TakeruK

It could be a matter of field then? Actually most schools in my field don't post average GRE scores at all, but when they do, I generally see scaled scores. Let me know if you have any questions about attending schools in the US (send me a message if so!)

I agree with @eternallyephemeral. It is important to "check in" with yourself and ensure you are making decisions that will make you happy and lead to the goals you're seeking. But if you just started a program, it's too early to know if it's the right decision for you. Most graduate students I know decide after 1 or 2 years (i.e. usually after a Masters degree). I think it's worth spending at least a year in grad school to see if you want to continue. Especially since you have spent some time away from school, it will take some time to adjust to the type of work required to be a successful student.

In most fields, faculty members are not going to tell you if you are a competitive candidate or not. This is not the reason to email prospective advisors ahead of the applications. Besides, since these people you email may not be the ones making the decision, they are not going to want to say something like "you will/will not get in" because they don't have control over it. And, if you know they don't have control over it, would you believe what they say? Instead, the point of the email ahead of applications is to find out whether or not a professor is even interested in more students and/or if they are interested in a field of study you want to pursue. For example, if their website says they study "Topic X" in their lab and you want to go to grad school to study "topic X.1", you might email to see if they do actually work on "X.1" instead of just "X.2" and "X.3". But from what I hear from my biology-related friends, most faculty do plan to take on more students every year and labs are quite big, so perhaps emailing ahead of time doesn't yield as much useful info as it does in other fields.

More is not better. At some schools, even if they allow you to upload more than 3, professors may just choose not to read the 4th letter (or beyond). Remember that people are generally dealing with stacks of applications that can be very very large. If one of your good letters is letter #4 (you don't know how they will be sorted), then you are taking a big risk. I agree with @Warelin. In addition to their suggestion of only including a 4th letter if it adds something special, my rule for submitting more than the required number of letters is that I only submit them if I'm genuinely okay with the committee picking any random 3 out of the list. If I am confident that any combination of 3 letters is competitive, then I think all the letters are roughly of equal quality. Otherwise, pick your top 3 and stick with those. I say this because I wouldn't include a 4th letter just because it adds something different---I'd only include it if it adds something different and it's as strong as the other three. (Note: also ensure you have the right priorities for grad programs; I don't know about your fields, but when applying to grad school, teaching ability isn't very important because most undergrads don't spend a ton of time teaching, so grad schools [at least in my field] do not select students based on this).

Regarding online universities: What are your post-degree goals? Usually, if you want to pursue additional education, e.g. graduate school, an online degree isn't worth very much. If the degree will help you get a certain qualification for a job you currently have, then it could be a good idea if the university is properly accredited. Looking at the school you linked, I do not think PCU is properly accredited. There are many schools in the world that are designed to take money from students and not provide anything of value. I'm not saying that PCU is one of these schools, but in general, you want to make sure any school, online or not, is actually accredited with a recognized entity!

Oh also, you are quoting percentile scores in this example, but I think in many fields, it's the scaled score (i.e. out of 170) that matters more than the percentile score. The percentile score compares your performance to every single test taker. However, it's rare that the school cares about this information, unless they want to do some kind of cut off (usually a fairly low cutoff) as a first pass. If they do use GRE scores to compare candidates, it will most likely be the scaled score, because they only care about how you compare to the other applicants, not the test taker population at large.

I would not fret over the published "average" GRE scores for two reasons: 1. Average score means that, if the scores are normally distributed, half of the people admitted scored below this. 2. You don't know how strongly correlated the GRE score is with admission. At schools that don't weigh the GRE very heavily, you might as well be worrying whether you are the "average height" for an admitted student.

You're over thinking it. It's fine. I wouldn't offer to buy coffee though, just say that you would love to catch up over coffee.

In general, TheGradCafe isn't a place for homework help, no matter how much thought you put into the questions. For your situation, you should probably talk to the professor and/or the TA if you are having these problems. For me, learning how to critically analyze research articles was a very foreign concept and I didn't really know how to do it correctly until my second year of graduate school. It just takes a lot of practice and familiarity with the material. So read lots more, listen, ask questions and learn!

In our classes, when students turn in work for things like final projects or midterm exams, it's generally considered a finished product and we often encourage students to write them like academic papers. So, everything is single spaced and typed up. For regular problem sets, it's generally handwritten and like fuzzy, I don't get a lot of text. Usually one or two lines of words at a time, followed by some math and diagrams, then more words etc. So with this level of text, it's not really possible to define single vs. double spaced!

