EdNeuroGrl

What about a writer who hasn't submitted yet and the due date is Dec 1? I sent her a reminder email about 4 days ago with no response... starting to get worried... :-( I also know she is a terrible procrastinator... what to do?

Man I'm sorry :-( For me, tho, Friday would be the end of my semester. The end is neigh! I got out last Tuesday and I should be back in class tomorrow. Actually I HAVE to be back in class tomorrow (final presentation and paper due) *shrug* But I'm doing well now and pushing to get all of my stuff done for tomorrow! BTW the last LoR writer who agreed to write letters for me, has less than 24 hours to submit most of them... still no sign that she's doing it. :-( Have sent reminders, one like 5 days ago. Should I email her again? Would it kill her to respond to my reminder and say she's working on it?

Still waiting on my LoR for one prof. Due date for 3 of them is Dec 1st... she agreed to do it back in August. *frustrated* Everything else has been submitted.

No, I've been sick on and off since this summer (has a 4 week hospital stay in May). I was hoping I would be able to put off my surgery until after the semester ended, but no luck here. However, I do have Bipolar and all this stress did throw me into an uncontrolled fast-cycling thing, had to double my meds :-(

Just spent the last 6 days in the hospital. Cause I TOTALLY NEEDED that right now... o_O FML

I will be waiting until mid Jan to mid Feb. .. maybe later but that's when interviews happen... I would frankly be quite thrilled to get an interview or two I got through about 5 drafts of my main essay then two of my edited for each... from there I just submitted. I listen to all my essays in a text to speech program and then submit Since submitting I've FINALLY been able to get so much done!! Sure I'm worried about it but there isn't anything else I can do about it, so the slightly obsessive part of me is just not triggered anymore. Woooo! I am so relieved. I want to get in soooooo bad, but the process has sucked everything out of me (no joke I've had some serious doctors appointments in this time). Now I'm like getting work done and writing papers!

For submitting early, there may be an edge for being the first group reviewed. For me, I got it done early mostly because having it on my plate and mind was a source of much stress. So I hit submit and I let it go :)

I had some problems coming into my Master's program. The cohort and the department are all pretty disconnected, which for me is a problem. I really thrive on social interaction and need to feel like I belong. So the first thing I did was join the graduate student government. Even if you don't get elected there are tons of committees you can serve on and ways to help out. Through that I have made a good deal of connections. I also made a point of learning where the resources are and how to get them. That way I can help people out when I talk to them. Both of these efforts paid off pretty big as now I have more social support. I would rather they be people in my program, but they are mostly part of our umbrella organization (that is I am in a program that is part of a department that is part of the college of education that is part of the university)... so most of my group are grad students in the college of education. There are other organizations you can get involved with that aren't part of student government. Usually there are graduate student resource groups and informal sports teams... even workout groups, etc... The student resource center usually has workshops also where you can focus on skills like writing, preparing a dissertation/thesis, writing posters, etc these can target skills, but they are also a good place to meet other grad students who care about the same things as you do. Another thing that I know is really successful is to form a writing group. http://gsrc.ucla.edu/gwc/resources/running-an-effective-writing-group.html http://academicwritingclub.com/ http://patthomson.net/2015/03/19/4033/ There are a lot of good reasons to start or join a writing group! If you are dealing with some emotional challenges in addition hit up the school's counseling/mental health resource. Often you can get a one-on-one meeting, but there are also usually groups and workshops targeted at graduate student issues (dealing with anxiety, isolation, stress, working exercise and diet into your schedule, etc)... as above, they can help with skills, but in the group settings you can make some friends. Good luck! Hope some of these suggestions help.

Yeah, essentially. If I do everything with no more delays I am looking at getting my PhD when I am between 35 and 37, then doing a post doc for a couple years... essentially starting a career at 40 and having 20 to 30 years of work before retiring/getting too sick to work... with the very strong assumption that my current health problems don't take me out a lot sooner... So, after my BA I clearly didn't get right into grad school, I got into a Post-Bac program that supported a year of research. At that point I still didn't get in and my contract was up with no option for renewal. I had less than a month to get a paying job before I was homeless. I got a job that was in a med laboratory and it got the bills paid. I worked there a couple years while being promised opportunities to advance, but not being actually given any... Eventually I decided to accept going further into debt because I needed to advance my career and clearly I wasn't competitive. Only after my second semester did I discover opportunities to work as an RA or a data analyst that would also advance my career. It would have been great to know about earlier, but I didn't... I spent 2 years paying down my debt and didn't really make an impact... I had 40k and in the two years (making 21K a year) I didn't see any difference. Anyway, long story... right now, taking time off to pay down debt is not a good option. Between the spending valuable time and the small impact on total debt, it isn't worth it to me.

Yeah, very personal decision. I go in because I've tried other options and I know where I want to be. For me it is worth it to do what I love. And for me also, more down time is going to be detrimental to my over all career. For you, perhaps not.

