TakeruK

You can always check with the school if you are not sure, but what you describe is fine. I hate dealing with stupid tables in Word though, so I would just hit "print" from the student account page. In many browsers, you can choose to print to PDF instead of an actual printer. However, almost all of my schools has an "unofficial transcript" button that opens up a PDF for you so that it prints more nicely.

Just to check: Are you at a school like Cambridge/Oxford or other UK school where a tutor is a person hired to do research and provide small group tutorials/teaching to supplement the students' instruction from professors? If so, then I think this person would be a good LOR writer and able to speak to your ability better than some of the professors because she knows you a lot better. However, it's useful to note that in North America, a tutor is usually someone unrelated to the University (**they may be another student or a graduate student but they are working as a private service, not part of the University) and a person that you pay (usually by the hour) to help you catch up on classwork. So if this is the case, then I think the tutor is not an appropriate choice for a letter. Even if this is not the case, I would make sure I know this is the meaning most North Americans will associate with "tutor" so I'd avoid using that title in your application to refer to this person. Overall, I think the only person I would say you should strike off this list is #3. Most schools ask for 3 letters so I would pick the three out of the remaining five that knows you the best. If you are allowed to submit more than 3, then you could consider that too. Out of the five though, I would say #4 might be the least helpful as you say they might not remember you and they taught you an introductory first year class rather than an upper level class.

12 programs may be a lot, but I don't think it's unreasonable or "too much", if these programs are all good matches for you. As telkanuru says, if you are not focussed in your applications or interests, then some time off might be a good idea to figure out what you want to do! Whether you can get a deferral depends on the school. My school is pretty generous with deferrals---many students in my department have received one. One student would be the only person in a cohort of one, so they asked to defer for a year. Another student had won an award to travel the world and do various research internships so they did that before attending. I think what you should do, if you are not sure, is to apply to both Americorps/Peace Corps as well as graduate schools. Once you hear the results of your applications and your PC/AC applications, then you can decide what you want to do. If you choose PC/AC then you can ask the school of your choice for a deferral for PC/AC. The worst that could happen is that they say no, you will have to be reconsidered again against all new applicants next year (not a big deal and maybe they will even keep your application on file for you). But if they agree to enroll you and let you defer your start date, then you won't have to worry about applying to grad schools when you are busy with your PC/AC work! --- I think your professors might be giving you good advice when they are suggesting a gap between grad school and undergrad. I think taking the time to mature is a good pre-requisite to enter grad school. However, this doesn't mean you have to put yourself in a position where you are broke living in an apartment! I think it's a very reasonable and smart thing for you to think about financial independence. I lived at home during college so that when I moved out for grad school (and across the country), I was much better off financially than those who moved out for college. I do understand what you mean by loving your family but being ready to live away from them though. However, I only chose to do so because it made financial sense. When considering grad school, I definitely factored in the pay and the cost of living so that I would be financially stable and independent. This is also why I think you have the right idea by keeping your options open at this time and applying broadly. Applying to grad schools does not mean you have to attend! And as you said, it will also be easier to decide when you have the options laid out---do you want to do grad school for $X per year or would these other opportunities sound better for you? Apply and see

ETS says it takes 10-15 days but it often arrives before that.

Like fuzzy, all of the schools I applied to also asked for the original transcripts and did not ask for a third party course evaluation. The school evaluated themselves using their own criteria and previous experience. However, are you talking about cases where the transcript is in another language and it would not be readable by the school? If so, the schools I applied to usually ask for a translation. Sometimes they require a certified translation, however, most are happy with an unofficial translation (or you can do it yourself) for the admissions review process (they might ask for a certified translation if you decide to attend though). I think $200 per transcript sounds too high so I would be careful to check what that company is doing. If you are having trouble paying for translation costs, you should talk to the school and see if they will accept unofficial translations until you are accepted.

I would strongly second rising_star's advice against annotating everything. This is how I started reading in my first year of grad school too and it didn't help me at all. Summarizing in your own words and maybe even presenting a 5 minute summary of it to a colleague is what really helps me understand material. There are still maybe a handful (less than 5 papers) that I've read every single word, annotated the margins, and can recite full equations from. These papers are the ones that form the foundation of the methods and ideas behind my main research questions so I think it's important to know that at this level. But you should not be doing this for every paper. Also, for the papers that I did annotate everything, I did the quick thing rising_star and telkanuru's PhD comic said first, I just "went through" them and after going through a lot of papers, I was able to identify the key foundational works and then read them more deeply.

