rejected from Yale

[cridamour]

Yes, I totally agree with the importance given to matching faculty interests. I was talking to one of the professors who admitted me and I was saying that I really had no idea of how competitive my application was, and I was mentioning my unknown undergrad school and stuff like that, and the only thing she was talking about was how our research interest are exactly the same and how excited she was to have found someone interested in the same things. So, I guess we are answering the question we had some months ago: "What is the most important element of an application?" I'd say, for the top schools, it is definitly matching research interests, which they can get from your SOP and/or previous research projects. For lower-ranked schools, GRE and GPA are probably more important. That's my take on things, anyhow.

[Ivo]

Originally Posted by cridamour

Yes, I totally agree with the importance given to matching faculty interests. I was talking to one of the professors who admitted me and I was saying that I really had no idea of how competitive my application was, and I was mentioning my unknown undergrad school and stuff like that, and the only thing she was talking about was how our research interest are exactly the same and how excited she was to have found someone interested in the same things. So, I guess we are answering the question we had some months ago: "What is the most important element of an application?" I'd say, for the top schools, it is definitly matching research interests, which they can get from your SOP and/or previous research projects. For lower-ranked schools, GRE and GPA are probably more important. That's my take on things, anyhow.

yeah we're now unraveling the "black-box". Having realized that I can say now there's some more rejects on the way for I've applied to schools with different research interests just because they are simply big in terms of name. There's however one of the very very big ones which is so crazy close to my onw research project - indeed three of the prof. are being used in my work as main sources of reference. We'll see what happens there.
anyhow I second Cridamour, it's most probably as you said: lower ranked schools put greater emphasis on things like GRE, GPA etc. while the bigger ones are looking at research interest mainly.

for TJK and Freethinker: thank you for your kind words. You're right, with Berkeley and UVA under the belt, I feel more relaxed than I otherwise would.

[cridamour]

Originally Posted by Ivo

I've applied to schools with different research interests just because they are simply big in terms of name.

I'm also guilty of this...

[psylocybha]

That's my observation too ... Attracting the interest of profs with a proposed plan of research - through emails and the SOP - seems to have made the difference with my acceptances. Michigan could well be the exception though ...

[cridamour]

Originally Posted by psylocybha

That's my observation too ... Attracting the interest of profs with a proposed plan of research - through emails and the SOP - seems to have made the difference with my acceptances. Michigan could well be the exception though ...

Yes, I also didn't contact anyone at Michigan and I didn't really think it was such a super-match in terms of research interests, but still, they admitted me with full funding...

[chickenz]

Originally Posted by Ivo

rejects:
- Duke, Yale

im planning on applying to DUKE..just curious what were your gmat/gpa univ stats when you applied...?

thanks