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I understand what you mean. But this is what I want to avoid. Working in an unrelated field to pay bills and scrape by. Better to apply with no distractions and since I'm already working, adding another year or two now for the later peace of mind is worth it

Try Interfolio. I opened an account before I left school since I knew it'd be a few years before I could apply to grad school. Anyway, since the letter is stored at a 3rd party and it's directly sent by your writers. Most schools don't seem to have a problem with it. They charge a fee per letter per institution sent. Have your writers write a very strong yet general letter for whatever program your applying for. It won't have that special touch saying "Dear Brown Admissions" but, other than that I don't see an issue with it.

It's worth a try. I'll attach some old papers. Not hopeful though, its been a few years already.

Thanks for the reply. Is this relatively common amongst those serious at getting into phd programs? I've been drafting a tentative time table before finances are stable enough for grad school. Seems like it's better to prolong my working years to better cushion the transition.

After spending some time reading these forums. It seems quite a few people winded up applying to Phd programs 2, 3, even 4 times before they finally got accepted into programs that fit them the best. Out of curiosity, what did you repeat appliers do in the meantime? Did you spend your entire year refining your applications? Working in unrelated fields? Getting intern experience? Studying?

Here's some more info on teaching abroad. South Korea Public Education programs. You will be an NSET (Native Speaking English Teacher). On paper you are an assistant teacher. In practice, you will be the primary teacher. Responsible for all lesson planning, assessments, etc. Hiring occurs twice a year. A mid year hire to start working in December. And a massive hiring spree starting in May running up until Late July. Work starts at the end of August. Applications are accepted on a first come, first serve basis. I strongly recommend you get some basic credentials like a 100 hour Online TESOL certificate. You are expected to hit the ground running. It is better for you to prepare as best you can. SMOE (Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education) - Must apply through EPIK and request a placement in Seoul - http://www.epik.go.kr/ EPIK (English Program in Korea) - National Program - http://www.epik.go.kr/ GEPIK (Gyeonggi-do English Program in Korea) - No official website. Must apply through Recruiters. - GEPIK is decentralized, schools do direct hiring JEP (Jellong-Namdo English Program) - Must apply through a recruiter. Talk - Reduced hours and pay compared to typical EPIK, GEPIK, SMOE, and JEP Positions - Apply through EPIK: http://www.epik.go.kr/ - Expected pay is dependent on qualification. See the respective agency's salary scales. - Contract workload is 22 teaching hours a week. It is up to your school to decide how much they're give (Usually its at least 20). The turnover rate is extremely high because the requirements are so low. Recent policy papers say on average 66% quit in the 1st 6 months. Most of the people coming over aren’t properly prepared and what they get is too far from what they expected. I've included a short list of a typical teaching assignment. - 4 weeks vacation is provided but you must teach a mandatory 3 week winter and summer sessions before you can go on vacation. Schedule is determined by your school. - You'll be teaching between 600-2000 different students a week (Dependent on the school and it's size) - Typically you will have to prepare at least 3-4 lesson plans a week depending how many levels of students you'll be teaching. - You will be expected to create an English Curriculum around a Communicative Task Based Approach. There is no established, standardized curriculum - Generally speaking, Student English levels are highest in Seoul, 2nd highest in Gyeonggi-do, and there's a very sharp drop off in every other region in Korea - Placement is decided by the agency according to qualifications - Placement is at Korean elementary, middle, high schools, and teacher training centers - There are approximately 7 different types of high schools: Special Purpose, Academic, Technical (Alternate), College Preparatory, International, Gifted and there are at least 2 special high schools that I know of that are specifically for adolescent North Korean refugees. To get an idea of how many teachers are regularly hired. Look at this spread sheet provided by EPIK: https://spreadsheets...=CJKrwIoF#gid=0 If you have any further questions, I’ll be happy to answer them as best as I can. But you must understand actual working conditions vary greatly. Your contract says one thing but how it works in practice depends on how schools interpret it

Yes that's the risk. But no recent writers can talk about research ability. I'll have to balance some of the old LORs with more recent ones.

I finished my undergrad in '09. And I got abut 3-4 good LORs that I stored with Interfolio. I won't be needing them for another 3-4 years. But I just realized that 2 of my references wrote letters recommending me to a Political Science Phd Program and 2 references wrote letters for a Political Theory Phd Program. Does anyone think this will cause problems with a Political Science Phd Program if I submit all 4 letters? To put it into perspective I majored in Political Science but I was leaning heavily towards Political Theory. There was so much overlap, at the time I figured I could use them interchangeably and I hope the references noted that in the letters. But I waived my rights to read them, so I have no idea. The best thing would be to ask my former professors to make adjustments to what they wrote. But, I have lost contact with all of them.

Just remember you need a lot of documents. Apostilled copies of your diploma, certified transcripts, FBI criminal background check, etc etc etc. Its mid April now. Most of the programs are hiring for the August / September intake. They work on a first come, first serve basis. Usually whoever gets all their documents in first. A. For the Seoul District and national program. The recruiting arm is EPIK and you list your geographical preference with your age preference. B. For the Gyeonggi-do Program (GEPIK), it's a mix of applying directly to the Gyeonggi-do Education Office and they're place you randomly or you can apply directly to a GEPIK affiliated school. They use the same contracts, they're under the same education office umbrella but, the education office let's them do their own hiring. For the later it's better to use a recruiter. I can't recommend you one though C. For the rest of the programs I mentioned, you apply directly to them or through a recruiter.Once you sign the contract, the respective education offices will assign you to your school. They're try to take your preferences into account but it is ultimately up to them.

