Prepping for I/O PHd program applications

[gradorbust]

Hello everyone now that school has started again and all the professors are back I am doing intensive preparations for applications for the 2013 Fall. I have three professors who I am going to talk to about letters of recommendation, two who I will have/will be doing research with as well as one whom I did research for one of his phd students as well as took a class with him. Now to the nitty gritty

My Overall GPA was 3.59 with a 3.73 in psychology. That was for the last two years of my degree, However my scores at my pervious college (due to deaths in the family as well as divorces) were much lower.

I did a trial run of the GRE(two weeks of two hours a day for prep) and got 86th percentile verbal and 92nd percentile math. I was wondering if I should re-take it or not? I plan to take the Subject test at the end of the month and plan on spending most of this month preparing for it.

I am strongly interested in Michigan state, however I know they are very competative and was wondering if anyone had advice for how to improve my chances.

Thank you all for your help and if there are any questions that I can answer to help let me know and I will try to get back to you ASAP. This is my life/job for the next three months so I need to make it happen.

[gradorbust]

I re-read my post and realized that I sounded kind of douchey on the GRE scores thing and for that I appologize. After talking to other people I realized that those scores were actually pretty good, I just saw a bunch of people posting here who had better scores and was worried because they sounded worried.

I am meeting with professors for Letters of Rec next week and was wondering if anyone had any advice on steps I should take, good ways to message professors at the university to see if they are taking in students that fall, things of that nature.

[ILuvPsych2013]

Your scores are amazing, so no worries there. The only other things are to make sure that your CV and SOP are top notch.

I have emailed all the schools I am applying to and have gotten great feedback (only 2 out of 16 have not replied). FYI, Michigan State is taking students for the coming fall.