Hanyuye

I don't think giving them more work is a way to make admissions committees happy about your application. If you are determined to send in that many, make sure to order them somehow (in an online form or in your SOP) to make sure that the three you most want read are at the top of the reading list. Assume they won't read them all, and letters 4 and 5 may not be looked at by every person in every committee. Do reference who they are from and what they speak to about you in your SOP if there is something specific you want people to notice that isn't covered in the stronger letters.

Do you know what a decent price for rent would be? I was accepted to U of Minn with a rather small stipend (25% assistantship) and am doing some research into whether or not I could make it work.

Man I feel ya. My first few semesters of college I paid for myself and didn't have money for any books. It was miserable, I got all C's and B's and lost all my confidence.

Chin up, chap!

There's a whole thread on NYC. Check it out. I'm born and bred here in NYC. NYC's food is not cheap whatsoever. And Astoria is a very cramped neighborhood where students flood in and flood out so prices are not cheap whatsoever. Expect to pay 800-1100 dollars on  a tiny 15 x 10 bedroom, 4 friends of mine lived in Astoria and that was the average room. This is NYC, not Wyoming. Not here to bash Ablukhov but NYC is not to be underestimated in terms of prices and expenses. 
For cheaper rents, Jackson Heights, Woodside, Sunnyside in Queens, the further east in Queens, the cheaper and of course the longer the commute. As for Brooklyn, I'm not sure. 
 
Travel time to LIC from BK is around 30 minutes to 1 hour, Depending on what trains you take, the G train being the fastest.
 
Then again, check the thread!

you could always live in Long Island City. I've heard (can't confirm) that it is nyc-affordable. Have you looked at Padmapper.com? it's a pretty great app and I use to to kind of scope out areas. Are you from a city originally? If you are, don't be afraid of moving outside recently gentrified areas. Public transit is very good, runs all night, and even I can get out to the 'hipper' areas of Brooklyn from the SBX fairly easily. 
 
Do yourself a favor and get an unlimited metrocard. It hurts the wallet when you first get it, but trust me, you can easily spend $7-10 a day on mass transit here if you are not careful, so you could find yourself spending anywhere from 150 to 200 on mass transit monthly without even realizing it!
 
Talk to others and see who has landlords they like - my dad's a property manager in the BX and he leases most of his open apartments from referrals and people who call. Paying a broker is definitely not necessary here!
 
Food. Ah. Food. This is a contentious one. Some people can do it for cheap, but i find if i am hanging out in gentrified areas I can spend up to $20 on a 'good but not like, gourmet' meal with food and drink (for a dinner) The good thing for you is that there are a lot of areas that have delicious food from different countries - again, occasionally a trek but what are you moving to NYC for if not to explore? for less expensive than their 'elevated ethnic cuisine' counterparts. As for groceries, there is a trader joes on 14th at union sq, Met, Gristedies and Pathmark are your friends.. Pathmark has some really good sales. 
 
As for coffee, stick to the cart coffe and away from starbucks, easily save like $4 a day depending on what kind of coffee you get. Starbucks does have free wi-fi though and many of the "indie" coffeeshops are now into the whole "we don't do wi-fi" thing...
 
Don't bring your car unless you wind up in what is commonly referred to as the "outer-boroughs" (usually this means 35-40 minutes out of manhattan into a borough but, like most things here, everyone will tell you differently) 
 
Depending on what music scene you are into, a lot of the indie rock scene is in west brooklyn, along the L line of the subway. There's punk and rap almost everywhere, though. As a teenager I pretty much stuck to the Bronx for punk shows and lower manhattan (RIP the 2nd iteration of the Knit!).  
 
Ok. That's all i can think of right now. Any other questions feel free to pm me!

Since the law campus is in Queens (not Manhattan), I wouldn't recommend living in NJ unless you had a very good reason. It's too far and there's no reason to do that commute when there are many decent neighborhoods in Queens. There is a range from quiet residential areas to artsy neighborhoods to dangerous/not nice places too. I have been to Queens often but have never lived there, so I'll let others comment on specific places. 
 
