Quarex

My past has betrayed me. Yes, that was I.

19. You assume this list will be a series of hilarious exaggerations that will amuse you, yet find to your horror that 90% of them actually do describe the last two months of your life extremely well.

It kind of makes you wonder what to do, huh. What is your background? Is there an alternate step you can take now to get back to where you want to be?

As long as you are a sick man, you must have no problem with telling us why you turned down a fully funded position to end up back here again a year later.

I think it hurts more for UMNDude due to his name. Though it is still lame. I got rejected, too, which hardly surprised me since their acceptance rate is lower than Yale's (per capita) if Peterson's is not lying.

My girlfriend is a choral conducting M.M. applicant right now, so I will just come in here and pretend to be her. No, but she has had a pretty interesting time flying all over the stupid country (and Canada!) for auditions. You musicologists are lucky. I bet none of you spent $3,000 on flights and hotels as a result of your applications!

It sounds to me like you really need to take a little from column "A" and a little from column "B." Also, the Excel (or OpenOffice Spreadsheet!) database idea is the best one. My university database has like 40 fields for each school, and I love it so much. If only I were a good enough candidate to actually need it.

Where are you going to school? No personal experience, but I imagine coming out at most any school outside the most conservative regions of this country would result in responses like "cool" or "hey, me too!" rather than anything dramatic or angry. Generally I think it is important to keep political opinions to myself on the Internet, since meaningful dialogue requires immediate feedback and a two-way conversation. But: it sickens me to realize that you even have to wonder about this. Any two consenting adults in a committed relationship should have all the same rights as a man and a woman in one. You do not deserve to be kept apart from your love.

I apologize for quoting an old thread, but this piqued my interest (I studied at Leicester Uni for a year, so I always click on everything UK-school related I see). Personally, with the exception of my friends who went into computer science/math, I did not know anyone who DID have calculus or linear algebra before heading off to university studies. Unless "linear algebra" in your parlance refers to what I just understood as "algebra" (though not likely, since we study that when ~14). I still have not had any calculus or linear algebra, and have a master's degree.

Huh, I did not even see that George Mason had a Political Science Ph.D. I think phds.org may not have had it listed in their find-a-program database when I started my search? Hard to say. In any case, I applied to George Mason for their very tempting Public Policy Ph.D., so I do not imagine it would have been that good a decision to apply for Political Science. They may even share faculty, for all I know. My girlfriend was accepted there (amongst other places) for a choral conducting master's, so if I get accepted at all, we very well may end up going.

You may not think that list sounds so good, but it still has lots of "known" schools in the list. That is more than I can say for some of the programs' placement lists I have seen!

I almost did not apply because their application requirements made me so, so very irritated. If I ever need to explain to someone why it takes so long to finish graduate school applications, all I have to say is "Georgetown's application made you copy your entire transcript history, verbatim, onto their own woefully inadequate form, despite also requiring your transcripts. And they were not the only ones. And none of them used the same form." Rather than give up, though, I did finish my application, since I was particularly interested in their dual security studies/political science program. Too bad I also felt virtually assured that I would not be accepted.

Duh, because some of us applied to every reasonably-good-fit program we could find in the entire country! And then some! And still have not heard any actual Ph.D. acceptances yet! Still plenty of applications to go, though. I am probably ignorant and a masochist considering my application process.

Haha, funny you should be in that situation. My girlfriend and I just moved to Virginia last year, so perhaps there is a Virginia-Connecticonnection. They really are pretty different ... though some parts of Virginia are certainly more like rural half-farm-half-university Connecticut than are others.

The impression I got from meeting with some people there is that their program has likely gotten a little stronger in the last ~decade, and the recent influx of interest and money into the school thanks to the big NCAA basketball wins a few years back will likely see their situation continue to improve. Plus, the Dairy Bar has the best ice cream in New England!! Of course, you never know what the future may bring, and obviously every other department in the country is trying to improve its fortunes, too. Hard to say. I will be happy if I accept their M.A. offer--they are extremely friendly, approachable, and know their stuff, which is all obviously important. An actual Ph.D. acceptance would be nice, though. One last thing to consider--it is amazing just how much nearly every department in the country seems to find a way to show that they are near the top of the heap when it comes to something. One program that I think was ranked about 10th from the bottom overall in that list brags on its webpage about how it has the like fifth or sixth highest graduate publication output in the country. It makes me wonder what they are doing to achieve that, but it is still one of many dozens of factors to contemplate when ultimately deciding.

That really is a great quote. It sounds like something I have been trying and failing to articulate properly for a long time. Spending a significant part of your childhood living in random countries and meeting people who most of your peers will never even know exist is particularly eye-opening. You and I have to compare notes again in a few years once we see how well this whole "walking out of the ivory tower to the cobblestone path" approach works.

