pinkrobot

Female authors being termed "all just so awful" has physically transported me into periods in time when women began or sustained their careers under male pseudonyms. You know, like the Brontës, George Eliot, etc., etc., etc.

There seem to be about five thousand sides to this to-name-or-not-to-name coin. I respect the contribution of andsoitgoes161, but I have also seen a number of successful statements of purpose that do name faculty members, and one of my recommenders explicitly told me to do so. Like bespeckled, I tried to hit a middle ground, in doing so aiming to remain true to my own voice. Like indalomena, I personally feel deeply uncomfortable about saying "I want to work with you": that feels, in the vein of andsoitgoes161's quote, egotistical. (I have no idea whether or not it actually is: this is just my gut, and very personal, feeling.) But at all of the schools I am applying to, there are faculty members whose work has inspired me, excited me, intrigued me, etc. So I did mention faculty members in that context. To ecritdansleau's question, yes, when they asked, I listed.

Hi team, I had the score recipient not valid/active problem, too, and so did a few people on the GRE forum. I called ETS about this a couple weeks ago and posted this on the GRE forum: "I had the same problem and called ETS today. I had requested four additional score reports for my general GRE scores; my subject GRE scores (test taken on Nov. 12) were not available at the time that I ordered those score reports (and in fact are still not available!). The ETS representative told me that when you order score reports AND have taken a test for which the scores are not available, those two stars show up regardless of whether or not you are trying to send those unavailable scores. (The legend "Score recipient not valid/active" seems misleading: in this case it has nothing to do with the score recipient at all.) So, my general GRE scores went without problems to the four score recipients I designated on the date that ETS states they were sent, just like I requested; the two stars are there because my subject test scores, which I had not been trying to send anyway, are still unavailable. Does this make any sense? (It may also help you to know that before I called ETS I checked my bank account to see if the amount of the transaction had been deducted; it had, and there was no refund of any kind. If the same holds true for you, you are likely in the clear.)" Edited to add: on the topic of subject score transmission issues--since I made that last post, my GRE subject scores became available by phone. I waited until after I got them by phone to send them (the system actually didn't let me send them before that), but not until after they became available online. The subject scores were sent to the schools I sent them to (confirmed via mail from ETS and via status updates from my submitted applications). So I think as long as you waited until after the scores came out by phone to send them, they should have arrived okay. Major sympathies to those of you with the blank score report problem: that's analogous to ordering a sweater which turns out to be out-of-stock, receiving an empty box, and being charged for the sweater anyway! Good luck.

This varies wildly for me from one day to the next--one day I can't pull anything off without music, and the next I can't pull anything off unless I have total silence. And some days I can't pull anything off. (But I can never work in a cafe--if not at home, libraries are the ideal amount of noise for me.) Right now I'm bugging on an album called "The Goat Rodeo Sessions" (mostly instrumental): it's an absolutely brilliant collaboration album with Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, and a couple other geniuses.

Hi folks, hope all is well with you! I wonder what you guys think of affixing a brief note to my transcript? I've written a very brief note regarding a few classes (the grading system for those classes was different than for the other regular literature classes, and the transcript itself does not explain this) and affixed it to the transcript as the last page of the transcript PDF. On the top I've written a little header that "this is not a part of the XYZ College transcript," and I wrote "Note" as well and signed my name at the bottom to make it super clear that I added this page. I can't find any specific rules forbidding or encouraging this kind of thing. What do you guys think? Thanks!

Commiseration re: this. The first app I sent, one paragraph in my WS was missing a period, and the thing had the most dullsville title known to man because I just couldn't think of anything better at the time. These are small things, I know, but they grate nevertheless!

This is always the case, for every standardized test. My hunch is that it has something to do with selling more books ("Oh no! I tanked the diagnostic! I should buy Company X's companion books for math, vocabulary, pandas, time travel . . . "), coming hand-in-hand with the kinds of slogans they use ("Take control of your future!"). As a tutor, though, I remind my tutees that this is one case where it is not hard to see the silver lining to a manifestation of greed: if you are prepared for the test in the preparatory books, you are most likely good to go for the actual test. This does not apply, however, to the Literature GRE, where often the tests in the prep books are not only harder but in fact entirely off base (in my experience, for the Lit. GRE the things that makes the prep books' tests more difficult are inaccuracies and incredibly vague wording--I'm looking at you, Barron's--which do not help prepare for the real deal; this of course does not affect you, but I've had that vent stored in me for months!). (Ed. for typos.)

Yikes! Have others heard the same? If so, would you mind mentioning what/who your sources are for this information? Thank you! I ask because I've been scouring department websites for answers to this question and I have found none, so I've been operating on the assumption that the works cited does not count towards the page count (based on the general rules at my undergrad, where "20 page paper" meant 20 pages of writing).

Just FYI--if anyone's keen on feeding the hungry beast that is ETS, scores are available over the phone now. Good luck to all!

No worries--I'd want to confirm, too. Not something to mess around with! The department website just says "December 8." But here's a paragraph from the grad school website: From: http://gradschool.duke.edu/admissions/deadlines/

Right there with you! But deadline is 11:59pm tomorrow, yeah? Either way, hoping to have it in tonight . . .

I had the same problem and called ETS today. I had requested four additional score reports for my general GRE scores; my subject GRE scores (test taken on Nov. 12) were not available at the time that I ordered those score reports (and in fact are still not available!). The ETS representative told me that when you order score reports AND have taken a test for which the scores are not available, those two stars show up regardless of whether or not you are trying to send those unavailable scores. (The legend "Score recipient not valid/active" seems misleading: in this case it has nothing to do with the score recipient at all.) So, my general GRE scores went without problems to the four score recipients I designated on the date that ETS states they were sent, just like I requested; the two stars are there because my subject test scores, which I had not been trying to send anyway, are still unavailable. Does this make any sense? (It may also help you to know that before I called ETS I checked my bank account to see if the amount of the transaction had been deducted; it had, and there was no refund of any kind. If the same holds true for you, you are likely in the clear.)