The negative thread...

[Summit_Bid]

I'm feeling better already reading all these. This "negatives" threat is actually cheering me up and making me laugh. I'd like to take a stab...

I want to get into a PhD program in Cinema Studies and the only way to get in is to have an MA in Cinema Studies...which I don't have. My MA is in a completely unrelated field. I have no more money to get another MA or even take a few classes.

So basically, I'm doomed. To make matters worse my GRE Scores are also somewhere in the 3rd %tile and my recs, while all glowing, are from people not in my field and who taught me undergrad classes (all the classes I took as a grad student were undergraduate level but I got grad credit for it...it's a long story).

I have nothing published and have no real work etc. experience in my field.

My writing sample?....I chose what I still feel is my best piece of writing but it was my master's thesis--I never did pass my master's thesis the firs time around.

No wonder it's my third time applying.

I'm more screwed than all of you!!!

Ha! See if you can top that!

[grad_wannabe]

I did one uneventful term (6 little credits) at a community college between my stints at universities, and was awarded three measly credits for a summer program I did in high school. I didn't report either of those on most of my applications because I thought they were so insignificant.

Now I'm wondering if my applications will be considered incomplete and I just effed myself.

Also, I spent an unusually long time in undergrad - 7 full time years. I didn't address this in any of my SoPs because I didn't really want to draw attention to it, and am now wondering if I, again, effed myself.

[tinuvielf]

Glaring 'D' in a stupid water ballet class that I didn't even have to take. Actually it was Aquatic Exercises.

No publications.

Unknown/unrespected Christian school (UG) in Middle-of-Nowhere, U.S.

Recommenders who went to pretty good schools, but are still basically unknown.

One school that still hasn't updated the status of my application to "complete" and is supposedly missing my last transcript, even though I sent it FedEx five days before the deadline and FedEx's tracking service provided the name of the person who signed for it. I wrote an email to the admissions dept. telling them all this and they still said they couldn't provide any info on the status of my app. All that for $95 in application fees! Thanks a lot.

I feel better already. I like this thread...

[Anita]

So, I scored in the 1st percentile on the Quantitative. I was applying for MFA programs at the time, which notoriously don't care, so I simply filled in bubbles in a pattern (yes, seriously). However, I am using the same score to apply for an English PhD this year due to last minute decision making.

1st percentile! No joke! I will let you know if I get in to either of the two schools I applied to--

at one school I am a fourth generation legacy and still have doubts.

Epic! Maybe schools will see you as you as someone who is so cool they can CHOOSE to underperform ("I could totally ace this thing, but since my brilliance defies mundane standardized tests, I'm just going to make a pretty pattern with my score sheet so I can give the scoring machine some aesthetic fun!")

My turn: I'm applying to experimental psychology program, and I got a C+ in stats, which (to schools) means I can't run a stats test to save my life.

My GPA is 3.5, which is below average for all but maybe 3 of the schools I'm applying to. The other 3? 3.5 is squarely average. And my school is notorious for grade inflation. And psychology is consistently one of the highest-GPA majors.

One of my rec'ers is my advisor, but he has never taught me, failed to remember what year I was in after advising me for a whole year, and agred to write the rec without asking to see my transcript, resume or SOP.

Another of my rec'ers taught me one class from which I got a B+.

My last rec'er, also my thesis advisor, practically begged me to quit my thesis for my own good (as well as hers, I guess).

I mentioned my first breakup in the SOP I sent to my dream school.

And to top it all, I'm not American. Let's see what school has the gumption to sink $100,000 into educating someone who as likely as not will hightail it for her home country as soon as she's done and bring the school as well as the country zero prestige.

[ColorlessGreen]

The worst part of my application is probably how boring I am. I'm usually the quiet one who shows up to every class (I swear I have perfect attendance!), gets good grades, but is forgotten the instant the semester ends - or earlier. I have a history of teachers forgetting who I am during finals week. This happened to me once in a class of five people. With a professor whose other class I had taken the previous semester. Maybe it was his problem, not mine.