I was digging around the board and I came across this thread. I'm not in the Fullbright Korea program. But I do work in one of the alternate public school programs. Unless your particularly hung up on the Fullbright program. I suggest you strongly consider applying to other programs like: SMOE (Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education), EPIK (English Program in Korea), GEPIK (Gyeonggi-do English Program in Korea), or JEP (Jellong-Namdo English Program) Only because the workload is the same but the pay difference is about 400-500,000 Won a month depending on what qualifications you bring to the table. There's also the TALK program but their compensation is on par with the Fullbright Program. Here's also two teaching sites to help you hit the ground running. http://waygook.org/ http://eflclassroom.ning.com/ I forgot to mention, there's also a special program for public school teachers. Your tax exempt for 2 years.

I can't figure out how to do the multi-quote function so bear with me. I tried to respond as close as I could to a point by point format I'll do what I can to try to boost GRE scores. I'm gonna have to go back to Community College as a non-degree student to get a crash course in all the math. Besides basic statistics I never learned the more advanced quantitative stuff. Having to wait another 3-4 years was my biggest concern . I thought that it would severely hurt my chances since I'm aiming for an academic program instead of a professional one. What you said is definitely a relief. But, I don't understand what you mean by writing something for a conference. Do you mean related to what field I want to do my phd in? Is that something a recent graduate with just a B.A. could do? Or did you mean to try to get conference experience in general? If that's the case, I'm sure I can find something. The field I work in is an academic black hole, there is nothing in mainstream or even peripheral research on anything related to at-risk learners in a Foreign environment learning a foreign language. I completely understand what you mean about name brand schools. I'm only interested in the Ivies because they generally collect the the best researchers for that field and the by product is that these schools are generally good at everything. No single program dominates the rest and the professors have experience doing interdisciplinary research. Like for Cornell, unless Dr. Anderson retired. His specialty was particularly narrow. I think it was Indonesian history or something along those lines. But his theory on Imagined Communities inspired and anchored a lot of the more recent stuff in subaltern studies, collective memories, and geopolitical identities. But I admit that banking on working with a top researcher in the field is a hit or miss, especially if I list that in the SOP. if the professor doesn't have room than they won't even let me into the school Does anyone know if graduate schools will let less than picture perfect candidates in on a kind of probation trial period? If your professors don't think you can perform in X time than your asked to leave? My only issue is getting into these competitive schools, once I get in. I'm pretty sure I can perform beyond expectations. And what about internal transfers from a Master's Program into a Phd Program? A professor I had suggested this to me a few years back but, I always thought that back door was more of the exception than the rule.

I was hoping people could give me some advice on things I can start doing now to help pave the way into a top tiered Phd Program. I want to do it in either Political Science, sub-specialty Ethnic Democracies or in Political Theory exploring the social contract. I'm more interested in the theoretical aspect of things than the hard core regression statistics. I want a career in academic research so I’m aiming for the more competitive programs at top tier research universities like Cornell, NYU, etc. But, for family reasons reasons I can't go back to graduate school any time soon. In the best case scenario. I might be ready to go back in another 3-4 years. I've already spent the last couple years working in a completely unrelated field. I’m a English teacher at an alternate high school in East Asia. I also coordinate some of the school’s intervention programs and do teacher training for the district on pedagogy and curriculum design for at-risk learners. But those extra tidbits seem largely irrelevant to an admissions committee in a unrelated field. Academically, a bit about me; I got my A.A. in Liberal Arts from a small Community College with a 3.3 GPA. Then I got my B.A. in Political Science and Middle Eastern Studies from Syracuse with a 3.3 GPA. I admit my grades aren’t the best compared to the kinds of people I’ll be up against and in general I tend to do bad on standardized tests. But before I left school; I took a lot of graduate courses as electives to give me an idea of what grad school was like. And help me weigh my application away from standardized scores. I figured, I could point to a proven track record instead of trying to sell them on my hopes and dreams. I took about 3-4 entry level graduate (500-600 level) and 2 doctorate courses (800-900 level). I did pretty well in them. I also got recommendation letters written before I left school and stored on file. But unfortunately since none of the professors remember me, I can’t ask them for advice on what I should do now. And I don’t enjoy teaching English as a Foreign Language enough to spend the rest of my life doing this. So are there any suggestions on things I can start doing now to help me improve my chances of getting into a competitive phd program? Like internships, editing academic papers. Just something extra I can do or look into while I’m teaching. Because the only option I seem to have is take a couple years off after I finish teaching to join the Peace Corps or something else with high prestige, minimal commitment just to get that government experience. If I was completely bilingual, I could get some part time jobs with the government as a translator-editor. But since I’m not, the most I can get is a on and off again editing job for a consultant who works with a lobbying group.