liszt85
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Posts posted by liszt85
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I married my girl (3 year long distance relationship) right before I came to the US to attend grad school.
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Is it better to spend more and get a degree from a top school or save more and get a degree from a lower ranked school? For instance UNLV v. BU
Thanks in advance for your help!
Depends on a lot of factors: How much more expensive is the top ranked school than the lower ranked one? How low ranked is the low ranked one? I wouldn't consider rank 25-40 low ranked. I would consider 1-25 top ranked. I wouldn't differentiate much between 15 and 25. If its rank 1 vs rank 40, I'd probably go for rank 1, provided its not $20K more expensive than the lower ranked place. Also, it depends on how important the rank of the school you got your degree from is in your field. If its a PhD that you're going to do, the ranking will probably be less important than the actual research you'll be doing. So research fit and professors' interests would be of greater concern than the ranking of the school.
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I had a 610V and 780Q. I think that was a decent score. I think that the quant is the more important score. Technical writing skills are not reflected by the GRE verbal score! If you score 800 on the verbal, its more likely that you'd struggle with technical writing (which requires you to avoid flowery language)! I'm just exaggerating..but you get the idea.
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A higher award? Did you make a typo here? No school is going to take external funding away from you if it goes over their stipend. If you win an award that gives you a $30,000 stipend, then you'll certainly get it in full. If you win a $10,000 award, then yeah, they might reduce your stipend to $10,500.
No, they meant exactly that. Even if I won a 25K award, they would adjust their own award (probably the tuition fee?) to even out things.. I'd end up with the 20.5 regardless of what award I win (unless its some graduate teaching award or something like that). This was one of the many reasons I chose not to attend NU.
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My squib got me a bad grade in the syntax course that I did.. "too much information, not very well organized" was the evaluation. There were comments with question marks put in by the prof even on stuff that I quoted from the literature. So I got a B in the course.. he was pretty hard on me! I found that professors in any given dept give better grades to students from the same dept even if the performance levels are comparable with students from outside the dept. I don't have hard evidence for this..so I can only talk about it in here.
Got an A and an A- in the other two courses = 3.523 gpa (B in a 5 credit course, A and A- in 4 credit courses). Yea, grad school is not easy but it wouldn't be grad school otherwise!
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That would be nice, but I don't know how common it is.
My sister said that her school reduced her stipend by the exact amount of the NSF stipend. (This was in the days before the NSF paid much, so the school stipend was actually higher.) Needless to say, she was a bit miffed.
This is exactly what Northwestern told me. Their stipend (Linguistics program) was fixed at $20,500 a year. I asked them if I could get more than that if I applied to and won a scholarship/fellowship that carried a higher award. They told me that they had a policy by which I'd end up getting just the 20,500 in any case. They might make the necessary adjustment in some other form, maybe reduce the tuition support by an appropriate amount?
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1) Grades don't really matter as long as you don't lose your funding.
2) Think about your research when the coursework gets you down. That's helped me.
3) Remember that the first year is the hardest.
4) Go do something fun before your last final and use the break to really relax.
I did all of the above in my first quarter and it helped immensely! So rising star is absolutely right about the above. I know somebody who stressed about it so much (and worked extra hard, slept like 2-3 hours a night) that he developed an eye problem and had to go see a doctor after the end of the quarter. His gpa is 0.3 more than mine..but I don't think its worth an eye
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Most of these are for US citizens. Do you guys know of any that international students can apply to?
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I hope I don't sound like too much of a tool here...
Hi all, so I took the GRE, got 800s on the Q and V, but a 4.5 on the AW. This board had almost convinced me that this score would not be a big deal. But then today, I went to U Maryland's website and found out that their hard cutoffs were 550V, 650Q, 4.5 AW. Obviously, I'm past that hurdle, but seeing that a 4.5 AW is the hard cutoff, I couldn't help but worrying. This means that at least some programs weigh the AW score heavily, and that in those cases my score is marginally poor!
Also, my undergrad GPA, while generally not horrendous isn't that great (3.7), and included lots of peaks and troughs (A+'s and a couple C's). Considering my GRE score has the same topography, will schools see me as erratic?
