200 to 1000 applications, and the best ones usually accept 1-5%. I imagine the selection is based primarily on the writing sample. So how in the world do they read that many? To take as an example Iowa's program (which many consider the most prestigious): In 2007, they received 1285 applications, and accepted 55 students (3.9%). They ask for a writing sample of "under 100 pages". Assuming that the writing sample is the primary thing they base their judgment on, how could they possibly read 120,000 pages of samples? Obviously many are bad enough that they can toss them after a page or two, but they must have some way of narrowing it down a *lot* more before they start taking a serious look at people's samples. Anyone here sat on an MFA admissions committee?

I don't know; I think this is pretty good advice in general. It's easy to get stuck in the academic mindset that you *have* to keep progressing and moving through the system, when the reality is that there are more applicants to graduate school than there are slots in programs, and more people with PhDs on the job market than there are jobs for them. We live in such a feel-good, you-can-do-it world that sometimes it's a shock to even consider the possibility that someone might want to do something but not be able to. Well, the reality is, not everyone is good enough, not everyone is smart enough, and not everyone has the right personality type to be a professor. I imagine that law and medical students hear this type of advice all the time. That said, lots of professors get off on making students feel bad. Maybe this was one of them.

I certainly think that giving professors gift cards is a bit inappropriate. A $25 gift card is essentially the equivalent of a check for $25; I think most people would agree that actually giving a professor $25 for writing you a recommendation crosses the line. But I also think giving a small gift of some kind (like a box of chocolates or whatever) is okay if you've got the proper relationship with the professor. These aren't necessarily anonymous professionals with whom you have only an academic relationship; professors and undergraduates can get to know each other quite well, and a professor (being, after all, a human being) will appreciate the gesture just as any other friend or acquaintance would. It's situations where the professor IS practically an anonymous face where going overboard with a gift can make things a little uncomfortable.

My guess is that anyone who thinks it's no big deal to go drastically over the stated word limit has never had a giant stack of papers to grade. The people evaluating these applications aren't sitting down to have a nice relaxing cup of tea with you over the course of an afternoon. Your SOP is one in a pile of hundreds that some anonymous stranger has to get through as quickly and efficiently as possible. If everyone makes their SOPs twice as long, that's twice as much work for the evaluators. And since they're in a position of extreme power over you, and you're a nobody that they've never met and might never meet again, you don't want your first impression to be pissing them off and making them read more because you think you're SO important and have SO much fascinating stuff to say about yourself that it's worth wasting their time and going over the preset limit. Being able to cut down 1200 words to 500 words without losing much meaningful content is a skill that anyone with a college degree should have. Practice until you get good at it; it will make your writing much better in general.