TakeruK

Yes, the grad school told you exactly what to do to get the minimum percentile and the ETS person told you the same. Looking again at the link I sent you, let's say you wanted to make the bare minimum by getting 40th percentile in V and 20th percentile in Q. You can do this by scoring 149 in V and 145 in Q. Or, maybe you want to aim for 50th percentile in V and 10th in Q, you can achieve this by scoring 151 in V and 141 in Q. Or, you can aim for 60th percentile in V and 0th in Q, you can achieve this by scoring 154 in V and the 130 in Q (min score). Although this combination might be really bad.

I agree that I also don't think FERPA allows profs to just be able to log in and see your other grades. But I am assuming that when it comes to issues like your thesis committee seeing your grades or a committee of profs deciding the top senior undergrad etc, they then have a legitimate reason / "need to know". That is, what I mean is I can probably imagine a situation where a prof gets FERPA approval to see your other grades on a "need to know" basis if they have a good reason, but agree that they cannot just log into the system and see your grades!

Even in my field where contacting POIs is more common, this is definitely still true--you need a reason to ask and this type of question is a perfectly fine reason. I agree with your other points too--it's up to the student to find out about SOP fit, not asking the POI on how to write their SOP!! To answer this question though, this is how I phrased my emails: That was my basic outline and I added some personalization where appropriate (for some profs, I had met them at conferences or whatever before). I keep these emails super short though--no more than 5 sentences for sure! I do not attach any application-like documents and do not even bring them up because I don't want to sound like I am trying to get them to evaluate/influence my admission/application at all. My main goal with these emails is to make sure that this prof is someone that I could actually work with if I get accepted to the school. The usual response I got was "Thanks for contacting me; yes I would be very interested to work with a student in , please apply" and sometimes they clarify that they cannot influence the admission process. I don't even want them to influence the admission process, all I want is to make sure I have a research interest match at this school and that I won't sound silly on my SOP stating that I want to work with Prof X when everyone on admissions knows that Prof X is going to retire/leave the school/go on sabbatical/change research interests/have no funding etc. One important information I did get from one of the profs was that they told me they would not have any funding at all for the project so I would have to earn my stipend by TAing a lot until we write a grant for it. I felt that this was an important piece of information to know and it did influence my own decision at the end of the application period.

Oh sorry for the incorrect assumptions! I'm not 100% certain that it is desirable to use parents/relatives as references, but it did not get me denied in the past when they were really all I had. So I guess that is good enough? I somehow doubt that they would even call these people--my references were not called. My in-laws have a different last name than my spouse and I so they would never know that we are related unless they asked. They also do not know that my other reference is really my old friend from college! I think a letter of recommendation from your previous boss would be nice but probably not necessary. Still, I think including it even when unnecessary can't really hurt, since at worst, they'll just throw it out and at best, they will think it's responsible that you are overly prepared. (Make copies of everything and have originals to show if necessary but just give them copies)

What do you mean by "convince the consular officer about my course and school"? During your visa interview, they will not question whether you are qualified to be admitted to the school because that's not their job. They are checking to see if you are eligible for student visa status, which is mostly to confirm that 1) you are admitted to an eligible program (prove this with an admission letter and your I-20/DS-2019), 2) you have the funds to support yourself in the US (prove with I-20/DS-2019 and proof of funding) and 3) that you have significant ties to your home country so that you intend to return home after you finish your program and not using the temporary student visa program as a way to gain permanent residence in the US.

I studied almost solely from this website: http://www.majortests.com/gre/. I only studied for the GRE V, since I felt that my science background prepared me enough for the GRE Q so unfortunately I can't speak to how good this website's GRE Q material is. However, I would strongly recommend their GRE V stuff. Other things I did closer to the test date was to use the practice questions on the ETS website itself (not POWERPREP, they have a good number of sample practice questions too) and then also POWERPREP to familiarize myself with the test software and format. Honestly, if you are currently at the point of scoring around the 30th percentile or less, I think the first step is to just prepare for the test and study for the type of questions as well as the material before trying to find a sample test to find some "baseline score". In my opinion, one can gain a lot more points in learning how to take the test, not necessarily the material itself. I scored very poorly on some of the GRE V stuff before I figured out the "thought process" behind the questions on the test and how ETS wants you to arrive at the answer. Once you crack that and understand what you are being asked, you can do a lot better! For me, the best way to learn this was to read the ETS' guide to the GRE (available on their website) and doing a lot of sample questions. Then, after I learned this, I found that simply memorizing a bunch of words will help greatly now that you know how to use them to answer the questions. I'm not saying you have to study this way--just letting you know what worked for me and hope that helps you think about how you want to do it for yourself!

