liszt85

Well, didn't you read about one or two cases on this very thread where this was not true? So did that not falsify the premise?

Hey, what do you do for stress relief?
I do (get) orgasms.
Nice. Your boyfriend must be really encouraging and supportive of your research work.

Might attend Gatech for a MS in music technology. Need some info. I will have a $1500 per month stipend (before taxes). Would this amount (minus taxes) be good enough for a couple to lead a simple life in Atlanta (near the Gatech campus)? How much would a 1BR apartment rent for near the campus?

They get hundreds of "good grades + academic history" applications. GRE is just one aspect of the application that may or may not keep you out of the race..but to say that the GRE is not indicative of anything at all is wrong, I've argued for it in another thread and really don't have the energy/time to discuss that again. People really should stop complaining about how the exam is structured. Dummies did not design the test. Trained professionals did.

First of all, you seem to have no idea about grad school admission procedures. You didn't mention your MA's and your GPA's in them in your original post. Grad schools tend to look at your recent degrees and pay less attention to your undergraduate gpa in that case. If your application was as weak as you claimed it was, I guarantee you that a 1600 would not have got you in at any of the top prestigious universities. You don't call me a pessimist, you call me a realist. Only when you acknowledge facts can you work towards improving the relevant parts of your application. Be as dramatic as you want to be, that's not going to change the truth. Now that you've mentioned your MA degrees, you might stand a chance.. Anyway, like I said before, you don't seem to have a clue about this which is why you didn't even mention those MA's. You believe your friends are the ones who say "Well done John! Well done.. you will get in for sure no matter what, go do it!" as opposed to "John, lets look at this realistically..here are the parts of your application you must improve, your GRE is good enough. I speak from experience, follow this advice and you may get good results". Your friends are not the ones who incessantly make you feel good, whether or not what you say makes sense. I thought these were lessons in life that you probably learnt even before I was born but looks like I'm mistaken.

So yes, feel free to introduce me as a pessimist to whoever you want but none of that is going to change how admission committees work.

SAme advice as the others.

Schedule interviews with them at different times so that you can attend all the interviews. Mention that you have also contacted a few other professors since this was your final attempt and I'm sure they will understand and appreciate your honesty. Nothing wrong with attending multiple interviews!

I did a 3 year long distance (met thrice a year, 4-5 days at a time) thing with my girl and we're happily married now. You may not be good at it but there are people out there who make it work without having to sacrifice much (other than some "cuddle" time). So your calling rogue callous, is by your own definition wrong. Rogue might be a person who is fine with making things work this way. There's nothing callous about trying to suggest to a person who is trying to get a higher degree to prioritize stuff and make some small sacrifices to both get your degree as well as save your relationship.

You will regret being a bored housewife than being an old unmarried journalist, I guarantee it. But of course, there is no way to know it because if it does happen, its going to be either of the two. Then again, neither might happen. You might be a happy married journalist, married to someone as intelligent as you are (your kids can still go to expensive schools and you can still rule the house). How does that sound?

Math doesn't require memorizing. Biology and Chemistry probably do but not math.. if you have the ability to "see" what these rules actually say, its very simple. Lets take the very simple example of a question that goes: Two sides of a triangle are 4 and 5. What is the range of values that the third side can take?

You don't need to memorize any rule to answer this. You don't even need to have done any math at all in high school to be able to answer this. You would need to know what a triangle looks like though, is that what you mean by memorizing?

Another question: 5 people can complete a job in 10 minutes.. after 2 minutes of working, one more guy joined in. How many more minutes does it take to complete he job?

Again, do you really need to memorize rules to figure this out? So 90% of the quant section does NOT require any form of memorizing. Also not having done math for years is not a valid reason. You are expected to prepare for the test, you know? That is a sign of a good potential grad student. If you haven't practiced taking timed tests, you will be unable to complete the section and unanswered ones are penalized heavily which is one of the major reasons why many people don't do well.

Math doesn't require memorizing. Biology and Chemistry probably do but not math.. if you have the ability to "see" what these rules actually say, its very simple. Lets take the very simple example of a question that goes: Two sides of a triangle are 4 and 5. What is the range of values that the third side can take?

You don't need to memorize any rule to answer this. You don't even need to have done any math at all in high school to be able to answer this. You would need to know what a triangle looks like though, is that what you mean by memorizing?

Another question: 5 people can complete a job in 10 minutes.. after 2 minutes of working, one more guy joined in. How many more minutes does it take to complete he job?

Again, do you really need to memorize rules to figure this out? So 90% of the quant section does NOT require any form of memorizing. Also not having done math for years is not a valid reason. You are expected to prepare for the test, you know? That is a sign of a good potential grad student. If you haven't practiced taking timed tests, you will be unable to complete the section and unanswered ones are penalized heavily which is one of the major reasons why many people don't do well.

