ZeChocMoose

I applied to UCI and if anyone else out there is waiting, I just thought I'd let you know that someone from the faculty called me for a interview. The interview went fantastic, however, I was called two days later and told that the committee has decided not to admit me because someone else had higher GRE scores than me and they wanted that person for a teacher assistantship. So, in case you are waiting to hear from UCI, I imagine they will be sending out notices in the very near future.

My first rejection...hopefully the last.

I can only speak for chemistry (and even this based almost exclusively on hearsay), however I am becoming increasingly convinced that where you go to grad school can unfortunately matter a lot in terms of your chances of subsequently gaining employment, especially if you are interested in an academic position. The problem is that the competition for professorships is so fierce that in many cases it may be hard to be seriously considered, let alone receive an interview offer unless one has a doctorate from a top ranked program. I found the following article: http://pubs.acs.org/...education1.html to offer a sobering analysis of the realities of the academic job market. In this article, a group of researchers who studied the effect of one's grad school choice on success in finding an academic position concluded that:

Having said all that, of course there is another side to the story. Clearly it's not possible to fully separate correlation from causation here, i.e. on average stronger candidates will be admitted to higher ranked schools and these individuals will then find it easier to get a job easier because they are more able, not because of the name on their diploma. Furthermore, if you are an exceptional scientist who can produce truly outstanding results in graduate school and post-doctoral work, chances are you will one day become a professor, no matter where you went to grad school. I'm sure all of us know such individuals who have successfully climbed the academic ladder. Nonetheless, unfortunately for every such success story there are probably ten people for whom things did not turn out ideally, so one must look at such stories in perspective. Of course going to a higher ranked school offers no guarantee that you will one day become a professor (or any kind of successful scientist for that matter), but it does look as though it can give you a real advantage for the former.

tl;dr: The academic job market is incredibly competitive and, for better or worse, where you go to grad school can have a significant effect on your chances of being employed.

These forums are all about snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, so I hate to say anything negative about your chances. I'm no fan of the GRE nor a great believer in the test's ability to predict future success at graduate school. But, a combined 810 is a very poor score. Being that it is a religious studies department, your verbal is going to have more of an influence than your quantitative score. The average verbal GRE score for those admitted to the schools that you've applied for are as follows:

Boston University: 540.
Harvard: 578.
Yale: 582.

Emory does not publish an average of GRE scores for admitted students but does post a range of scores of students that were admitted (500-800V), so you can take from this that your scores will probably exclude you from Emory.

Unfortunately, the GRE 50th percentile mark on the verbal was 456, which means you scored in the bottom half of those who took the test. And even though you are applying for a religious studies program, it is only fair to warn you that even if your verbal score was sound, don't make the mistake of thinking that you can neglect your quantitative score. Your quantitative score alone is low enough to exclude you from every program that you applied for. I had a friend who learned this the hard way who tried to enter Ancient Near Eastern studies with a Q<400 and found out that it excluded him from 5 out of the 6 programs that he applied for. The truth is few departments want a PhD candidate that can't read a graph. For most PhD programs, you really need a combined score in at least the 1200s. But for high demand programs like what you've applied for, you will probably need at least 1350.

It's too late for you to do anything about it now. So, just relax until the results come in. If you don't get in anywhere, take the GRE again. But give yourself plenty of time to not only to study and take the test once but twice. A score that is an improvement of over 200 points can trigger ETS' anti-cheating mechanisms, forcing you to have to write it a third time.

Best of luck...

Meh. I don't think what she did was that terrible. Faculty are really busy and have a lot of demands on their time. I don't know what time of year this was but it is quite possible she had other priorities. I agree that you should wait to pass judgment until you meet her in person and get to talk to her advisees.

Even though Vanderbilt is the #1 education program in the US, I notice no one seems to be talking about it. It's all HGSE and TC. Why is that? Am I missing something?

That is a good question. There is some talk about this on the forum at the Chronicle of Higher Ed

http://chronicle.com...ic,20357.0.html

http://chronicle.com...ic,20091.0.html

http://chronicle.com...ic,18466.0.html

And I am sure there are more than just the ones that I have selected. Seems to be a hotly debated topic in the academy.

I really hope I'm not the only one who has had this thought run through their mind, but we're approaching/have begun interview season. I know I have been in contact with my POI's throughout my application process (just hoping it'll make them spend 30 seconds more reviewing my app). But because of this I have grown to like and respect the POI's I have been in contact with and am excited to meet them for recruitment/interview days.
Does anyone else feel like telling the ones you DON'T choose that it's like letting down someone who asked you out?
Yes, I am really interested in your program and I think you as a person are totally awesome...but, so-and-so is slightly more awesome and I'd rather spend the next 5 years with them.

I'm sorry if I led you on...but we can still be friends.

Unfortunately, yes. I have read some. In my experience, there were not a lot, but I think I have encountered at least 10 "non-recommendations" and that is probably after reading roughly 1,000 recommendations. Some of these were for grad school apps and some of these were for undergraduates trying to get into a particular major. None of them said I do not recommend this student for admission, but either they said nothing of substance besides so-so was in my class and they received X grade (I kid you not two sentences!) or they "damned them with faint praise" as catherinian has said. The later is definitely worse and a couple I will remember to this day because their comments just stick with you!

Honestly, I conclude that most professors will decline if they cannot write a strong recommendation for the person.

If they want your GRE scores - and I have seen a couple of companies, British-based companies, that want test scores - they'll ask for them. Otherwise, it does look weird (I am basing this on nearly four years of industry work) - a lot of people don't even put their GPAs, let alone their test scores.

Honestly, the fact that you can do well on a standardized test is not likely to impress the people looking at your resume. They want to see relevant and/or transferable skills, and preferably relevant past experience. Your quantitative skills will look more impressive if your resume and cover letters discuss how you've applied them.

This is going to sound harsh, but here's my honest opinion


I hope that all of the missing spaces are an artifact of copy/pasting (though the spelling in this and your other post make me somewhat doubt it) Your SOP grammar errors. Paragraphs 2 and 3 don't tell the readers anything they didn't already know Paragraph 4 is highly generic and doesn't say anything about what you did, only that you worked on "aproject" Same problem with paragraph 5. What kinds of social activities did you take part in? Paragraph 6: Why are you interested in doing research? This two sentence paragraph doesn't give anything beyond the name of the field to which you're applying. Finally there's some substance towards the beginning of paragraph 7 (why you're pursuing an MS), but it's still a terribly generic paragraph. This is your statement of purpose. Make it about you, not about the average prospective grad student. I've never seen underscored used in that way, but good opening sentence to the second-to-last paragraph. The rest of your paragraph is weak. You mention two professors with a very generic remark. The last sentence makes everything look like you were playing mad libs with your SoP. The last paragraph doesn't add anything