if only more programs did this: SUNY-Buffalo's application advice

[Imogene]

Thank you for being forthcoming, SUNY-Buffalo! Check this out: http://english.buffa...u/?page_id=1265

Here's a nice tidbit:

"The Committee reads every application folder, then discusses them at long and sometimes contentious meetings. Mostly we find ourselves discussing the personal statements, the writing sample, and the letters of recommendation. While we do gauge grades and GREs, we are not number driven and we trust our judgments. We have accepted candidates with modest GREs and have rejected candidates with stratospheric scores. Furthermore, we do not place any particular emphasis on the schools you have attended. It is not the prestige of a school that produces interesting applicants. Brilliant students dwell in strange or obscure places, and they interest us."

There's more there, like the make up of their adcomm (5 professors and 5 grad students, with equal votes), and advice for approaching your personal statement. I think that this information could help us all with our applications to any program, but I sure wish more programs were as thorough and honest!

[dazedandbemused]

This was one of my favorite things about Buffalo when I applied last year. They were really kind and communicative during the whole process and if I'd made it off of the waitlist (which was apparently sooo close) I would have gone in a heartbeat.

[Dark Matter]

I posted a long note about my decade long experience on the admissions committee of a top 20 English department. You can go to the Fall 2013 thread and read it if you like. The SUNY Buffalo note rings true to me, apart from the presence of graduate students on the committee, which is highly unusual and (by my lights) not a very good idea.

[hashslinger]

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Buffalo uses GREs as a cut-off as rigorously as anyone else. I have it on pretty good faith that the committee doesn't read an application if its numbers fall below a certain score. Just like everyone else, Buffalo gets a lot of applicants, and they have to sort through them somehow. You're not going to get your application discussed at that contentious meeting unless you've already been vetted.

My advice is to just get the scores up. Seriously. They matter. With grade inflation at an all-time high, GREs are quickly replacing GPAs and resumes as an indication of a student's intellectual performance. Get them up. No, they won't decide whether you get admited--but they will decide whether you get read.

[thestage]

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Buffalo uses GREs as a cut-off as rigorously as anyone else. I have it on pretty good faith that the committee doesn't read an application if its numbers fall below a certain score. Just like everyone else, Buffalo gets a lot of applicants, and they have to sort through them somehow. You're not going to get your application discussed at that contentious meeting unless you've already been vetted.

My advice is to just get the scores up. Seriously. They matter. With grade inflation at an all-time high, GREs are quickly replacing GPAs and resumes as an indication of a student's intellectual performance. Get them up. No, they won't decide whether you get admited--but they will decide whether you get read.

As dumb as this is, it sure would help me!

And Buffalo might be my top choice, as well

[Stately Plump]

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Buffalo uses GREs as a cut-off as rigorously as anyone else. I have it on pretty good faith that the committee doesn't read an application if its numbers fall below a certain score. Just like everyone else, Buffalo gets a lot of applicants, and they have to sort through them somehow. You're not going to get your application discussed at that contentious meeting unless you've already been vetted.

My advice is to just get the scores up. Seriously. They matter. With grade inflation at an all-time high, GREs are quickly replacing GPAs and resumes as an indication of a student's intellectual performance. Get them up. No, they won't decide whether you get admited--but they will decide whether you get read.

Well, to be fair, SUNY Buffalo doesn't say, "GREs aren't important to us and we don't look at them." They say "While we do gauge grades and GREs...", i.e. (probably), "we use GREs to do an initial cut of sorts, but after that, the GRE really doesn't factor into the decision anymore." And actually, if you click that link provided in the OP's post, at the bottom of the page it says that you must score a 1270 on the old and 313 on the new (combined verbal/quant) to be eligible for additional fellowships from the CAS. Programs don't often accept students who won't be competitive for funding, particularly if the department itself cannot guarantee funding. The last thing SUNY wants to do is accept a bunch of students but then find out that none of those students qualify for funding.

GRE panics are really frequent on these fora, which I think is why you see more of the "don't worry about GREs" type of advice. GREs are the one thing we as applicants have to gauge ourselves against other applicants; our writing samples and SOPs are so subjective, we have no way of knowing how they'll be received. GREs, on the other hand, are clear cut; I did this well or poorly compared to everyone else. They are easy to stress about because from the moment the test is done, we have an idea of how we match up with others. And ultimately, this sort of worrying does nothing. Take the GREs, do the best you can, retake them if you think you can do better, but after that, what's done is done. Focus on the rest of your application.

There are plenty of people on here, myself included, who had faaaaaar from perfect GRE scores, but still got accepted. True, my GREs weren't terrible, and true, they were higher than the "average" scores of all test takers, but my guess is that mine were on the low end of people accepted to humanities PhD programs.