Indeed, Nov 1is so far away right now. Is this the very first time this person is writing the LOR for you this year? i.e. is this the first deadline? If so, send a polite reminder 2 weeks prior to the deadline just in the very low chance that they forgot all about this request. 2 weeks is usually more than enough time to find the 45-60 minutes it will take for them to write your LOR. If this is not the first LOR from this person this year (i.e. they have already submitted LORs for other applications this year) then send a reminder 2 days before.

Just to add: In my field, double-spaced are only used for drafts** because as others said, the space is there for making notes. So, when I see something double-spaced, I unconsciously feel like the piece of writing is not complete, or is still in the process of improvement. Even if you wrote 4 pages double-spaced instead of 2 pages single-spaced, the double-spaced version might inadvertently cause the reader to feel like they are reading something not polished. (** To clarify, it's not that all drafts are double-spaced: my paper drafts are always in the two-column, single spaced format. But the only time I ever read double-spaced text are drafts!)

I agree with fuzzy on everything. The only thing I'd add is that if you feel comfortable about it, you can talk to one of your mentors and letter writers about the situation. They might think it's helpful to discuss how you have matured as a student in their own letters. If you trust them and feel comfortable sharing, their advice might be very valuable and specific/relevant to the individual applications.

As long as you phrase it right, there's not much you can lose from asking, is there? Since it sounds like you and the prof already have a good professional relationship, the way I'd phrase it would be something like: "I'm graduating this May and will be back in town for awhile. I want to apply for a PhD program in a year or so, and in the meantime, I'm searching for a [insert best way to describe what you're looking for]. Do you have any advice or do you know of any potential openings?"

If you are starting your junior year now, then the topic of graduate school is a great icebreaker to start a professional relationship. I know your field is different from mine, but some things are universal, in my opinion. Here are a few ideas on how to start a professional relationship: 1. Ask for advice. Generally, people like talking about what they do and professors are usually ones that enjoy passing their knowledge on to the next generation of students. You can seek out some professors that you find interesting and then email them or drop by their office hours to ask if you can sit down with them for 30-45 minutes because you are thinking of graduate school. It might be easier for you if you start with professors that you know from your previous or current classes. But don't be afraid to cold-email someone you have not talked to before in your department. Also, you can and should do this with multiple professors, not just one or two. If you find a couple of people that you really click with, if they really get you and understand your goals, they might become very good mentors for you over the next couple of years as you go through the application process (i.e. be able to write you good letters for their program). Some good questions would include things like "How did you decide to become a professor?" or "What considerations did you have when you decided to go to grad school?" etc. This type of interaction is often called an "information interview". You're not trying to convince them to admit you into their graduate program at this point---it's so that you can learn more about what grad school is like, what they think are good things to do to prepare for grad school etc. 2. Ask about their research/work. Find professors that are working on interesting things and just ask them for a 30 minute meeting to discuss their work. They'll probably ask why and you should say that you are thinking about graduate school and the career options. This is pretty similar to #1 above, it's just another type of information interview. Instead of discussing the logistics/advice for preparing for grad school, you'll just be discussing the topics that they are really interested in. You are also still a junior, which means you have time to add/change future classwork. If you find yourself interested in their topics, you can also discuss what kind of coursework you could pursue either later this year or next year to further your understanding. I think it's pretty typical to start with a meeting that is one type and then have a followup meeting on the other topic. 3. Ask about a specific topic in the course. This works best for professors that are currently teaching you or just taught you something in the last semester. If there's a topic in the course that really intrigues you, then come to their office hours (or ask for an appointment) and ask if you could pick their mind on that topic. Make sure you do your research well and be able to ask interesting and useful questions about the material that goes beyond what was covered in the class. But, don't just do this to impress the prof or to suck up. Do it because you genuinely find the material so interesting that you need to learn more about it beyond what was covered in the scope of the class. Sometimes it's hard to find material that is this interesting to you though. My tip would be to make a list of all concepts/ideas/etc. covered in the previous/current classes that spark even the slightest amount of interest. Then, spend an hour or two reading up on each of those ideas. This might take awhile but it will help you get experienced in the topic area. Hopefully, after an hour or two, you'll know if you like that topic or not. If not, then oh well, you learned something and move on. If it's something that continues to fascinate you, do a bit more research and then use that topic as the springboard for this type of meeting/interaction with the prof.

