gellert

nm

You know what? Let's look at this from a positive perspective. If someone (grad student? POI?) is taking the time to google us, we must have good enough stats to pass first cuts. If schools are receiving >500 applications, no way is every single person getting googled.

I've started getting increasingly more notifications from academia.edu about people googling my name + undergrad school. Oh christ.

Include it. You still had an experience there, and it still shaped you as a researcher. I doubt schools will seek that prof out for a reference when they already have three LORs to read, unless they happen to be close friends with that prof already ... in which case they will hear either way, no doubt.

Yes and yes.

Someone on SDN said they got an email from their POI for a phone pre-interview for FSU clinical psych Ph.D. Trying to figure out how I'll stop fretting long enough to sleep tonight.

"Whatever," she decided at last. "I'll make a topic on TGC later today and ask a whole bunch of internet people I don't know for their opinions and then arbitrarily choose one of the three inevitably contradictory answers and do that." It's as good a plan as any. She tucked her iPhone back into the pocket of her jeans and vowed not to check her email at least for the next hour.

I'm wondering the same damn thing. I recommend taking up a new hobby, or reigniting an old one. Personally, I'm planning to fill the next couple of months with work on a new paper and trying to finish writing this novel. Only time will show if the distraction proves sufficient; for now, I'm still checking my email compulsively!

sorely losing

I'd also like to add that grades and GRE scores are much less important in grad applications than in undergrad, so even if they do end up comparing you to Asians as a whole, it shouldn't make too much difference in light of the quality of your experience, LORs, and SOP.

All right, so, let's play a game to while away the days/weeks(/months) while we wait to find out the results of our labors. You know how to play Round Robin, right? Someone writes a sentence (or a few sentences) of a story to start us off. The next person continues the story (preferably logically) in a few more sentences. The next person picks up where that person left off, and ... you get the picture. Eventually you end up with a complete story, usually pretty funny or full of weird twists. I'll start us off! -- "Thank you for submitting your application to the University of Awesomesauce - South Epic. Your application is being processed, and you will receive a confirmation email shortly." There was no going back. No more last minute edits to her statement of purpose, or harried text messages to her adviser wondering if she should or shouldn't list all the other schools to which she's applying. Just done. Finished. Well, not finished, not really. Because now ... now, she must wait.

Same, I ended up just saying something like "# first-author publications, #other publications, #posters, #presentations, x and y awards, see CV for titles." I did end up calling and Cornell said I could upload the CV in that additional info page or email it to them (the department). So, yeah, I think it's totally okay.

I was just about to post something like this! I'd called a school yesterday because I'd accidentally sent transcripts separately rather than in bulk as their website requested. They looked and said they had all my transcripts, so not to worry about it. But the status checker still says they have none of them, and it's definitely been more than two weeks since my transcripts arrived at all my schools because I sent them eaaaarly. :/

And now I've submitted Cornell! Completely done. Ugh it feels ... terrible, actually.

^ That's kind of horrifying.

I think it's going to come down to what will make you feel more comfortable. I'd like to say no one is going to compare you to some Asian Achievement Scale, but I'd like to say a lot of things about race stereotyping. I don't think anyone would compare you to some stereotyped view of what Asians "should" be like. Whether or not you get accepted will be based on factors such as research experience, fit, SOPs, LORs, and grades/test scores, not your race. Race only comes into the picture so far as applying for diversity fellowships. However, I don't think being Asian will help on the minority race/diversity angle, as Asians typically aren't underrepresented in academia. I doubt it would hurt you to include race on your form. I doubt it would hurt you to leave the question unanswered. But only you can know which is going to make you feel more comfortable, and will lead to less stress over the next few months.

You say your "other half" is Asian -- what's the second half? I don't think not claiming any racial background could hurt your application, but if your non-Asian half is a minority race, it could help on the diversity angle.

This is slightly psychology-specific, though I'd welcome input from anyone in any discipline. So, there's no place to upload CV on the Cornell app. It says in the instructions not to include unsolicited material. However, the psych page says you can include "research reports or papers" if you like. So...what is a research report? I guess it's a stretch to interpret that as CV. Would you recommend: a) Including research experience under work experience, even if unpaid, b ) Not mentioning it at all and hoping your LORs and SOP speak for themselves, c) Calling and asking even though tomorrow is the app deadline -- thereby risking not submitting in time, or d) Uploading a CV Thanks!

Crap, I too-belatedly realized one of my schools wants all the transcripts collected by the student and sent in a single batch. I had them forwarded by the schools separately. Whoops. Um. Advice? I guess the only thing I can do this late in the game is call the school in question and mention it.

Not in polisci, but I'm like you and ... yeah. This thread needs to happen. - How often do you check the status of your applications? At least twice a day. YOU NEVER KNOW, OKAY? - How often do you go on grad cafe? Probably 6-8 times a day. Maybe more. - What is the craziest thing you have done or written in preparation for these applications (i.e. spelling mistakes in SOPs? Hilarious personal statement teasers? Nagging emails to letter writers?) Wondered if I should write to a school to fix a spelling mistake in an already-submitted SOP and had to be comforted by my adviser that it wasn't that big of a deal or even a noticeable error. - Do you check other people's "what are my chances" posts because you want to help or because you want to know how competitive you are with them? A little bit of both, I think. I do want to help. I also want to know where I stand. - Have you ever responded to a "help me with my _____" post and then slightly regretted giving someone else an edge? Yes. Oh my god does that make me a bad person? And now I'm going to hit "post" and then mosey on over to the Minnesota website to check the status of my app again....

It actually ended up resolving itself about an hour after I made my post. I didn't do anything differently, it just ... stopped saying I had missing information. Huh.

Okay, I keep trying to submit to Brown and it keeps telling me to fill out all required fields. I have checked the application exhaustively and I've filled everything out. I don't know what else to do; I've submitted a request but I'm worried they won't get back to me by the deadline. Has anyone else has this issue?

Neutral, perhaps tilting toward negative. It might seem like you rushed through college and didn't take the time to have any "life experience." Apparently that's a fairly-frequently cited downside to all straight-from-UG applicants, that they don't have enough "life experience." TBH the major downside to this is that there's no way you were in college long enough to have the requisite amount of research experience to be competitive. So that's the real question to ask yourself. How many years of research experience do you have, and of what kind?

magic fingers