Edited September 29, 2012 by Stately Plump

[comp12]

I agree that their procedures really don't seem as if any different than any other department (well run department, that is). The only two things are: (1) they actually post this blurb on their website about how their committee runs things, and (2) they ask grad students to serve on their admissions committee.

I feel that having an adcom of an equal number of grad students as professors to be rather odd. I can't let myself believe that they would actually give each of the ten members (5 profs, 5 students) a vote with the same weight. That would be disconcerting.

[comp12]

Actually, now rereading the department's website, their procedures (minus the grad students having equal power tidbit) seem to be in fact, standard procedure, status quo with any PhD department in the humanities. Any serious applicant should know about this standard protocol of how to apply to a program. It is good for Buffalo to lay out so clearly and directly what to do in an SOP. I think it should help them a bit in avoiding totally clueless dart-shooting applications. I also think it is good for newbie applicants (who haven't discovered resources like the Grad Cafe community, and who think applying to a PhD is just a matter of filling out some forms and taking a GRE test) applying to run into right on a program website.

[Imogene]

I think that everyone makes good points here -- no one should think that GRE's play *no* role in the admissions process. And, as I mentioned, I think what SUNY-Buffalo lays out is likely helpful for any/everyone applying (nothing too idiosyncratic there, except for the mention of the grad students on the panel).

I think what I appreciate the most is the amount of information and the fact that they discuss the role the GRE plays, period. Of course GREs play roles, especially as the first-line winnowing goes. But I think it's important for folks to know that, as their description says, people with "stratospheric scores" will get rejected, and people with "modest" scores can get accepted. To me, that's honest and likely true for most, if not all programs, yet I don't hear other programs spelling that out.

I think everyone here should know that you need to score well in the Vocabulary section of the GREs, especially, and that there are likely minimum cut-offs for making it to the round of serious consideration.

I guess I just get tired of the standard "we weigh all parts of your application equally" phrasing, because that's not really true, right?

Edited September 29, 2012 by Imogene

[practical cat]

I guess I just get tired of the standard "we weigh all parts of your application equally" phrasing, because that's not really true, right?

I agree with this so much.

I think also that the page speaks, to me, to the overall tone that the department is trying to impress upon applicants: they're transparent, they're friendly, they're interested in a wide variety of people from all sorts of academic backgrounds. While this may be equally or more true for all other programs, I like the way that Buffalo stresses that here and elsewhere on their site. What a department chooses to emphasize changes my perspective as I dig seriously into their faculty pages and think about whether or not I'm going to apply there. It's not a make-or-break thing but I like their style and think it's refreshing.

[anhonestmouse]

I'm actually an undergrad at UB right now, working my way through the grad school application process. I'm looking at schools out of the area (I would love to stay at UB, but seriously a BA and Phd at the same school is suicide, right?).

I've talked to my professors and DGS at UB trying to get an idea of what adcoms are looking for. UB is big on their Poetics program, and is supposedly a pretty "innovative" program, so I think their website is meant to reflect that. Having spoken to my profs who've been on the adcom a few years ago it seems like they do follow a pretty normal admission procedure (as a lot of people mentioned), meaning that you can't completely bomb your GREs and expect to make up for it elsewhere.

From what my thesis advisor tells me the most important thing UB looked at is "your own writing" - meaning the SOP and writing sample. Apparently members of the adcom have gotten pretty defensive about certain students whose work they "connected with" and felt strongly about.

[ramedlau]

Hi all, current English PhD student at UB here, chiming in for the first time on GradCafe (after a year of lurking about throughout my adpplications/admissions process last year). One of my biggest concerns, this time last year, was my less-than-impressive GRE score: a respectable 96 on verbal, counterbalance by an unsurprising 70 on quantitative, and an utterly abysmall 35 on the analytical writing section. Despite this, I was still admittted to UB in the first round and, after committing, was awarded a fellowship on top of my TAship funding/stipend - in spite of the fact that my GRE scores and my cummulative undergrad GPA were both below the minimum level to be considered for funding from CAS/UB. I, of course, don't want to offer unequivocal reassurances - I get the sense that my quantifiable/standardizable acheivments are definitely on the lower end of the spectrum and, despite expected levels of horn-tooting on my part, I know that luck had more than a little to contribute to this outcome.

They mean what they say on their website! I was impressed by the degree to which both the DGA and DGS not only remembered my writing sample, but made a point of discussing specific details when I met with them over the course of recruitment and orientation events. As for my lackluster GPA and test scores - never mentioned.

So, perhaps a little reassurance? There's a great program here, good people, and a lot of openness to idiosyncratic folk.