VioletAyame

Thank you both so much. Duna, I'm so glad you pegged me right away as going for quant instead of qual. I have never been that good at Maths but empirical methods just make sense to me somehow. As both of you pointed out, these are some top notch schools, and I'm quite concerned about having no back-up plan. I'm making a list of potential advisors right now and will start contacting them after I'm done with my GRE next week. I mean it does make sense not to apply to schools you don't really want to go to, but I wonder if there's any strategy to minimize risk. Or just go with it and reapply next year should I don't get in anywhere?

Hello everyone! First I just want to say thank you very much for all your help. It's my first time applying and I was able to find a lot of helpful information here as well as great answers to my questions from a very supportive community. Now I'm finalizing the list of all the programs I'm applying too, and I would really appreciate it if you can take a look and see if I should add or remove anything. My areas of interest are Media Effects, Entertainment Studies and Emerging Media. My undergrad research project examined traditional and reversed gender stereotypes in TV sitcoms from 1950s to now, so I am a bit more familiar with stereotypes in the media, humor theories and gender issues. Recently I have become more and more interested in Emerging Media with topics such as identity or self-image cultivated through social networks and the education-entertainment values of educational channels on YouTube. So the programs currently in my list are: The Annenberg schools (USC & U Penn) Penn State U of Michigan, Ann Arbor UC Santa Barbara U of Wisconsin, Madison U of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Ohio State I'm thinking a total of 7-10 programs would be manageable, but please correct me if I'm wrong here. Thank you in advance for all your help!

This is the first time I'm applying to grad schools, and I don't know of admission interviews or campus visits are customary in our field. If yes, should it be done before or after admission decisions? What if I receive an interview invitation before admission and I can't afford to go?

I'm applying to grad schools for the first time, and I don't know if this is a silly question or if anyone else is concerned with this, but is there an optimal number of schools that you shoud apply to? I now have a list of over 20 schools which I'm trying to narrow down to 10, but maybe that would still be a lot. I don't want to overextend myself with 10 different personal statements and my professors with letters of rec, but I don't want to miss the opportunities with some good programs out there. Please let me know what you think. Any opinion or advice is greatly appreciated.

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/provide-green-card-foreign-students-who-have-earned-masters-or-phd-degrees-usa-universities-and-have/RD1s6V8y There's a petition on the White House website to grant green cards to international students who got their masters or doctorates. It may be a long shot, but you'll never know if you don't try. Deadline's coming up, so please pass it around! Thanks guys.

@mrpbn7 I guess I should have made it clearer in my post: You're absolutely correct, I was talking about a combined MA/PhD program, where I can earn credits for my MA (they may or may not grant me the degree though) then go straight to PhD. I think it's save me a lot of time during the program and also I won't have to apply another time. I want to do that instead of going to MA separately because I think it'll give me a better chance to get tuition remission and/or assistantship. Please correct me if I'm wrong here. However most programs I've checked out seem unclear whether they can be combined or not. For example, both USC Annenberg and Ann Arbor said that they accept people from heterogeneous educational backgrounds, but when I emailed them to ask if I need a MA to apply, USC said it's totally OK (I checked and the youngest person to get accepted last year was only 22!), while Ann Arbor said it's not required but it's not likely I'll get in without one. Even so at USC I'll be competing with peple who have completed their master degrees and/or have many more years of experiences. I'm just trying to measure my chances here to see if I should go through with this or not. @uromastyx Thanks a lot, that's very encouraging!

@zabius Thank you so much for your super thorough reply. I heard a lot of people mention public transportation as a big thing, but I've never thought about political and social environment. That's really helpful. Also, I've never lived in the cold climate before (I used to live in a tropical country, then in SoCal ever since I came to the US); I know it's gonna be hard to deal with cold and long winter but it seems like I don't have much choice since I consider most of the US (apart from SoCal and Florida) cold.

Hi everyone! I can't tell you how glad I was when I discovered this site a few weeks ago. I'm a recent grad from a state school in CA, and as part of the school's Honors Program I did an original research as my undergrad thesis. Both my mentor and the program director loved it (I received the Best Project award), and they encouraged me to go to grad school to eventually do research and teach. My mentor has already been committed to helping me along the process, i.e picking out programs, going to conferences & introducing me, but I'm really not confident about my chance of getting in to a good Ph.D straight from undergrad. I emailed some of the programs in my preliminary research and some were welcoming while others said that even though it's not mandatory to have a M.A, it will very much limit my chances if I don't have one. I will have a little bit more than a year of experience on my belt by the time the deadline comes (I'm thinking of applying for Fall 2014). So what do you guys think? I appreciate any advice or insight you have on the subject.

Sorry if I'm asking a dumb question here, but this is the first time I'm researching which city to live in. What are some of the most important criteria to look for in a city/town? I know the basic things like appartments, cost of living, and transportation, but from your experiences, what are some other things I need to be looking at? Thanks in advance.