I just got an email from the iSchool at Berkeley. It reads: The admissions committee of the School of Information has reviewed all of the materials submitted with your application. I regret to inform you that you have not been accepted for admission to the Fall 2007 entering class. Oh well! I’m pretty happy that I got accepted to Michigan already. Berkeley looked like a pretty good school, but it was my “probably too hard to get in” one, so I don’t feel too bad.

I got an email today from Michigan offering me a half tuition merit scholarship! This brings the cost of tuition down to the same amount that an in-state resident would pay. Scholarship students also get travel expenses refunded in order to visit the school on the SI: Visiting Days. The visiting days include an optional tour of the campus, housing, or libraries, and then a few activities with some of the student groups.

Today I received a letter of acceptance from the University of Michigan School of Information. It was one of my top choices, so I’m happy to be accepted for admission. Actually, right now it’s a “conditional” admission, since they said they’re having issues with my official transcript, but I’m sure that won’t be a problem. I still haven’t heard anything about possible financial aid or scholarships yet. Hopefully I’ll be offered something.

I finally got my official GRE scores back. They were the same as the “unofficial” ones that I got right after I took the test. For the verbal, I got a 590 which was in the 83 percentile. I got a 710 for the quantitative which is in the 73 percentile. For my analytical writing score I got a 4.5. I’m pretty happy with the score that I got for the verbal part of the test.

I took the GRE a little more than a week ago. While I want to hold off on writing about it until I see my final scores, I will say that it’s really important to prepare for the GRE before taking it. The best way to do this is to take practice tests. The best ones are those that tell you not only which questions you got incorrect, but why you missed them.

Today is January 1st, which means that you can now sign up for the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid). The FAFSA determines your eligibility for stuff like grants, loans and work study, so be sure to apply for it early. In my first year of undergrad college, I signed up for the FAFSA, but did so very late. I ended up not getting any work study money. I believe I waited until the very last day.

I finished the last (probably) GRE practice test before I take the real one on Wednesday. This was the second test of the Powerprep software test. I got a 540 on the verbal part and a 760 on the quantitative section. I’m pretty happy with the score of 760, which is up quite a bit from my first practice test of 630. I actually think it was lower the first time I took it…

I was supposed to take the general GRE test this morning. Since I would get most of the scores right after the test, and the site said that it would take 10-15 days to send the scores, I thought I would make it in time for all of my applications. It snowed really really hard (at least, for New Mexico) yesterday, so they canceled my test! I had to reschedule for December 27th… I’m not sure if the scores will even make it on time for a few of my schools, now!

Reader demaws commented on my Application List with a few other schools. I figured I should take a quick look at them to see if they’re application worthy: Carnegie Mellon 🔗Degree: Master’s in HCI Deadline: January 31st, 2007 Notes: Carnegie Mellon is one of the more highly ranked and prestigious schools out there. Their HCI program is different from many others because it only takes a year to finish. The program runs from Fall of a given year to the Summer of the next.

As a follow up from the last post, I got a reply regarding a few questions I had about Berkeley’s iSchool. Mainly, I just reiterated my concerns about the perceived legitimacy of “Information Schools” opposed to pure Computer Science. I also asked about the availability of funding for Master’s students. The reply was that the reputation of the program over at Berkeley is rising. Of course, I’ll take that info with a grain of salt, but the person who replied to me said that many companies like to recruit at the iSchool, and had some other facts to back up the claim.