If you are applying to North American schools, I would not provide the class rank unless I was explicitly asked to do so. In that case, they might have more details on what they are looking for specifically. If you do provide it, I would use the last value (i.e. compared to those in your major that started in the same year). I would also provide details on the denominator (i.e. ranked X out of 40).

If you are asked for a number to the tenths decimal place, then the only correct representation of 3.89 is 3.9.

That is a good point about subfields. In my department, there are only 7 faculty members, and for any particular topic, there is usually only one professor. However, if you don't limit yourself to just a subfield or just a topic, then it's not hard to find more than one professor that could serve on your committee or be an alternate advisor. So I just want to say that while the advice to find more than one POI is always important, I hope people don't misinterpret that as meaning "if you can't find more than one person who can help you study topic X" then you shouldn't apply to that department. Many small departments or fields aren't going to hire more than one faculty in each subfield. Instead, when I say "find more than one POI", I actually mean "when looking for schools, find places where there are more than one professor that works on something you're interested in". My primary interest might be subfield A but I would also be excited to work in subfields B and C. So, I might apply to places where Prof. X is the only person working on subfield A, but the department also has Prof Y and Prof Z working in subfields B and C. So I would have 3 POIs at that department!

Yes, they probably talk to each other. Application materials are supposed to be confidential though, so it's unlikely that they will share specifics of your application. It is also unlikely that they will compare notes about you with each other, because well 1) it's not really ethical and 2) to be honest, we're not interesting enough that faculty will "gossip" about us in this way! But they will probably know that you are applying to work with them However, you don't have to worry about having the same personal statement. With the caveat that my field may be different from yours, the expectation from faculty in my field is that students will write the same statement of purpose for every school. Most students will just change out the name of the school and the 3-4 sentence paragraph where you write why that particular school is a great fit for you. I mean, your letter writers (i.e. faculty members who are also on admissions committees) will be doing the same thing---they aren't writing a brand new letter for every school.

In addition to the reasons that rising_star mentions, sometimes, you will find that you just cannot work well with the faculty member you had in mind. If the faculty member isn't doing anything wrong (i.e. just a difference in style) then usually the best path forward is to just change advisors. You want to have multiple options at each department. Also, even if the faculty member was deemed to be inappropriate and sanctions are taken, it's generally true that the student would want to work with someone else anyways.

Yes, non-Canadians can apply for a OGS. However, there is a hard limit on how many OGS will be awarded to non-Canadians. No, you cannot hold a Trillium and the OGS at the same time. Note also that generally, there is an upper limit on grad stipends. That is, if you win multiple fellowships or scholarships, you will generally cap out at some amount. This amount depends on your school and your department. In particular, for a lot of internal department awards, you only get this money if you don't have major external money sources.

Yes, if you mouse over a username on the left of their post, the pop-up will have a "message" option. Or, if you click on the username, it will go to their profile page, from which you will also see a message option.

Also, forgot to add: Are you a US citizen or US permanent resident? If you are a US permanent resident, then you also need an electronic travel authorization visa (eTA visa) in order to enter Canada. So, perhaps the reason your study/work permits say "not valid for re-entry" is because you need to have a eTA in order to enter, so the study permit is not sufficient. This is a recent change to Canadian law. You should also discuss this with experts at your new school though! I'm just a random internet person, so be sure to double check info

I am assuming by U of T, you mean the University of Toronto and you are writing about a study permit for non-Canadians to study in Canada. (I'm making this assumption since you say you are American and "study permit" is used in Canada while "student visa" is usually used in the US). If your study permit says "not valid for re-entry", it generally means that you have to apply for another study permit if you leave Canada and wish to re-enter Canada. I believe you can apply for single-entry and multiple-entry permits. However, please make certain that it's your study permit that says "not valid for re-entry" and not your work permit. In Canada, you will have both permits, a study permit to be in Canada in order to attend school in Canada and a work permit that allows you to work as a TA, RA, etc. The work permit often says "not valid for re-entry" because it's indicating that you cannot use your work permit to re-enter Canada, you have to use your study permit instead. This doesn't mean you have to apply for a work permit again, it just means that once you enter Canada, the border agent will assess your work eligibility and issue you one if you are eligible. Assuming everything is in order, then you are likely okay. See more info: http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/study/study-arriving.asp

It won't matter, unless you have a large history of Ws.