IvanBezdomnii

I think so. Haha, my hopes went up for a second!

I'm slightly divided. I am all for the popping bottles, but I have a conference in Lexington in March, so I'm currently saving my bourbon bucks for that. My current plan is all you can eat sushi if and when I receive my first acceptance. Well good luck to all when the anxiety train starts rolling again tomorrow. I've been enjoying not checking my e-mail every five minutes the past two days.

It had been a frustrating process. Haven't heard back from a single school yet, perhaps in part because I only applied to schools (with one exception) with a 12/15 deadline or later due to working on my thesis at the same time. It seems like last week was a big week for hearing back last year, but as someone pointed out it's different every year. Good luck to everyone. I hope we all get some good news as soon as possible.

I'm anticipating next week being a pretty big one in terms of people hearing back, but who knows how the snow messed up the northeast schools?

Another heads up, FLAS awards are granted by the government not to schools per say but centers. You'll need to apply through those (i.e. The Center for Asian Studies at x University).

This is only well informed conjecture, but I'm expecting the first round of UNC-CH decisions to come out today. Good chance they take a lot of people off of the wait list because their $15k stipends often encourage people to take other offers. Excellent school and department though with a top notch faculty and great history grads.

I've had four of these. NO NO NO! Most schools do not offer them and the numbers were slashed dramatically last year. Schools that do offer them sometimes only offer them for specific languages. You will need to apply for a critical needs language. You will not be able to get one for French, Spanish or German (maybe German at a very very high level). Just wanted to correct that misinformation.

Sub-field differences/Scholarship nomination deadlines?

I think he/she called them, so at least the POI was frank. That's all you can ask. Although I'm as eager to find out as the rest of you, I'm trying to avoid unnecessarily e-mailing or calling anyone. I think it annoys people more than anything. I'll wait until March before I resort to that.

They do two rounds of admits, so again, don't freak out if you don't hear back right away.

Do you know if Harvard does interviews?

Glad to see one other Russianist here. I am still waiting back to here from anywhere. I got an interview request from Penn yesterday, that was the first I heard anything. I have a friend who got accepted into Ohio State last week (I didn't apply there), but that's all I've heard so far. I applied to five other schools (Harvard, Princeton, Toronto, Georgetown, UNCCH) and haven't heard a peep from any of them yet. Any luck on your end?

They were phone calls from the department secretary (for lack of a better word) asking if the applicant was available for a Skype interview on x day between y am and z pm. Don't be too disappointed if you haven't gotten one yet, for all I know they were only for one subfield.

Best news I've heard all day. Thanks. Never write your Master's Thesis the same semester that you're applying to PhD programs, haha.

Really dumb question. If an application must by submitted at midnight on December 15 does that mean I have until 4 hours from now or 28 hours from now? Big difference. Thanks, I'm feeling pretty dumb right now.

^Thanks very helpful! Very surprising that South Carolina of all places never had an application from a UNC grad student before! I will def bring it up to my LOR writers. I hadn't thought of using someone from UG before, but I will now consider it. Thanks again for a very thorough answer.

Hey dwn53, no worries. I would specifically ask the schools you are applying too how they want you to handle this. Your letters of recommendation should also address how you handled your course work, in all likelihood. I guess the one positive for me is that all the schools i'm applying to should have experience with graduate applicants from UNC (it's not a small place) and therefore some precedent has likely been established. But I guess I will cross that bridge when I get to it. I'm just trying to neutralize any potential problems ahead of time instead of dealing with them at the last minute, as I am prone to do.

Hey all, I'm currently a MA student at UNC Chapel Hill. I will be applying for a PhD during the next cycle. Oddly, all graduate programs at UNC use an unorthodox grading system. We use the grades H (High Pass), P (Pass), L (Low Pass), and F (obviously Fail) without + and - modifiers. Also, there is no GPA. I think many schools use a similar system for concentrations in chemistry, physics, and other hard sciences. However, in the humanities, where I fall, this seems to be highly unusual. Another complicating factor is that the professors themselves seem to have no idea what they mean. To some professors HPL simply equals ABC, and others only give Hs. Has anyone experienced a similar situation? Does anyone have any knowledge about how this system might be interpreted by other schools? Or if I should include an explanation somewhere on my application? Another personal frustration with these grades is that on a traditional A-F scale I would have earned all As/A+s and consequently I have been lumped under the same grade with people who would've earned low A-s on that scale. Oh well, this weirdness aside UNC is honestly a great school and my comments shouldn't discourage anyone from applying or enrolling.

