music

Thanks, and huge congrats on Stony Brook!

I don't know really, I assumed that I'd be getting straight rejections so just applied to my 5 top places, thinking I'd take any of them in an instant. Still feeling the same way, but well...Chicago kind of has everything...

Beside myself with joy. The Logan Centre is stunning, the whole university looks like Hogwarts, the new library is like something from the future, I had the best time when I visited over the summer, and *the* guy in my field teaches there. Hoping to fly out for the prospective student day, and already looking at housing options

So UChicago emailed me at midnight and I'm holding them responsible for my lack of sleep... I'm gonna get my PhD!!!!! :D

Congrats!

Messaged you Wait-listed at Stanford... Really wanted that one to work out...

Another interview invite today: Penn! So far 3 interviews and 1 acceptance And yet to hear from 3 more.

Stanford Skype interview on Friday. Terrified the South African Skype connection will fail on me (I'm on a conference/lecture recital tour right now, such stressful timing). Also HOLY CR@P I GOT AN INTERVIEW!!

That feeling when your academia.edu webpage lists viewers from Providence...

Thanks Karajan Cambridge are apparently contacting all applicants in the New Year, so I can stop checking the online portal every day and forget about applications altogether for at least a month. Who else is submitting this year? Seems very quiet...

First offer came through 4 days ago, before my second reference was uploaded. KCL baby Good to know I will be going *somewhere* next year, and Kings is right on my doorstep, so it's a great option!

Got an email with this as the preview: "This email is to notify you of a new message or decision regarding your application to the at King’s College London. " Choked on my dinner. Unnecessarily. And so it begins.

Have done 5/7. Went to submit Brown and my card got declined due to lack of funds. I knew applying to grad school was expensive but still...

They won't even look at your apps til January IDK whether it works the same for schools, but Fulbright still lets you log in after you've submitted and access the recommender page. You just can't change anything else on the app. Nice job getting everything done ahead of time! I'm getting there. SoPs uploaded, 2/3 letters submitted, 1 writing sample uploaded, the other in its final edit, CV ready, GRE scores sent, and off to give my 2nd conference presentation this weekend. Even if I get 5/5 rejections, I learnt a *lot* from this process and would feel confident to do a 2nd round. Once the US apps are gone, I have 2 UK schools to deal with and then I'm taking a holiday!

I am, I suppose, *diverse* in terms of ethnicity, religion, nationality and educational background, I just don't see the need to explain or justify myself. I figure if it's relevant to my studies then it will be evident in my other application materials. I wouldn't have even thought about being a minority in those ways until just now, that's how little it impacts upon my studies and daily life, so I don't want to misrepresent myself. Besides, as an ethnomusicologist, diverse has a very different meaning than it might in straight-up musicology.

Meh, I am perhaps not diverse enough but was thinking less. I doubt the music department care all that much, they're surely going to select on the basis of your ability first and foremost. I figured diversity statements are a nice way to pull in extra funding, but since everywhere I'm applying provides full tuition and a stipend, it makes little/no difference... I'm also really against the whole sob story thing, and would rather be assessed purely on the strength of my actual academic potential. That's just me though. So I awoke today to a very creepy email from Brandeis offering an application fee waiver based on my GRE scores, and they somehow know *exactly* my area of interdisciplinary interest. How???? Their music department is not strong in my area but they have another MA joint degree course which is, and would set me up very nicely for future PhD study elsewhere. Anyone got an opinion on Brandeis and/or applying for an MA outside of music? (ETA: my profile pic gives away my specialist area )

Bleugh, well I decided to apply this time around, have got my letter writers on board, and am editing two kinda-sorta decentish writing samples. The SoP is just such a gross thing to write. It makes me cringe inside. I think I'm too self-depricatingly British to write it. I'm also going to have a go at Fulbright (lol) so my first deadline is November 14: 6 weeks today, and I'm out of the country at conferences for almost half of that time. Guess I'll be taking my application materials to some funky foreign lands with me! Anyone else getting further along with the process?