If you have time, you could do the following: 1. Bring a record of all your previous addresses, including your parents' places and dorms--most US applications ask for this. 2. Translate the banking/pay records yourself -- it won't be "official" but that could be enough for them to at least initially consider you. I'm assuming the numbers will still show up in the originals? 3. References do not have to be landlords only. For these applications, I have used my parents, my in-laws, friends, my supervisor (sometimes if they prefer a reference in the city). 4. Forgot to say this earlier, but my current landlord was okay with my lack of US credit due to my foreign status but they did increase my security deposit from $500 to $800.

You are reading that table wrong. It's a very confusing table that combines 3 pieces of information into one table! The first two columns simply converts OLD total score to NEW total score, it is independent of the other columns' percentiles!! The line you are reading really says that a GRE V score of 146 is 31st percentile and a GRE Q score of 140 is 12th percentile. Here is the correct chart to use to convert GRE V and GRE Q scores to percentiles: https://www.ets.org/s/gre/pdf/gre_guide_table1a.pdf ** Note that this chart has slightly different numbers because the percentile rankings changes each year Note that there is no chart for total percentile scores because it makes no sense to consider this statistic. The GRE V and GRE Q scores should not be combined in this way. Instead, I would interpret your email to mean that they care about your total GRE score and that each section should be above the 30th percentile (assuming that's what they mean when they say both parts are equal). So that means you should have a GRE V score of at least 146 and a GRE Q score of at least 147 (using the updated ETS link). Finally, to answer your question, your score of 148 V / 138 Q means you are in the 36th percentile for V and 4th percentile for Q. But as others said, I wouldn't trust Kaplan scores. Also, you might improve faster than you think. Although these initial scores are low, the bright side is that even a few more points would greatly increase your percentile ranking!

Save your money. The GRE Quant is a bunch of high school level math / pre-Calculus algebra. Your actual mathematical ability in your field of work is much more important and easily demonstrated by your grades in these courses. I really doubt the admissions committee will be worried that you are "only" in the 88th percentile of all GRE Q takers because the GRE Q does not actually test any mathematical ability relevant to a graduate degree in the sciences, in my opinion.

Yes, I have heard the same and this is what I meant. Thanks for clarifying! (That is, opening the accounts is what hurts you, not simply having them open--and in fact never closing your first credit account is a good idea!)

Typically, prep for TA work starts in the week or two before class begins. Some schools don't even assign TAs until this time! You're fine Each person's style would be different, but what works for me is to start on the course material about 1-2 weeks before the term begins (readings, assignments etc.). This way, I am always 1-2 weeks ahead of the class. I find that this helps me stay "fresh" with the material because I just recently went over it, and also it helps me stop myself from spending far more time on the course I'm TAing that I should be. And I think it also helps so that I can adjust e.g. problem sets to fit with the class ability as we go along, instead of setting everything in stone before I even know my students.

This is my 4th year of grad school (2 years of MSc and then now 2nd year of my PhD) and I have no first author publications. So you are not alone! One of my drafts will be submitted soon though, but I will still be the last one in my cohort to have a first author paper. Do you have any work that is approaching publication level? As GeoDUDE! said, grad school is an emotional test and I try my best to not compare myself to others in my school. I know that it's pretty normal for a PhD student in my field to not publish a first author paper until their 3rd or 4th year, so I'm basically on track with the nation, even though I might be "behind" my classmates. Oh well. Don't let it get to you! In the end, most PhDs publish 3 ish papers by the time they graduate and I don't think it really matters much when you do it, as long as you get a few in by the time you're done!

