Sunday, December 10, 2006

Graduate application costs

I thought it might be interesting for all prospective grad-students to know how much they are going to spend, or in fact how much I will spend. Let’s see:

  • 160$ GRE general test [1]
  • 45$ GRE transcripts [2]
  • 60$ Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
  • 90$ Upenn
  • 90$ Harvard
  • 105$ Stanford
  • 70$ MIT
  • 80$ Berkeley
  • 80$ CalTech
  • 60$ Mark transcripts
  • 20$ Posting

This adds up to 860$. It’s probably a bit early to think about interviews, however I hope the flight costs will be refunded (though I would happily cover the costs if I receive an offer from any of the above listed institutions).

[1] I have no clue why I had to pay 40 bugs more than the American test takers. Moreover, only 4 transcripts are included in the test costs.
[2] Makes another 15 bugs per transcript. They must have been sent in golden envelopes or similar. From my angle this whole ETS business looks like an education-mafia.

Labels:

4 Comments:

Blogger Ψ*Ψ said...

Yup. They pretty much are an education mafia. I'm trying to keep a rather short list of schools to apply to, so I don't go broke in the process.

1:54 am  
Blogger Alchemyst said...

I also had to pay 160$ for GRE

4:28 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'm pretty sure that all of those schools will cover the cost of your visit (including travel and lodging). You'll also get plenty of free food and beer.

I'm a student in Harvard's PhD program and just wanted to say that you shouldn't worry about your "Harvard incident." Those applications all get thrown into identical manila folders by administrative staff, so you're insulated from the people making acceptance decisions (unless they read your blog). Also, you shouldn't forget that while you want to get into a good school, the good schools want to have you. Students are the professors' most valuable resource. No talented candidate is going to get rejected based on forgetting to attach a file to a online application.

Good luck with everything.

4:36 pm  
Blogger Mike said...

@Paul: Thanks, that alleviated my burden of worries. I read your blog from time to time and it delivers a nice glimpse into grad-school life. And your CV helped me to optimise mine, which I in turn forgot to attach - irony, isn't it?

@tynchtyk: I suppose you took the test outside the US as well.

Today, I realised that GRE costs are a piece of cake compared to the GMAT. My brother thought about taking the test and the mba.org website states a scheduling price of 250$. Add roughly another 120$ for a reasonable collection of revision books and ... yes, sweet indeed.

8:25 pm  

Post a Comment

« Home