I also don't think it's a good idea to offer that critique to the director unless the department does some sort of survey or otherwise solicits feedback from their students/alumni. My department did this once per year so that would be an appropriate time. But as telkanuru say, giving unsolicited feedback like that will help no one and it can hurt you. As I said above, in Canadian Masters programs, it is the norm that we do not have Masters thesis advising committees. Also, I would be wiling to bet that from the director's point of view, they did not see anything wrong because the end result is that you passed, like everyone else. Hopefully your own advisor will learn something from the experience and adapt to the department culture for future students. Also remember that, as graduate students, our perspective and experience could be a lot different than the faculty's. For example, academics tend to like picking one problem and then intensely and deeply discuss it. We should remember that the intensity of the discussion is not proportional to the importance of the issue at hand. Some people call it the "Bike Shed Effect". I see this happen a lot when people that are not deeply connected to the research problem evaluate or discuss something. It is often targeted at the methods (like in your case) because methods is usually a common link. I've seen people deeply debate two similar methods for estimating error bars on some dataset when it really turns out the difference is actually minimal and has no effect at all on the conclusions of the work. But I think this is a good thing (the time waste is bad but the openness to discussion is good). It is important for researchers to be able to discuss small details without losing sight of the big picture. It's okay for you to have stumbled on that part of the defense. It's okay that perhaps you and your advisor didn't choose the best possible method to do your research. In reality, all researchers often choose less ideal methods because of restrictions like time, funding, equipment availability etc. We make do with the best we can. There is no such thing as perfection in research--you could have always done better. Ultimately, your committee decided that you completed a decent enough job to pass and get a Masters and that's the only thing that matters. My current program's qualifying exam is a 3 hour oral exam about your first year research. The point of this exam is to find the extent of your knowledge, so every single line of questioning will have followup questions until the student is unable to answer them. So, from the student point of view, everyone feels like they did terrible, because every line of questioning stumped them. We feel this way even though we are briefed and coached through the exam process by faculty and older students and we know this will happen. What I am saying is that it is normal in academia to be challenged to the very extent of your knowledge and not be able to answer things. This is fine. This is not related to your ability to do research and it is certainly not related to the committee's impression of your abilities! After all, in academia, we are trying to push the boundaries of human knowledge and we can't do that if we ourselves are not challenged to the limits of our own knowledge.

Yes, definitely true and from talking to people and my own experiences, much more feasible in Canada than the United States! Canadian schools generally offer a one-time bonus when you come in with a big national fellowship too. I think there are two main reasons for the differences: a. Canadian graduate students are treated more like employees and the overall process feels a lot more like negotiating your salary package / benefits like you would when accepting a job offer. In Canada, it's often possible to ask your supervisor to promise or put aside a certain amount of their grant money to pay for certain things (like computers, trips to conferences etc.) as a condition for coming with an outside award. b. Your award value is a much bigger part of the total cost to the professor/department in Canada than the United States. Stipends in Canada are paid with the expectation that you have to pay tuition out of it. In Canada, the total cost of a student to a department, if they have no external funding would be on the order of $25,000 per year. Big awards have values around $15,000 to $35,000 per year, so this is a huge chunk of the cost removed when the student picks up an external award. However, in the United States, tuition can cost a lot more--$10,000/year if you're an instate student at a big public school and up to $50,000/year at private schools. I would say the average total cost for a graduate student is something like $50,000-$80,000 per year, not counting overheads. So, bringing in an award valued around $20,000-$30,000 per year is only a small fraction of the total cost.

I don't think you need to tell every school you are applying to that they are "the" department for you, if by "the" you mean "the only one" or even "the best one". Faculty are smart people and everyone knows that there cannot be just one single program that is the only program that will meet your needs. It's okay to say things about one program that you can also say to another program. For example, when I applied to PhD programs, I wanted to work on observational methods to study exoplanets. I picked schools that had good access to telescopes (i.e. they own some share of a major international telescope) and cited that resource as why they are a good fit in my application. I didn't try to say that School X is "the" department for me because they owned some telescope, since it's clear that a few other schools also own telescopes (i.e. their competitors). Instead of trying to compare (explicitly or implicitly) how well I fit in with a certain department relative to others, I just focussed on the positive aspects of fit with the school I'm applying to. For example, I could say things like "I am excited to work with Profs X and Y at University Z because of their experience and expertise with observing programs on Telescope ABC". I think this is a strong statement of why I am interested in University Z but there is no implication that University Z is the only place I'm applying to nor the only place that would fit nor any wishy-washyness, in my opinion. Demonstrating good fit does not require demonstrating that the school is the only good fit or even "best fit". Instead, it is clearly articulating why that school is a good fit that is important.

