TakeMyCoffeeBlack

I keep checking my e-mail, but my acceptance letters aren't showing up. Is there something wrong with my e-mail or theirs? I'm really worried...

No problem and good luck! I do want to add, though, that a high acceptance rate does not necessarily reflect on the program quality. They're still NYU and Columbia, and likely they have very good faculty working for them.

It's hard to say. For a lot of masters programs, they are willing to take on as many students as they see to be academically qualified. This is especially true if they're a small program with a small applicant pool. The Petersons data could be confirmed or rejected with a short email to the administrative assistant. Like I said, the more informed you are, the better off they will be.

I reiterate: Before you drop the money on retaking the GRE, contact the program and ask what they think. It benefits them to have highly qualified applicants, and they will be honest with you about where you stand and how you can improve.

Why? My girlfriend's at a top ranked program for her field doing a masters, and the acceptance rate is ridiculously high. This is usually for two reasons: 1.) you're in a pretty specialized field and the competition isn't as intense (so the program accepts all students it sees as qualified, doesn't have to split the arbitrary hairs) 2.) a lot of masters programs bring in a lot of income for schools, so there is little benefit to accepting only the top 1% of applicants (though, of course, schools will still admit in line with the sense of prestige they've cultivated over the years)

I think it would be to your benefit to reach out to the programs and ask specifically. According to data available at Petersons.com, Columbia at least admits about 91% of its applicants in Bioethics (22/24). Assuming your GREs pass their minimum standard - I would guess they do - you should be fine.

Masters or Ph.D.? The writing sample itself will tell them significantly more about your writing capabilities and logical prowess than a standardized test. You should feel free to contact someone in the program and ask. Also, are the programs quant heavy? You may need to think of ways either to increase your Q score or compensate for it in other ways.

I think typically they'll offer to reimburse up to a certain amount for travel to a recruitment/accepted students weekend. Colorado-Boulder did, and they're using the recruitment weekend as a sort of informal interview for funding, too. Last year I flew to DC with money from a Masters program for a recruitment weekend.

I've been doing that these past few months, but calling it "research."

I'm not really sure in the hypothetical situation. Though, I plan on saving the celebrating for when I visit home in March. Going to hit up my favorite bar with my favorite people and celebrate with a couple pitchers (and free nachos and popcorn!). When I got my (first or only?) acceptance, I didn't do anything special to celebrate. Just smiled a lot.

Congrats to all the Davis admits! Wow, news on a Sunday! (no day is safe...)

This. An acceptance may confirm your quality as a student or academic, but it does not define it. There are simply too many variables. I imagine most of us will be facing the same anxiety in 5-6 years on the job market, which is even more competitive and even less indicative of your quality.

What program? AW score may or may not be important.

Pittsburgh, OSU, UC San Diego, Iowa, LSE and Emory, from my count. The week after this will see a lot of good and bad news all around.

If anything, you're not alone. I just build the brewing time into my daily schedule. I use low cost equipment ($20 small drip brew system, 10 Euro press I bought in Germany, $20 coffee grinder) and buy beans about a pound at a time. That means, in the end, I'm spending about $5 a week on cafe quality coffee. Sure, the boost can be nice, but if that were all I cared about, I wouldn't go out of my way to grind fresh every morning. Social coffee drinking is a big plus for me, too. Sure, I like drinking alcohol with friends too, but I find it's much cheaper to go out for coffee, even if you get an expensive latte or something. Chances are, you aren't going to get more than one or two. When I go to a bar, a beer costs about the same and I'm apt to drink more than one. So I think for me, the pills would kind of ruin my coffee and tea experience, which is my daily meditation.

Scrolled through last year's equivalent of this week. Looks like there may be some official heartbreaking too.

One unfunded offer. I got a great fellowship to go abroad, though, so I took it and entered round two.

It sounds like they're gauging you're interest in them. As in, how likely are you to attend? They don't want to nominate you for a fellowship if you're going to turn them down, because that's money lost for the program. I also ditto iphi.

I'm right with you. And then there's the whole catch with my one acceptance, that I don't get information on funding until March. So... even that semblance of security is a facade.

It's quiet. Too quiet.

My girlfriend entertained fantasies about life as a cat lady before we got serious. It was at the same time her worst fear and her dream. It helped that she loves cats.

The good news is that the average life span is much longer than it was in the 1950s. Even if you start a decade later, you'll have just as many years to do this. Try and enjoy being young and single as much as you can. You have the next ~60 years to cook and clean for your husband.

In the 1940s my great-grandfather drove his daughter, my "Oma," to Bell-Aerospace, where she became the lead mathematician under Werner von Braun for that location. She met my grandfather there, a young engineer helping to develop the technology that brought us to the moon. When she gave birth to my father some years later, she stayed home to raise him and, eventually, her daughter. Thank God, though, that her father had permitted empowerment and not required her to fulfill the traditional feminine ideal. When my grandfather became very ill, she became financially responsible for the family - which she did as a professional musician. This is feminism. It's about choices, and it's about discovering who you are intellectually, professionally, and emotionally.

I think what you're thinking of has more to do with major changes to our economic system, and less to do with the empowerment of half of the population. Feminism would hold that if you want to be a stay at home mom or a housewife, you should be able to make that decision. The decision should not belong to your father, brother(s), boyfriend or husband.

Umm... Alrighty then. I rather think that feminism makes it okay for women not to want that, not to have to conform to an image of femininity created by men, and to pursue that which will help to fulfill them as an individual as well as a woman. I don't think it has anything to do with chivalry, other than to say (and as a man I appreciate this): "Although we don't need you, we appreciate you and want you to continue doing this." If women are freer and more independent (even if that means only that they can choose to be stay at home moms), then so are men. It's a matter of basic human equality, not the destruction of traditional values (read: except where those values are ethically questionable or have the effect of restraining, discriminating against or oppressing a certain segment of society).