Your username kinda suits you
The thing is, with a 1600 GRE, 4.5 AWA (which is decent enough) and a 3.7 GPA, you have nothing to worry about, unless you have zero research experience, zero publications, zero projects undertaken, etc. If all you've got is your GRE score and your GPA, you probably won't get into a very good PhD program..but if you have research experience comparable to other applicants, I don't see why you should even post such a query here when people have a lot more to worry about than you, give your extremely high GRE score and a gpa that is better than good. I'm guessing you needed some ego boosting comments here which I think we all obliged you with. -
Finals week. I did get an A in one class already, but this is my only A and the teacher gave most students an A. In another class I completely bombed the final and I probably barely had a B going into it. My third final is in two days and I'm scared to death because the exam is intentionally noticeably harder than regular exams and I've got a solid B going into it, but I don't know if i can handle anything tougher and I feel like i'm going to blow it.
Yeah, maybe I just have first year jitters, but in all honestly, I really don't like school. I hate having anxiety, I hate having to sacrifice all of my free time to study, and I hate not being able to have the time to hang out with any friends or have some hobbies or anything. I just don't feel like I'm in love with the subject matter for it to consume years of my life in this way.
The only portion of this experience I've enjoyed is being a TA and this is because I have teaching experience and I enjoy teaching.
Thankfully I already have one masters (in teaching), and if i can finish out the year with at least a 3.0, I should have the credentials to teach at a community college. This feels like a much better path for me to take and I think I'd be much happier if I took that route.
Thoughts, comments, suggestions?
I got an A, an A- and a B this quarter. I got the B in a class that I worked for the hardest. I topped the class in which I got an A but then the professor gave A's to most students in that class. I did almost as well as the others in the class in which I got a B and that was a 5 credit course which brought my gpa down by a lot.. however, things will be much easier for us if we accept the FACT that grades don't matter in graduate school. My own adviser told me this..and every single professor and every single 5th year PhD student I asked about this told me exactly the same thing. The only thing that matters will be the quality of research that you do and the amount of good work that you publish. So the advice they all gave me was this: spend time on courses that are directly relevant to the research that I'll do,..spend just enough time on other courses to take care not to piss off professors teaching those courses. This is exactly what I'm going to follow. I stressed about the B (after having worked my ass off for it) for a while.. but graduate school will remain a pain in the neck if we continue stressing about grades in courses, which in the end won't matter anyway.
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What do you guys think is a good GPA to maintain in grad school? I got a 3.523 in my first quarter (which was very hectic since I come directly from a semester system which is much slower and easier..).
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Nothing helpful here from me.. I thought you were talking about "the" Chopin and then realized it was Kate Chopin you were talking about.
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Towards the beginning of the quarter I asked a professor to write a recommendation for me for a fellowship. However since then our relationship has gone down hill and today it hit the gutter. I can be honest in saying that I have not done anything to this professor however she has been malicious to me in a very public manner. She makes jokes during seminar about the conferences I have been accepted to attend insinuating that they are a waste of time. Amongst other things she singles me out in seminar for my opinion on things to just shoot me down. Today she asked for opinions on the book of a professor in our department and my classmates started pointing out critiques and I stayed silent. She then turned to me and asked my opinion and when I pointed out one of the core flaws in the line his argument she responded with this, "You may not know this but it takes a lot to write a book. So instead of tearing it down and viewing it from your own lens how about you focus on what it has to offer." This comment was directed at me eye contact and all making the environment really tense. When we left class my classmates asked me what that was all about. And said that the professor was flat out rude and unmerited in her response to me. Someone even commented that it seemed like she hadn't even heard what I said but was just ready to shoot me down as soon as I opened my mouth.
In all honesty I don't think she will write a scathing recommendation however do not think it will be the most favorable. She has not shown that she likes my ideas or me very much. Is there a kind way of telling her sorry your rec is no longer needed?
Any help would be appreciated.
Something similar happened to me once. I had asked my project advisor to write a letter of recommendation for me for an internship. He refused and gave no explanation. At that time, I was working hard on the project and was making good progress and he often commended me for the good work too and I had no idea why he'd refused to write a letter of recommendation. He later told me that he had a policy of not writing LORs for internships but then said he'd make an exception for me if I wanted him to but by that time, I'd gotten upset just like you are now as he hadn't offered this explanation to me at that time. I went ahead and told him that I didn't need his letter anymore as I got another one from a different professor and ended up getting the fellowship for the internship. Telling him that I didn't need his reco was awkward though.. and so like the others have already told you, make sure this is no misunderstanding before you refuse a letter of recommendation from this professor.
