liszt85

http://tennis.sticksports.com/gameallstarsmash.php works for me.

Seconded.

They said that my funding would be decided on the 10th of March. If you come to know of the stipend before I do, do let me know. Am quite anxious to know and the earlier I know, the earlier I can start calculating if OSU would be better for me financially. Btw just out of curiosity, are you from India? Also, did you reject an offer from the Dept of Psychology at Berkeley?! Wow..

Hmm thanks for the bit of info about OSU. Do you know the present level of support that is offered to grad students in the Psychology Dept at OSU? What is the stipend offered (departmental fellowship)? I do know that there is a very good researcher, David Huron, in the Dept of Music who I've been in touch with. Similarly at Northwestern there's Ric Ashley in the Dept of Music. Both are excellent researchers in the field of music cognition and if the Psychology Dept agrees to having them on my committee, I could always get to work on music. So as it stands, I will have plenty of opportunity to do work that I'd love at all these three places. Since this is a new field to me, I really don't have strong preferences (eg: neurological vs behavioral approaches, anything would do as long as I get to study a problem that I seriously want to study and solve). Again the thing with OSU is that I was rejected by the grad school at the first instance! These two very nice profs contacted me and told me that they were very interested in my application and they interviewed me via skype and then nominated me for some funds (3 year dept fellowship) and one of them committed to funding me for 2 years from his research grants to make it 5 years of funding. So this is turning out to be a really tough call for me to make as I've been in touch with all these people for 4-5 months now and I pretty much know I'll have fun regardless of which school I'll go to because my interests are broad. In a way I'm glad now that I don't have too many acceptances. I've always had issues with making decisions I can't even choose a goddamn shirt when I go shopping for clothes, I usually tell the person accompanying me to pick but I can't do that with a grad school decision and its especially tough when people have put in so much effort to get me funds because my screwed up grades couldn't win me funds at the first instance :|

I just hope I make the right decision for both me and my future wife. I'm glad I'm in a position where I get to choose esp since this has been a tough year on everybody. Btw, do you have a decision yet from McGill? After emails that I sent to Caroline Palmer and Daniel Levitin, they let me know that my somewhat non-stellar grades were problematic in getting funds, so its most likely a rejection. Else, Daniel Levitin's lab would have been a top choice as well. The guy has done pretty much everything I wanted to do. I spent a good share of my undergraduate days a thousand miles away from university, singing in rock bands in Mumbai. I wanted to drop out and go do music. Daniel Levitin has done all of that and would have been nice to work under him, getting a glimpse into his life experiences Anyway, that's no longer a possibility. Good luck with your McGill decision, its a great place.

Yes, Prof Trainor wrote to me saying that she'd like to have me join her lab and that she'd recommend my name for admission. That was about 3-4 weeks ago and I'm getting quite nervous now. I hope it does translate into an official offer. I don't mind if majority of my work is to be neurological as long as I get trained well enough through coursework in research methods, that I can conduct a behavioral study if I so wish later on. The thing is she wants me to join the lab because I'm from a physics background and there are some sophisticated signal processing tasks to be done in the lab and my knowledge and experience with acoustics and certain techniques (like beamforming) might come in handy because certain such new techniques have been introduced in the lab. So she probably was looking for somebody with a strong quantitative background. Now, while I wouldn't mind devoting some time to all of that, I do not want to be forced to do just some signal processing tasks! I however do think she'd give me enough freedom to choose what to work on towards my PhD. About the money, Hamilton is not an expensive place to live in and I hope to get around $15,000 CDN pa. I however do not know if that will be sufficient to support two people in Hamilton. Some people say it is. Prof Trainor also had asked me to let her know if I had any other financial constraint and I did tell her about my plan to bring along my spouse and hence would need some additional support. I don't know if she would be able to give me some extra cash in addition to what the dept can offer. You are absolutely right about the charm of linguistics. The reason why Northwestern looks so attractive to me is the wide range of options they've put in front of me. They've put me in touch with professors from Physics, Music, Speech and Communication Disorders, Cognitive Science departments, all of whom have shown active interest in working with me. There is this music, language and communication specialization track which I intend to do under the complex systems institute http://www.tgs.northwestern.edu/academi ... unication/ and this would offer me the chance to do music cognition and analysis of music using concepts from physics (fractals, multifractals, scaling laws, etc) which I really enjoy doing (I've already done some relevant research in this area). I would however also be expected to work in semantics/pragmatics. It would be really difficult for me to reject their offer but like you said, that advice about more jobs in Psychology has been playing at the back of my head and I just can't ignore it Also, the NU stipend (1st year fellowship) is around $1500 after taxes (20.5K before taxes per year including summer funding). In Chicago, that's not a safe amount for a couple to live on. I don't know if I can get some additional support from some professor's grant in the summer (in addition to the guaranteed summer support they've offered). Now you see why this decision is going to be super tough for me. :| Anybody with more thoughts on the matter? Psycholinguist and I would really love to hear what you all think about the situation. When its no longer an issue with research fit, what factors must I give importance to while making a choice? For me, my future spouse's preference to live in Hamilton, Canada than Chicago, USA is definitely one but more importantly, I need to know about future prospects attached to each of these PhD's (PhD in Linguistics, Northwestern vs PhD in Psychology, McMaster or Ohio State University (lesser research interest fit)).