Like everyone else said, you should never accrue debt on your credit cards. I only use them as a way to delay payments (by a few weeks) and to gain whatever benefits the card provides. I think it hurts your credit to have too many credit card accounts open, and I personally find it confusing to keep track of so many (but it's up to you what you are capable of!). So, I always decline to join store credit cards but I do have one credit card from my bank. I also think a credit card from a bank is better for your credit than one from a store. My bank credit card effectively gives me a 1% to 5% discount on everything I buy depending on the type of purchase. This is pretty good for me so I prefer to just have this card and make all my purchases with it. If you are willing to manage a target card, make sure you only use it at Target because you only get the discount at Target! Once you use it elsewhere, Target also wins. For me, I probably spend $400/year at Target, so 5% is $20 but my normal credit card gives me at least $4 back, so the difference is $16. I don't think $16 is worth it for me to deal with an extra bill each month, but that's my personal choice! However, I recommend thinking along these lines if you are deciding whether or not it will be worth it.

I was transferring experience in Physics grad programs to Math ones--i.e. many physics students do not take the "senior level" version of the "core" class until the final semester so most physics grad schools only see introductory level "core" courses and the Physics GRE only tests the intro level. But this seems like it was a mistake since a math grad student has pointed out my error! Sorry.

I think this is a tough choice! Keep in mind that the decision of going back to work or not is very hard and personal so it makes sense that someone might want to wait until the "last minute" to decide. Also, if the employer is kind and understanding, they might extend leave for their employee and allow them more time. So, even though it sounds like this woman's leave ends at the end of July (i.e. before you move), this date might change. I know people who have been in similar situation (i.e. Person A takes a temp position to replace Person B on mat. leave, but B is on the fence about returning and A was interested in staying if B won't come back, but due to indecision, A remained in limbo for awhile). I am assuming that your current employer knows that you will be leaving next month to go to grad school. Here's what I would do: 1. Continue making plans to leave for grad school but keep them flexible where possible. i.e. take out loans that don't have an early repayment fee if possible etc. 2. At the end of July (or whenever the person is supposed to come back), if they do come back, then it's not really an issue anymore--you only have one choice! If they don't come back, you can perhaps ask your boss if they plan on hiring a replacement. If they say yes, and you are still interested in the position at this point, that might be a good time to let them know? It's possible they might have to do a complete job search in order to officially hire a permanent position. 3. Meanwhile, keep an eye on job postings to see if your museum posts this position, if they do this before #2 above happens, then talk to the boss at this point instead of waiting until the end of July. 4. Make your decision at some point between #2 or #3 happening and your move to grad school! If you don't get any official sign (formal or informal) that the position will be open, then I would not delay grad school to wait around for an opportunity that might not exist. But if the position does open up, then you can make the best decision for you! Hopefully you kept your moving plans as flexible as possible in step 1 so that this can happen! Whether or not you take the job or school is a really personal decision and I don't think we can tell you what's best for you. I can add a few things to consider though that might help, in addition to what's said above: 1. How long is your grad program? Since it's unfunded (you say you are taking out loans) and it sounds like it might be a "professional masters" program, this might only be a 1-2 year program that can give you long term job benefits? So like the others said above, perhaps getting more qualifications now can help you get your dream job later anyways. 2. How necessary is this degree for your future dream job(s)? Were you only able to get your current temp. position without this degree because it was a temp. position? 3. Note that you can still move on to grad school and take the job later. That is, if the person on mat. leave decides (e.g. in September) that they don't want to return and the museum posts the job officially at that time, you can apply to the job while you're in grad school. If you get a job offer in say, October, you can quit grad school and take the job at that time if you feel that's the best decision for you. That is, remember that you can leave grad school at any time, but you probably have to start grad school this fall (or else wait another year!). So, it makes more sense to move on and quit if the opportunity comes up and is good enough instead of delay grad school and wait for an opportunity that might never come. Also, perhaps a few months into your grad program, you can be better equipped to decide between taking the job or finishing your degree, now that you have experienced both!