My freak out moments have been in all the preparation and writing. Now that those are 90% done I feel like I can dig back into my work without having these applications CONSTANTLY on my mind. BTW submitting my last one today!

My philosophy is that IF it serves a point, then yes include it in the SoP. I tried to avoid listing anything that was on my CV unless I had a very immediate purpose for mentioning it.

Uck... I try not to think about my loans... What you have is not much compared to what I have. I also was not fortunate enough to be able to work while attending. Having a learning disability means that I've got to put all I have into this stuff, and when I've been able to take on TA positions as a grad student I was informed that positions don't go to Master's students... so *shrug* In part, it is a personal decision. As far as the information I know about your average student loan amount, you're on the low side of average for someone coming out of a BA/BS.

I hated my first draft! I wrote it and then left it alone for like 2 weeks. Then, I arranged before hand to have 1 professional writer/editor and several others read it for edits. I know what my weaknesses in writing are and so I've made a point of making sure whoever is reading it knows what to look for. The writer has been the most help because she has been able to help me reword things and arrange them so that it gets my meaning across but in a stronger and more concise way. I think her and I went through 4 drafts before I felt comfortable with the essay and actually liked it enough to get some opinions of others in my interest area. As for schools having different requirements. I wrote my longest one first (2 single spaced pages). Then I used cues from the prompt and the question to precisely target what they want. For example Georgetown asked for 500 words or less, but they very clearly wanted a statement about goals and alignment. So all of the stuff about preparation and about how my abilities are going to contribute etc those didn't even play into what they wanted. I would suggest before you start "randomly cutting" that you think about what they want. Don't think about it as cutting out. Start from the bottom and build up using pieces of what you've already written to directly target what they care about. If you feel like you are randomly cutting things then you are probably going about it wrong.

I put my name and the college/department/program in the header. Otherwise, no. As for the mailing group, I've not gotten only like 2 responses and no one is actually sending me info to exchange. I have my statements done and don't need any additional feedback. If anyone here wants to start a message with the others in the thread, please feel free.

I have heard about Master's GPA being very helpful and I have heard it told the other way. One professor told me that because of grade-inflation if you are getting too many B's it means there is something wrong, otherwise a master's student with a 3.8 to 4.0 is completely normal and nothing special. I've had another prof tell me the opposite, that regardless of undergraduate GPA, having shown that you can handle and succeed in graduate level courses is going to be a big plus on your application. I've also heard that some programs will simply ignore a master's gpa entirely... So, not a super helpful answer but as far as I can tell it won't HURT... I don't know how much it will help though. :-/

So, I was not really seeking any advice on who I am applying to. I have spent a LOT (about 5 years) of time on this problem and talking with many professionals who study the topic specifically, my biggest weakness according to researchers in the field is that I haven't focused my interests ENOUGH and so won't have as close of an alignment with regards to methodologies. I literally had a researcher tell me he wouldn't consider a grad student application that didn't include at minimum 2 years work in neuroimaging from an educational and developmental perspective (so, incidentally, I'm not applying to his lab). I also don't have the money to apply to any more places than I am. I am already quite invested in the specific area of research and expect this to be my career. I feel that given the resources (monetary, time, emotional, social) I have, the discussions I have had with the PI's themselves (funding, methodology, approaches, etc), and the research I've done on the departments and the experiences of their graduate students, that I have struck an acceptable balance. I will ultimately be working with a team of researchers as this is a form of cognitive neuroscience, and regardless of school, I will have an opportunity to diversify or switch focus should I really have the NEED. I have considered how broad or narrow a net I plan on casting, and ultimately, I do trust the researchers, post-docs, and graduate students who are actually in the field already (that I have formed relationships with) over an unknown person with unknown background offering anecdotal evidence on a subject I wasn't really asking for anyone's opinion on. I would be happy if Eigen would send me a message about the name of his/her college and I can actually see if the situation were applicable to me or not, but I'm not entirely sure how the discussion of the PI's I am applying to work with is germane to the topic of this thread. I will offer some unsolicited advice now, myself, in general, if your unsolicited advice serves to derail the topic of the thread, perhaps, you should consider the "Underpants Rule" before posting. The Underpants Rule is simple: everyone is the boss of their own underpants so you get to choose for you and other people get to choose from them and it’s not your job to tell other people what to do. To illustrate, if you’re considering saying something that starts with People shouldEveryone ought toWhat people need to doWe should allNobody shouldYou shouldn’tblah blah things that have to do with underpants that aren’t yours blah blahthen there is a 99.9% chance that you are about to break The Underpants Rule. The only exception is ultimately if someone is asking for help or your advice. I am violating my own underpants rule, admittedly, but I feel this an acceptable risk given the situation. I was really only offering a situation where the original poster might contextualize the situation differently, not asking anyone on here about my own strategies. If I have a question or concern, AND I feel that this forum would be a good place to seek answers, I will ask about it of my own volition. dirkwww I apologize that my comment has served to derail your question. In retrospect I should have not responded to eigen's second comment.