Yes, NYC is expensive in general, but in my experience, it's most expensive when you first arrive; you don't know where to find affordable grocery stores, restaurants, furniture, used books, happy hours, etc. It takes some time to know where to shop, but you'll figure it out after awhile. If you're into music, there is always something going on here. If you like diversity, ethnic food and energy, it's a great city! 

There's a whole thread on NYC. Check it out. I'm born and bred here in NYC. NYC's food is not cheap whatsoever. And Astoria is a very cramped neighborhood where students flood in and flood out so prices are not cheap whatsoever. Expect to pay 800-1100 dollars on  a tiny 15 x 10 bedroom, 4 friends of mine lived in Astoria and that was the average room. This is NYC, not Wyoming. Not here to bash Ablukhov but NYC is not to be underestimated in terms of prices and expenses. 
For cheaper rents, Jackson Heights, Woodside, Sunnyside in Queens, the further east in Queens, the cheaper and of course the longer the commute. As for Brooklyn, I'm not sure. 
 
Travel time to LIC from BK is around 30 minutes to 1 hour, Depending on what trains you take, the G train being the fastest.
 
Then again, check the thread!

There's a whole thread on NYC. Check it out. I'm born and bred here in NYC. NYC's food is not cheap whatsoever. And Astoria is a very cramped neighborhood where students flood in and flood out so prices are not cheap whatsoever. Expect to pay 800-1100 dollars on  a tiny 15 x 10 bedroom, 4 friends of mine lived in Astoria and that was the average room. This is NYC, not Wyoming. Not here to bash Ablukhov but NYC is not to be underestimated in terms of prices and expenses. 
For cheaper rents, Jackson Heights, Woodside, Sunnyside in Queens, the further east in Queens, the cheaper and of course the longer the commute. As for Brooklyn, I'm not sure. 
 
Travel time to LIC from BK is around 30 minutes to 1 hour, Depending on what trains you take, the G train being the fastest.
 
Then again, check the thread!

San Diego weather/climate patterns are very different from Miami. Florida is surrounded by warm ocean currents and has that gawd-awful humidity. Coastal California has cold currents from the north, and a good bit of upwelling, producing ocean breezes and a significant cooling effect, esp. at night. Can you tell it's my favorite climate? ;-)

If heat is not your thing, you need to rule out Davis.

Agreed, San Diego is very little like Miami weather wise, it is a very pleasant place to live. But it is more car-centric than many of the other cities you mentioned. Berkeley is in the SanFran metro area, also very pleasant, but super expensive. Boulder certainly feels small if that is where you stay, but is anything but if you plan on some outdoor recreation. Pittsburgh is smaller than many of the cities you mentioned above, and I've not heard anything good about public transit there.

Also, it sounds like you are not fixed in anywhere yet, so it may make more sense to figure out which programs are a good fit (not just "good") before worrying about transit. You can use it as a tiebreaker after you get into programs, but deciding about it now seems premature.

I hate temperature extremes too.


"Washington [DC] is not a place to live in. The rents are high, the food is bad, the dust is disgusting and the morals are deplorable.
Go West, young man, go West and grow up with the country."

-Horace Greeley

Hi ofe1818, I can't answer your questions about CUNY but I live in NYC (brooklyn specifically) and can pass on this advice: travel times in the NYC are entirely dependent on whether or not you are near the subway line that you need. It looks like there's a G stop near CUNY law so you could possibly have a commute of around 30 mins if you lived off the G in say Greenpoint brooklyn- alternately it could take hours if you don't have an easy connection. There are buses but I'm not a huge fan. My advice is to look at the subway map and plot your apartment search around the train lines that you'll be using.
As to cost of living...well, rent is really expensive as I'm sure you know...but food and public transport are relatively cheap. You can significantly reduce your rent by sharing a two bedroom and a lot of the universities have boards to help students pair up with roommates. Oh, and a lot of students choose Astoria Queens for the cheapest rents- its a nice neighborhood, a bit quiet compared to Brooklyn though. Hope this helps. If you want more specific info down the line about neighborhoods or anything else you can PM me.