I agree with all of the above. When I moved across Canada for my MSc and then to California for my PhD, my spouse and I flew out to our new city ahead of time and stayed for 3-5 days, with the goal of signing a lease at that time. It worked both times and all of the tips above are great. Let's see what I can add.... 1. Know how the lease cycles work in your new city. At MSc school city, tenants must give notice to vacate 60 days ahead of time--so the ideal time to visit for apartment hunting is 60 days ahead of move in date! 2. I agree with the "don't oversell grad student" thing. In every case, when the landlord asked what I would be doing in terms of employment, I said I would be a researcher at University X. They ask how much that pays and when I tell them my stipend, they don't really care whether I am a "student" or not. If you are doing an international move, you will have to tell them you're a student right at the beginning because you need to explain why you don't have a SSN and why you don't have any US credit and why you are in the US! 3. Definitely bring a chequebook and all of your paperwork. A copy of your offer letter from your school stating your stipend. Your last paystub. If you can, print out a copy of your credit report too (especially if you are not from the US and can get a credit report from your home country); it can help and also show that you know what you are doing. If you are moving with someone else, have all of this ready for the other person too. If you are an international student, bring a copy of your I-20/DS-2019 etc too. 4. Scheduling viewings. We start calling up potential places to view a few days before we leave and we basically set them up so that the viewings are 1-2 hours apart. You don't want to be late for one because the last viewing was really intriguing and you spent more time there. You also don't want to be rushed either! There will be other places where you are not able to reach the landlord / not able to schedule a viewing. We visit these places in the case where one apartment we saw was really crappy and our next one was not for another 2 hours. Then, that was a good time to just drop in (or try to call first) on one of the unscheduled viewings. During these visits, we are basically either looking at apartments or scheduling other appointments! We can usually fit in about 6 apartments per day and both times it took us about 10-15 viewings before we found the one we liked and was affordable! 5. Oh one last thing--if you only have a few days, make them weekdays, not weekends. Many apartment landlord companies are not open on weekends (or not open on Sunday) and that's a waste of a day. Or you might have to call your bank or something and they might not be open. I would probably arrive on a Sunday evening and start looking Monday morning! If you have time to stay the whole week, I'd use the weekend / last few days for fun things and to get to know the city better too.

I agree--if this is a school you really want to go to and you don't already have an alternative for this year and you were plan on reapplying to grad schools next year anyways, then I would definitely reapply with these pointers in mind. I would also apply to other schools too though! In fact, I might even use the advice in that email to improve my application for all the schools (where appropriate).

They probably will make the decision before they see that grade, but in general, a single course grade would not have that much of an effect. They can use the other grades to determine your academic abilities (both in general and in math).

Note that the percentiles are computed again every year. But you probably would not expect it to change by more than 1 point or so per year.

I think this is something uncommon but this is only based on my (limited) experience. I know I would not use my student's performance in other classes as a factor in determining a grade for them in my class though. So in my opinion, I don't think the professor should be making this request of you. However, my (again limited) understanding of FERPA is that if you consent to this release, the professor is not doing anything illegal. But I agree with Sigaba--check with your school's policies on privacy and you can do some searches on FERPA to be sure. Note that FERPA does allow profs to see information that they "need to know" so they *might* be able to do things like ask your other professors to show them your grades on other assignments. I don't know the full story so I won't assume why the prof wants to see your other work. But if you really really don't want to show them, why not just destroy them. You have no obligation to keep old assignments from other classes. However, depending on the reason for this request, this might be a bad idea if these old assignments can actually help you in the long run.

@queennight, yeah I felt like that question was useful because during visits, the department would say something like "You get 2 chances at quals. No students have been forced to leave the program in the last 10 years due to failing both times". But these statements don't usually count the students who, in the view of the program, "chooses" to leave the program and not retake the exam (or were not allowed to retake the exam). I say "choose" because even if the policies/rules allow for a retake, I find that few students would choose to retake the exam if they felt that their profs were not behind them and did not want to see them succeed!

