Hi all, I finished my Masters in 2011 from one of India's best universities.Till 2011, I had no gaps in my academics career. I was the youngest in my class at my Masters and one of the teachers favourite too.I was good at studies. In my last year of Masters' I faced a lot of problems- class politics against me , lies and rumours about me etc which adversely affected my cgpa. Also in my Masters' dissertation, in the last semester I got a highly uncooperative guide who made things very miserable. ( we were assigned guides according to our roll numbers and we couldn't have chosen our guides). After masters got over I was a bit shaken-there was a loss of confidence. I thought okay, maybe if I work for a while in a lab, my confidence will come back. I got a job as a research assistant in july 2011, immediately after my masters but my problems didnt end there. My new guide told me he could leave me before 2013 or dec 2012 plus the work conditions were so gruesome and hard there ( 16-18 hours/day lab, no weekends off ever, substandard food, remote place, transportation problems etc) that I quit in dec 2011.
I know I was a bit kiddish back then. Things others said about me affected me-I tried to stay strong yet I just couldn't.
In July 2011, I wrote the old GRE . Though I had almost lost all the will to study at that time and hardly prepared for GRE, I got some 640 in Quant, 540 in verbal and 4 in AWA. My CGPA at Masters finally came out to be 3.3.
in a normal state, maybe I wouldn't have been affected much but I was already kind of battling depression when I finished my masters and this new job only increased it. After dec, I came home- for a while I just remained away from science- I did some travelling around my country, got into spirituality, read a lot of literature, basically relaxed. After a while I started a science blog- wrote about the things which interested me...and slowly I got my interest back in science. Then after a while I made my blog into a website, it's gonna be good.
I wish to apply for a PhD now and I am going to write my GRE this time, with all I have got. I am just a bit worried now about how to explain this gap. My professors are happy to write me a LoR. My CGPA I know isn't amazing but I am confident to get a nice GRE score.
Is there any way I could make my application stronger now?