Math doesn't require memorizing. Biology and Chemistry probably do but not math.. if you have the ability to "see" what these rules actually say, its very simple. Lets take the very simple example of a question that goes: Two sides of a triangle are 4 and 5. What is the range of values that the third side can take?

You don't need to memorize any rule to answer this. You don't even need to have done any math at all in high school to be able to answer this. You would need to know what a triangle looks like though, is that what you mean by memorizing?

Another question: 5 people can complete a job in 10 minutes.. after 2 minutes of working, one more guy joined in. How many more minutes does it take to complete he job?

Again, do you really need to memorize rules to figure this out? So 90% of the quant section does NOT require any form of memorizing. Also not having done math for years is not a valid reason. You are expected to prepare for the test, you know? That is a sign of a good potential grad student. If you haven't practiced taking timed tests, you will be unable to complete the section and unanswered ones are penalized heavily which is one of the major reasons why many people don't do well.

Math doesn't require memorizing. Biology and Chemistry probably do but not math.. if you have the ability to "see" what these rules actually say, its very simple. Lets take the very simple example of a question that goes: Two sides of a triangle are 4 and 5. What is the range of values that the third side can take?

You don't need to memorize any rule to answer this. You don't even need to have done any math at all in high school to be able to answer this. You would need to know what a triangle looks like though, is that what you mean by memorizing?

Another question: 5 people can complete a job in 10 minutes.. after 2 minutes of working, one more guy joined in. How many more minutes does it take to complete he job?

Again, do you really need to memorize rules to figure this out? So 90% of the quant section does NOT require any form of memorizing. Also not having done math for years is not a valid reason. You are expected to prepare for the test, you know? That is a sign of a good potential grad student. If you haven't practiced taking timed tests, you will be unable to complete the section and unanswered ones are penalized heavily which is one of the major reasons why many people don't do well.

You'll be amazed by how sometimes high achievers break when they get to grad school whereas some others (who may not have had stellar grades but have shown clear signs of being successful in grad school) fit right in. I didn't have stellar grades, didn't have professors who thought highly of me because my research interests were never in "high energy physics" or "condensed matter physics" which were the only research areas that professors were interested in where I did my undergraduate degree. As you see, I'm now in a Psychology PhD program at a very decent school. My current adviser saw the research that I had (almost) independently done which was something he was exploring to use in his own research. I've been here for a quarter and a half and have started writing my first first author paper for a top journal. Some others, who got in with university fellowships, have been crumbling under the pressure (I can't give you too many details here).

So be careful not to overestimate your ability to succeed in grad school based on just your performance in undergrad. Also don't underestimate the other "lazy" guy's potential. I was constantly labeled a lazy guy at my ug university. The postdoc in my lab now tells me very often that I'm way more hard working than the others in the lab and I've been making much more progress than them. Its unfortunate that I have to make this argument using my own case as an example because it might not motivate you to take me seriously.. but I take that risk while saying this because you'll see what I mean when you start a grad program. Grades suddenly won't matter.. what will matter is your ability to come up with ideas and your ability to implement them efficiently. So the advice I have for you are to set your priorities right at this point because when people go into grad school with this kind of mentality, they are sometimes shocked by how different grad school is from undergrad.

Your relationship with your adviser is going to be of paramount importance to your success in grad school, so you are absolutely right. You should dig deeper. Students not responding for 2 weeks is indeed strange. Also, you don't seem to be EXTREMELY interested in her work.. if you have another school that you can go to that you're more excited about (in terms of the research as well as the vibes you got from your POI there), you should considering rejecting the offer from your "top choice". Before you do that, maybe you should shoot her an email and ask what you want to ask (but try to make it as subtle as possible).

That's awesome news, congrats.. Something tells me that you're in the top half of that waitlist. Lets see, fingers crossed.

Your relationship with your adviser is going to be of paramount importance to your success in grad school, so you are absolutely right. You should dig deeper. Students not responding for 2 weeks is indeed strange. Also, you don't seem to be EXTREMELY interested in her work.. if you have another school that you can go to that you're more excited about (in terms of the research as well as the vibes you got from your POI there), you should considering rejecting the offer from your "top choice". Before you do that, maybe you should shoot her an email and ask what you want to ask (but try to make it as subtle as possible).