In general, it's always more affordable to pool resources in order to buy/invest in something! Getting married is maybe the most common way, but in theory, any two or more people can pool resources to cut down on expenses and invest in a house. Although in most places, the laws regarding marriage tend to provide more security that regulates what happens if the partnership breaks down. And to some people, a marriage is a stronger partnership but I don't think that is necessarily true all of the time

I can't advise about options A and B since I am not in those fields, but my BSc and MSc are in Physics. My advice would be to not choose Option C because it is "safe" or that you might magically discover some lost passion for Physics. In my experience (myself and other graduate students), you need passion to motivate you to finish a graduate degree in Physics and if anything, graduate students lose some of this passion through the trials of research / academia rather than gain it. I'm not saying to leave Physics, but I am saying if you choose Option C, you should choose it because after learning more about your possible choices, you choose C because you want to continue working in Physics. Don't choose it because you don't know what else to do and staying in school seems like the "safe" choice!

GradSecretary makes the perfectly correct point that being told you're not qualified for admission is a normal thing in academia and that's just how life is. Although I didn't downvote this post, I did see many of their other posts and my personal opinion is that this person's post are quite rude (such as this one) and not the environment I would want GradCafe to be and also not the type of person I would interact with in real life. Obviously, my opinions on what I personally want GradCafe to be are just my personal opinion--I'm not saying I should control how our community works but I think every member of the community should take some responsibility to cultivate the community they want. Just as you advocate that posters like GradSecretary can contribute good for the community, I would like to advocate the opposite. I felt their posts are mostly rude, and sometimes extra snarky for no reason. I also do not think sentiments like "you need a thick skin to get a PhD / be in academia" is the right attitude I would want to see in my field in academia. When one receives rude comments, it's perfectly fine to call out that person's rudeness. As a junior person in my field, I don't like the way people tend to forgive/allow senior people to treat junior people crappy and say things like "well, you need a thicker skin". To be clear, I'm not talking about rejection--obviously that is how academia/life works. I am talking about unnecessary snark/rudeness or other inappropriate work behaviour and unprofessional conduct, as displayed in GradSecretary's post above.

You can see how much Canadian schools pay their universities here: http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/81-595-m/81-595-m2009076-eng.pdf (data is from 2008-2009 so the pay rates should be a few percentage points higher now). [Make sure you read the second table for each school; i.e. the ones that exclude medical/dental profs] Maybe there is a similar study/survey for US schools or other countries you may be interested in? At top Canadian schools, assistant profs in the physical sciences start around $80k ish per year and full professors make about $110k-$120k. If you have admin duties, like Dean status, you might make up to $160k. In some cases, you keep the pay raise even after you go back to "regular prof" status. All major Canadian schools are public and provincial governments require all public entities to publish the pay for all of their employees greater than some amount ($75k in some places, $100k in others) and these numbers above are from looking up profs in the physics department at my school. By "assistant professor", I mean an entry level tenure track position. There are lecturers in Canada that are not normally labelled as "assistant professor" (or any "professor" rank at all) and they would generally be employed simply to teach. At bigger schools in Canada, their pay range is around $50k to $60k. I know at my MSc school, an entry level lecturer is paid about $8000/course and they might teach 6 courses per year (3/3 load). This seems to be the right ballpark rate because non-research colleges in Canada (i.e. "community colleges" in the US) pay their full time teaching staff at a starting rate of about $50k-$60k and the pay scales up to around $90k once you have been there a long time. So I think how much a prof gets paid depends a lot on field and location. I'm not in academia "for the money", as in I'm not doing it to make big bucks. As you pointed out, most PhDs have enough education/skills to make much more than starting salary ranges. I love my work but I don't love it so much to be willing to do this for $30k / year! My goal is to find some balance where I make enough to live comfortably and also do work that I enjoy. Unless I needed the money, I wouldn't give up all job satisfaction in order to make $150k+ but I also wouldn't give up a reliable income in order to do what I want! So I try to not worry too much about "what if I had a BS in engineering" and just set reasonable income goals before deciding to move on in academia. When I decided to do a PhD program after a MSc program, I made the decision factoring in the low stipend that PhDs get paid. One big factor in whether I continue in academia post-PhD will really depend on my ability to find a decent paying postdoc (my target salary is around $60-$65k, and probably my minimum is $55k; I think typical postdocs in my field get paid around $50k-$60k per year, so these numbers high goals but not unrealistic).