FertMigMort

This is a money-making scam. It seems to be a rising trend. You're better off applying again next year to the Ph.D. program or going someplace where you got funding even if it's not your first choice.

Hi Neal! I'll chime in and say that on the committee I described in my AMA, the cutoff was for each test. We did not have a cutoff for the writing portion of the GRE.

It does indeed. I finished my Ph.D. and got a non-academic job. I am so much happier and healthier now that I've left. To avoid outing myself, if anyone has questions about leaving, please feel free to PM me.

Hey everyone, just wanted to say that I'm going to retire from answering questions. I've graduated and have a real job in the real world now. I'm definitely not a source of information for academics anymore. I'm glad that my thread was helpful and I hope that it serves as a resource for many people to come! Best of luck in academia!

I hope this isn't too late, but I don't remember this affecting applications. I know of several students who had divinity degrees, in my program and others. Hopefully, you've gotten in and this isn't a concern.

I'm not as familiar with Canadian applications, but in the US, most schools give some sort of preference to minority students. The type of preference varies from school to school.

The problem is that people have been saying this for years. When are we going to wise up and admit that the landscape has changed in such a way that for the majority of graduate students, a TT job at a HRM is not in the future? I would caution against it unless you have a clear need for the degree in your future occupation. Most of the people I know who are doing well have left academia.

Yeah, not to overstate it, but your professor is full of shit. Go look through the AMA I did on getting into grad school (stickied at the top of this forum) on more info about fit. If you have a stellar GPA/GRE we might let you in if fit is just okay, but not if fit was out and out bad. We also didn't like to admit students who didn't have a clear idea of what they wanted to do, even if it was just an area.

I talked about this a bit in my adcomm AMA, but we did not look at a total score. There aren't any guidelines that I could find for a total score percentile, just one broken out for each category. The GRE score was kind of a weed out tool. We had a cut-off and didn't look at students below that cut-off. Contact programs you're interested in or check their website, some of them have guidance or mean GRE scores that you can use as a guide. Best of luck!

Most schools are willing to work with you and create an unofficial recruitment visit. We usually had one or two students do this every year. You don't have to state your reason for missing it, schools know that you have other offers, you can just say that you have a conflict.

You're too kind. I assure you that I can't take even 1/4 of the credit. Y'all worked hard and got in on your own merit + the admissions crapshoot. I'm not here often anymore (real world job), but if anyone has questions, just PM me. I still get some and try to answer them in a timely fashion. Unlike some advisors ... ba-dum-cha! I can't agree with this point enough. Talk to AS MANY grad students as possible. I was happy to answer the same 3 questions repeatedly during recruitment weekend. Current grad students have different agendas, but my personal one was to make sure that the people coming here were going to contribute in a positive way to our department, which included them being happy and completing the program. Also, departments stash problem students sometimes. Some people in my cohort were never invited to email prospective students (made me so mad) because they weren't sunshine and smiles about the department. Nothing they said would have prevented me from going to my school, but the GA decided they couldn't take that risk.

As recruitment visits are approaching, I thought I might start a topic on what questions senior graduate students think are valuable to ask AND who you should direct them to. A few suggestions: What direction is the department heading in? (to the graduate director or the person you'll be working under) If you're coming into a department wanting to do education and there is a huge new push towards health research, that's something you need to know. How do you like working with X? (to ALL of their graduate students) Don't base your opinion on only one of your potential advisor's students. Try to get all of their opinions. What is the pass rate on comps/defenses? If you fail, can you retake them? (I would ask this of the grad director AND the students. Sometimes grad directors have reasons to inflate this number.) These are just a few of the questions I came up with off the top of my head. I'm sure that other faculty and older students here have others.

I was talking more from the perspective of being on an adcomm. Faculty members on the adcomm were very wary of students who had finished coursework and quals and wanted to transfer. I know people who have done it, but they have had to repeat coursework and/or quals.

First, I'm very sorry about your situation. There's no way around it, that sucks. Second, I concur with the things that have been said here. I would start by talking to your professor and seeing if there is any way that you could move with him. At this point, there is a week before the April 15th deadline and there is still some chance you could move (depending on the funding situation in his new department). If that isn't an option, look at where you are in the program. Have you taken your qualifying exams? Are you done with classwork? If you are, then your best choice is probably to stay where you are at. Some professors will continue to work with students even when they've moved away and some schools let you have an outside university member on your committee. Explore those options. Third, if you still have a ways to go, I would consider applying to another program. The downside of this is that you'll probably have to wait a whole year to start somewhere new. Schools are also hesitant to admit more advanced graduate students. Make sure that you detail your circumstances in a new personal statement. Best of luck to you.

Something fun. I remember what fun was like...