Your relationship with your adviser is going to be of paramount importance to your success in grad school, so you are absolutely right. You should dig deeper. Students not responding for 2 weeks is indeed strange. Also, you don't seem to be EXTREMELY interested in her work.. if you have another school that you can go to that you're more excited about (in terms of the research as well as the vibes you got from your POI there), you should considering rejecting the offer from your "top choice". Before you do that, maybe you should shoot her an email and ask what you want to ask (but try to make it as subtle as possible).

Your relationship with your adviser is going to be of paramount importance to your success in grad school, so you are absolutely right. You should dig deeper. Students not responding for 2 weeks is indeed strange. Also, you don't seem to be EXTREMELY interested in her work.. if you have another school that you can go to that you're more excited about (in terms of the research as well as the vibes you got from your POI there), you should considering rejecting the offer from your "top choice". Before you do that, maybe you should shoot her an email and ask what you want to ask (but try to make it as subtle as possible).

Being the friend that I am, I am concerned about your obsession with rankings. What exactly drives your passion (other than wanting to go to MIT or wherever to prove all these people wrong)? What do you want to be contributing as a scholar to? All you've talked about is "I want to go to rank 1 (either university or department)". That to a lot of us is the wrong reason to go to grad school and more importantly will prove to be a major hurdle (the attitude) that will stand in the way of success in grad school. Some of this attitude will also be reflected in your SOP. Admission committees are very competent. They have this uncanny ability (most of the time) to see who's really passionate about the research there and who's applying only for the name/credentials/other non significant reasons.

I guess this is what someDay was trying to say too. So the best thing for you to do would be to take some classes relevant to the field that you will be applying to, get some research experience (voluntary/unpaid if it needs to be), develop a keen interest and dedication to the field and then apply. You will stand a much greater chance of being accepted to your top choice if you do this than if you spent all your money on a GRE course or spent your time giving yourself motivational speeches "I'm not getting any younger" is not a good enough reason not to do this, unfortunately.

EDIT: I just saw now, after many posts in this thread, that you've started talking about what your passions are. I also see you mention classes that you've taken. I see you mention these things after mentioning a lot of unimportant (bad) aspects of your application.. Now, I'm beginning to think you are the pessimist and again, this is going to be reflected in your SOP. So unless you stop worrying about your decades old ug gpa and start concentrating on the strong parts of your application, you are going to face difficulties getting accepted. I now sense that you probably have stuff in your background that could make your application strong, if you're willing to focus on those.

Also for your field of interest, a lot of interesting work is being done in Europe. Maybe you should stop focusing only on top ranked grad schools in the US.. have you identified people who do the stuff that you would like to do? Have you identified potential advisers? If not, those are things you might want to consider getting started on.

I don't know if the accepted standards are different in social psych but for me (cognitive), my adviser has set a goal of two journal papers per year (first or second author). I'm only in my second quarter here and I've started writing up a paper for submission to Cognitive Science. 4 authors, I'm first author. I also have a collaboration with a professor outside the dept (in something totally unrelated) and we expect to publish roughly once a year too, so I'll be first or second author on those depending on who does most of the work in any particular project. So by the time I graduate, I expect to have at least 9-10 publications. My professor tells me that even that won't be very competitive.. a good number of publications in top journals is absolutely necessary to be very competitive in the job market. So if the final year PhD students don't have a single publication, that would be EXTREMELY strange to me and I would seriously consider digging into it deeper. Proceedings don't matter in Psych (cognitive) according to my adviser. Papers/talks in conferences/proceedings are good if you are in computer science but not in psychology. I have sent abstracts to 3 conferences so far..so having papers/talks in conferences is no big deal. The peer review process for that isn't too extreme and its fairly easy to get poster presentations (slightly more difficult to get talks). I myself am a reviewer for one big conference that's coming up and have been reviewing a paper and I'm only a first year grad student. So you can expect this process to be much less rigorous than a peer review process in a top journal. So I wouldn't even consider conference posters and proceedings when evaluating the output of the grad students at your prospective program.

You'll be amazed by how sometimes high achievers break when they get to grad school whereas some others (who may not have had stellar grades but have shown clear signs of being successful in grad school) fit right in. I didn't have stellar grades, didn't have professors who thought highly of me because my research interests were never in "high energy physics" or "condensed matter physics" which were the only research areas that professors were interested in where I did my undergraduate degree. As you see, I'm now in a Psychology PhD program at a very decent school. My current adviser saw the research that I had (almost) independently done which was something he was exploring to use in his own research. I've been here for a quarter and a half and have started writing my first first author paper for a top journal. Some others, who got in with university fellowships, have been crumbling under the pressure (I can't give you too many details here).

