shadowclaw

Well I had two dreams about this last night. The first dream was straightforward. I opened the email and saw I was awarded the fellowship. The second dream was was about an alien conspiracy to abduct the winners. The aliens disabled the NSF servers some how and then linked into them using devices disguised as a grills. They then set up centers for students to come find out the results. If someone was a winner, they fed them a piece of pepperoni from the grill that had a mind control agent in it. While waiting in line, I figured out that the grill was fake and an alien device so I ran out to try and find someone to stop them. However, aliens were everywhere (disguised as humans) and they chased after me so I couldn't blow their cover. Never found out of I got the fellowship, though.

I frequently stay up until 2 anyway... what's an extra hour?

I heard from the director of the department. He didn't give me a whole lot of information, but said that the admission was unofficial until I got an official letter from the graduate school. He also said I'd hear from the graduate school soon and I'd receive whatever materials I need to accept the offer. The website still says Submitted for me, too. I don't know if that will actually change... when I applied for my masters, some of the schools' websites still said submitted after the decision was made. I'm still waiting on funding, too. I emailed the program director about when to expect a funding decision, but he hasn't gotten back to me yet.

George Takei was in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home with William Shatner William Shatner was in Star Trek: Generations with Patrick Stewart Patrick Stewart was in Robin Hood: Men in Tights with Cary Elwes Carrie Fisher, Anna Paquin

Thanks for the info! Everything I've read about Corvallis has been really good, and the Pacific Northwest in general is really appealing to me as someone who loves the outdoors. I'm glad that OSU impressed you... I graduated from a tiny school for undergrad (about 2000 students) and I'm getting my masters from an only slightly larger school (10,000 students). The only large school I've seen was Penn State, and I only got to drive by it on the way to a conference haha. I still haven't heard from the graduate school yet. I'm getting so impatient! I want to start telling people outside of my immediate family that I was accepted, but I don't want to jinx it.

It just so happens that it is through the math department. I really expected more from this course. I am using far more complicated stats for my thesis, so I find this review of simple ones (and the struggles of some of my classmates) to be very, very annoying.

I remember the joys of getting my wisdom teeth removed. One of them was apparently very difficult to remove, and that socket hurt the most and for a much longer period of time than the others. I hope for your sake that's what's going on! Just keep swishing your salt water. It tastes so bad, but it's important. I don't think you actually screwed up anything, either. All my doctor told me to do was to swish with salt water, to not use straws, and to not poke at the incisions with anything. I ate anything and everything I wanted to and just made sure I avoided the extraction sites. So you've got a leg up by limiting what you eat.

I HATE when people take my seat. I don't understand why it happens, either. Everyone sits in the same seat all semester long, but if I happen to get there at the last minute, someone often takes my seat. When it happens, I always give the person a death stare haha When I was in undergrad, I took this course that was full. Every seat was used. There was some kind of desk shortage on the floor or something, because the math class next door kept stealing some desks after the first week. So it ended up being that if you were one of the last two people to come to class (and everyone showed up), you had to sit on the floor. It was a complete free for all with seats and it made me so mad. Today's vent is about my biostatistics course. I didn't want to take it, it was supposed to be taught using R but instead the professor decided to use SAS (which is pretty useless to me), and it is boring as hell. We haven't learned anything so far that I didn't learn in the research statistics course I took in undergrad. We learned one thing every 1.5 weeks. Which amounts to making box plots, determining how data is distributed, doing two kinds of t tests, and ANOVA. Did I just get a really good education as an undergrad and people really make it through a biology degree without learning such simple statistics?

Flashdance, that depends entirely on the program. The program at FIU, for example, has sent out acceptances as late as June, despite having a deadline of January 15 I applied to a masters program at Drexel two years ago in November and was accepted in mid-April. You just don't know!

Thanks for the pep talk! We need more positive thinking!

I was actually super positive about my application until this week. My confidence suddenly tanked. Maybe it was from all the negatively popping up in this thread, maybe it's because I got an unofficial acceptance to one of my top choice programs over the weekend and now it's real. I even broke the rule of not going back to read submitted application essays. I think my personal statement is great, but there are some things I wish I added to the proposal.