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Thank you all so much for your advice and words of encouragement. I feel much better already just knowing that I'm not the only one who feels this way. Up to this point, I've been able to put pressure on myself and get the results that I want. Being in a situation where working my hardest doesn't get me A's is pretty scary. I just need to get out of my head so I can relax and enjoy this as much as I can.
I think you'd have been better off had you experienced some of this in your undergrad. I experienced some of it during mine and so was somewhat prepared when I came to the US to do a PhD. I find that though I get the scores that I deserve when I work hard enough for some of the courses, there are others where it just doesn't happen. In fact, there is this 5 credit course (which can screw the GPA real bad) that I work my ass off on and still end up with 75-80% scores on the homework while most others get 90-100. This is a syntax course and I needed it for background information. So what do I do? I don't fret because I don't get the scores that I think I deserve.. it just isn't as important as we think it is. Fuzzylogician is right..these grades won't matter at all in the end. Focus on the courses that are directly relevant to your line of work and do just enough to keep the professors of the remaining courses from getting pissed off at you. This last line of advice was given to me directly by a professor in my area and I decided to take his advice. I also make sure that I spend time during the weekends doing nothing..or listening to music, chatting with friends, take my wife out to dinner, etc.. So I don't study a whole lot during the weekends. It helps.
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I am just as stressed out about my GRE scores as the next person, but my scores were awful. I had awful scores for my SAT's, and i still managed to get into a few colleges. My question is two fold: will a GRE score of under 1000 hold me back from being accepted to any grad programs (im applying to general psychology, behavioral neuroscience, and biopsychology programs)? Also, do application reviewers even look at the GRE's? I've heard different things from different people. One faculty that i worked for at my undergraduate university told me that they don't even care. He said that they know if they want you, and they don't pay attention to those things. What do you all think?
I've heard that GRE scores are looked at when funding decisions are to be made. So it might be a good idea to retake the GRE just to be safe.
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Get some coding skills if you already don't have some. You will have to code up experiments for your PhD work and some coding experience won't hurt. Python would be a good place to start.
Learn to use statistical packages better. SAS, R, MATLAB, whatever suits you.
Brush up concepts of probability.
Read general stuff.. pick up research papers that look interesting and browse through them.. be aware of what's going on. This would be the perfect time to do all the fun reading. Once you start your MA/PhD, you will have time only for coursework the first couple of years.
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I'm kind of assuming that if I can't get in anywhere in North America, which I would really prefer, I could always go there.
Make sure of this. Funding situations change like crazy from year to year.. not just funding, research objectives change too! The person who showed interest in taking you on as a student last year may not this year due to reasons that may be out of his/her control.
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I didn't end up getting a J1 but I did seriously research that option. All the universities that offered me a J1 presented that option after I had been accepted, when they sent the visa application forms. In them, I could choose between an F1 and J1 - just tick the box for the visa I wanted. I don't remember there being a question about this on the applications. But pretty much all the programs that got as far as sending me the documents did have that option. You could contact your prospective programs and ask if they issue J visas - it's an important factor that might cause you not to apply to a school to begin with. Current students might also be a good resource - you could go online, find married international students and ask them.
The reason why I opted for the F1 visa was that the J1 is believed to be more difficult to get from the consulate, esp if the reason for applying for the J1 is solely so that the dependent can work. There were also restrictions that specified that we had to return to our country for at least 2 yrs after the visa expires before we can reenter the country (USA).
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I heard that the F2 can transfer to H1B if he/she finds a sponsor? Am I wrong?
I think that's possible if you manage to find a job in a company that would do that for you. However for things that we're looking at, like working in a research lab here, they wouldn't deal with the visa stuff for us and I don't think they have the jurisdiction to do that (within the scheme of the university policies..). Also, its impossible to find a job in a company with a masters in Physics (that's her highest degree). A masters in electronics of computer science may give you better chances but with physics and no particular computer skills to talk of, its impossible to find a job.
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Hello, everyone, glad to see all your posters here
I am here to seek for your help and advice for my psychology application.
My basic information:
1) Gradated from TOP university in China, BUT major not related to Psy.