I think the best way for us to truly reach the masses is to try to merge our academic goals and training with the exact mentality that generally keeps academics away from the public eye. In other words, we need to try to condense our own work into insultingly banal sound-bite tripe and publicize it as heavily as possible. It also will likely not hurt if we all spend a little of our precious research time working out and getting a tan. A large part of the reason some of the most brilliant people in the country never end up talking about issues on television is because they are nightmarish abominations of flesh. Well, maybe not that bad. But having a non-professorial appearance (i.e. a relatively conservative haircut, avoiding tweed jackets with patches, coordinating colors, etc.) will likely go a long way toward bridging the gap! (There is plenty of sarcasm here, but I really have spent some time thinking about how to best fulfill the duties of a professor without falling into the stereotype of the absent-minded, ill-dressed, eccentric genius.)

Oh, could be! Their offer is definitely tempting, and the three hours I spent in Lawrence a few years back did show me that it was a pretty awesome area. Plus, if my girlfriend ends up going to Ohio State, Skybus totally has cheap daily flights between Kansas City and Columbus! What is your general research interest? You probably got accepted directly to the Ph.D.!! ADMIT IT!! I was in Arizona and New Mexico for a few weeks when I was younger, and other than not yet being able to comprehend how anyone could want to live in weather like that, I liked it. It really is stunning. Always a plus! Criminal Justice, yeah, these things happen. The worst part is that I was at one of the most academic-leaning Criminal Justice programs in the country, with essentially no professional/practical coursework even available beyond a management seminar; compare this to another Illinois' schools entire series of courses on firearm training, and you start to see the difference. One of my thesis advisors was always pushing to have the program renamed to "Justice Studies" as he felt it more appropriate for their focus, but he also realizes that would drop their enrollment by about 80%. And in any case, without putting in my application "please do not hold my degree against me," I was not really sure how to bring up that it was not a "cop shop" (as applied programs were called so derisively by some of the professors there). Also, I really cannot get enough of the "stars and cupcakes" theme. Congratulations on your acceptance, though; who was the professor? What were these books? WHERE CAN WE FIND THEM? My own quest to apply to the schools where all the academics who got me really solidly interested in my field, and who I extensively quoted in my thesis, led to me realizing that unless I went to Harvard I was not likely to be in a department with them. Plus, half of them are law, economics, or sociology professors, so that nixed things right there, and several are retired. Go figure. Oh, Amitai Etzioni, why are you so out of reach? Hey, thanks! Yeah, it is totally uncool when it seems like some school is a great place to apply, or sounds like a fairly easy program to get into, or something similar ... and then you examine the faculty interests, and think "is this even the same field I want to study?" And you are likely correct about looks. I enjoyed my time at UIUC and all, but that was also back when only being an hour's drive from my hometown sounded like a great plan. Glad to hear things are looking up for you at Barbizan School of Hair Design!

Thanks, Eve. Yeah, I certainly hope that excellent performance (which I am absolutely going to achieve, as I have never been more enthusiastic about something academically) will make me all but a shoo-in for the Ph.D. when that time comes ... but worst case scenario, if I have to apply somewhere else, I will have a whole new set of positives to add to my application. It sounds like Kansas and Connecticut will not offer much if any funding, but Arizona State sounded less negative in that regard. Still got another billion applications to hear back from, though, so who knows? Also, I have been out of school for all of 9 months now! :!: I actually just completed a master's degree in Criminal Justice, which I am considering my "real bachelor's degree," considering my terrible performance in (and the poor fit of) my English Literature undergraduate degree. Many programs said that if you did not have a political science degree, you would have to do the entire M.A. coursework (though potentially minus electives) anyway, so I was still expecting this work load--just hoping for the "big" acceptance right off the bat. Meanwhile, are you content with your options, or will you be disappointed if you do not get into your super-deluxe-stars-and-cupcakes schools?

Haha, thanks. I am hoping, too. Even if I do not, though, I already have three M.A. consolation admissions, so worst case scenario I can be in a much better place for a new round of applications in two years. I am going to get that 4.0 that has eluded me my whole life, no matter what it takes! Did you talk to anyone in the department beforehand? When I visited last summer, I was supposed to meet with Dr. Clifford, but while waiting for my appointment, Dr. Hansen saw me and basically grabbed me and pulled me into her office to talk at great length about both my interests and her shared interests with my dad's subfield (they are both India/Southeast Asia economic/community development specialists; you would think they would know each other, but no). Their department is incredibly welcoming, and that goes a long way toward making it sound like somewhere worth spending years of one's life!