So be careful not to overestimate your ability to succeed in grad school based on just your performance in undergrad. Also don't underestimate the other "lazy" guy's potential. I was constantly labeled a lazy guy at my ug university. The postdoc in my lab now tells me very often that I'm way more hard working than the others in the lab and I've been making much more progress than them. Its unfortunate that I have to make this argument using my own case as an example because it might not motivate you to take me seriously.. but I take that risk while saying this because you'll see what I mean when you start a grad program. Grades suddenly won't matter.. what will matter is your ability to come up with ideas and your ability to implement them efficiently. So the advice I have for you are to set your priorities right at this point because when people go into grad school with this kind of mentality, they are sometimes shocked by how different grad school is from undergrad.

You'll be amazed by how sometimes high achievers break when they get to grad school whereas some others (who may not have had stellar grades but have shown clear signs of being successful in grad school) fit right in. I didn't have stellar grades, didn't have professors who thought highly of me because my research interests were never in "high energy physics" or "condensed matter physics" which were the only research areas that professors were interested in where I did my undergraduate degree. As you see, I'm now in a Psychology PhD program at a very decent school. My current adviser saw the research that I had (almost) independently done which was something he was exploring to use in his own research. I've been here for a quarter and a half and have started writing my first first author paper for a top journal. Some others, who got in with university fellowships, have been crumbling under the pressure (I can't give you too many details here).

So be careful not to overestimate your ability to succeed in grad school based on just your performance in undergrad. Also don't underestimate the other "lazy" guy's potential. I was constantly labeled a lazy guy at my ug university. The postdoc in my lab now tells me very often that I'm way more hard working than the others in the lab and I've been making much more progress than them. Its unfortunate that I have to make this argument using my own case as an example because it might not motivate you to take me seriously.. but I take that risk while saying this because you'll see what I mean when you start a grad program. Grades suddenly won't matter.. what will matter is your ability to come up with ideas and your ability to implement them efficiently. So the advice I have for you are to set your priorities right at this point because when people go into grad school with this kind of mentality, they are sometimes shocked by how different grad school is from undergrad.

You'll be amazed by how sometimes high achievers break when they get to grad school whereas some others (who may not have had stellar grades but have shown clear signs of being successful in grad school) fit right in. I didn't have stellar grades, didn't have professors who thought highly of me because my research interests were never in "high energy physics" or "condensed matter physics" which were the only research areas that professors were interested in where I did my undergraduate degree. As you see, I'm now in a Psychology PhD program at a very decent school. My current adviser saw the research that I had (almost) independently done which was something he was exploring to use in his own research. I've been here for a quarter and a half and have started writing my first first author paper for a top journal. Some others, who got in with university fellowships, have been crumbling under the pressure (I can't give you too many details here).

So be careful not to overestimate your ability to succeed in grad school based on just your performance in undergrad. Also don't underestimate the other "lazy" guy's potential. I was constantly labeled a lazy guy at my ug university. The postdoc in my lab now tells me very often that I'm way more hard working than the others in the lab and I've been making much more progress than them. Its unfortunate that I have to make this argument using my own case as an example because it might not motivate you to take me seriously.. but I take that risk while saying this because you'll see what I mean when you start a grad program. Grades suddenly won't matter.. what will matter is your ability to come up with ideas and your ability to implement them efficiently. So the advice I have for you are to set your priorities right at this point because when people go into grad school with this kind of mentality, they are sometimes shocked by how different grad school is from undergrad.

You'll be amazed by how sometimes high achievers break when they get to grad school whereas some others (who may not have had stellar grades but have shown clear signs of being successful in grad school) fit right in. I didn't have stellar grades, didn't have professors who thought highly of me because my research interests were never in "high energy physics" or "condensed matter physics" which were the only research areas that professors were interested in where I did my undergraduate degree. As you see, I'm now in a Psychology PhD program at a very decent school. My current adviser saw the research that I had (almost) independently done which was something he was exploring to use in his own research. I've been here for a quarter and a half and have started writing my first first author paper for a top journal. Some others, who got in with university fellowships, have been crumbling under the pressure (I can't give you too many details here).

So be careful not to overestimate your ability to succeed in grad school based on just your performance in undergrad. Also don't underestimate the other "lazy" guy's potential. I was constantly labeled a lazy guy at my ug university. The postdoc in my lab now tells me very often that I'm way more hard working than the others in the lab and I've been making much more progress than them. Its unfortunate that I have to make this argument using my own case as an example because it might not motivate you to take me seriously.. but I take that risk while saying this because you'll see what I mean when you start a grad program. Grades suddenly won't matter.. what will matter is your ability to come up with ideas and your ability to implement them efficiently. So the advice I have for you are to set your priorities right at this point because when people go into grad school with this kind of mentality, they are sometimes shocked by how different grad school is from undergrad.