Although I never considered Med school myself, I know a lot of people who did. Like Eigen, they were able to pursue both tracks simultaneously by taking both sets of standardized tests and choosing coursework that fits both tracks. Some of them even applied to both med school and grad school in their senior year and didn't make the decision until later (although this would certainly require a lot more work). I don't think there are a ton of pre-requisite courses required for med school right? I did remembering taking a quick look at one point and the first year courses are the same core courses that most science degrees would require and then the other other pre-reqs are 2nd and 3rd year courses that you can easily count as electives towards any other degree. I know a lot of physics undergrad majors that just added on about 4 or 5 courses** (mostly organic chemistry and biochemistry courses) they normally wouldn't take (fulfilling Physics degree elective requirements) in order to meet med school admission requirements. Since you are a biology major already, I'd imagine you would meet most of the requirements with just your major program? (**Note: I just looked up the requirements for my undergrad school's med program and the minimum coursework is 4 additional courses beyond the standard core first year introductory science courses but I know my friends took additional relevant courses because they felt that without a biology or chemistry degree, they would be better prepared with additional coursework.) I can imagine how it would be tough to meet both med school requirements AND do a math minor though, so maybe a small change regarding that may be necessary depending on your minor requirements. A math minor is certainly not necessary for grad school though and you can still do part of the minor requirements just to get the necessary training without the formal recognition. I think this is the only area you might have to make adjustments in coursework in order to be able to be competitive for both med and grad school. Changing your math minor into a series of math electives without recognition will not harm your grad school chances at all though, so if I was in your shoes and if that was necessary to fit the courses for med school, I would rather do that than make a decision between MD vs PhD right now.

I am not in Psychology but I think I can still provide some helpful thoughts that maybe a psychology person can correct or add to Departments are looking for a candidate that will fit into the research program that is currently existing there. So, in addition to avoid having future students become lost puppies, they also want students to contribute to and build on the existing plan. In my opinion, graduate admissions is not just selecting the best candidates, it is about building a strong community of scholars with some purpose. In addition, while the eventual goal of the PhD is to produce intensely focused work on a very specific question, this is not where you are at now, as a prospective graduate student and this is not what admission committees are looking for. Yes, they do want to see that you have focus but I would say this is in the context that you have a good reason to attend graduate school and to attend their particular program, rather than a focussed research question or dissertation topic. When I applied (my field may be different), I contacted ~3 professors per department. If I could not find more than 1 professor per department, I didn't apply there because I didn't feel I would be a strong enough fit. I think the balance between multiple professors and wishy-washy is important. Actually I think if you find your statement sounds wishy-washy because you identify a link to multiple professors, I would say this is a sign that you are doing something wrong. Here are two possible things to avoid: 1. If you are currently defining your interests such that mentioning more than one professor sounds wishy-washy, then I believe your scope is too narrow for graduate school applications. To use an example from my field (sorry--hope it still makes sense), a good scope for graduate applications in planetary science might be "what is the inside of icy moons like?". When defined this way, you should be able to connect your interests with multiple professors (for example, one that studies the surface of Europa [an icy moon of Jupiter] by telescope observations to infer interior structure, and another professor that uses geophysical models of planetary objects to predict interior structure of Rhea [an icy moon of Saturn]). But if you had said your interest was to only study Europa, I think that would be too narrow for graduate school applications as there may be only one professor doing this. 2. You may also sound wishy-washy if you are using too strong language and exaggerating your interest in a particular topic. You should definitely not tell each professor, in a separate email, that <whatever they are working on> is your favourite topic ever and that it is the thing you are most interested in for graduate school. I think you should avoid superlatives and be honest that it is one of the many things you want to study further in graduate school.