I mean it's a versatile field. So you will likely be able to cater to your preferences (political science, policy, history, economics, whatever) within whatever program you attend. Some do pursue PhDs in certain fields. My advice, look what careers graduates of the programs have gone to and contact any program you are interested in and ask about the possibility of pursuing a PhD in poly sci after you graduate. They will be honest with you. Good luck.

You're generally asked specifically what region you plan to focus on. For Russia, a minimum of 2-3 years of Russian language study is generally required. However, for other less commonly taught languages no experience at all is required (although experience in Russian is still a plus for those). As long as it's a financially viable option for you, I certainly encourage you to apply to schools in the US. I don't know enough about schools in the UK to comment.

Hey you can find more info on the UNC program here: cseees.unc.edu Two years of Russian technically meets the minimum requirements for admission to most programs but you may not be very competitive with only two years of Russian language experience (although admission rates tend to be very high for Russian and East European studies compared to other areas of graduate studies). You could express an interest in a different less commonly taught language (Bosnian/Serbian/Croatian, Uzbek, Polish, etc.) which would increase your chances while still giving you the opportunity to study Russian. I will warn you that if you are not an American citizen your chances for funding are very low since most of the funding for this area of study at the masters level comes from the US government. Hope this helps.

Very cool. Do you know where you're going to grad school yet (or are you already in grad school?) I'll admit I don't know much about SWSEEL, the opportunity just serendipitously presented itself. However, I'm definitely excited. Have you been before or have any incites? A past student who is familiar with my proficiency in Russian said I would probably not be below a lvl 7, but I honestly have no concept of what that means, because I'm not sure how they determine levels (well through the placement test obviously, I guess I'm not sure what skill level or score corresponds to each level). Although based on the textbooks, she's probably about right despite the fact that I'm a little rusty. But I'm probably way more excited about this than I should be. I should really be able to hit the ground running when I start my MA in August. Are you living on campus or subletting? I'm looking for a sublet. Renting a room in a dorm comes out to almost $1000/m. Too expensive, although it's probably more convenient to live on campus in a lot of ways. Anyway, I guess I'll see you in June.

Hey, folks. Out of the blue UNC arranged for me to recieve a FLAS to study Russian at Indiana's SWSEEL. Anybody else going?

Hey folks. I got my FLAS even if it wasn't exactly what I was expecting. I applied for Russian at UNC and got wait-listed. But I was offered and accepted a FLAS from Duke to study Romanian. I'll still be going to UNC, but I have to take Romanian at Duke. Even though it wasn't what I was expecting, I'm very happy to be funded and I think a background in Romanian will help my career in the long run and will certainly help me get grants for any future research. I mean how many schools offer Romanian? Should help me stand out in the future. I plan to continue with Russian at the same time and plan to apply for a summer FLAS for Russian from either UNC or Duke. Out of curiosity has anyone here studied Romanian before? I know the basic facts about the language, but not much more than that. Right now I'm trying to brainstorm some research topics where I can use both Romanian and Russian.

cml - I guess you're lucky we're nice people since it's in our best interests to disuade you considering you got an FLAS I'm more interested in pursuing an academic track, likely a PhD in history after this, so the opportunity to work with Donald Raleigh who's one of the best guys in the field was one of the deciding factors. Additionally, the huge amount of relevant resources related to my field was another big factor, they have a great library of slavic and east european materials in addition to a wonderful collection of databases. Personally, another big factor was the opportunity to continue studying Russian. I graduated in 2011 and figured I probably needed to shake off the rust and refine and improve my language skills before I pursue a PhD. Of course, being from the north the weather in NC was definitely not a negative. Additionally, I consulted my undergraduate professors and they all vouched for the program. It has a great reputation. Other pluses that weren't necessarily deciding factors are the fact that Chapel Hill does seem like a very cool place to live. The staff and faculty have been very friendly and accomodating responding to all my questions and concerns. They even extended a deadline on a TAship for me after I got alternate status for FLAS. The program size, as bg13 pointed out, seems to be good. Not too many students. I wouldn't want a program with only 3-4 students, not because of pressure concerns, just simply because being around the same 2-3 other people constantly for two years can be trying. Anyway, the best advice I can give you is just evaluate your specific research interests and see what program best suits your specific interests, it may not end up being the "strongest" school from which you recieved an acceptance. Also, e-mail faculty you are interested in working with at each program you're still interested in and see if they are both willing and availible to work with you. That could heavily sway your decision. Best of luck in making your decision! BTW If you don't mind where did you go as an undergraduate and what year did you graduate?