What school is that?

I'm not sure if there is a reasonable answer to this question. I've wondered myself, but if you wanted to get hard-core stats on it you would need some data about their past behavior as well as some objective measure of fittedness,which we don't have. We can't assume that this is a consistent variable among schools either since some very popular schools with get more applications with a much greater variability in fittedness ... *shrug* There are a lot of factors that we just can't account for and we would need some base rates even for a Bayesian type of calculation... So even given your assumption, as I see it your question about range of schools can't really be answered. Other than in a broad sense that it is smart to apply to several schools of differing ranks. You could hypothetically apply to every program and have the best possible chance (assuming your application quality wasn't impaired), and maximize your chances. But, where is that probability versus effort at the most efficient? I have no idea how to even approach that question... If you talk to a bunch of people who have been through this successfully, you'll hear a lot of stories where they get rejected from 6-8 programs and only one accepts them and the ranking has nothing to do with it. Yes, higher ranked programs are harder to get into, but I'm not sure that the amount of variance due rank even approaches meaningful when compared to quirks of the program/POI funding/who happens to look at your application. There are many occurrences of people getting rejected from many low-rank schools only to get in at a top-rank school, AND many times where someone gets in to a low-ranked program and rejected from a bunch of tops, AND students with literally perfect stats who get rejected summarily, etc Something to think on: often times rank will have something to do with how many applicants they get and how "high" they put the "minimum cut offs", but from there if you make it and you assume everyone has similar fit... there are still more applicants than spots (usually). It is also more common than you'd thing that PI's to get a list of applicants who pass the cut-offs, and those PI's have to nominate from the pool, students that get reviewed by the department for consideration. So aside from making the "cut" you've just got to have luck or some other line-in on the PI to be considered. So, I'm not entirely sure that rank of the school is going to help inform your decision of which and how many schools to apply for. I would like to know if others have differing opinions.

Eigen, if you're responding to me. My PI search considerations: Are they doing research on education AND neuroscience related topics? Does it have anything to do with numerical/spatial thinking OR learning disability? At the moment, it is a small (but growing) field, the vast majority of researchers (who are taking grad students) are looking for students familiar with the challenges and methods they are working with; students who they think will hit the ground running and be productive researchers. Going outside this focus is going to actually reduce my options because my interests will seem unfocused. And from my experience in my master's I am just not up for spending more time spinning my wheels in a department that just doesn't care about the educational neuroscience field. There are only a handful of these in the states, and a few more outside of the country. . Also, all of the programs I am applying to offer very flexible programs that will allow me to explore areas including curriculum development/leadership and policy/neurogenetics/intervention strategies/early childhood education/statistical analysis/neural network learning/etc/etc. Insofar as my career plan goes, there are TONS of ways I can distinguish myself and generate unique approaches to this field. I know my specific area is not typical of the majority of grad applicants out there, but my field is not either. I only use my situation as an example of how/why the OP might consider framing the responses they have gotten thus far; that is, if they got a 'maybe' response AND their fit is good, they should probably go ahead and apply.

However, this depends on your interests. For example, in my area there are really only a few researchers doing the work and they're all pretty much the only ones in their department doing this research. So... if I were to follow the above rule, I'd have no places to apply to. On the other hand, I've talked to all of them about their situation and about their labs. I've gotten 1 maybe response and 1 no response. However I know that both are planning on expanding their labs in the near future so chances are good that they'll take on a grad student or two. The other 2 I have literally had several hour long conversations with and feel great about my prospects on. Nothing is guaranteed but unless I get a no then I am going to apply anyway. If I had a bunch (more than the 4 I have) and wasn't sure if I should apply in the first place then maybe I would take a luke warm response as an indication that I should invest my efforts elsewhere. Keep in mind that a bunch of PI's really feel that responding in an encouraging way might skew their own decision making unfairly against the less social ones who aren't sending emails or reaching out to contact them. *shrug*

Okay guess I misunderstood the question. I would upload what they ask for. If you are choosing between a resume and a CV pick a CV. If all they want is a resume, then submit that. I think it is odd that they would ask for a resume and NOT a CV, since I'm assuming you're going for an academic based program (as opposed to something that is more along the lines of a certification program). If they just ask for a resume I'd be really hesitant to submit a CV, since a huge part of the process is just doing exactly what they're asking you to. Honestly, I would contact the admissions staff and ask for clarification, since a CV is the norm.

In short, no... if you have a template you're following it may be a real "hit" for your application. I have found this book enormously helpful it has some examples from different disciplines. http://www.amazon.com/Graduate-Admissions-Essays-Fourth-Edition/dp/1607743213

3 of 4 of the programs I am applying for don't require official transcripts unless you are offered and accept a place in their programs... Yay for me! Saving a bunch of monies there and a few headaches!