[Why do you even want to go to grad school anyway?]

I'm a Psych major, so my junior year of college I had this realization that I would not be able to do anything worthwhile with my bachelors degree & needed to go to graduate school. I started getting involved in research & by some miracle found the McNair Achievement Program at my university & was well on my way.

So originally, I started on this long & arduous journey just because I realized a BS in Psych was pretty much useless, but I think now it's a lot of things unrelated to academia. One big one for me is making people proud. Like one of my very best motivators in life is the thought of my loved ones being proud of me for my accomplishments, & since no one in my family/extended family had even gone to college, graduate school & the idea of me potentially getting a Ph.D. is HUGE to them.

 

Another is definitely money. I come from a low-income family & I'm determined to change my life so I don't have to live the way I have up until now.

 

My last two are pretty average - one being that I want to continue growing as a person & I think graduate school is the best place for that, & the other being that I want to make an impact on the world somehow.

[Regrets?]

I think I regret being so confident. I am a McNair scholar, & I clearly thought that title would have a bigger impact on my applications than it actually did. I have average GPA & GRE scores, which would probably be considered quite low compared to many of you guys, & only applied to Ph.D. programs. I applied to ten schools, nine of which were highly competitive big name schools, known for their excellence & prestige. I also think that since I was in McNair & didn't have to pay application fees, I shot even higher than I normally would have since I didn't have the consequence of paying like $500+ in fees for schools I likely had no chance getting into. Overall, probably a good experience to remind me of my place & that I have to fight REALLY REALLY hard for the things I want. & a good lesson in fate, cuz naturally I got accepted with full funding, & ended up falling completely in love with, the only "normal" school I applied to & the school that was originally very last on my list. So low on my list, in fact, that I almost didn't complete the application!

[Food science graduate programs]

I know nothing about the process or how they're going about it, but I work at the desk for the School of Food Science at Washington State University & I'm fairly certain they're still working on going through applications. Hope that helps ease your nerves a little! :]

[The "rejected" dream]

Even after I got accepted to a program I really liked, I was was still having nightmares about getting rejected from THAT program. I would have nightmares that I was at the interview event again, only this time around it was going horribly wrong & kept getting worse.

[What were you doing when you got accepted?]

Mine is a little TMI but it's the truth & it might be funny to someone.

 

I suffer from recurrent UTI's & was in the middle of a raging one when I stupidly agreed to go to the grocery store with a friend. I was completely miserable the entire time & finally found myself in the bathroom, which is where I ended up checking my email on my phone & seeing that I had been accepted!

[Has anyone applied to HDFS?]

I also got a snail-mail rejection from Penn State. I'm not sure when I got it, but it had to have been sometime over the weekend. I agree - postal service rejection is brutal! That was the first paper anything I've gotten from any school. All I could think was how much of a waste of paper it was, haha. You couldn't have just sent an email?! Sigh.

 

Thanks so much for your congrats and congrats on your acceptance to Oregon State!  And that's great you went to WSU for undergrad!  Do you mind if I PM you some questions about the area? 

Not at all! I would be happy to answer any questions you have!

 

Welcome Congrats on your admission to Oregon State! And among the universities you applied, is there UMD or ISU?

Thanks so much! & nope, neither of those schools. But congrats on your admission to Iowa State as well! Woo! 

[Waitlisted - waiting for your school AND everyone else's]

After getting several rejections right off the bat, & then getting one random program that was REALLY interested in me & ultimately accepted me - I was certain the rest of my schools [really competitive schools that I probably shouldn't even have applied to] would reject me. So when I got waitlisted for a pretty decent program after all that, I was overjoyed, mostly because YAY, at least TWO of my ten schools thought I was worth something, right? But I would imagine getting a waitlist feels a lot different after you've already been accepted to at least one program you really like & are willing to go to if you get no other offers. So, long story short, I feel for those of you who have been waitlisted for your top programs, especially when those waitlists are all you've gotten so far. :[ Best of luck!

[So what age are the ages of all you grad school hopefuls this year?]

Currently 22, will be 23 when I start a program. I thought being young & fresh out of undergrad was out of the norm, but that doesn't seem to be true after scrolling through this thread - there are actually lots of 22-going-on-23 year olds! :]

[What are you listening to?]

I have this playlist literally titled "PICK ME" & is basically a motivational playlist with songs like 'Fly', 'Don't Rain on my Parade', & 'World's Greatest' on it that I've been listening to pretty much all application season. 

But today I decided to switch it up & I'm listening to all the Ron Pope I have in my iTunes.

[Has anyone applied to HDFS?]

Hi guys! I've been lurking around here for a month or more & finally decided it was time to take the plunge & make some friends.  

 

First off, I wanted to say congrats to eaboo316 for getting into WSU! I go there now, as an undergrad - the program is great, & very new. I wish we had faculty doing the type of research I want to do in the future, because I love my current mentor & I also took a grad class this past Fall & loved that professor as well. So good luck to you if you decide to come here! 

 

I'm also applying to HDFS & have been rejected from about half my schools so far. I've been interviewed for two programs, one of which I got rejected from & one of which I got accepted to [Oregon State]. I've also been waitlisted for UW-Madison. It's all so stressful, but knowing that I at least have that one acceptance is such a relief!

 

I saw you were all talking about Penn State, which I also applied to & noticed the slew of acceptances/rejections in the results search. I have not heard from them yet either, but I also haven't checked my mail in a few days. We'll see tomorrow!