tripoli Posted April 14, 2011 Posted April 14, 2011 Today is April 14 and I have heard nothing from 3 schools and been rejected from 4. I think the silence from the 3 schools means rejection or low wait list status. I was pro active in attempting to put my name out there, got excellent LORs, decent GREs well above the standard cut off for the programs I applied to (combined 1280), and a GPA that, while not stellar (3.2 overall) steadily improved from my lousy freshman year performance and that was very good within my field (3.9 major GPA). My SOP could have been better in hindsight (committed a few mistakes that likely made it blend into the crowd from reading this forum), but it was by no means bad. Is it worth it to try again... I don't know if I can put myself through this again. I poured my heart and soul into this process, spent almost $2k and got nothing. Will my chances be any better on a second try? Anyone have experience with re-applying? Thanks.
TeXManiac Posted April 14, 2011 Posted April 14, 2011 Today is April 14 and I have heard nothing from 3 schools and been rejected from 4. I think the silence from the 3 schools means rejection or low wait list status. I was pro active in attempting to put my name out there, got excellent LORs, decent GREs well above the standard cut off for the programs I applied to (combined 1280), and a GPA that, while not stellar (3.2 overall) steadily improved from my lousy freshman year performance and that was very good within my field (3.9 major GPA). My SOP could have been better in hindsight (committed a few mistakes that likely made it blend into the crowd from reading this forum), but it was by no means bad. Is it worth it to try again... I don't know if I can put myself through this again. I poured my heart and soul into this process, spent almost $2k and got nothing. Will my chances be any better on a second try? Anyone have experience with re-applying? Thanks. I can so totally connect with what you are saying. I applied to 7 places too. Got rejected from all of them. I just can't believe it. I don't have any other plan.
newms Posted April 14, 2011 Posted April 14, 2011 If you want to go to grad school don't give up after your first attempt. I, as well as several other people on this forum, was successful this year after not getting in anywhere last year. In fact, some people get in on their third and fourth attempts. Applying to grad school is a very competitive process and every year people who are qualified and capable of succeeding in grad school get excluded. If you plan to re-apply, I would encourage you to make your application stand out as much as possible. Your GRE scores are ok, but could you score higher? If so retake the GRE. As you said, your SoP could have been better - re-working an SoP could be the single most important thing you can do to improve your chances of admission. Also, consider your choice of schools that you applied to. Were they good fits for your interests? Did you apply to a range of schools that are strong in your area, or did you apply to only really competitive ones? For me, improving my SoP and choosing schools that matched my interests better were key to my success this year. Good luck with what you decide to do.
ZeeMore21 Posted April 14, 2011 Posted April 14, 2011 (edited) I would try again! Last year I applied to one school, which was definitely silly on my part. I made sure that this time around, I applied to a lot more schools (applied to 14, which was crazy) and made sure I had a lot more professors look over my personal statement and writing sample. My advisor said that the SOP is probably the most important document among all of the other application materials,so relying on LORS and GRE scores alone is definitely not going to cut it. Edited April 14, 2011 by ZeeMore21
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