OhMySocks

The actual monetary value of "Cheap" will vary largely depending on where you live. I manage to get by on 200-250 if I'm trying to save. I could probably get lower but I LOVE fresh fruits and vegetables. My meals tend to be fairly simple. A lot of rice and potatoes (both are dirt cheap), beans, various grains, tons of vegetables, meat every few days. As long as I take the time to plan out what I'm eating for the week and think about what I need to buy and how I can use up what I already have, my grocery bills are fairly cheap. If I try to rush and just go to the store without thinking thats when it starts to add up.

What does it mean to get your transcripts evaluated and why does it cost such a ridiculous amount of money?

I thought this was amusing: On Wednesday morning, I received an email from the department at school A with an invite to their admitted students visit weekend. On Wednesday evening, I received an email from the department congratulating me on being accepted by the grad school and having funding info. On Thursday, I received one of those generic "Your application status has changed emails" and pointing me to the web site, which had an acceptance letter. Today, I received an email saying that the graduate school has made a decision and that the decision would be available in the next few days on the website. So yeah, they've got the whole thing completely backwards.

Its a very innefficient process because all parties only have partial information and everybody's decisions are tightly interconnected. The grad schools are holding out making decisions on everyone because they're waiting on a a few students who are waitng on other grad schools who are waiting on other students and so on. In the perfect world every student would submit their school preferences and every grad school would submit their student preferences to a giant computer which would calculate pairings that make the maximum amount of people happy.

Welp, looks like acceptances are out today. Never mind

Anybody heard from Davis? I'm a bit confused because in the past years they have sent out all admissions decisions in late January/early February and this year, there has been 1 decision posted from early Feb. and nothing else. Their website reads: "Generally, most applications submitted by the January 15th deadline will be reviewed prior to mid-February, though some applications are held for later consideration. Most decisions are communicated by early spring." "The Graduate Group in Computer Science holds a graduate recruitment event in early March of each year for admitted Ph.D. applicants. The Department of Computer Science invites qualified applicants who have been recommended for admission to spend a day meeting faculty and current graduate students, touring the research facilities and familiarizing themselves with the Davis community. The department reimburses some students for a portion of their travel expense. Information about this event is sent to invited students during mid-February."

Also, I don't know if the department head is quite who you want to email. At least with the schools I applied to, there was a point contact person listed, often a grad secretary of some sort. I would definitely email them first.

I have the whole priority inbox thing going for Gmail, and I'm now convinced that gmail is sentient and trying to protect my feelings. I've gotten 4 decisions so far and one interview so far and it has filed the 2 acceptances and interview as important and the 2 rejections as not important.

Yeah, at this point, I think its either an informal waitlist, or (far more likely) a rejection.

Yep. UCSD says under review. And nothing from Brown.

Maybe its the opposite. They are monitoring how often you check your application status and using that to gauge whether you REALLY want to attend the program. Better get to refreshing

The one thing I did prefer with the old one was that it gave you the option to choose several options, instead of having radio buttons. I sit in a weird middle ground between a few of the listed fields so anything that I chose wouldn't really be accurate.

black mold

Well, looks like another weekend is here. I thought for sure that this would be the week I would hear from my top choice, since last 2 years in a row they informed people first week of february and they told me 3 weeks ago that they would make decisions that week and they told somebody else that decisions would come out this week. I just want to know...

Yep, I'll post here when I actually hear from them. Let me know when you hear back.

Yeah, I was told late Feb-early March as well. Its only the beginning of late February now, so I think a little patience is reasonable.

With the JHU PhD, they've had a few visit weekends. It seemed implied that the people that would be admitted would be chosen from those invited, so it seems like a reasonable assumption that if you weren't invited you're probably rejected.

No. Its just an application software that some schools use. Others use ApplyWeb or other things. There is no separate thing to register for, its just where you applied.

Either grilled peanut butter/nutella/banana or peanut butter/banana/honey sandwiches. Soooooo good.

On monday, Gmail considered some ad from a clothing website "Important" and filed my rejection from one of my top choices as "Not important". Either their algorithm is really thick or just trying to look out for my feelings.

If you need a hug: The Nicest Place On The Internet

Yeah, I had some problems with my UG not sending out 2 of my transcripts. One of the schools notified me, one of them didn't.

Grad cafe chatter suggests that my top choice is sending out decisions this week, which depresses me. I'm fairly sure I'm rejected. I had an interview visit at another school this past weekend and I know that they have another interview weekend coming up in 2 weeks, so I suspect they won't send out decisions until all that is done so I have a while to wait. I suspect that this school might be the only one that I still might get into (outside of the one that I was already admitted to, which, after much consideration, I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't attend if it were my only choice, I would take another year) so I think these next few weeks will be rough as rejections trickle in, without any option already in my pocket.

Yeah, the University I work for is open today. And I just got my first reject. So it seems like a lot of schools don't observe President's Day.

As someone who has been through a lot of what you're dealing with and has gone through therapy to help figure it out, I'm glad that you are willing to give it a try. The thing that really stood out to me reading your original post is that you seem to fall victim to a lot of cognitive distortions. Here is a list of examples if you want to take a look: http://psychcentral.com/lib/2009/15-common-cognitive-distortions/ Therapy really helps you identify and question destructive thought patterns along those lines. I just wanted to warn you that it is neither quick nor easy. Before I started it seemed like everything I read gave the idea that therapy was this amazing thing that you start and all of a sudden everything gets better, and honestly it made it a lot more difficult at first when that didn't happen immediately and I felt guilty because I thought this was somehow my personal failing. It really forces you to become aware of and talk about a lot of thoughts that you are having that you try to ignore in the past and this can be really a really challenging process. However if you stick with it and make a real effort, it is SO worth it and your effort will definitely be rewarded. You just need to start telling yourself that you deserve to feel better.