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You have no idea how helpful your post was! I agree that she was pretty detailed in her e-mail, but I thought it was because she seemed like a genuinely kind person (based on my 8-10 mins interaction with her, which isn't much, but she just so obviously seemed like such a decent person, that it made me even more enthusiastic to work with her) and also because I tend to get quite pessimistic. But the instructions she gave me, plus your post and the help I am going to get from my ex-supervisor makes me a little less scared of putting together a proposal. Thank you so much! I hope you'll get some good news about your grant application soon!

Thank you for your replies! I just got an answer, and I have read about people analyzing professors' replies, so I thought I might ask whether this is a neutral, encouraging or discouraging answer. Obviously, one would need to know the personality of the prof to make that judgement, but I don't know much about her personality, except that she seems like an very kind and humble prof, who is also pretty young. "Dear XXX Yes, I remember our conversation at the XX conference, and yes, I’ll be happy to supervise your work should you get admitted to our DPhil programme.The admissions process is very competitive so my advice is that you try to clearly distil in your proposal what makes your research unique and original, and what makes you stand out from other applicants (we are receiving an increasing number of applications with similar research topics as yours). I pay special attention to the methodology, and how it aligns with the theoretical questions posed: I like to see that students have a clear roadmap of how they will deliver their research targets, and how they will deal with possible contingencies (i.e. difficulties in obtaining the appropriate data etc). Make sure you highlight how your past experience and background make you a unique candidate! Good luck and happy start of 2013," I think it is a kind e-mail, which answered my question of whether she would supervise me if I worked on a topic that I proposed, which wasn't outlined very clearly. I also told her that I was working with my ex-supervisor on making my proposal a lot clearer, since it was very unstructured right now. I definitely think that her reply will help me a lot in writing my proposal, but I don't know whether she is politely telling me that I don't really stand a chance. I can't believe how stressful this is, every time I open my inbox, I am just scared that something will go wrong, it doesn't help that I am only applying to one university...

Wow, 24!! That seems like a good strategy, though, I am glad it worked out. The problem is, I am only applying to one university, I could try and get in contact with other professors in the same department who are working on related stuff, but it is only 2 weeks before the application deadline, I am afraid that it would look like a last-minute thing (which it is, but I don't want them to know that )

I wrote an e-mail to my POI (I wanted to paste it here, but I am afraid that it would be too revealing). I started with mentioning that we've met before at a conference 2-3 months ago and which presentation was mine (my presentation was just okay, not stellar, and she was there to see it, and then my conference paper got rejected from a journal which lists her as one of the three editors, so I kind of lose here, but I thought I would give my application a try anyway). I then went on to describe my background in a paragraph and one project that I am working on right now in my free time, that I would like to do as a PhD student. The research questions aren't very clear, but I explained to the best of my abilities. In the last paragraph, I also mentioned two other research ideas in one sentence and wrote that I was still working with my supervisor on developing my PhD proposal, so the topics I've mentioned aren't set in stone, but that I just wanted to ask whether it seemed like a topic she would want to supervise. She still hasn't replied (I did write on 26th of December, which was obviously an awful idea, and all this after reading extensively about how to write to professors, I completely forgot that Christmas isn't the best time to contact professors). How long did it take for ou to get replies from potential supervisors? Should I be worried? This is for a UK university, where they specifically say that you should make contact with at least one potential supervisor before application and then mention them on your application. Otherwise, I wouldn't have done it, since the things she do are so similar to what I am interested in (I've read all her papers, although I am pretty sure it wasn't evident at all from my e-mail) that I wouldn't have thought it would be necessary to get in touch. I don't know why I freak out so much about things that aren't under my control, I just feel like there is no point in applying if she isn't going to reply.

I actually attended the Faculty of Humanities at this university! The universities in Hungary are not like the ones in the US, they are all public universities with little money. It might be a good conference, but the stakes aren't as high as they would be in other parts of the world. The only university that actually holds very prestigious conferences in Hungary are the ones held by Central European University (CEU). However, this conference doesn't really belong to ELTE, it was just chosen as the venue, and for ELTE standards the website looks awesome, to be honest. So what I am trying to say is that -even though I had many amazing professor teach me there, and the science faculty of the university is extremely extremely strong- ELTE isn't a very prestigious school in US standards (it is the best uni in Hungary, though).