You all make me laugh. I took the time to register this account, because I thought that I was looking at a thread of disasters. In-fact, almost all of you have decent GPA's. I dont think I saw anyone with below a 2.6....That's pretty good.
 
This isn't a here's my story, it's better than yours. Rather it's a true disaster which cannot be fixed in any way.
 
I finished my undergrad with a 2.41 in business. I was studying accounting, but if your GPA falls below 2.5 at the University of Colorado then you lose your emphasis. Mine was accounting. I read everywhere that with a 2.4 I can eliminate 98% of grad schools in the U.S.
 
In my entire college tenure, my best semester was a 3.29 and my worst was a 1.6
 
Between those two extremes I fit everywhere probably averaging around a constant 2.5 the entire time. But my backstory is what helped (which I don't encourage you to do). I was in Iraq where I was severely injured to the point where I now have seizures on a weekly basis. I'm a disabled veteran, and I found out that this doesn't play into anything when applying to grad school. Since I had saved money, I decided to take my 2.4 gpa and apply to every top school that I could think of. I don't have good grades, my professors won't write me letters of recommendations because of my grades and my work experience is non-relevant to accounting. Basically I have no help getting into grad school.
 
However, I was wrong. I spent two days creating applications, paying fee's and writing countless essays as to why I would be a good fit. I then picked the six schools that I *knew* wouldn't accept me because of my bad grades and applied to them. I spent over $1000 in application fee's and other items. My top six schools that I applied to for a masters in accounting: Stanford, Michigan, Cornell, Wisconsin,California and Harvard. Then I completed five applications to schools that I thought I had a moderate chance of getting into: Texas A&M, Texas, Ohio State University, Nebraska, and Auburn. After finishing those applications, I tried some other one's that I thought would be sympathetic to my veteran status and applied to five more: North Dakota, Western Michigan, University of Utah, and Boise State University.
 
I didn't think anything of these. At worst, I thought that I may have just submitted 16 applications which would end up in the trash can followed by a degrading rejection email that is sent to the auto rejected students.
 
However here is my current problem:
On my desk I currently have acceptance letters to every single school except Utah because of an application error which is supposed to be resolved soon. The first thought that came to my mind was "wow, I got into Stanford". The first idea was to immediately call/email all of the admissions staff to see what kind of marijuanna they were smoking because my acceptance likely ended the dream of a better qualified student at that particular school. To keep things short, I summed up the responses from all of the universities by displaying what Michigan wrote back. I did this because it generally follows what Stanford, Cornell and just about every other school said. Texas A&M said that my veteran status improved my rankings consideribly. But anyways:

Michigan: "Your undergraduate grades were horrible, and frankly I cannot believe that you are applying knowing that the GPA floor is 3.3 for minimal consideration to the accounting program. After looking through your packet, I saw nothing which indicated that you would have the ability to complete a graduate level degree. Furthermore, after our interview it became very clear to me that you have no relevant experience in accounting outside of academia. I left the interview perplexed because nothing statistically showed my staff or myself that you belong at Michigan. However, I did enjoy reading your essay and listening to your thoughts on the Enron scandal. For having such a low GPA, I am interested in how you learned so much. While I am grateful for your service and terribly sorry for your injury I cannot simply put that in front of your academic performance. You got into Michigan because you can communicate well. It's not too often that a student will present themselves as a problem solver and a situational thinker yet not be able to test well. I think you will bring something profound to our program and that is the ability to hear and speak."

So just so all of you know, having a 2.4 doesn't help but if you can overcome with something else then you can definitely go places.

Again, you're comparing apple's and oranges here. Top liberal arts colleges, say your Haverford's and Swarthmore's are in a very different class than a commuter school with low research activity. You also seem to be intentionally ignoring the fact that aside from Princeton, the "elite" privates are known for having some of the worst grad inflation. I don't think a student in the top 5% of their class from a large public university with multiple presentations and 1-2 years of research experience is going to be at a disadvantage applying to grad school. In fact, I am counting on this myself and the feedback I have gotten from top programs has been very positive thus far. That said, I really only have experience in my discipline, things could be very different for other disciplines but I know plenty of people that have had no problem making the jump from lower ranked schools if they have well defined research interests and quality experience.

