招生官集体吐槽常见的申请错误(二)

I’m sorry if I gave the opposite impression, but we in fact give a lot of weight to other circumstances, and actually tend to favor students with non-traditional paths, as they are usually notably more committed and mature than a typical 4-years-then-straight-to-grad-school applicant. Students who have worked “real jobs” during school also are viewed favorably, and are given more leeway on grades, provided the GRE indicates that they did in fact learn the material. (For the record, I’m not saying that it’s a demerit to take a traditional path and not have to work — it’s just that there are fewer extenuating circumstances). The only scores I’m “mocking” above are cases where the student’s record is pretty clear that their topic in grad school is not actually where their heart and commitment lies, or, where the recommender has a very emphatic, but obviously incomplete picture of the applicant. The post was decidedly not about how it’s so ridiculous that people who get B’s think they can ever do research at a graduate level, ha ha. Other departments may have a far more restrictive view about scores, but ours definitely looks at the whole picture.the quotes aren’t “bad”, just a bit unprofessional. It’s not enough to keep you out of graduate school, but enough to cause a committee member to shake their head a bit and chuckle.I think the key is to make sure the committee gets a full picture of what makes you tick, which in turn requires some self-reflection on your part. There is no single thing you can do on an application which makes you a shoe-in. The awesomeness of applicants is usually the result of sustained effort, coupled with some combination of smarts, maturity, and initiative — it’s pretty much a three-axis phase space, and a good applicant will have mapped out a non-negligible volume of it.It’s sad that you receive reference letters that are negative. Such reference letters should not have been written in the first place. If I am asked to write a reference letter for a student and I am not prepared to wholeheartedly endorse that student, I will decline to write the reference letter (“I can’t recommend that program for you,” “I don’t know you well enough to write the kind of letter you would need,” etc.) rather than write a letter that might sabotage the student’s chances.

雅思考试 托福考试 留学攻略 留学院校库