At my Masters program at the time I was enrolled, the only legally binding guarantee of funding was TA assignments, up to a set number of years, even though TAship is only 1/3 of the total funding package (the department just awards fellowships so that we make more than the minimum stipend on campus, which is set by full time TA work). So, winning additional fellowships does not extend your funding guarantee, unless the fellowship was high enough that you got excused from TAing. However, after I left, the school is petitioning to set an upper limit on time in a degree program so with this hard upper limit, you will not be able to get funding of any kind after reaching this limit (not sure if this resolution passed though, but many people, including myself, were very much against a hard upper limit without proper support to ensure students can finish). At my current PhD program, we are all promised full funding for the entire length of our degree as long as we remain in good standing, no matter how long it takes. To remain in good standing, we must 1) not fail out of the program and 2) each student in their 7th year or beyond must petition for an extension every single year---the process is meant to be an audit/checkup that your program/advisor isn't holding you back and that you are indeed making progress towards a degree. So, getting additional awards does not mean an extension of guaranteed funding, since we are guaranteed funding as long as we are here. I also want to point out there are tons of great benefits to being funded by outside sources even if it's not a direct increase in your stipend. You have much more freedom in choosing what you work on instead of having to work on projects your supervisors have grants for. Your supervisor has a lot of spare money now to spend on you for conference travel or other expenses. And these awards carry prestige, as usually winning previous awards is often a factor in future award applications. There are also indirect monetary benefits sometimes. There was one year where we had a severe financial hardship and when I mentioned it to an administrator, they went ahead and approved a needs-based award to cover part of the financial hardship. They were able to find the money and make a strong case for me because the department agreed to pay for a portion of it since I had an outside fellowship that brought in external money. It was very nice and made a huge difference, especially since it was something I was not expecting at all. So, I think it's definitely worth the time and effort to apply for money/fellowships that don't make a difference in your stipend!!

My faculty members that wrote letters for me say that it takes about 1 hour to write the letter and then 5-10 minutes per school to change the school names in the letter, figure out how to log into the system, upload the letter, and fill out any questions that the school might ask for along with the letter itself (e.g. "How would you rank this candidate...." type questions). So you can probably estimate their time commitment as 1 hour + N/6 where N is the number of schools you are applying to. I think that 8-12 schools (up to 3 hours of total time) is a typical number. But if you have reasons to apply to more (two body problem, for example), I think anything up to 20 schools would still be a reasonable request as long as you give them enough time and advance notice.

Just to clarify, this is what I meant by "ideally" above---I did not mean in the legal sense, but in the "everyone is on the same page and cooperates" sense. The rest of juilletmercredi's post is very good if joining the reserves is an important thing for you to do and you are willing to fight your department/school for proper accommodations to do so.

Not a great feeling indeed and I sympathize! But as others said, it's not just about you---I really think you are just the unfortunate "test case" where these conflicts/confusions come into play for the first time. Hopefully, the department will learn from this and update their protocols so that everyone can understand them more clearly. My Masters defense was the same setup (maybe it's a Canadian thing?) where there's no committee until ~2 weeks prior to the defense. There's a second reader, an extra person from inside or outside of the department and the Department Chair (who doesn't vote, probably doesn't even read the thesis [got no comments from them] and just conducts proceedings because they sit on every student's committee). And, I just want to say that for things like thesis defenses, candidacy exams, and qualifying exams, there is a reason why we don't get a letter grade. A pass (with minor revisions) that comes smoothly or comes after an argument between two faculty members means exactly the same thing in the end. And I think this is a good thing, because academic freedom should mean that academics who disagree should be able to disagree freely and passionately and if they turn out to be wrong, this should have no impact on the student's result. That is, I would prefer a world where your example could happen than a world where work is not challenged because even if there is a hint of disagreement between the second reader and the advisor, the student would fail. In the rest of academia, most results are binary. You either did it, or you didn't (e.g. paper peer review, grants, fellowships, job offers etc.). I wouldn't dwell too much on what actually happened in the defense because of the reasons above. A pass with revisions is a pass, no matter what happened in the defense! Congratulations!!

I'm not on admissions committees. However, I think it's perfectly reasonable in this case to just state your English BA GPA is 3.4 and your EE BS GPA is 2.7. You can even add this to your CV under your degree information if you would like. From my conversations with professors on admissions committee, they ask for the transcript not just because they want "proof" of your GPA, but actually because they want to see what you earned in each individual class. So, if you are applying to English programs, you can already expect faculty to inspect your transcript for courses relevant to your degree. I'm not sure what you're actually planning to write, but from your description here, it sounds like you are going to say too much and waste too much space that you can use for positive things! My advice would to keep it to 1 or 2 sentences. You just need to say that you did a dual degree program and state your GPAs for each of your degree programs (you could even just state your English GPA since your EE GPA is not relevant). Don't make excuses about "harder" EE classes and no need to advise faculty members to look at each course individually---they know how to do their job.

