knp

Is Cornell's anthropology department even any better than Rutgers'? I've only just committed to this field, so I don't have a particularly fine-grained understanding of the differences between programs to which I did not apply, but I would have said they were about equal—neither tippy-top (including Cornell) but both very good (including Rutgers). However, I think OP meant not "at Cornell, I do not have a (name-brand) scholarship," but "at Cornell, I do have a scholarship, but it's not as famous as the Fulbright." I don't know how that changes things; if OP has full funding with a stipend at Cornell, I don't think the Fulbright is so prestigious that it should override OP going to their top choice school! But if it's just partial funding OP should go to Rutgers, no question. When evaluating fit, though, I would also caution that you are overestimating how much of a rank difference we have here. Many Ivy graduate programs in many, many subjects are very good but not in the top ten (or whatever) of a given field. They'll almost always be in the top fifty or so graduate programs, but many public universities, including Rutgers, are also in that quality range.

In any graduate program, resources are limited. The question for admissions to any graduate program, then, is what students will make best use of that program's resources? Interviews—no less than essays, to which none of you have objected—are a way for universities to judge which students will gain the most from their program. Any student who claims, without proof, that the moon is made of cheese, and denies all proof to the contrary, will not gain the most from any astronomy program. I am not a lawyer; perhaps you would have an argument if interviews were required for any state-run, "open-enrollment" graduate degree that actually rejected students based on the interviews. However, since no graduate programs are open-enrollment, and all are choosing how to educate a body of students given scarce resources, this is not only a legal non-starter, but should be a legal non-starter. As far as I can tell, the logical conclusion of your argument is that any time a state-funded educational program required a one-sentence essay—or perhaps even filling out one line of one form?—for admission, that violates the applicant's right to free speech. After all, what if the applicant reveals through her speech (whether written or spoken) that she is simply less qualified for admission than other applicants? If you choose not to admit her because of the lack of qualifications she revealed, that's discrimination! Would you also argue that any grade in any class in a state-sponsored universities is a violation of free speech? After all, if a student submits a final paper responding to a prompt that asks students to write about archaeological evidence of early hominid evolution, drawing on at least three peer-reviewed articles from the journals X, Y, and/or Z, with an essay that argues for creationism based only on Biblical quotes, that should be illegal! It's a violation of the student's free speech! The student didn't follow the assignment at all, but no non-dangerous speech should ever have any consequence of any kind. This is both a standard that is completely unworkable and one that goes against any interpretation of the first amendment that has, to my knowledge, ever held sway in legal circles. As mbfox said, the first amendment protects people from legal (especially criminal) consequences for their speech. It does not protect a single person from SOCIAL, PROFESSIONAL, OR ACADEMIC CONSEQUENCES OF THAT SPEECH.

I just got into half the PhD programs I applied to with letters from professors who haven't seen my work for three years, and that's actually low-to-average among people who took time off. Many of my incoming cohort worked for a decade before they applied to graduate schools! Your professors will understand. The project sounded cool! When you got there, it didn't turn out to be. Moreover, the department is changing in ways that will make it harder and harder for you to do your desired research there, which you could neither have predicted nor known. So now you need help finding somewhere that will in fact have a better research fit for you—and "better fit," when true, is the panacea of explanations for transferring between graduate programs.

If you think that, among all the students who have ever been admitted to both departments, 80-100% have historically chosen the Ivy, I don't have a recommendation for what you should do one way or the other. They might find it perplexing to get your email letting them know, but it's your business and I don't have strong advice either way. If the departments usually compete on about an equal footing for students, however—where 20% or more students might normally choose the state school—be quiet and do not tell them. (I mean, don't keep it a secret if it comes up! But there is no reason to go out of your way to let them know.) Why? Because the response, if the departments usually are able to compete for the same pool of prospective students, is going to be something like, "Oh, you're letting us know that you think we're peers with Brown? Yeah, we know."