I have asked this on a different forum as well, but since I am just sitting here still undecided whether I should send in my application package in a month, I thought I would ask here as well, maybe somebody has been in a similar situation: Background (skip if you just want the question ) I have for 5+ years been interested in the same academic areas, which included a branch of social science and mathematics/computer science. I never thought the two would ever merge, but it did, so right now my interests lie in social computing; doing social science with "Big Data". I have an undergrad from the best university in my country, which no one has ever heard of outside the country. My undergrad grades are pretty awful, since the degree was not very challenging, but I graduated with an Excellent diploma, which is the highest honors you can receive (when grading the diploma, they don't look at your GPA; they only look at your thesis grade, which has to be excellent, the result of your final exams, which is an intense oral and written exam of everything you studied during your undergrad -this also has to be excellent- and recommendations from two professors who taught you, your supervisor and an extra prof, who have to agree to grant you an Excellent diploma), but I think they rather look at your grades than the grade of your diploma, so I don't know how much that offsets my not so spectacular grade average. I started a second undergrad in Computer science, which is going well, but I am only doing it as a hobby, as my academic interests are not in computer science, it is rather a tool I use to do research in social sciences. I did two summer research 'schools' with a well-known university in Europe, and then I did my master's degree at this university, graduating with an 81% average, which is considered an A. All throughout my studies I was very successful, even when I wasn't getting good grades, it was accepted that I was the best at both my undergrad and my grad schools, so my recommendation are going to be very good. All my professors are urging me to do a PhD, I got offered two PhD positions already, but I don't want to take either of them, since I want to explore a new department. I have presented at one major conference at the university that I want to apply to, my presentation didn't go too well, it didn't seem very professional in my opinion and then my paper that I submitted for the conference journal got rejected. So that is a huge blow. I have presented at two workshops, and 4 of my assignments for my master's are going to be published in a book that is being put together by the head of my department (however, I don't know whether the details will be smoothed out before I can make my application, so that might not appear on my CV). I know I was a very advanced master's student and an undergrad student, some of my results make this obvious, some not so much. However, I don't have any publications yet, none of the works I did received any media attention and I haven't interned in any of the big research institutes. The reason I am listing these as shortcomings is that most of the people who are doing PhDs in the one school I would really like to end up in have very impressive CVs, and I am not sure how mine compares. Currently I am actually working as a researcher in my specific academic area, doing the things I would like to do for my dissertation and I am doing this for a company, where I have complete freedom. The school that I want to go to is in the UK, and I talked with the prof that I'd want as my supervisor during the conference, we only talked for a few minutes, I expressed my interest in doing a PhD and having her as my supervisor, and she said that if my application got to her, then she would definitely like me in her group, however she doesn't have much say in whose application gets sent to her, since that decision is made by the university wide admission commitee first. I don't know whether this was just a very polite way of rejecting me in advance. I am not saying that she should have offered me a PhD position right there and then if she really thought she wanted to supervise me, but she didn't ask for my name or anything to make sure that she pays attention to my application or didn't ask me to contact her by e-mail or anything. So the bottom line is, I don't think I made the best impression on this department by getting a rejection from my paper being published in the conference proceedings (which is edited by 3 people from the department, one of them being my potential supervisor), and I can't tell if the potential supervisor was being polite by saying she would want to work with me, or she really would, since she hasn't made any for to contact me afterwards (we didn't exchange contact information). How bad do you think getting rejected from the department's own journal influence my application?

That story actually brought tears to my eyes, I'm so happy for you! Congratulations!!

Thank you for your reply! Unofortunately, I don't have too much time to work on my Verbal, I am taking the GRE tomorrow My diploma grade does apear on my diploma, which I will have to get translated (I was able to ask for the registrar's office to print out an excel table of all the courses taken, put a stamp on it and sign it, so this transcript will be in English, because all of the courses I have taken have official English course names, as well, however I don't think they can do the same for my diploma, I will have to get that translated professionally). The grade of the state exam and my thesis work also appears on my transcript. My MA scores don't appear anywhere, except for the central university examination board, which I don't want to deal with right now, but the oral part of the entrance examination was conducted in front of a board that included the head of the faculty, who is writing one of my LoRs, so I can ask him to mention it. I won't be devastated if I don't get in right ow, because I am already pretty sure that I don't stand much chance, I was just extremely sad about the fact, that even if I spent the next 2 years finishing my MA here, at my current university, and got amazing grades, I still wouldn't be able to get into the Phd schools I wanted to get into in the US, because for some reason my GPA is extremely low... Thanks again for replying and good luck with your applications!!

Hi! I am an international student from an Eastern European country and I will be applying for a master's program in Media Studies at MIT. I used to think I had a chance at geting in but by now I am almost completely sure that I don't really stand a chance. I was shocked at how high the GPAs of American students are. In my school, our scholarships are calculated based on your GPA per semester and I've done 8 semesters at my uni and received the maximum amount of scholarship available for my department 6 semesters out of the 8, yet my GPA (when converted into the American scale) is only 2.8. I thought I could offset my low GPA with high GRE scores, considering the fact that I am also an undergraduate student in Mathematics, I score around 750-800 for the quant part but only around 550 for the verbal part on the practice exams. I have a 6-week intense research experience,working with a research group in Amsterdam, great letters of recommendation (only one of them is a pretty well-known American scholar, who is the head of the New Media Department at a very highly ranked European university,he is also the head of the research group, the other two are from my university, aren't known at all, but one of them is my thesis advisor and the other one is the head of the faculty), but I believe the competition will be very harsh, considering the fact that the 2-year Master's program is fully funded. My question is: are American undergraduate diplomas graded in any way? At my university, your diploma is graded based on the average of the grade the student gets for his/her thesis and an oral exam (state exam) that encompasses all the compulsory classes for your major. Based on these results my diploma was graded the highest mark possible (I did not take this into account when I calculated my overall GPA), I also had maximum points available for my entrance exam to the Master's degree I am currently enrolled in.