1) Delaware isn't bad 2) Chicago is obviously famous 3) You wouldn't have asked this question had you been unable to afford to pay that 75%. 4) You could always do your MA at Delaware and go do your PhD at Chicago or some reputed place later if you wish to. 5) If its to do an MA and go back to working a job, Chicago might be the better choice as you should be able to repay your loan if any sooner than if you would go on to do a PhD. Therefore, if you do not have a PhD in mind and if you want to go right back to work after the MA, I say go to Chicago. If your intention is to go on to do a PhD after this MA, take the free ride, do it in Delaware and work hard to build a solid research based resume which will possibly get you into an even better place than Chicago for your PhD!

Friday, March the 13th rings a bell. Is this Berkeley you're talking about? The Psychology Dept there said the same to me but I bugged them enough to get them to send me an email with the decision letter attached. It was a rejection. A few of my friends who assumed rejections were pleasantly surprised to see letters of acceptance come in, albeit a little late, by post from U Chicago. So don't lose heart..good luck.

I think this is for the Fall 2010 season. I briefly looked at my country's website too. When they say "we offer assistance with placement/admission", it probably means that you give them your preference or even otherwise, they would match your interests with the top programs.. I'm sure you'll have a say in it, though I myself didn't get that information from the website. In any case, this deadline I believe is for the Fall 2010 applicants as the interviews for the shortlisted candidates will be held only in September and the website I looked at does say its for 2010. I'll give you a link to the site if I find it, I had taken a brief look a month ago. Edit 1: I just read your Edit 2. http://www.usief.org.in/Scripts/ForIndi ... Award.aspx This is the source of my information and this says that the deadline is indeed for the 2010 placements.

So how do they make sure people just don't accept an offer and then go elsewhere? Don't they need some kind of assurance? One other question I had in mind was what happens if you accept one of your offers (school X) by the April 15th deadline and then your top choice (school Y) makes an offer to you as somebody else had rejected their offer. What do you now do? Can you go ahead and tell school X that you just received an offer from Y that you value more and would be attending Y? How does this whole thing work?

I can tell you what factors come to my mind when I apply for PhD positions in European universities. Other than tuition fee and environment: 1) Coursework and how that will be organized (this has been one of my major concerns while applying for PhD positions in Europe as they treat you more like paid employees rather than students), No. of official working hours per day, facilities in the labs, infrastructure, etc 2) Stipend, financial support, health insurance, etc 3) Cultural activities..eg: music scene, food, diversity, outdoor activities, etc. 4) Time taken for completion. 5) Housing, transport, etc near the University. (cost of living in the city) 6) Campus hot spots, restaurants and eateries on or near campus, etc (for the purposes of making a video).

I have applied to both these departments. I have one offer from a Dept of Linguistics and two *possible* offers that might come my way from Depts of Psychology. Some people advise me that I should pick the Dept of Psychology offer since my research interest is a highly interdisciplinary one (music cognition with some interest in language issues also) and it wouldn't matter which dept I do it in, so what remains would be to check what PhD would offer me a wider range of options when its time for me to look for a job. People also say that Psychology professors are paid a little more and more grants probably are secured by Depts of Psychology. Is this true? Does this advice make sense? I frankly don't have a preference as I wouldn't mind teaching and working in a Linguistics or Psychology Dept later on. So what other factors do you think I must take into consideration while choosing where to go given that interests match well, one with a linguistics dept at Northwestern, and one with a Psychology Dept, say at Ohio State University or McMaster University? Also based on reputation alone, which would you choose, OSU or McMaster (both Psychology)? Excellent researchers are present at all these three places and I find this decision a really hard one to make and I would find it especially hard to turn down an offer from Northwestern Linguistics because the people there really seem to be eager to have me there and we've exchanged around 20 emails (with professors from 3 different departments who I might wish to work with). One major factor would be the cost of living and the ability to support my spouse on the stipend. So that way OSU and McMaster might actually turn out to be better in terms of expenses.. I'm very confused Thoughts on the matter welcome..