You know, if I get rejected from any of those schools with the like $100 application fees, they had BETTER at least send me a letter. I am going to frame my beautiful $100 pieces of paper. I have surely paid more for less valuable things in my life (how much did I spend on that Magic: the Gathering card at Gen-Con '97 again? $75?). Understandably so. When it seems like everything finally makes sense, and you found the school that is perfect for you, and are ready to just only send in one application with the knowledge that everything will work out ... and then ... that. My girlfriend and I both had great meetings last summer with the faculty of our respective departments at one school, spending hours on end talking business and personal with equal aplomb. We decided that was our five-star university, that we would be perfectly happy going there together, and that at least if everything else failed we knew that was a sure bet for our future. We finished applying there at the end of November. By the second week of December, she received their rejection letter. Now, I can talk at great length about what is wrong with my own academic background, and why I might not get accepted to many programs, but she is a full-ride-scholarships-galore-near-4.0-GPA-achieve-achieve-achieve-and-years-of-relevant-work-experience kind of applicant. And she still got shot down three months before the application deadline even passed. We still have no idea what the hell happened there, as they are pretty mum about the process. Once she started getting excited invitations to audition left and right in January, things definitely started picking up. You just have to remember that as long as there is one more application out there, everything could well work out great. Even the most incredibly qualified candidates might get randomly ignored for something that you could never anticipate ahead of time ... and even someone thinking their application is a stretch might perfectly fit a niche he/she does not even realize he/she fills!

I will be posting in this thread for the next sixteen months while waiting for all these applications. Oh, sure, it might only look like one month to all the people who are not involved with the graduate school application process. But I assure you: it will be at least a year, and possibly ten years, in application waiting time before I hear back from all these schools. So far, I have an exciting choice of three M.A. consolation acceptances, each 1,300 miles apart: Arizona State, the University of Kansas, and the University of Connecticut. I am not honestly sure what I will do, especially since I still have plenty of other applications out there to hear back from. If it ended up being a choice between those three, well, it is hard to say. Kansas sounds like the best scholastic bet, but Arizona State was much more upbeat and chipper about wanting me there and implying that I am a shoo-in for the Ph.D. if I perform as well as my POTENTIAL indicates. Connecticut, meanwhile, has a great ice cream bar. Oh, and I met with their faculty, and they were all amazingly helpful and knowledgeable and everything, and they actually suggested a potential advisor in my acceptance letter--that does not sound completely like standard M.A. acceptance fare (at least, not to me), so it seems encouraging. I will sadly not be able to show Tidefan around to all the best coffee shops at UIUC, now that my alma mater shot me down. I can finally start ignoring their donation requests with a clear conscience!

VandyCandy: Firstly, your signature is out of date, as you totally have Madison in both "waiting" and "dinged." Also, I am a little sad that there is no overlap between our applications (at least not now that we both got kicked to the curb by Madison), since I have decided going to the same school as you would be hilarious. Oh, wait, I guess we also both have the University of Minnesota. Considering their acceptance rate is lower than Yale's, I am not too optimistic for myself though. I figured I could very well be in the situation where I get all-around rejected and have to figure out how to pick up the pieces and try again, so I went through the same process as seemingly everyone else here--wondered if maybe I could go back in time and fix my grades. Wait, no, I contemplated setting my sights lower, picking up a(nother) master's degree, maybe even getting a good job in the field, trying this whole thing again in a few years, perhaps with an even better GRE score to go with it. I probably would have studied if I had known five years ago that the GRE was not like the ACT. And I probably would not have listened to my mostly professional-bound master's degree classmates when they told me that grades no longer mattered once you got to this level. Sure, they no longer matter if you just want a master's degree so you can get a raise as a probation officer. Jerks. It is hard to fix the fact that you did everything wrong years ago, and now that you have finally put all the pieces together and have a clear goal (and a passionate love) for your future studies, you have to try to get past the years you spent not having any clue what was going on, and just going to college because you thought you were supposed to do so. Also, that was a nice encouragement story. Temple is a very special place, as I have learned. They seem to have a decent program, yet their tenure track is evidently even harder to obtain than some of the best schools in the country--hilariously, the professor I wanted to work with at Temple the most (and the reason I did not end up applying to the school) was denied tenure last year, since even though the department and the chair and whoever else all recommended him for tenure, someone in the dean's office had veto power and seemingly arbitrarily decided he was not what Temple wanted. Harsh. I could also be horribly butchering this story in the re-telling, but I know the "everyone but one person wanted him tenured" part is accurate.

I applied to the Ph.D., but was admitted (last week) to the M.A. program instead. I would therefore assume they are done with both M.A. acceptances and Ph.D. rejections, as I do not imagine their department is so huge that they would have to do their rejections in waves. Thus, if you have not heard yet, it might be a good thing.

Hello, so-confident-only-one-month-ago buddy. I only have three rejections so far, but I trust I will catch up with you soon. It really is telling how thrilled I am about my two consolation M.A. acceptances, even though I thought that was going to be the worst case scenario at one point. Little did I think about how the real worst-case-scenario is 100% rejection. Anyone know if I should put any stock in the one letter saying "we admit to the M.A. program first before going on to the Ph.D. program?" I could read that either way, that they like what they see but want to be sure I can hack it first, or that they just think I am dumb enough to not know the order of degrees. I am totally thrilled about how I got to pay all this money for these nice gold-plated rejection letters! High five! And yeah, seriously, I cannot imagine what would have happened if I had tried to do my thesis at the same time as doing this. These applications may have actually taken more time overall than my thesis. It was certainly close. I would definitely have not graduated that semester. Hahahaha. The best person for the job is someone who did not even apply there. No stress!