1Q84

Agreed. I know the mantra around here is to stress the holistic approach to evaluation to which many adcomms adhere, but an F in a master's program is severe. It's basically the equivalent of a "DO NOT HIRE." I think the most helpful thing that we should communicate to this person now is the trouble that they are in. It really would take another MA degree to even come close to having leeway to explain away an F.

I'm curious as to how folks feel about this: I was originally intending to apply to those tippy-top programs in my field as kind of a "hail mary pass," (which is not to say that I wasn't going to put effort into the application). I already spent some money sending GRE scores and transcripts to those programs but now I feel as if I've had a change of heart, mostly about my chances of being accepted. Would you just continue on with the application and sink more money in for the app fee or would you cut your losses and save some money/time?

Hi, I'm currently in my 2nd to last semester of my MA (2 year) and applying to Ph.D programs. You send your transcripts that include all completed work. The courses you are currently completing will say something like "in progress" and Ph.D programs know to expect this. There are some online applications that allow you to enter (unofficially) courses in progress to supplement a transcript. Some programs may ask for grade updates after the completion of the semester in which you applied. Some will even ask for updated transcripts after you complete the MA altogether, just to make sure you didn't completely bomb after you were offered acceptance!

May I lead with a gif? CONGRATULATIONS!!!

As I understand it, your application goes to the graduate division of any school and then is sent to the specific department to which you are applying. I have a really crappy Q score and I was just told by one POI that the graduate division may not look kindly on that, even though my V score is 99th percentile and I'm applying to the English department. I looked on the school's graduate division website and saw no information to that end. Is it kosher to email them and ask about that?

They wanted your SOP? That sounds kinda strange... are they on the adcomm? They want to look at it in advance? Or they aren't and want to offer feedback on it? Good to know! Do you know if that POI is on the adcomm?

I seem to be having a lot of anxiety with this particular aspect of applications. One professor was very warm in his reply, encouraged me to apply and asked that I send him samples of my work and a CV. Is this normal?

Thanks for the feedback. I've never felt like such a rude doofus. Anyway, I sincerely apologized and asked if she might still be able to answer questions I had. She sent back a quick email answering and that's that! So I'm sure I came off as dumb but I guess not all is lost.

Welp, grad student nightmare #456456 fulfilled. I forgot to change a sentence in a form letter email describing what my interest is in that particular professor's research. She emailed back somewhat snarkily (rightfully so, of course) and I have no idea how to respond. She's not a main POI of mine but I hate having this hanging over my head. Any advice from others who have gone through the same?!

^ What Retta said! I'm at SAMLA this weekend (hotlantaaaaa) and a weekend getaway is just what the doctor ordered. I know I'm going to be stressed as all hell when I get back on Sunday but these few days will be nice to get out for a bit and away from the computer screen. (Plus, having time to work on the plane in solitude and silence sans internet was a godsend!)

Checking in as fellow math sucker: I wear my 15th percentile badge with a strange sense of pride.

May have to steal this but change it to: "I was turned into a newt but I got better."

I've heard quite a few times that these large, regional conferences are not going to come off as important mostly because they can be large and impersonal. I say this having presented at the last RMMLA and will be attending SAMLA this weekend. But, yes, it's often better to focus on conferences specific to your field ("Kalamazoo" for Medievalists, for example).

Hear, hear. Every new (conflicting) piece of information I read on here has me like: Okay, this has been what all my professors have been saying and, in fact, we spent some time discussing why it was important to use the "In this paper I will argue that..." as a strong way to establish an academic voice. Glad to hear I wasn't the only one. Or maybe it's just an LA thing?

How about "I believe"? PS. Thanks to you all, I just went through my WS and removed about 100000000 instances of *I* and *we*

Wow I'm so surprised to hear about all this "no I" talk going on. I was under the impression that that was mainly a high school composition rule and that "I" was just a regular part of higher level academic writing. Exactly zero of my professors have even mentioned anything about the use of I and some have even encouraged my use of it.

I was lucky enough to get a 169 V on my first shot (we shan't discuss my Q score :/) but I have a degree in Latin. I honestly thought being able to puzzle out vocab words with Latinate roots really saved me a lot of time to concentrate on the other aspects of the V section. To that end, I personally would suggest getting to know Latin prefixes and suffixes and other common etymological relationships (one that always stuck out to me was silva meaning forest or woods in Latin, which gives us Sylvia, Transylvania (literally on the other side of the forest), silvan, etc.) YMMV!

No, I was at USC this morning. Yeah, it was really anxiety inducing, especially because the max parking was 4 hours, which I thought would be enough and since they delayed the test an hour, it was not. I actually thought it was really disrespectful to put a warning on the ticket that test takers would not be admitted after 8:30 am (causing me to wake up at 6am, just to be safe) and then force me to sit around and wait for stragglers (ours were standby too). It's just like at the airport how they let people late for their flights go through the fast lane... it's rewarding slackers! Plus the fact that they make hundreds of thousands of dollars each round of testing and they can't even pull it together to organize the darn thing? Just make the whole thing computerized like the General Test and things will flow much better. </rant>

Thanks for the commiserating words, Wyatt! I think I will file a complaint. Y'know, the proctor said at the end that they filed two complaints as well but, yeah, I'm not expecting any results (though 25 pts added to everyone's test would be nice ) Dedicated to all fellow takers who passed through the flames today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnE5ZtQQ_zI&spfreload=10

I was very upset by my experience. ETS was completely disorganized and our test room happened to be beside a full-blown concert, which shook the walls of the room as we took the test. We started an hour late because who knows? They just felt like it. It was all very frazzling. That being said, I had the same experiences as others I think. I ran out of time and ended up leaving a lot more blank than I would have hoped. Many, many long passages that had to be read in their entirety because of "tone" type questions. The material, to me, was way off from what was suggested in Princeton. Even the works and authors I recognized were being tested for very obscure details. That all being said, the test results are scaled?!

As I walk into the testing room...

It's happening again the day after tomorrow. Ack! Been doing practice tests everyday. Making some flash cards now on the subjects/people I just can't seem to nail down....

Apologies. I was definitely not attempting a "humblebrag" of some kind. I actually have no idea what constitutes good and bad for subject test scores but I was under the impression that somewhere in the 70th percentile is not that great, which is what 620 is. :/

Finally heard back, just wanted to update you guys on this: !!!

Did my first practice test and got a 620.