Anyway, when searching for recommendation-writers this past semester, I managed to find three professors who know me on at least an academic, if not personal, level - or so I thought, until a month and a half ago, when one of my recommenders, who was actually advising me on an honors project I was doing for his class, forgot my name.

Of course, the teacher's first language isn't English, and he does teach several large classes, so I can totally understand it. I mean, sometimes I call my brothers by the wrong names, and you'd think I'd know them by now. At that point in time, though? I did not want to see my (arguably) best LOR writer blanking on my name. Moreover, this was around the same time that one of my other teachers was making it clear that he had no idea who I was, despite my having had perfect attendance all semester in his class of 10, so I had a small freak-out moment there.

It's not an immediately apparent weakness - not the type of thing that shows up on my transcripts when I'm applying - but I can't help but think that my LORs can't be that good if so many of my teachers don't know who I am.

[repatriate]

My embarrassing blemish is my undergrad performance. I nearly flunked out, got a 1.7 my first semester and a 1.8 my second. That put me on academic probation. After that, I got a diverse mix of grades and continued to flunk or withdraw a class or two every semester--until I finally withdrew from the university partway through a semester (3.5 years in). I took a year off, got my act together and returned, steadily raising my cum. GPA, to a final, not-very-sparkling, 3.2. I graduated 6.5 years after I started with a degree not in the field to which I am applying.

On the bright side, all of this has made me a better, more committed student and doesn't seem to have made me untouchable by great programs. I have an interview next week with a fantastic program and spoke with my POI there about nomination for a fellowship today. Hooray for sometimes overcoming our negatives?

[Victorianna]

This is an interesting topic and is one that I am excited to contribute to. I thought, "Now here is thread that I can really succeed in contributing to!" Sad really...

I have a low GRE score. I hate standardized tests and I refused to pay any additional funds to ETS. At the time I considered it to be an ethical decision, but now....

I withdrew from a semester during my undergrad years due to some personal issues and roamed the countryside homeless. Interesting for real life education, not so impressive for graduate applications.

There, that feels better.

[johndiligent]

I have 16 W's! Beat that, kids! I hate it when people post here asking if 1 W is going to hurt their application. Not that they don't, just I get to multiply that by 16.

[Dr._Robotnik's_Shadow]

I withdrew from a semester during my undergrad years due to some personal issues and roamed the countryside homeless. Interesting for real life education, not so impressive for graduate applications.

As soon as I read this I was actually caught by surprise. This sounds interesting if you can twist it in a positive way and make it relate to your major. What a way to start an SOP! Dig deep into that time you were homeless and use that as inspiration for a real eye catcher for those adcoms. I'm sure you have lots of stories of this tough time roaming the country homeless and it sounds like you've overcome great odds to get out of that situation-something adcoms love to hear.

[qberta]

i have only ever taken one introductory class in my proposed field of study. (and i hated it.)

[Anita]

I withdrew from a semester during my undergrad years due to some personal issues and roamed the countryside homeless. Interesting for real life education, not so impressive for graduate applications.

Tell us more! I actually want to do something like this too if I don't get in anywhere. Apparently it's the sort of thing nobody ever regrets doing.

Also, you sound like a challenger of authority and conventions. Maybe it's just me, but I think that's the most important quality for an academic - to be able to question and deviate from accepted norms. I'd play it up if I were you. You sound a little unsure now, probably because it's you that's being challenged, but I think you can afford to sound more confident of your choices

[solairne]

I noticed, after submitting, a spelling mistake in my writing sample and a misuse of a word in my SOP.

I guess that is what I get for rereading my supporting documents 10 times after already submitting them...

[sometimesiexist]

I keep having to put my GPA as 0 and my earned credits as 0, because I go to a school without grades, and without a credit system. I have never failed a class, but my applications look like I've never even taken one. Sometimes I want to cry when I have to hit the 0 button.