In addition to what avflinsch said, keep in mind that your options on test day (for the four free score reports) are different than after test day. On test day, you only have two choices: Send ALL of your scores, or send the score for the current test you just took. After test day, you can choose which test score(s) you want to send. Of course, if it's your first test, then these two scenarios are the same and it doesn't make a difference. But if you end up taking it more than once, remember that on test attempt #2, you will not be able to use a free score report to send the scores for test attempt #1!

Sending your scores will mean that the schools will have access to your GRE scores. When you do submit an application, the school will connect your application with the GRE scores they received.

The policies vary from school and school and you should check your own school's policies. Sometimes a leave of absence means you get to keep your stipend, but others, it means you will give up the stipend for the time that you are away. Again, it just depends on each school's policies. Schools might also have a conflict of commitment policy that you will have to adhere to. The commitment you describe sounds like something that would be just fine at my school (at least at the University-level, it might be up to your advisor on whether or not you can take the specific weeks you need to take off). So again, take a look at your school policies. Also, since you have not yet joined the army reserves, it won't hurt you to talk to someone at your school. Don't go to the department, but go straight to the Graduate School or Graduate Office or equivalent. They set the University-wide policies and might also be able to help you navigate department policies. Tell them about your plan and talk to them about it. In the end, ideally, you would need both the University's and your department's blessing to join the reserves and be able to take the time off you need for the reserves.

Seems like a difference of fields (I realise this is in the Psychology forum though but the question is general) because in mine, "in prep" is a common way to say "I am working on it". It does not necessarily mean, to me, that the draft is already written. It just means that enough results have been found that I know I will be writing a paper soon. Usually, I would only use this term when giving an oral presentation and if I am presenting work/results that have not yet been submitted or published, I'll say it's my work in prep. Similarly, I would do the same if I am presenting a colleague's work that is not yet submitted. However, I would never cite a paper "in prep" when preparing a manuscript of my own. In fact, most journals in my field will strongly discourage and maybe even not allow authors to cite anything that is not already published for exactly the reason you state here. There is an exception though. In my field, there is a pre-print server where people can upload any document they want and it's common for people to upload draft or submitted articles here while they await the peer review process. There is even a standard citation format for these articles in our journals. Since any reader can access the PDF for the article from the preprint server, it's okay for papers to cite this work (however, the reader should be careful to note the differences between papers on the preprint server that has already gone through peer review vs. ones that have not yet done so). Usually, by the time the paper's own peer review process is finished, the cited preprint papers will have also gone through peer review so the final published version of the paper will have a citation to the actual publication, not the preprint server link. Finally, I think there could be difference in value between "submitted" and "in preparation". In many journals in my field, the acceptance rate is very high (i.e. the journal will accept all valid science, not just results deemed interesting enough/worthy of that journal's publication). Also, the field is small so there is a high cost to your own reputation if you just submit crap (as the referee will know who you are and know that you are submitting crap). So, there is a big difference, in my opinion, if your CV says you are submitting to a journal like Nature or Science (5% of submitted articles are published) vs. The Astrophysical Journal or The Astronomical Journal (both 85% to 90% acceptance). However, the standard procedure in my field is that if you think you have a great result, you always try Nature or Science first, and then if rejected, you resubmit to one of the other journals. And because preparing an article for the strict format guidelines of Science or Nature is a lot of work and means you must have thought about your result a lot, I think having a submitted article on your CV does signal some achievement beyond an "in preparation" line. (And also usually the amount of work that went into a Science or Nature submission means that the quality of work is high enough that it will pass through one of the other journals process fairly quickly!)

I want to just emphasize that while I (and many others) view training undergraduates as service, it's certainly not like this all around. (Maybe I didn't make that part clear enough!). At my current school, there is a fund specifically made to pay for undergraduate researchers so that they can gain experience. In Canada, the equivalent of the NSF also awards money to professors to subsidize undergraduate research for the same reason. But there are definitely also research positions in the sciences that are also like what you say here. Especially as budgets shrink and departments are rewarded for activities that bring in money (e.g. lower level survey classes). But many faculty members are also arguing for the importance of valuing research mentoring too!