I will be so mad if results take until the 10th to come out... I wonder if there's a pattern to what day of the week it will come out. If Monday is day 1, then the pattern so far is 1 2 5 2 2 5 5 2... I think another 2 would come next in the pattern. So my bets are on Tuesday 3/31 or Tuesday 4/7.

I've been browsing apartments in the Corvallis area, and there definitely seem to be more pet-friendly apartments in the surrounding towns and at better rates. I may be attending OSU, so it will be myself, my husband, and our two cats moving across country. We currently have 2 cars, but they are both getting old and have high mileage. We are hoping to sell them over the summer and finance one brand new car or perhaps one that is only a year old. So, ideally I would like to be able to walk, bike, or ride a bus to school, since my husband will probably need the car to get to work. I read on the OSU website that there is a bus route to Albany that is free for students. Does anyone know how frequent and reliable this route is? Also, how is the job market around Corvallis for unskilled labor? My husband didn't go to college, but was a diesel mechanic in the Marines and works at a greenhouse right now doing a combination of cleaning, loading trucks, and checking the nutrient levels in the hydroponics system. I think ideally he'd enjoy something like what he does now.

I saw this one today and thought of this thread- Oregon State University, Mechanical Engineering PhD, 20 Mar 2015: "If it's a joke it's not funny at all! This is ridiculous. I had everything that they wanted and a lot more. Are they playing dice to get these results?"

katsharki, I had the same thing happen to me two years ago. I had filled out a pre-application at Penn State and listed two POI's on it. The secretary then notified them of my interest. One turned out to not be accepting students, and the other e-mailed me right away with a bunch of information on projects his lab was working on, photos from the field, etc. We traded some e-mails and I sent along my CV... he seemed very interested, especially in my senior project (which was very relevant to his lab's work). At this point it was getting close to the deadline and I basically had the application filled out. He asked for a phone/skype interview, so I sent him my availability and went ahead and submitted my application. I didn't hear back, so I e-mailed him again and also let him know I submitted my application. Still nothing. I tried a third time and he still didn't reply. Ultimately I was rejected and I never heard from him. I can only assume that once my application was submitted, he was able to look at all of my materials and he didn't like what he saw or just had better applicants. I would have at least appreciated a quick e-mail saying I wasn't competitive enough or something. I had some issues with other POI's that year, too. There were several that acted interested and wanted to see transcripts, and then never replied and ignored all of my follow-up e-mails. I have some crap in my academic history from a lifetime ago (but in completely different fields), so I can understand their hesitation to take me on as a PhD student. They could have at least taken the time to tell me that, though. One the other hand, my masters advisor wasn't very communicative, either. He was really slow to reply at times because he was on sabbatical (which I didn't know), and after I was accepted and had some questions for him, he didn't reply for about 2 months because he was teaching a summer course at the marine field station and just didn't have time to get back to me. I have a friend who also applied and was interested in his lab, but he took so long to get back to her that she successfully applied elsewhere and took the offer. Similarly, one of the new grad students this year told me she wanted to work with him, but he also took too long so she joined a different lab. Even though she loves her lab, she was pretty bummed when he finally e-mailed her back, because he was looking for someone to do some international bird work and that was something she really would have loved. So really, it could be any number of things that kept your POI from getting back to you. I don't know if the program has rolling admissions or sends out acceptances in waves, but you could still have a chance. I would definitely get in contact with the POI. Even if you aren't accepted, I'm sure he wouldn't mind letting you know what's up.

I'm curious, rising_star... you didn't actually say that your insurance company is unaware that you live and drive in another state. I assume your drivers license is from the state you live in (since you'd need it to establish residency), not your mother's, so in that case they would have to know that you live and drive in another state. Correct me if I'm wrong. What I am talking about is maintaining residency in your home state, which also means keeping your license from that state, and not informing your insurance company that you are living elsewhere for school.

