sankd

Saw your post on Results. Looks like I'm not getting into GW!

Nope. I've met plenty of people who aren't in the six years I lived in the area.

I think my problem with Mt. Pleasant isn't that it's small, but that it is a small town surrounded by drab sprawl, if that makes sense. You drive down Pickard and it's mostly dull strip malls. You turn onto US-127 BUS towards campus and it's the same. The campus itself is alright for this, but you really have to leave town and go east (or west, I suppose. Just not north or south) for some real plant/animal life. That I can't give you a definite answer about, but I will say that the western portion of town (where downtown and CMU are) seems nicer than the eastern side (casino, airport). Mt. Pleasant has two main thoroughfares (Pickard and US-127 BUS). Most of the town gravitates along that axis.

Wow, I had pretty much given up hope. Still not hopeful, but still..

I spent 4 days in Mt. Pleasant last summer, if that's any help. I'm from SE Michigan/Ann Arbor. It's not really much of a college town. The campus is quite drab, though there are some nice new buildings like the library. The surrounding area is really weird because of the Indiana reservation. West of campus is pretty much straight farmland, and east of campus is residential area/strip mall stretch. There is a downtown Mt. Pleasant which is pretty much your standard small town fare. It's not bad, but it's nothing terribly memorable. There's an indian casino in town too, Soaring Eagle. Cost of living should be fine, though. Mt. Pleasant really isn't near anything besides Saginaw/Bay City/Midland. Grand Rapids is closer than Detroit or Lansing, but it's not a straight shot down. If you have any specific questions, let me know.

I'll PM. Congrats!

Accepted into my two safeties! Now I watch them fight it out with funding offers while I await rejections.

I thought about applying to Rice but I didn't think they offered a Middle East field of study. Congrats!

I've been assuming it does. Curious to hear more about Texas, since I think they actually had money too.

I totally agree, but then what else would you write in the letter? Component 1: We are rejecting you. Component 2: Vague form excuse (money, competition, you are not that great, etc.) Component 3: Best wishes in all your endeavors. The only thing is, the more neurotic of us would construe the last component as condescending, even if less so than Penn's 'Someone will love you, I am sure'

I have a job interview lined up. Plan C is in motion. In regards to form letters, how would you write one without sounding cold, condescending, and distant? Maybe a [gendered] maternal 'I couldn't afford to nuture your dreams' [/gendered] instead?

Don't feel too blue! I'm sure something will work out. Meanwhile, another pricey form letter from the graduate school for me. Minnesota! Worst fit of all the schools I applied to, but I'm curious to see if they bothered to admit their first Middle Eastern history student this cycle at all. I decided to change my signature to be more realistic.

Oh yeah, first official rejection of the season! UCSD probably ran out of money.

Did anyone get in for Arabic, I wonder? Maybe they cut the sites in half thanks to Egypt and that made it worse.

My buddy was rejected via email, I think. Personalized, in fact.

I didn't get it either. Congrats to everyone that did, though.

UCSB's website says "Decision Available" but doesn't say what it is. Given that a ME history person was contacted directly about their acceptance, I'm suspecting a likely rejection. Slaving away at NARA reading German microfilm doesn't seem to be quite worth it at the moment.. multiarchival and multilingual, psh! Congratulations to everyone on their acceptances, though!

At least there are documents for regimes to block! Congrats on Berkeley, BTW!

Deep down inside, past the groans about language and multi-archival research, we love them.

Yeah, there have been ME history acceptances at Ohio State and Illinois so far. Outside of a place like Michigan, UCLA or maybe Arizona, one ME/Islamic history student is something to cheer for in an incoming class. Usually we get smashed by the Americanist Horde.

I'm also waiting to hear back from the State Dept. about CLS too. I think hearing back from one place, regardless of outcome, will make things easier in my messed-up head. At least I will know something.

This is my life, exactly.

I wrote two wildly different seminar papers my first year. I decided to build on one of them to make into a MA thesis, especially since I knew I barely cracked into the sourcebase. I went to my advisor last semester, gave them the 35 pages I already finished and wrote up a plan for research. I should be done by April. Of course, if I don't get into any PhD program, I'm just going to take the summer to finish it while interning in DC. Plan B!

Two years of guaranteed funding isn't bad. There could be year-long fellowship opportunities at your university or elsewhere to tide you over between prelims/prospectus and dissertation completion. For example, at my current institution we have calendar-year academic grants that can offer you an extra year of funding. It is very competitive (only about 2 receive it a year) but the possibility remains open. All of my colleagues who have received the fellowship use it during their dissertation-writing stage. Find out what competitive funding opportunites there are at this school, and also consider other outside competitive fellowships.

I would rather go to Jordan anyway, for dialect reasons. I expect Jordan and Morocco to stay on the list, but they'll need a third location (somewhere in the Gulf, maybe?). Alexandria and Cairo seem to be logical exclusions, sadly.