Also, I'm pretty sure that one of my LORs is just going to write an essay about how I should be working in cultural history instead of philosophy, one is going to write about how I should get an MA first, and one is going to write about what a disaster I look like all the time because I don't sleep enough. haha...I hope my enormous dark circles and eye bags make it into one of my letters.

Here's to 1500$s to be told that I suck.

[Sparky]

My LORs will be "good." And no superstar profs. Meanwhile, my dream school says LORs are the most important part of the application.

Most of my apps are for a subject in which I do not have a degree.

There is only one semester of Latin actually on my transcript.

No publications.

The real confidence-killer: Most of these programs accept one person per subfield. I could see myself being in the top 3 or 4. But not number one.

Basically, I am the ideal waitlist-then-reject applicant.

[APHI224]

I keep having to put my GPA as 0 and my earned credits as 0, because I go to a school without grades, and without a credit system. I have never failed a class, but my applications look like I've never even taken one. Sometimes I want to cry when I have to hit the 0 button.

Wow really? Can you explain this? I have never heard of this. How is it a school if it doesn't have grades and credits? Is it accredited? I didn't know you could apply to graduate school from a place like that, what school is it?

[LifeIsGood]

Interesting article on this: http://media.www.thesandspur.org/media/storage/paper623/news/2005/11/04/LifeTimes/No.Grades.In.College-1045326.shtml

"However, there are draw backs to this type of grading. Since the evaluations replace grades, grad schools will be forced to read pages of evaluations rather than viewing the normal GPA or list of letter grades. On one hand, as msn.com has found, "last year The Wall Street Journal ranked the New College of Florida as the second-best public college or university in the country for sending grads to the nation's leading law, medical, and graduate schools." On the other hand, students fear this new system will cause grad schools to turn their heads at the detailed evaluations. Tradition, they have found, is hard to break free of."

[LiteratureMajor]

My GRE scores literally brought me to tears (and this had nothing to do my fever and runny nose during the entire four-hour long ordeal). And, of course, there are a few W's on my transcripts. Which irks the living you-know-what out of me being that many of those W's came from me dropping and adding courses within the first week of the semester. These are circumstances that I cannot explain to adcoms. Now I sit and wait with trepidation.

[jortin10]

I graduated with a 2.17 gpa from undergrad (was dismissed), 3.79 in MS, and I am applying to HGSE, Penn, NYU, and UMich for PhD. In Educ. I do have a 720 Q, 650 V and a full scholarship waiting for me, just have to get in anywhere.

[Mumbet]

During my undergrad research, producing a research paper took much longer than planned. While that was its own stressful ordeal, the delay unfortunately made my application suffer in three indirect ways:

1. By the time it was finished, I had to immediately drop everything and prepare for grad school applications (it was October and I hadn't even studied for the GRE or CSGRE yet!). Because of this and a lack of funding, I only had time to submit the paper to one very selective conference. The result is that I still have zero publications, when I could have feasibly gotten one or two.

2. Due to #1, I have been barely making deadlines for all the schools I have applied to so far. I was researching programs / groups so late in the game that I decided to apply to many at the last minute, meaning many of my mailed materials will be getting in late.

3. Also due to #1, I didn't leave myself any chances to retake the GRE tests, which it turned out I actually needed when I didn't do as well as I hoped. I got nervous and "bombed" the math portion of the GRE by running out of time. I spent too much time rigorously checking answers or struggling with the one or two questions I should have skipped. A score of 740 isn't awful, but competitive computer science students normally score higher, and I know I would do better if I retook it. Similarly, on the CSGRE I carefully took my time on the first half (feeling great about all my answers), then looked up at the clock and realized the test was almost over.

Edited January 11, 2010 by Mumbet

[starfish]

Ooh, this is fun! And reading over all the replies so far, I see I'm not alone in my biggest weakness--flubbing college the first time. Here's my story:

I spent three semesters in college when I was 17, and came away with something like a 1.6 GPA. I took some time off from school and eventually got an A.A. with a 3.3. GPA through the Navy, so that's an improvement.

