NZGirl

Hi everyone, I applied for one PhD program last season and was rejected. It was the one school which I had my heart set on and honestly believed that I would be best placed. Apparently the selection committee did not agree with me on that but hey, I' m going to try again anyway. I have since figured out that I should have applied to 5 or more schools. I have a few questions about this (I am from New Zealand, we have about 4 universities in the whole country and the application process is not really competitive so bear with me). 1. I'm not sure what professors in America are like, but our professors (at least at my university) are not particularly receptive or accustomed to writing LORs for graduate programs. I get the feeling that they think I would be better off just staying in NZ. The letters of recommendation I have from last year are excellent but I cannot imagine that these people are going to write me 5 more references so I can apply to other programs. Do you guys just get one reference and change the name of the school or do you get different references for each school? Also, do the professors have to submit the references themselves or can I do it for them? Does anyone have any strategies for dealing with this situation? 2. Do you guys write different essays for different schools? The school I applied for was the school that I honestly believed to be the best fit for me based on my research interests and learning style. My essay was obviously specific to the school I applied to, I just re-read it and it wouldn't really make sense if I changed the name of the school. Does everyone write generic essays or do you spend months and months writing different essays for each school? 3. More an observation than a question, this is an expensive process! I'm off to do a GMAT course (because apparently this is more important than I realised and my low score pretty much meant I shouldn't have bothered applying last season) which will cost me about $4000 (no GMAT course in NZ so have to go to San Fran for 7 weeks), then$70-120USD per application on top of that (that's a lot of money in NZ!). I would appreciate any advice people are willing to give me. Thanks in advance