hdunlop

well played

By the way when they taught me math it was that mean, median and mode were all methods of finding the average. I'm certainly not "on board the quant train" but that's what they were teaching in high school in the 1990s (and on Wikipedia to this day).

TJ's pays 3x minimum wage? Jesus, that ain't bad.

I haven't gotten either acceptance or rejection from UVA. Not sure what's going on there.

I finally got my formal Chicago rejection... and also just got the Levy scholarship for law at UPenn, a full ride there. At least I can get into something!

Well, four, and two rejections (one accept is art history). But I'm thinking so too. Three to five seems to be the standard GradCafe Cornell cohort from previous years. If so, pending a last-second twist from UVA (where I survived both the acceptance and rejection waves), I'm settling at 0 for 6 this cycle, up from 0 for 3 last time around. At least this time I can say I put my best foot forward. I plan to reach out to some POIs (many of whom I met this fall, most of whom were warm and all of whom were helpful) for their comments, but most likely -- against some of your recommendations -- I'm looking at law, a field that is blessedly more numbers-driven. When a person is 0 for 9 at one thing and 6 for 6 at another (including two funding offers so far, and with luck, two more on the way) at some point it's hard not to read the writing on the wall. That said, two of the three schools I'm seriously considering (and two of the two I've been admitted to thus far) are at or near the schools I applied for history at, so I may yet take one more crack next year! If not, there's always the late-in-life vanity degree. I'm going to write my damn dissertation come hell or high water - ha!

What's the deal with Cornell? Seems like they're onsie twosie POI admits, but do we think this is the wave and that's it or will they continue to trickle?

Was Rumsfeld a theorist or philosopher? To find the answer to this known unknown, one must look east, west, south and north somewhat. Man. That 2003-2006 period really feels like a dream sometimes.

I'm no MBA but it seems that, even as an extreme anti-capitalist, you embrace the notion of supply and demand.

Didn't get a UVA acceptance when they went but didn't get a rejection today either. Wacky.

Some additional very helpful thoughts re. my situation, guys (e: just in case: folks) -- thank you.

Thank you czesc and thedig for the pep talk re. the PhD -- I do need it. This round (my second) isn't over yet, and I remain hopeful if not optimistic. If I bust out I do think I'm most likely going to start with the JD (the goal was always joint) and consider another shot at the PhD as I pursue it. There's no doubt law's easier to get in, not least because you usually have to pay, but full funding offers do exist. They're incredibly competitive but I've at least made it to the "please interview/write an essay/whatever to compete" stage which is further than I've made it with the PhD applications so far!

I'm now 0 and 4 with PhD programs and 4 and 0 with law schools. Starting to think this choice is being made for me. And then there were two...

Actually the seeming randomness of the boat is the one thing that makes me think it's something that really happened. Broadly, though, the idea is that the boat keeps taking your money, whereas the others are one-off purchases, over the top as they may be. Diamond rings are overpriced by at least two orders of magnitude for reasons that can be summed up as "consumerism/capitalism," but the nice ones are beautiful as hell so I wince at worthless. And I say this as someone who went with a sapphire for the lady.

I can't believe no one liked my boat story. I think that's the greatest story.

The OP got one key thing right: if this is how they treat you now, think about what happens when you get your PhD. At that point you become one of hundreds sending in resumes to school after school for job postings. There's usually no application fee at that point, but you also don't get the courtesy of an impersonal form letter. Once someone told me a story that I always think about at times like this. I assume it's apocryphal, but I love it. The story goes like this: guy is out on a boat with his friend, having a great time. He says to his friend, man, I'm having such a great time, I'm going to get a boat. His friend asks to borrow $20 -- and proceeds to flush it down the lav. The guy freaks out. The boat owner says, listen, if you're upset over that, then I just saved you a world of heartache. I don't dispute that Berkeley, like all top schools, is capable of arrogance (the extremely polite rejection letter from Harvard still made me smirk: there was a sentence in there that seemed to exist primarily to demonstrate that Harvard men and women do not end sentences with prepositions). But this is the real world. If all it cost to get this admittedly painful lesson is $100, you got a pretty sweet deal.

The bigger issue is levoyous came here from New York, where mocking DC is practically a residency requirement. Not that you're wrong about anything you said.

DC is definitely more expensive than Kent but you can make it work. Rent is really the only killer and if you're truly broke you can commute in from VA. If you end up here PM me and I can send along more if you want.

I failed last year and have had the best year of my life in the meantime. Professor Plum's advise to chill out cannot be understated. I'm still incredibly impatient this cycle, but it's different. Patience is impossible, all things considered, but there's lots to be said for working on the anxiety.

I'm hoping for a PHD-JD and glad to see someone suggest it's a good idea. The feedback I got from POIs I visited with this fall was decidedly mixed -- some thought it was wise for my career prospects; others thought it suggested a lack of academic committment to history; a few thought both.

I got a rejection on a Saturday last year.

I could be wrong as I'm no expert, but it sounds to me like you just had a really good HMO and a not-so-good PPO. The plan I had before the current high-deductible plan I'm on had coinsurance for hospital stays, but copayments for specialists. And I'm pretty sure I've seen HMOs that have coinsurance for specialists. It seems to me the only for-sure difference between the two is that HMO requires you to have a PCP and referrals to see specialists whereas the PPO lets you go outside the network. It may be true that HMOs tend to have stronger coverage for less cost, and I think it is, but it's not at all a rule. You can participate in the exchange even if your employer offers qualifying coverage, you just can't get the subsudies. At issue is whether the university counts as an "employer" when they're giving you a stipend. I'm thinking the answer is yes; from what you're saying, it sounds like that's the case.

CageFree, I'm not sure why everything in a PPO would necessarily be expensive -- isn't the PPO just a description of your network, so costs could vary tremendously depending on what kind of plan you have? I wonder if graduate student stipends count as employment for the purposes of qualifying for subsidies under the ACA exchanges. Does anyone know? I might try and figure that out. Individuals would certainly qualify for fairly generous subsidies if their only income was the stipend, unless they're prohibited from receiving them since their "employer" offers a plan.

About the only people I remember doing them last year were the Harvard kids. I had been doing really well with the wait but am starting to get impatient. Last year I was anxious. This year I'm just impatient.

Mine was for law.