nilnawk

I checked on the online system. No email.

Fletcher decisions just came out

decision and financial aid info were just posted for me

I wouldn't expect it. the financial aid application had a much later deadline than the admissions application, and I vaguely recall seeing somewhere that they would render their admissions decisions by March 15, but that financial aid information would likely be released around April 1. Can't find the sources at the moment though.

The Fletcher School has an early notification option, which rendered results back in mid-December.

Just got my results for early notification!

Early notification folks -- I may be off the mark, but I'm starting to get the impression that we'll find out later than the early notification applicants did last year. If the Fletcher blog post excerpts below are accurate, it would seem that the committee is about one week behind schedule compared to last year. Fletcher blog post from today: "The Committee on Admissions reviewing fall 2012 applications will meet for the first time today." Blog post from December 3, 2010: "It isn’t until we start the Early Notification process that we bring in our full forces — this year including the Admissions staff, three professors, and eight students — and we’re just about to have our inaugural meeting."

I feel like a lot of what happens in the admissions committee is a complete mystery. We probably won't know exactly how they're going to use the information we give them. The best move on our part might be to be as honest and straightforward as possible without trying to second-guess what the committee might do with that information.

I got my SPARKS access already. I submitted my application around mid-November.

Last year's early notification results came out on the 13th of December, which was the second Monday of the month. If it's the same pattern for this year, then the exact date might be the 12th.

just testing the waters -- anyone else patiently waiting on the early notification results?

Hi all: I just submitted my HKS application for September 2012. I have a question. I reviewed the pdf of my app again after I submitted, and I noticed that the form itself seemed pretty sparse (the form didn't show sections for prior academic institutions, GREs, etc, even though I know I filled in these details on the online application). Is that normal? I might be fretting about nothing. Thanks!

Last year's early applicants to MALD were hearing back by roughly the second week of December. Not sure if that has any bearing on the strength of the applicants though. The admissions folks did say that they could accept, defer, or flat our reject applicants from the early application pool. All this is based solely on what I found on other forum threads. Hopefully it's accurate though. It'd be great to find out so early.

jrnels -- I sent my application in a few days ago, even though my LORs hadn't been finalized yet by then. I think the admissions office is ok with the application coming before the LORs. If this year is anything like last year's admission cycle, I'm expecting to hear back from the admissions committee by Dec. 12. Best of luck!

Atkum, I worked through the ETS, Barron's, and Kaplan practice questions and practice exams. Each time I encountered a word I didn't recognize, I marked it down. I then copied each of those words to an excel spreadsheet, searched for the definitions for those words, and eventually converted the words with the definitions into digital flashcards using quizlet.com. I just studied those words repeatedly in the days before my actual exam. I saw a number of those words come up in my actual verbal exam. Knowing the meanings of those words definitely made the difference between making a well-informed selection versus a wild guess on a number of questions. As for the reading comprehension, I simply practiced with the reading comprehension problems in my practice books over and over. There are definitely certain patterns to the reading comprehension questions that become discernible after practicing enough.

Nothing definite yet, but my estimated ranges at the end of the exam were 700-800 verbal and 750-800 quant.

I just took the revised GRE, and I found it to be a relatively comfortable exam. The analytical writing was pretty straightforward. I only practiced writing four analytical essays in the days before the exam, but I felt that was sufficient. The quantitative sections included a fairly balanced mixture of very simple and very challenging questions. General piece of advice that I found to be very helpful on the quantitative sections: if the obvious approach to a challenging question seems too complicated or involves too many calculations, there's probably a simpler but less obvious approach to solving the question. Also, it's definitely good to know the special triangles by heart (i.e., 3:4:5 right triangles, 30:60:90 triangles, etc). I found most of the verbal sections to be pretty straightforward. As a part of my preparation, I had marked all the unfamiliar words I found in my GRE books, and I committed the definitions of those words to memory. I encountered many of those same words during the verbal sections of the actual exam. I would definitely encourage test-takers to study any unfamiliar words encountered in GRE study books, since being able to answer many of the GRE verbal questions is contingent upon knowing the vocabulary in the questions. Being able to mark questions and come back to them later definitely helped. For the most part, I skipped all the data analysis and reading comprehension questions on my first pass, then came back to those question after answering everything else. I also tended to skip multiple answer choice types of questions on the first pass. Being able to come back to questions later definitely made me feel more comfortable in terms of time management. I don't think ETS has collected enough data on the new exam yet to provide reliable score estimates, but the score ranges I received at the end of the test were 700-800 verbal, and 750-800 quant. I prepared for the new GRE using the latest ETS, Barron's, and Kaplan books. The ETS book was good for practice questions and generally familiarizing test takers with the test format, but it doesn't really explain answers to questions. The Barron's and Kaplan books both had plenty of questions and provided some pretty good explanations and tips, but overall, I found the Barron's book to be more challenging and helpful.

Applying early for 2012 GREs in two days, and I have my recommendations lined up.