2) Good acedemic record, GPA 3.6-3.7 and my graduation paper won University Dean's award...But no lab experience, no paper published
3) GRE: V560/Q780/AW 3
4) 500 hour psychology related training and have got psychological consultant certification from Chinese government
5) 6 years working experience after graduation, which might be my bright spot... 3 years in consumer research department in Fortune 500 company and 2 years in a top management consulting firm, with top performance… My job has a lot to do with consumer research, including design questionnaire, lead agency to execute and analyze data for conclusion, both qualitative and quantitative…But of course these work are still quite different from academic lab
My interest lies in Psychology but I am also willing to spread psychology knowledge and help people live better…The ideal direction for me is positive psychology, followed by social psy and I/O... I can accept MA or PHD
Do I have a good chance? Any suggestions? Thanks in advance
PhD admission committees look at relevant research experience and I think you may not have enough of that. So I would suggest you to apply to both MA/PhD programs AND MA programs and try your luck. I'm guessing you'll see more acceptances to MA programs and funding might be hard to come by as funding is more abundant for PhD programs. Good luck, I don't mean to discourage you in any way, just giving you my honest opinion!
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It depends. If he is on an F1 visa then she'll get F2 and won't be able to work. If he is on J1 then she'll get J2 and will be able to work. That's the way things usually work..-maybe the Americans are nicer to Canadians than to other foreign students, I don't know.
I'm an Indian student here in the US. I recently got married. I'm on F1 and she's on F2 and will not be able to work. Not even without pay! She wanted to take part in research here in a lab and the professor agreed to let her be part of the lab (with no pay mind you) but the immigration consultant here told me that even that would not be possible unless the position was something that in normal circumstances would be truly voluntary in nature (that is, would be an unpaid position even if an American citizen with full work permit were to get the position).
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I'm going to end up with three by the time I'm finished. I have a BA in a foreign language, an MA in an unrelated foreign language, and am working on an MA in linguistics. I'm applying to linguistics PhD programs, most of which give you an MA along the way.
I have a friend who has two terminal MAs in medieval (English) literature and medieval (non-English) literature and is planning on doing a PhD in something related to the two.
So, I suppose some people end up with three MAs, but they're (we're) very indecisive people.
BS+MS in Physics. Currently in a MA/PhD program in Psychology.
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STATS
- BA Anthropology (3.14)
- MA Anthropology (3.94)
- I also teach anthropology at a local state university
- 17 credit hours of psych beyond intro (mostly graduate credits)(4.0)
- Gre: V- 570, Q - 720 W - 5.0
- Research experience: Anthro masters thesis and one psych research project in which I designed and carried out the entire process (paper under review)
- 1 anthro pub
- 1 psych pub (under review)
- 1 psych pub (under revision)
- Good LOR's (Thesis chair, psych research adviser, current dean) all of them know me well
- SOP: Hopefully good
I just got off the phone with a graduate admissions person. After hearing about my stats, she asked if I had taken the typical battery of psych courses. This made me nervous because I really haven't. My psych course work is mainly graduate-level research and methods courses (1 advanced social psych course). I have never taken abnormal psych, adolescent psych, personality psych, clinical psych, cognitive psych etc. Is this a problem? I am applying to mainly mid-level PhD programs.
Thanks
I did 5 years of physics (undergraduate + masters), no courses in Psychology, a few in linguistics. I got into a pretty decent Cognitive Psych program and am doing just fine (so far at least.. been just half a quarter!). IF you have relevant research experience and skills, and if you can get a professor interested in your application, that's what matters more than what courses you've done as you will have all the coursework you need in the first two years of your graduate experience in the program.
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Though there have been numerous studies that show that the GRE is a poor indicator of how one does in graduate school, it's a necessary evil. I hate it, don't get me wrong, but it serves a purpose. How does a program decide between two applicants who have identical GPA's, glowing recs, etc? The GRE, of course.
I've been told by numerous program to which I'm applying that they see the GRE as entirely trivial and that the only reason they require it is to get fellowships from the grad school itself. That almost makes it more stressful to me. I know that it's arbitrary in one sense and yet extremely important in another. Very silly.
Just like there is no perfect synonymy in language, I don't believe that two applicants can be EXACTLY the same in all respects (GPA, research fit, relevant research experience, relevant research skills, etc). So the argument for the GRE being the ONLY one that remains to make a decision on is not all so appealing to me. Why graduate schools use the GRE score to decide fellowships might have some logic behind it though. You have people coming in from various different backgrounds, various kinds of programs and various kinds of undergraduate universities. To make a fair comparison of GPA's, etc isn't an easy job, might be virtually impossible. So something like the GRE might be a necessary evil but I don't quite like the format of the GRE, esp the verbal section. It serves no purpose.
How'd the first semester go?
in Officially Grads
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Congrats! Your son must now try to beat that