jujubea

Yes thank you. Accepted to Middlebury! Rejected for Mandarin CLS Fingers crossed Middlebury/Davis Fellows comes through with funding otherwise it's a no-go for me on immersive language learning this year. Congratulations to all you semi-finalists! Fingers crossed for the next stage!

Hello - how were you notified of acceptance? I received an email that says "Welcome to the Language School" but doesn't anywhere say "you've been admitted" or "congratulations" or anything like that.

Hello? Um... Did I get into Middlebury? The email contains a header graphic that says "Welcome to the Language School" but no where does it say "congratulations" or "you've been admitted" or anything like that ...? But the rest of the email is instructions on how to prepare for the school...

Hey! we had a good run but stopped about two months ago. I work regularly and am down to team up if you'd like, it definitely benefits me - we can DM here, or check in here - what do you think?

Is your scholarship amount enough to pay for your dependents? Or are you using other funding for that? There's no right answer, just the facts.

Are you fully funded by the school? Make sure that is apparent somewhere, then you can put either self or organization. It really only matters when a student is NOT on a scholarship/fellowship/stipend.

Yes, absolutely include it. Some possibilities: If this was part of a job or paid position or internship or professional volunteering, you could include it as a bullet point under that position. For the job that asks for "research contributions" - I myself would put it there. You can structure your CV so that it has a "Research Experience" section, which can include this paper. Text looks something like: "Utilized XYZ (name or type) databases to conduct XYZtype research on XYZ migration" or "Conducted interdisciplinary research on XYZtype migration through interviews, newspaper database analysis, political analysis, ETC ETC." Feel free to DM me your specific language and I will read through.

Hi @snow_owl- good luck on your app! Good luck @WorldTraveler111 I also finished mine a few days ago. Fingers crossed everybody! Separately - re: Middlebury.. I didn't attach my transcript in time for the priority deadline, but submitted the actual application and fee on time. Does anyone know if I will still get considered for the Dec 15th decision? (It would be so nice to have some lead-time for planning purposes y'know?)

If you go here: https://clscholarship.org/apply and scroll down, on the right side it says "Download PDFs" and in that list is the "2021 CLS Application Essays Worksheet." Within that worksheet is a prompt for a "Statement of Purpose" but no length-limit is defined. Do you think that's the one that corresponds to the 500 limit in the portal? I haven't checked out the portal yet.

Does anyone know what they look for in the MIDDLEBURY letter of recommendation?

Basically just copy-paste the citation form of all sources I ever read into the Master Biblio document. It works better when you are more consistent about it ........ ? As for the master reading notes, I guess it's more like a master thought-notes. It's where my impressions of reading materials go when they don't belong in any current writing project. In other words, if I am reading something to find a citation to include in something I am actively writing, I inevitably find other interesting material in the manuscript that is not useful for my present projects, so I will take those extraneous quotes or my reactions/impressions and put them in the master notes document along with title, author and page.

Mmmm. You raise some good points that I must consider, as my tower of papyri (hah! get it?!) begins to loom magnificently overhead........

In the Essay Worksheet you can download, the Statement of Purpose doesn't have the word count or word limit listed but all the other short essays do. Does anyone see this word limit anywhere else? How are everyone's apps coming along? I am excited to do the program whether it's overseas or not - like was mentioned above, I don't have any other structured options for my language and level. Very hopeful for the support! But yes, of course it would be missing out on a massive element without physically immersing overseas.

Re: timing and time organization: For my first year or two I just swam as hard as I could as long as I could and didn't really take any time or days off until I collapsed. I could handle about a year of that and should have stopped then. Now, I make sure I have one full day off from all responsibilities every week. It changes according to the timing of each term's teaching and studying responsibilities. I feel this is enough for me, and sometimes even find myself working on schoolwork anyway because I am interested. But the point is you have at least one day every week where you are "allowed" to feel no pressure to do anything other than what you want to do, including being a lazy ass and sleeping all day. It is fun when this single day happens in the middle of the week, because everything is less busy out and about. For splitting coursework/research interests, I figure out how long coursework is going to take each week, and I figure out which time of day and timing works best for me to complete my coursework (this actually took me over a year to figure out). For example, certain types of work I do better in the evening; certain types of work I do better in the morning. I prefer to knock out a single course's coursework for the week in one chunk of time if I can, but you may be the type who likes to work on something a little bit every day, it really depends on you. In my program, it is more common to let your research suffer in order to do well in classes, since your performance in them makes an impact on the faculty. I am able to let my adviser(s) know I have x-amount of a course load and my writing/research will increase/decrease accordingly that term. I never get any flak for it. I like to have a combination of structure and flexibility, so after establishing class hours, office hours, etc., I schedule one or two multi-hour blocks each week that are solely for working on my own research, and then I schedule half the amount of time needed for homework, and then set aside several more hours that is for "academic work" generally that I can fill in however I want, whether that's more homework, more research, etc. As for keeping up languages, I have heard of people doing things like setting a goal of x-number of articles per week or month dealing directly with, or in, the target language. As for the ancient, find something that interests you whether or not it's related to your current research that you will want to look at regardless of whether it's required of you. Fight off the feelings of guilt that you are spending time on something that isn't your research; remind yourself you are spending time investing in yourself with this valuable skill. It is OK and actually helpful to reread the same things, don't feel guilty for this either. As to other organization: I only recently finally stopped wrestling with the fact that I have a very, very strong preference for reading things in hard copy, and I am more attentive, read more quickly, and am able to find quotes more quickly in hard copy. For that reason, just this summer I have begun switching out to an old-school hard copy filing method with file folders and all! I'll let you know how it goes. That said, I keep a running "master" bibliography of what I read and that is invaluable. I also recently began keeping a "master" reading-notes document on the computer that I seriously wish I started earlier. However you do it, I recommend you have all your types of things in single places, even if across types-of-things those places or systems are different. My "master" reading notes document is an example; before that, my reading notes for everything were in different places and different formats both online and off, making it very difficult to find them two years later. Good luck!

Agree it may be more helpful to ask the schools directly. In particular, get in touch with the department admin and see if they can put you in touch with a current student who has successfully done this, or if the admin can tell you about it.

Are you not interested in a PhD? There are a few programs where master's is en route to PhD

I don't know, maybe you can also be an up-and-comer and tow this as part of your angle? That's kind of what I'm going for, tbh, since I don't really see a need for caution when the employment possibilities are so limited anyway. Sure nobody had to listen to me since I'm not established in the field, but also, newness and newbies, we're kind of known for shaking things up a little aren't we?

PM'ing you about the undergrad situation

You mean to say, no one else is prepping 3-4 months before the first deadline? ?

Ok awesome. Maybe we should start a Middlebury thread? Or can we change this one to a combo CLS and Middlebury thread?

Note to all: even before the essays, etc., save your application often ? ...the system kicks you out regularly.

@Umenohana will you reapply for Japanese this cycle?

Hey, I'm probably going to apply for Mandarin... having a hard time figuring out my study-hours equivalents. I am really hoping they'll do virtual programs if summer 21 is still on lockdown instead of cancelling outright! I'm also applying to the Middlebury programs.

Hi there - can I ask folks on this thread who were accepted or put on finalist lists, who wrote your letters of recommendation? Thanks!

Join other graduate writers from the forum this Wednesday at 10am Central. DM me for the details!