I'm also on the fence about applying this year. I just have no idea what the standard is and wonder if I'm just completely kidding myself that I'll even get into an MA program. I'm very overwhelmed with my complete lack of knowledge about *anything* music-related right now, and at that cr@ppy stage where instead of studying making that better, it just seems to emphasise how much I don't know. Recurring thought process of September has been 'maybe if I take 2 years off to read then I'll be ready to apply' -> 'that's why you need to apply, so that someone will pay for you to survive while you do that reading'. (This might be the looming conference paper deadline talking, or the lack of sleep, or the fact that I just quit a well-paid job which was going to pay for applications to focus single-mindedly on my studies which leaves me unable to, ya know, pay for applications...) (Out of interest, how do people actually fund this stuff? You know, people who are in school full time and whose parents can't support a $1000 application process? Seems kind of elitist, almost.)

Mine were as follows (and yes, I did a lot of tests and relatively little studying which paid off for me): Magoosh score predictor: 150-155Q, 160-165V Magoosh test 1: 153Q, 159V Magoosh test 2: 155Q, 157V ETS paper 1: 158Q, 167V ETS paper 2: 160Q, 168V ETS power prep 1: 160Q, 163V Real: 158Q, 165V, 5.0 Magoosh definitely presents harder material than you see on test day.

Awesome info, thanks Counterpointer! Still totally confused about whether to pay a bunch more application fees for programs which don't guarantee full funding. Since I can't get loans or work properly on an international student visa, full tuition plus stipend is the only way I'll go to grad school. These application fees are no joke. Even with just the six I'm definitely shooting for, I'll have shelled out over £1k in total. Plus the £2k I spent travelling to visit schools over the summer. How do people without jobs manage to afford this process??

Do any MA programs offer the possibility of full funding? Had a look, found none, thinking that if my shockingly optimistic choice of schools all reject me I might be better off getting an MA here in the UK...or to put it bluntly, I'd have no choice.

Thanks! I was a little disappointed with the quant, since so much of it was geometry which is my weakest part, but happy with verbal. That's brave of you to juggle all parts of the ap at once. I am taking on one at a time since I'm in my final year of college, double majoring in musicology and performance, and also have 12 violin students plus school academic music teaching. There isn't room in my brain for any more than one bit of the ap process at once. Visits done, programs picked and GRE taken, now it's on to SoP while writing my conference paper. Hopefully by the time school starts back in mid-September I'll only need to clean up my two chosen writing samples and get LoRs. It'll still end up being a mad rush though, right?

Took my GRE today - so glad that's done. Got respectable enough scores of 165V/158Q. Looking forward to focussing on the bits of the application which I'll actually enjoy now! Umm after I've done my first conference that is... I'm not sure what you're *meant* to say in your SoP but I'm just being totally honest with how defined my current research is. My potential dissertation topic is pretty specific, but I have strong secondary interests which I'll talk about. In terms of writing samples, I intend to explain in my SoP why I selected the ones I sent, and how they relate to my research. Being a performance major I totally get how frustrating it can be to have a limited choice of papers to choose from :/

I'd love to hear what kinds of writing samples people are sending in. Just the titles, or whatever - I'm curious to see what kind of variety there is. Is anyone writing something specifically to send, as opposed to using a pre-existing paper?

Disagree to some extent. A poor GRE score implies a lack of willingness to study for the test (since I'd say anyone willing to truely put in a lot of time can do well enough), which is indicative of work ethic and, ultimately, strength of desire to go to grad school. I'm guessing there are a lot of seemingly pointless and/or less than enjoyable hoops to jump through during the process of getting a PhD alongside the fun stuff, and being able to apply yourself to succeed in such circumstances is a skill demonstrated aptly by getting a decent GRE score. For example, some of us will need to study for more language exams than we might feel is necessary during our PhD career (not me, but say an Americanist doing ethno, who in some schools would need three additional languages...). The study process involved there would probably be similar to that required to do well on GRE maths. I guess the more I study for the test, the more I appreciate what a good way it is of weeding out a lot of applicants with minimal effort. Which is certainly making me work a lot harder.