When I decided I wanted to go into art history, I was still in the military so the only school I could attend was a part-time online program through a tiny state school in Pennsylvania. I graduated from that school with a 4.0 GPA, because they didn't calculate in my transfer grades. Also, they didn't actually offer all general education courses online, so I had to take a few from other schools. I didn't think much about this at the time, but now it means for each application I have to send in seven transcripts. I just hope the ad comms notice that the really bad ones are from 10 years ago.

[UnlikelyGrad]

I've been a "stay at home mom" for 10 years.

I've already been enrolled in a Ph.D. program in a different field, but quit after two years.

I am old.

My letters of recommendation are from two professors in another field who taught me 15 years ago, and one from the professor who taught a graduate seminar I took last fall at a local, low-ranked university.

I have three graduate degrees, including a law degree from a good law school, but still haven't managed to accomplish anything professionally.

There is only so good you can make your statement of purpose if you haven't ever done any significant work in the field.

I do have very good objective data(though not without some problems), a few publications and some notable honors, but they are almost ancient history at this point.

I loved the positives thread. Seeing everyone's qualifications in print made me truly understand how stiff the competition is and I think it will help me deal better with rejection.

A not-so-negative post about my negatives. Written especially for Catilina.

I applied last year.

I had to send transcripts from FIVE undergraduate institutions.

At one of those, the one where I did my first two years, I failed six classes my freshman year (everything frosh year was graded P/F). My sophomore year I scraped a 1.9 for the first two quarters, then took a leave of absence when it became clear that I was going to do even worse the third quarter.

I was a stay-at-home mom for fifteen years.

I hadn't done any research at the time I applied (almost a requirement for Chem grad programs). I had no publications. Nor had I ever done any professional work in my field, since I went home to be with my kids as soon as I graduated with my bachelor's.

Here's the kicker: I got in. I got in to four of the nine schools that I applied to. And you know what? I'm outperforming many of my fellow students who came straight from undergrad.

[engwish]

I keep having to put my GPA as 0 and my earned credits as 0, because I go to a school without grades, and without a credit system. I have never failed a class, but my applications look like I've never even taken one. Sometimes I want to cry when I have to hit the 0 button.

Also, I'm pretty sure that one of my LORs is just going to write an essay about how I should be working in cultural history instead of philosophy, one is going to write about how I should get an MA first, and one is going to write about what a disaster I look like all the time because I don't sleep enough. haha...I hope my enormous dark circles and eye bags make it into one of my letters.

Here's to 1500$s to be told that I suck.

I'm in the same boat...well, half of that boat. A dinghy? My 1.5 UG years at grade-eschewing Hampshire College will ensure that AdComs will see my app as a chore, what with the evals, SoP, writing sample, etc...

This is a good forum.

[tskinner]

OK...here go the negatives

600 on Verbal GRE (low for the programs I'm applying to)

No real research experience (but plenty of research METHODS experience)

An SOP with an extremely vague "research interest" section

Coming from a fairly unknown but rigorous program (I always am afraid that grad schools assume unknown programs are easy and grade inflated)

I didn't contact any professors in the programs I'm going too (I felt like it would be too fake and contrived, so I didn't do it...which I regret now)

[kismetcapitan]

1.98 GPA from a Tier One undergrad school. FML

[captiv8ed]

I keep having to put my GPA as 0 and my earned credits as 0, because I go to a school without grades, and without a credit system. I have never failed a class, but my applications look like I've never even taken one. Sometimes I want to cry when I have to hit the 0 button.

This is me too. Except I am on the other end of the country. Luckily I was able to put N/A or leave it blank for all but one. Damn that 0 hurts!

So, since I go to a nontraditional school, some have said it is more important to do well on the GRE, to prove I can fit into a box. No boxes for me! I got a 410Q my first round and a 590Q my second.

I have 6 transcripts, mostly from community colleges. I feel like Sarah Palin.

My school doesn't have majors, it is interdisciplinary. However, you get to have an emphasis that you can call a major, depending on how your credit distribution falls. I sat down with an advisor who found that I have a sociology major. But I have never taken a theory class. I feel like a fraud