gellert

Yes, you are required to send in all transcripts, including study abroad, UNLESS your letter grades from your SA experience are notated in your home institution's transcript (which they probably aren't, unless you studied abroad through your university or an affiliate program).

FSU's website says it has neither my transcripts nor my GRE report, whereas all the other schools say they've received both. Maybe have to call on Monday to check in. :/

如果你跟美国人至少尝试交流的话，大部分时间他们那么高兴你尝试跟他们聊天儿，他们会原谅你的小失误。 在美国，常很难知道何谓友谊，不就是跟外国人，但跟其他美国人以及。虽然我自己是美国人，我也跟别的美国人有一样的问题。我觉得你已经知道美国人的友谊和中国人的不是一样的。这可以造成相当大的混乱！加油。 （请原谅我的可怜的中文，不是我母语。）

I'm not even in grad school yet, but with the killer influence of no-summer-vacation + senioritis, I'm feeling the exact same way. I wish I could say I had some brilliant, starry-eyed advice for you, but I really don't. All I have is commiseration. Good luck.

heart land (I know it's technically one word, but work with me here.)

IDK, I asked the grad student in my lab today and he said he didn't actually recommend sending them such emails unless they'd explicitly requested that I let them know. Perhaps it's better to err on the side of caution than be annoyingly persistent during finals week.

^ Sweet! Close call, sounds like. For one of my recommenders, I have to complete a 20-page term paper before he writes my LOR. (He says he can make it "even stronger" if he can reference that paper.) Unfortunately that means I need to write the entire thing by the 9th if I want to give him enough time to letter-write for 15 Dec deadlines. (It's a philosophy independent study.) Certainly feelin' the pressure now! Why can't the rest of the time between now and the arrival of interviews/acceptances go by in a montage?

What is the general consensus on re-emailing POIs who responded favorably to your initial emails, letting them know that you've submitted your application?

Harvard asks for a lot of details about all your relevant coursework, if that's the sort of thing you mean.

Eee, all my recommendations are in from 3/4 professors! Which means some of my schools are totally done in that regard. Others are still waiting on their third writer, who wants to wait until the end of the semester.

What is the general consensus on re-emailing POIs who responded favorably to your initial emails, letting them know that you've submitted your application? I saw one person in this thread touched on this, but I wanted to get more opinions.

The stats on "Are you permitted to visit ... social networking page ..." are swapped between those two reports. Report one has 88% saying "yes," report two has 88% saying "no."

I'd wait until Sunday, personally. I still have two recommendations that haven't been turned in yet (one of which hasn't even acknowledged receipt of the supplementary materials I sent!), even for my NSF (LOR deadline 29 Nov). Some professors like to hand things in last minute. (I'm assuming I've read this correctly and your letter writer has at least already agreed to write for you.)

I'm not a math person either, and I also only had 3 weeks to study for the GRE -- but ended up making over 700 in both sections! I liked the Barron's book for vocab, though the math was much more difficult than what you'll encounter on the GRE. (At the same time, though, mastering Barron's math made GRE math feel like cake.) DON'T cram. Don't study for hours and hours every day, because you'll burn yourself out. I studied 3 weeks for 2-4 hours a day, and not at all for the two days prior to the test. There's a point after which you'll stop retaining new information, and I think that point is after about 4 hours of studying. And don't make that 4 straight hours, either. Study for half an hour, break for an hour. Repeat. Do lots of practice problems, and don't do Powerprep until a week before your test. You'll be fine! Mastering GRE quant isn't about being good at math, it's about not freaking out, being patient, and trying to work through logic puzzles. You can do it!

Yep. Just make sure it's all appropriate and represents you well as a scholar -- though that should go without saying.

Maybe get a Twitter or make your Facebook searchable (but not viewable)? It's better to control your internet presence than leave it up to factors like someone sharing your name. If adcomms can see that one FB is obviously you (has your school network, etc.) and the other isn't, they won't judge you off the other person's visible FB material.

Gotcha. Thanks!

Question about this bit! How will adcomms know your favorite usernames? I have several usernames that I use across the net, and none of them are associated with my real name. This one here (on tgc) is probably the username with the most identifying information attached to it, so I don't use this username anywhere else on the net. Just wondering exactly how paranoid I ought to be, haha.

Oh god, I just submitted my applications for UMN and FSU. ladjsla It begins.

Answer with the schools you're applying to that match the given school best in terms of research fit. It can help you look focused and passionate about the subject. If you're truly uncomfortable saying the other schools you're apping, though, I doubt anyone would hold it against you if you left it blank. But it CAN be turned into an asset to your application, as said above.

If I took a guess, I'd say it's probably because of these reasons: i) The results board doesn't necessarily include all the necessary information that people might want to find in this thread. For one, it usually only includes date of notification. Secondly, if anyone else includes other information, it's usually GPA + GRE which are the least important factors of admission. ii) It doesn't offer the ability to respond and congratulate fellow applicants, or offer consolation when someone doesn't get in. The results board, as I said, is good for impersonal date-checking. Not for what it sounds like the OP intends this thread to be. iii) This guy has three posts and your first response to him was something about how he ought to know there's a whole other section dedicated to this on the site already. It comes across as a little harsh, especially to a reader who might remember how nervewracking it was trying to write that first post coming out of lurk-dom. OP - I think this thread is a great idea. Other subforums have done similar things in the past, and the results board is kind of worthless imho for anything other than date-of-notification-checking because it doesn't have the information I find most relevant.

I'm waiting it out for the NSF GRFP, and hopefully by Sunday for all of my schools as well. Fingers crossed! I'm anxious already.