That's simply untrue. I guarantee you that, if they had the same GPA, adcoms would take a (say) Stanford grad over your hypothetical Oklahoma student 9 times out of 10.

Now, if the Oklahoma student had a 3.9 but the Stanford student was running a 3.5 GPA, *then* I think there would be legitimate debate about who to accept.



Nope! Students from top liberal arts colleges fare very well in graduate admissions across a range of disciplines, indeed probably better than all except the top 10-20 R1 institutions.

I grew up in Albuquerque, in fact in the UNM area, so I know a bit about it. It's basically a pretty typical postwar southwestern city, similar in look and feel to places like Phoenix, Las Vegas, Colorado Springs, etc. It's pretty sprawly and auto-oriented as a whole, particularly in the newer areas.
The UNM area, however, is one of the older parts of town, so it's a bit different. The main UNM campus is on Central Avenue, which is sort of the main drag. There are a lot of cool little cafes and restaurants and other small businesses in the immediate campus area, both on Central itself and on the smaller streets perpendicular and parallel to it. The area south of Central around UNM is known as the student ghetto, and it has that sort of feel; mostly run-down old houses and apartment complexes, all of which serve primarily as student rentals. Some grad students live in this area, but it's mostly undergrads. It's one of the few neighborhoods in the city where a car isn't necessary, and lots of people walk or bike everywhere they need to go. Rents are low.
To the east of UNM but still along Central is the Nob Hill neighborhood, which is fairly upscale. This is a pretty hopping part of town along Central, where most of the businesses are, and there are a lot of good restaurants with a wide variety of price ranges here. Rents are higher here, and the population is more professors than students, but there are some grad students. This is also a pretty walkable neighborhood, and it would be possible to live here without a car.
Further east along Central the neighborhoods get a lot poorer. This part of town is known as the War Zone for the gang violence that used to be extremely frequent there. The violence, which has contributed to the reputation of Albuquerque as kind of a tough city (as noted earlier in this thread), has decreased a lot in the past twenty years or so, although there is still a certain amount. Rents are very low in this area, but not that many students live there.
To the north of the main UNM campus, which ends at Lomas Boulevard, is the North Campus area, which is where I grew up (and am in fact sitting right now, at my mom's house, as I write this). This area is a bit wealthier than the student ghetto, but not really rich the way Nob Hill is. More middle class to upper middle class.The population is mainly professors and other professional types, with student rentals sort of scattered throughout the area. Rents are fairly low. The UNM North Campus (basically the law school, medical school, and a few other programs) is right next to this neighborhood, as is the UNM North Golf Course, which is a great place to run, walk a dog, etc.
To the west of UNM main campus, across University Boulevard, is an interesting little neighborhood called Spruce Park. This neighborhood is built on a fairly steep hill, and the income gradations as you move up the hill are very noticeable and stark. There are big, fancy houses on top, more middle-class houses partway down, and cheap student rentals at the bottom. This neighborhood is particularly close to the anthro department, which is at the western edge of the main campus.
Those are the neighborhoods that are most convenient to UNM. There are a lot of other neighborhoods further away, some of which are pretty interesting, but they're not very convenient to campus and while some students do live in them, I don't think I'd really recommend it. From most places you would have to drive to campus, and parking is a huge pain. Much better to be close enough to walk.
As for the feel of the place, rock, tattoos, and southwestern food is a pretty good description, particularly of Central and the neighborhoods around it. There are lots of restaurants serving the distinctive New Mexican style of Mexican food everywhere. The public library system is fairly good, but somewhat weirdly there are no branches very close to the UNM area. The closest would be the Ernie Pyle branch, which is very small but interesting. It's in a little house that used to belong to the famous World War II journalist Ernie Pyle, in a neighborhood south of the student ghetto toward the airport. For most purposes you'll probably want to use the UNM libraries, which are excellent. As for part-time work, hard to say in this economy, but I doubt it would be harder to get here than anywhere else.
The UNM campus itself is beautiful. All the buildings are in Pueblo Revival style architecture, which lends it a certain uniformity that I at least find very pleasing (not everyone agrees). There are some very cool little places on campus to study or just relax. The anthropology department, as I'm sure you know, is very well-regarded, so I'm not surprised that it's one of your top choices.
I wouldn't say I love Albuquerque, exactly, but I certainly don't hate it. It's a sprawling sunbelt metropolis without much of a college-town feel, but it has its charm if you know where to look for it. I'd be happy to answer any further questions you have.