I mentioned the bit about an explanation if you get in an accident because car insurance rates are determined partly on where you regularly park your car at night. So if you get into an accident 3000 miles away, the insurance company might get suspicious. They will certainly asked lots of questions about why you were there, how long you've been there, etc. I think the real problem would come if you got into a second accident. I think they would be really suspicious if you went on two road trips to the same place, and it would really suck if they refused to pay your claim. Now, Maryland and Ohio are right next door to PA, so I doubt the insurance company would question that. It would also be easy to come back to get inspections, too. Although someone on here said that inspections only matter in the state it's registered. So in theory, you wouldn't have to worry about getting an inspection unless you were planning on coming back to PA to visit.

Realities makes a good point about needing to change your residency for tuition purposes. I believe a lot of schools have significant differences between in and out of state tuition. Now, if you're not in a funded program or you're in a partially funded program, then it might not matter if there's no tuition remission. You'll just end up ponying up extra money for tuition. Tuition aside, you can keep your PA residency if you keep your official address as one in PA. Students go to college in other states all the time. This isn't any different. Your insurance is another story. I have this problem, too, because I'm planning to move out of state for my PhD and my car is owned by my dad (and the loan is in his name). Many helpful people on the forum explained to me that you will have to tell your insurance company that you are going to school out of state so they can adjust your insurance to meet that state's laws. If you end up keeping PA residency, you can get away with not telling them (though this may technically not be legal). However, you will have to come up with an explanation of why you are in Ohio or Maryland if you get into an accident.

Today, one of my fellow grad students told me that she's presenting some of her research on Saturday at a conference and she still isn't done collecting/analyzing her data (she plans to bang it all out in the next two days). I wonder what exactly she put in her abstract when she registered. She also told me that after this weekend, she plans to bang out her masters thesis in two weeks. She hasn't written a word of it yet. Not even an introduction or methods section. She just has her sources picked out. I think she's going to be very sorry at the end of the semester when her committee still hasn't signed off on it because they don't have time to review it. I had previously suggested that she apply for the NSF GRFP, because 1) it's a huge honor to receive it and 2) the stipend is way better than what most programs are offering. At the time, she told me she didn't think she needed it. Today, she asked when I would hear back about it. Then she said she planned to apply for it once she got settled into a lab and knew what she actually wanted to do for her dissertation. I didn't have the heart to tell her she wouldn't be eligible after this year. Then she finished the conversation by telling me that she got waitlisted at one of her top choices, so she's basically in. I don't know why I'm venting about other people's strange ways. I was just really shocked by the whole conversation.

Thanks! Funding comes through a TA position which is supposed to be fairly competitive, although I do have experience from my masters program, so I think I have a leg up. I'm hoping for the best!

Thanks, Robo_Lizard!

bsharpe - thanks for the info! I have a combination of plain old impatience and worry that the graduate school lost the recommendation, doesn't want to admit me (which is silly since I exceed minimum requirements), etc. But as long as 1 to 2 weeks is normal, I can relax a little! VictoryDance - I know I should relax and that I'm basically accepted. I just really need to see that official acceptance on paper/screen for it to be real. Plus I'm curious about funding info, which won't come until after the official decision. Thanks for your wisdom, though!

Hi everyone. I have a question for anyone attending or who has successfully applied to Oregon State University. I got a letter (snail mail) over the weekend from the director of one of the programs I applied to at Oregon State. It was dated March 12. Basically it said the department was recommending me for admission and the graduate school still had to formally accept my application and I should expect to hear from them soon. I don't know if that acceptance would come through e-mail or snail mail (seems like most Oregon State acceptances are reported as e-mail). So my question is: does anyone know how long it takes the graduate school to issue an official acceptance after the department sends in its recommendation? It's only been two days since I received the letter, but I'm already going nuts over it. I imagine that the graduate school was notified of the department's decision the same day or perhaps the next. So it's been over a week and I just want to know for sure already!

This thread has some speculation and a sampling of some times: The short answer is that it can come just about anytime. Weekday or weekend. In the morning, in the afternoon, in the evening. Sometimes in the middle of the night. It can also come by post.