<p>Thank you both so much for the advice and reassurance. It is such a relief to hear that it won’t be much more of a burden for my LORs to write 12 (versus 9 or 10) letters… I am so enthralled by professors/research at each of the schools on my list that it was literally painful to think of having to eliminate the school from contention.</p>
<p>I still am curious as to how the admission process works at the most highly selective schools; does Stanford (etc.) actually give all applicants full review, or would my GPA be below some certain threshold and thereby send my application directly to the “no” pile? At UOregon, the admission process is clearly stated as beginning with a linear index cutoff whereby all applications with a GPA-GRE score combo below their predetermined cutoff point are eliminated. I wonder how many other schools do this, and what kind of numbers are used…</p>