anonyouknow

I just finished everything a few days back with a total of over $1400... Between GRE, GRE Subject, extra GRE scores, application fees, transcript fees, mailing fees from my US school to Singapore so I could enclose in a package to go back to Canada...and that's only for 7 schools! I'll be as bummed for wasting all that money as for not getting accepted at this point. On the bright side, my last LOR writer finally submitted his last online rec a few hours in advance of the deadline! It's now completely out of my hands and the waiting game for all schools has begun. Well, once those last three packages make it from customs in Vancouver to where they need to be. Speaking of which, anyone else running into incredibly slow mailing? Every time I've mailed packages and letters from Singapore to the US and Canada in the past everything has arrived in 6-7 days, including weekends. I got tracking for all my applications and have been driving myself crazy watching as they sit in customs for a week and a half each, taking from 14-20 days each to arrive.

I’d be happy with any advice too! One of my recommenders is notorious for not replying to email- ever. He’s a great guy and I’m confident his letters are my strongest (I served as TA under him and he consistently remarked I was the best writer and TA he’d ever worked with!) so they’re totally necessary, but he’s downright horrible when it comes to stuff like this. Waterloo requested online letters and I completed my application in time that his request was sent out on the first of December. They say letter writers have two weeks to upload their letters. Now it’s 2 days until that cutoff point, all my other writers have submitted and he’s just not putting his through. I’ve sent two emails reminding him politely but haven’t gotten a response, as expected, and now I’m not sure what to do that won’t come across as too pushy. I graduated in 2010 so I’m not around to drop in and see him (actually, I’m about 10,000 miles away now) and calling isn’t an option since it’s finals week and he doesn’t keep office hours. I know he receives my reminders straight to his phone through email so I could keep sending those but I don’t want to seem like I’m harassing him. Urgh, this is ALL I’m waiting on now to complete ALL my apps for good, I just want it done with!

I spoke with the secretary at one of my schools that has a Dec 15 deadline and she told me that the exact deadline isn't much of a concern. Although I had all my materials in well in advance she said they keep getting materials from schools and ETS through the end of January and don't hold those against applicants since it's out of their control. You can always check with the program if they may frown on late materials but I doubt that would be much of an issue.

It looks like Google Voice Lite is only available to US residents at the moment which rules me out, but thanks for the help and advice. I'll get in contact and let them know in advance just in case Hopefully since I'm international they'll want to conduct most communication through email anyway

I've already submitted most of my apps for this year but figure better late than never to know. I live in Singapore and would be an international student at the schools to which I'm applying. Of course, this means I have a Singapore phone number. However, because my phone is prepaid (and pretty crappy) I can't actually receive international calls, though I can make them using a card. Because it's necessary to provide your phone number on most applications, I didn't have any option but to put my current line although it'd be useless to any school trying to contact me by phone. I'm a bit worried a school will try to contact me by phone with important information and I'll miss it. I didn't see anywhere in most applications I could make a note of this and now I'm wondering if I should contact the schools and let them know it would be easier to contact me through email. Thoughts?

I'm just finishing up my last two Canadian apps, the waiting has begun for the other five programs. I've been neurotically checking the tracking status of the two packages that have been stuck in customs in Vancouver for over a week Luckily the deadlines for those packages are over a month away but I want them to get there asap!

Haha, I can feel the SOP regret too! I'm finishing up my last applications now and since I sent the first out I've rephrased a few sentences and even completely changed one of my paragraphs to something more focused. Now my bottom two schools are getting my re-read a million times and reworked to perfection SOPs. Lesson learned, don't finish your top schools first, you'll make a hundred better changes as you keep submitting!

I spent a short paragraph on each of the professors I mentioned wanting to work with too, tying each of those paragraphs in with my previous experience in the area to save some space and connect it all up. I think a brief paragraph is fine as long as it's clear why you're specifying their names, if it's a good fit with past research it should be clear why you're interested in working with them. I did throw in an extra mention of the professors' labs and how the recent research from there was of interest to me as well in order to develop a more developed breadth of knowledge in the field, etc etc. More than anything I just used that sentence to point out that I've been keeping up to date with my POI's recent work and would be entering the program with knowledge of what's going on past just my specific interest.

I'd actually be interested to hear opinions on this too. My LOR writer sent my letters recently and passed me a copy of the general letter he sent to my schools a few days later. I discovered he mentioned my GRE scores as being a bit lower than they actually are. I thought I'd let it slide since the adcoms will obviously see my actual GRE scores but I'm not sure what I'd do in your case. I don't think there's much you can do unless you ask your LOR writer to write an updated letter and the school to update it, but I'm not sure how well that would go over on both ends...