Although I'm still a procrastinator, I like these. http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-procrastinate.html http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/11/how-to-beat-procrastination.html I've also found that there's a certain level of "I have been completely unproductive today DOOM DOOM DOOM" head-noise that I can't recover from just by getting productive, no matter how much I tell myself that I am now going to sit down right now and do the thing. To short-circuit the DOOM DRUMS, I have to just give up and give myself between two and 24 hours off, depending on how much time I have before the deadline and how long I've been stuck in the loop. These hours are to be spent guilt-free, re-charging and re-setting. I cannot fill those hours with internet browsing, and other, less urgent/important work is limited. Instead, I should focus on making myself food, eating, showering, having tea, maybe calling one family member or friend, and getting a proper night's sleep. TV is sometimes allowed if it's something I'm not going to binge uncontrollably (e.g. the latest episode of a procedural, or the first season of something with eight half-hour episodes). When the four hours or whatever in which I am NOT ALLOWED TO THINK ABOUT THE THING is up, then I get back to it, and the DOOM DOOM is usually quiet enough that I can actually get started pretty quickly.

The best I did at a department where I only applied to work with one person was a waitlist. (And even then I'd made noises about the one other person in the department with even a faint interest in my theme.) The broader approach will probably help!

Honestly, your profile looks very competitive, and that GRE verbal is outstanding for a nonnative speaker. Did you meet anybody during your year teaching Spanish at the US university who could give you more personalized guidance, even if you only chatted two or three times? With a CV and grades like that, I would probably guess that the weakness lay in your statement of purpose and/or writing sample—perhaps your project was too specific, or too general, or you didn't focus enough on fit?

Have you spoken with anyone at CUNY? Have they offered to have you Skype with anybody? What about at UNC? I would lean toward whichever department made more effort to—even if you can't visit in person—get you connected with professors and scholars to talk about living there, the cost of attendance, intellectual environment, coursework, research, everything. You should be talking to way more than just the professor who is the single person most likely to chair your dissertation committee: financial support is really important, e.g., but no professor has really any experience with trying to live in a given area given the support they're offering to PhD students now. (Even if they got their PhD at the institution, things have changed since they started!) So I would try to talk to about three professors and about two students at each institution, whether or not you can visit. UNC is also a program where you will get/have to teach a lot, although it might not be during your very first year, so I wouldn't necessarily make that the deciding factor. I am a little bit less than familiar with UNC history's requirements, but in other fields they are known for being both fairly undergrad-focused and for not having many departmental resources to fund their students aside from teaching, both of which should increase your teaching opportunities. Why are you visiting UNC this weekend, by the way? Is it a lot closer to you than CUNY? I would have thought that, given limited resources, it would make more sense to visit the program towards which you're leaning. There are also varying degrees of difficulty in creating fits around different project, and luckily for you, your topic is one that you should be able to find good fits "around" even if your dissertation chair doesn't fit your topic exactly. How many early USists does UNC have? What about CUNY? Because you're in a field where scholars are fairly plentiful—unlike somebody who might study the medieval Czech Republic, e.g.—I would lean toward whichever university has a stronger early USist group, not whichever has the single closest professor for your interests. I mean, if they line up, that's even better! But I would still argue that if one of the schools has 4-5 scholars of the early US, even if none of them have ever worked on classical reception or even worked on that much politics, you might get better advising than at a place where one scholar is a better match but there's only one other person in your region. Also, does either department have somebody who has ever studied a similar theme in a different time during the United States, or perhaps even in a different region? That would help. And how are the faculty in related departments—are there reception studies people you could talk to in classics, or anyone in English studies who might have touched on this, or in American culture studies, or anything similar? I have no idea what the answers to any of these questions are, but I hope they're a good place to start!