I studied two weeks. One weekend with a couple hours each day of studying, one with 8 hours each day, and averaged about an hour on the weekdays (I was working a new, full time job). I got a 168V/164Q/5.5 which is much better than my practice tests were predicting. I probably could have done a couple points better if I really took the time to study -- I didn't study vocabulary, take a full length timed test, or write a practice essay at all -- but a saturday slot opened up pretty last minute so I took it sooner than expected to avoid a day off.

Why not?

Your list is fine, but be aware that none of those places are really known for their biostatistics departments.

I think your "top end" should probably include schools like Boston U, Pittsburgh, Emory, and Brown.

ETS doesn't care about anyones opinions. Only people's opinions that will cause them to make more money. If they could somehow weasel a harder section into the test they would, as long as it caused people to spend money on classes and tests.
Its really sad this test even exists, I don't believe in the whole, "it differentiates between 2 similar candidates". To me its all about money and I am sure the universities get something out of this for making students take it.

I agree with most of what you said, but this is incorrect. In order to closely approximate a test-taker's "true" score, you need questions at many levels of difficulty. Each question is associated with an approximate level of ability at or above which a test-taker will answer correctly and below which a test-taker will answer incorrectly. You must provide questions at many levels in order to come up with a good guess of someone's actual level of ability. This is why the computer adaptive nature of the GRE is important: once the computer program figures out that you are above or below a certain ability level, it starts serving you questions in the range it thinks you are so that it can discriminate more finely among people close in "true" score.

So, let's say abilities range from 1 to 100, and people with a true ability of 50 or more will generally get a certain question right, and people with a true ability of less than 50 will get the question wrong. Then, this question only divides people into two bins: at-or-above-50 and below-50. By including questions at all different ability levels (and preferably a couple at each), you make those bins smaller and smaller.

So both easy and hard questions are necessary for a standardized test like the GRE.

ok now you've passed the border of making a point to being just plain obnoxious.

This article is a terrible example of the clear writing the author so wishes we would all create. It's full of strange digressions (such as the salaries of bankers), and the author is using the GRE as a vehicle for a broader complaint about academic writing styles that really has nothing to do with what the GRE should test.

Whether or not we ought to write accessibly (we ought), the GRE should test the ability to read the scholarly literature that is available. In the world we live in, scholarly literature is dense and convoluted in style. In most graduate classes, instructors will expect you not only to read and understand this literature without help but also to lead discussions on that same material. Why should the entrance exam test your ability to comprehend a totally different kind of prose than you will encounter in graduate school?

While taking a GRE practice test today, I realized that I probably have serious ADD. It hasn't affected my work in college because by and large I don't procrastinate. However sitting for hours trying to take a test is tortuous. I actually have to remind myself to concentrate and then I end up concentrating on the fact that I am reminding myself to concentrate. I also can't stop moving, chewing my pencils etc. Ugghh. It got to the point where I was guessing on the 2nd quant section JUST TO GET IT OVER WITH, because I couldn't bare to sit there any longer. Ugghhh.

I got 780Q/690V/3.5AW and the only studying I did was to take the practice tests on the ETS website to become familiar with the format. I got into 9 out of 10 schools so I can't imagine why I would have wanted to spend any more time than that.