Ampere

ball bearing

loose screw

loose lips

Thanks. I guess I'll just give it a little while and contact them if I don't hear anything. And I do assume that the TAship is an acceptance, but since it doesn't mention the PhD program anywhere, and they also use Masters students as TAs... Well, I think I'm bound to stay anxious about it until I have everything spelled out in writing.

In the past two days, I've received my first two responses from schools. One sent me a letter telling me I have received a TAship, but never actually mentioned that I had been admitted to the program. The other school sent me a letter telling me I had been admitted to their program, but did not mention financial support (a previous email had said they intended to offer me support). I was just wondering if this is normal and if I should expect to get more information from these schools, or if I will have to contact them about it. I thought perhaps there might be two letters coming, split up by graduate school/department or admissions/financial aid. Anyone have experience to share? Thanks!

I applied to seven schools last year and got seven rejections. This year I took it up a notch and applied to twelve. So far I've heard back from three--two acceptances and a waitlist. All three are schools that rejected me a year ago, so it seems it definitely is possible to turn things around. Oh, and to settle another potential worry, the first school that accepted me was the one that received an SOP with a nasty error in it. Best of luck to the rest of you!

I'm sure you're right. My current annoyance with her is probably just putting everything in the worst possible light. Thanks for helping me see the situation a little more clearly.

Sorry, my point there relied on background that you wouldn't know. She is a very new professor at a small school that doesn't have many students going on to graduate study, and I get the impression that she thinks a recommendation should just be a very general "X is a good student, he performs well in my classes, etc." So if she disregards my concerns about what the content of the letter should be, then I can't really rely on her to get a meaningful letter. The reference that she would have been replacing for two of my applications is also a computer science professor and he wanted to actively discuss the best way to tailor his letter to math programs, so the contrast is pretty striking. As for coming back to her later, she specifically told me that if I wound up needing another letter I should let her know, but I guess that may have just been a bit of empty politeness.

Nah, she was fine at the time, and I've talked to her several times since then, so it was definitely something about the new request. Also, I contacted the next person on my list a couple hours ago and already got a positive response, so all is well!

It suddenly came up last week that I was short a reference on two letters, so I went down to the next professor on my list. She had previously offered to write me a letter, but I had declined since I already had enough references (or at least I thought I did) and she was comp sci and I was applying to math programs. Anyway, I sent her an email asking if she would still be willing to write me a letter and if she thought she would have enough to say about me in the context of the programs I was applying to. I waited a week with no response (I did try to see her in person in the meantime, but she was not in during her posted office hours) and then tried emailing her again. This time she replied with a very terse email telling me to look elsewhere for a reference. Apparently she took my suggestion that she might not have enough to say about my mathematical aptitude as some kind of personal slight against her letter-writing ability and was deeply offended by it. I doubt she would have bothered to reply at all if I had not followed up. So that's my story, which I was going to give as advice to be careful what you say to your references. In reality, I guess it turned out to just be a vent, but it was a much needed one. In hindsight, if she didn't think that the mismatch in departments was a legitimate concern, she probably wouldn't have written me a very good letter anyway. Hopefully I can find someone better to take her place.

Sounds rough, but hopefully the results will come through for you. At least it's out of the way so you can enjoy yourself now. Have a happy birthday!

I just got back from the GRE Math test, and figure there have got to be some other people who tested today and want to talk about it. What did you take? How do you think you did? This was my second time taking the Mathematics test after a pretty poor performance last year. This time it all seemed to go pretty smoothly, but I don't want to get too confident before the results roll in (I hope it isn't really a six week wait). I definitely feel like I knew what I was doing on the majority of the questions, anyway; it's really going to come down to how many stupid mistakes I made along the way. How about you?