daydreamer

Anyone who honestly thinks that there's a difference between 790 and 800 is way too serious about the whole admissions process. (I definitely agree there's a psychological effect of the "perfect" score, but I'd say this applies more for students/friends/relatives/laymen than for admins who see top scores all the time.) I would bet it's extremely rare (if not impossible) at the grad school level that two students are so identical that this would be the tie-breaker. That's just admin babble to get applicants out of their hair. Anyway, at that point, I think I'd rather call up Reco writers and ask them another question than go by some arbitrary test score difference. Or just admit them both.

Wow, housecleaning, why would athena come back TWO MONTHS LATER and make up some claim about a missing test score to hide a bad score. If he/she had received a bad score, he/she would have happily kept his/her mouth shut. It's not like anybody had demanded him to give a score. There was no reason to find this thread again unless he was dealing with a new issue. And are you really that surprised that ETS would mess something up??? I don't think it's athena who's smoking the crack... To athena: I'm terribly sorry to hear about your problems with ETS. At least it seems like schools are willing to interview you regardless. Good luck on your interviews and good riddance to ETS.

I was contacted by phone. And then got an email shortly thereafter. They didn't mention anything about funding but a quick search brought this up on their website: "Division of Medical Sciences students receive full tuition and stipend support while they are enrolled and making satisfactory progress toward the Ph.D. degree." athena, I still might choose Cal over Harvard. (This is IF I get into Cal...I don't like to assume things.) There's some awesome research going on at Cal in my field. Plus, I'm a Californian and I love California and am extremely close to my family. I'm doing my undergrad in Texas, so I've been away for a while. I'm really just sick of flying across the country to spend just holidays with the people dearest to me. Maybe stupid reasons to not go to Harvard, but they're reasons that matter to me. It'll depend on my visits in the end and where I can see myself being happy. It's going to be an extremely hard decision.

Thanks everyone! Good luck to all of you!

You can decide to believe me or not, but I've just been admitted to Harvard DMS-BBS program!!! :tup: I'm posting here to let all the TMians know that Harvard DMS is starting to contact people and because I can't get a hold of any of my friends or family to talk to about it. :D

I have an interview invite to Stanford (Biological Sciences). Plus before that I received an email about my application status. Still not a single word from Harvard (or UCSD).

Eudora is always open and checks my mail every 10 minutes. I love Eudora. And I love the little sound it makes when I have mail.

I haven't heard a word from them at all. At least tomorrow we have some hope of hearing something since it's the first business day in four days.

Like Harvard, Yale had a December 8 deadline too and didn't start looking at applications until January 3 (according to the secretary who emailed me about my the transcript my uni never sent).

You can believe what you want. For whatever reason Yale decided to admit people before interviews this year. Not everything you read on the internet is entirely correct. I thought it was impossible at first (prank call?), but I have a letter and email now. I read something about things not being "official" until it's actually the University as opposed to the graduate department issuing the offer, so maybe that's the difference. Are you applying to the same BBS track - not all tracks have given admit offers as far I know. Whatever. :rolleyes: Best of luck on your application process. Hope nobody doubts your good news when it comes.

Congrats! That's awesome! I'm sure you'll do wonderfully on your interview.

Just an update for those of you wondering which school is contacting when... Stanford just called me to offer me an interview. They're sending out interview letters today. Good luck everyone!

Thanks for backing me up. And for the record, I didn't change anything on the reco. It was a very well-written and flattering letter. I would have fixed a grammar error if I found one or changed the content a little if it contracted my application package, but other than that I would have felt awkward changing what she wrote.

Oops missed that question somehow. I applied to Yale (accepted), Berkeley (interview), Harvard, Stanford and UCSD. My research interests are already extremely specific so I stuck to schools where I could continue working on my interest. Plus, I'm lazy and got tired of filling out apps. :p

That can be true zyncod, but many times professors OFFER to let you view the letters/forms even though you've waived the right to see them. In this situation, the professor is making the choice and the university never knows. I once had a prof send me her letter and ask me to check the grammar (she's German) and add anything else I wanted in there.