The answer is definitely different based on the ability level and experience level of the student. I also have a slightly different mindset, where I see the primary reason of hiring and mentoring undergraduate RAs is service work, rather than to get useful labour/work out of the RA. So, to me, mentoring an undergraduate RA is an exercise in teaching and mentoring. But of course, this has to be balanced with all of the other things I have to do too! I try to figure out the main reason the undergraduate student is asking for all of this help. Is it because they truly do not know? Or is it because they have become dependent on me (or others) to get stuff done? The former is okay---I'm happy to explain and re-explain things as necessary. But the latter is a problem that needs fixing! My general strategy is to first do every "new" task at least once with the student. For example, looking up papers in my field is best done using a specific database search engine and there are some tricks to help you get to the paper. I do this once with my student (I direct my student, the student types and clicks required buttons) and then the next time I suggest they look up a paper, I ask them to do it without me guiding them (but I'm still there to help if necessary). After that, I assume that they can do this by themselves unless they ask for help again. If they do, I always do help them. If they ask me for help, I always ask to see them do it first. If I notice that they are asking the same things over and over then I would suggest things like writing down the steps in their research notebook etc. or train them in other useful scientist skills. In doing this, I think that I do avoid students asking for help just because it's easier and try to make their question into a learning experience in one research skill or another.

This happens in many fields, in both Canada and the US and also in the sciences. Every time I have won an outside fellowship, my internal sources get decreased. This is fair though, in my mind, because the internal money is not meant to be stacked with outside sources and I think it's acceptable for an internal fellowship to come with the condition that "the student may only receive this without outside funding" or something like that. However, in every case, the student with the outside money will earn as much if not more than the original package. Many schools in the sciences (at least in Canada) will have different funding levels based on amount of outside money. For example, my MSc program pays $24,000/year for no scholarship, $27,000/year for a provincial level scholarship and $30,000/year for a national fellowship (+$5,000 one time signing bonus). I came to my MSc program with a national fellowship and also won a University-wide fellowship valued at $10,000, but that did not stack--my department sourced funding got decreased by $10,000. At my current US program, in my first 3 years I brought in a fellowship worth $20,000/year and our stipend is $30,000/year. I didn't get any top-up, my school just pays me the difference (and also my tuition). Now, I have a different fellowship that is $24,000/year and the deal is the same--I get paid the difference between the stipend rate and what my fellowship brings in. There are a few students that have fellowships valued above the stipend rate and only in those cases do the students get to make more money.

GSA and other conferences (e.g. AGU) are great places to meet the current faculty, postdocs and graduate students from programs you are applying to. When I go to similar conferences, I regularly get approached by people applying to my school and I'm happy to tell them about what grad student life here is like. So, if you are just asking "Will it help me to go to GSA?", the answer is yes, it will make a difference. However, if you are asking "Is it worth it?" then it really depends on how much money you have to spare. Personally, I would not go to a conference on my own money and not present. There is certainly a registration fee for GSA (and every other conference). The link is here: http://community.geosociety.org/gsa2015/registration. Conferences cost in the $300-$600 range, but if you are able to get GSA student membership, it can be a lot less. And as you already said, hotels and food and travel costs will add up too. I think if you are attending and not presenting, it's also a little odd. Often, if a professor is talking to you, they will ask about your presentation and want to see your poster if you have one. It might come off a little strange if you said that you aren't presenting! Whenever I attend these conferences, it costs about $1000-$1500 per trip (paid by my supervisor). You might be able to do it for under $300 if you only stay for one day, and maybe $500 for 2 days. I don't have that kind of money to just travel to a conference to see POIs so I didn't do this (I did attend conferences where my supervisors paid for me to present my work though). I know one student that won a $1500 award from his department at the end of his junior year so he used that money to attend one of the conferences prior to grad school applications. Also, sometimes students will go on their own dime if the location is close enough that it's just a commute (so they only have to pay registration fees out of pocket). Overall, it's up to you whether or not you are willing (or able) to spend this amount of money for something that will make a marginal difference, in my opinion.

It's pretty unlikely that if the school does not get the score report exactly on the deadline, they will throw out your application. I submitted some score reports 2 weeks after the deadline. I would contact the school and ask if they would like you to send unofficial scores until the official score report is ready. Or at least let them know that the score reports are on their way and may be a few days late.