Nobody? I also don't see anybody who's applied to the Dept of Psychology at McMaster on the results page. Is there anybody else who has applied to this dept?

Yea, you're in luck. I'm an Indian and a professor, a top notch researcher in my field of interest at one of the UC's, had to tell me that she was extremely interested in me joining her lab but couldn't secure the necessary funds from the state. That is probably the worst kind of rejection one can get She even advised me on which journal to send my paper to, one that was rejected by JASA on the basis of "interesting work but falls out of the scope of acoustics" and gave me advice about the other possible acceptances that could come my way and how I should decide where to go, etc. The good thing is she said we'd remain in touch and I'd look to collaborate sometime in the future.. So I will probably contact her when its time to do a post-doc. But this does suck :| and I think this time it does have something to do with the present economic crisis as well.

I've seen that most schools, beginning 2007, have waived the difference between the international and canadian tuition fees. You should really scour the UBC financial assistance website and see if that's in place.

You've been one of the very few people who've not given reasons like "I'm a lousy test taker", "I forgot my high school math", etc for scoring low on the quant. Your application probably reflected that you're capable of taking responsibility for your actions which I think is an important quality for a grad student to possess. Good luck.

McGill however let me know that my grades hurt my chances at getting financial aid which is why I was unsuccessful in my application.. So they do hurt you depending on the university. There are places which have not given importance to my grades due to the other parts of my application which are strong and professors have written to me saying that I've been one of their best applicants. So its been a mixed response so far. So the idea for people like me would be to apply to various different places and hope for the best.

All the guy asked was what he should do in order to be a competitive applicant to a Psychology graduate program. I know that the topic title is a misleading one but its evident from the body of the post that he did not mean to ask if he had a chance after having applied to a program.

Hey, how did you get them to do that? I'm in a fix as I have to support my wife too on just this stipend (around $1500pm after taxes). That is going to be a real tight budget that we're going to live on unless I get some additional cash.. and this amount seems like their standard offer and I don't know if I should/can ask them if it can be raised (I'm awaiting a funding decision from OSU and a possible offer from McMaster) if one of the other places offer better funding (wrt living expenses in the respective city)..

One of my friends thought the same but some schools send their decisions ONLY by post and he got an offer from U Chicago today by post. A lot of people will also reject offers before the 15th of April and if you are on a waitlist, you should be offered a place. So keep your hopes up until the 15th of April. Good luck!

Got info on McMaster and life in Hamilton, anybody? Estimates for living expenses for a couple?

No man, its the Dept of Psychology at OSU that would be potentially making an offer to me. So I'm trying to compare the Depts of Psychology at OSU and McMaster with the Dept of Linguistics at Northwestern. IF there are people who've visited these programs, I would love to hear about your experience.

Your scores are perfectly fine as 550 in the verbal section is not too bad whereas a 580 in the quant section is not looked at the same way. People do look at the quant score carefully.. and probably do expect at least a 600-620 even for the humanities applicants as basic mathematical reasoning is probably something they all look for. Don't ask me to justify why they look for it, all I'm saying is that's what I think happens. It varies with the program and university. Yes, your Q score is pretty low but looking at that average of 636, its not too much lower than that. 56 points is not a huge difference and since your verbal score is an awesome one (as is your AWA score), I think you should do quite alright. So keep your hopes up, good luck!

That's not necessarily true.. I'd applied to the University of Jyv

I had applied to the Cognitive area. I did not receive any such mail I however did email the professor who I'd wanted to work with and he replied: ---------------------------- Thank you for your e-mail and patience. Invitations for interviews have gone out to selected applicants. Further official communication from Graduate Studies at UC Davis is forthcoming. ---------------------- I don't know if they send out interview invitations to international students. I sure haven't received any. Could any of you tell me if international students also get these invitations? If they do, I probably can safely assume that I've been rejected.