Same methodology as TakeruK. A prospective student walks into a meeting with a new professor, at a visit day that has been going quite badly. Student: "Hello, I'm Student, how are you?" Professor: "Good, busy, how are you?" Student: "Fine! ....... .......... (sobbing)" A prospective student was considering two programs, one at University A (amazing fit) and at University B (astoundingly bad fit). When Student mentioned to a few graduate students that she was leaning towards University A because of its better fit—to the point that B could not have supported Student's desired research project—the current students spent twenty minutes trying to convince Student that "that was a crazy reason not to choose B, because who really cares about fit?" At the final dinner of one program visit, the DGS made a prospective student cry. Student had been sitting next to the DGS, and when he asked what Student was thinking about which program Student would choose, Student mentioned that they was leaning toward going to a related field's program. Student explains that the [related field] department has a great track record of producing people who get [field] jobs, and that 60-70% of Student's potential advisor's PhD advisees now have tenure-track jobs in [field]. "No," he says, "if you go there, no [field] department will even consider your application. You're crazy to think you would ever ever be employed as an academic in your field." Public tears. Ending on a lighter note, a prospective student went to visit a program that was a pretty bad fit, but which Student was still considering. Within the first hour of the visit day, Student learned that of the three professors with whom she could have worked, one had the flu, one had just been denied tenure, and the third had accepted another job. None were on campus, so Student spent most of the visit day reading a novel in Starbucks. Moral of the story for professors and current students, which is luckily quite simple: even if a prospective student is saying something misguided, try to avoid describing them as "crazy."

Will I sound like a mean curmudgeon if I suggest that I didn't like many of the undergrads in my major even when I was an undergrad?

I find it so interesting that you introverts need alone time for this! As a (mild) introvert, in graduate school I expect to have to live with somebody. If I were doing a Loud Job With Lots of Talking—high school teacher, e.g., or customer service—I would need my own place in a major way. But graduate work in the humanities is so quiet and basically just "reading, always, all the time, except for the occasional talking about the reading" that I couldn't. As far as I can tell, I need 30 minutes of speaking with other humans every day or I start feeling very unhappy, and probably 2-3 hours of quiet time. I haven't had a job where I push the limits of my ability to engage with others, but graduate school feels like it's more likely to fall off the "alone" end of the seesaw than the "together" one.

@Pink Fuzzy Bunny Do you mind if I ask how you handled the broader impact stuff? You mentioned struggled with writing it, but three Es is a rousing success!

Yowch are the Ivies high. Public university funding ETA It's awesome for people who get that! It's just a comparison thing...I feel like my likely choice's stipend is fine/good, and then I think too much about how much better it could be. But that's great that some humanities PhDs are being paid properly!

It was a societal impact thing that would have no relevance to any of the actual sciences, only social sciences, which is why it may have been less emphasized for the GRFP. (I'm also exaggerating about "four words": I don't remember how many words exactly, I just know I mirrored lots and lots and lots of phrasing.) I mean, it's fine; it's no worse and somewhat better than any of the other mis-readings you lot have gotten.

Not recommended - social sciences. VG/G VG/F G/G - Shoot, this makes my program decision way more difficult. Sad. - Okay so it's not like I would have won it anyway... - ...but I am SO STEAMED about one of the "good" reviews for my broader impacts!!!! (And also the "fair" review just on principle.) - I rested half of my case for broader impacts on a concept that, admittedly, is only in the GRFP program solicitation briefly, but is all over the NSF website as a priority for their grants, especially for professional research project grants. - Reviewer: "As Concept is not an important impact according to NSF's goals..." - I cited it using exactly the four-word phrase (and copied some of the surrounding language, too), with which it appears in the NSF's own lists of its own goals!!!! What do you want from me!!! If I go to an NSF-eligible program next year, do I have to cite not only that phrase, but cite that it is coming from the NSF, not from my own head??? It's on all the lists of all NSF's recommended broader impacts!!! WUAGHHH. - Oh, also, my project is "notably incomplete," because it doesn't include sources from [population of evidence THAT DOESN'T EXIST]. A VERY FRUSTRATING EXPERIENCE Okay now I am going to go read all the rest of your posts to find out what happened with you!

Thank you! Are you working on a decision yourself?

I still haven't officially accepted, but I'm like 95% sure that I'm going to; two other places are still in the running (splitting the 5%), but Penn was not one.

I just declined Penn, although oh how beautiful their stipend was compared to where I am going! I mean, my place's stipend is still fine, but Penn's vs. their COL was much better.

Bump again! I feel like this year has a slightly low number of entries so far.

@ProfLorax Oh, yeah, that'd do it. I was struggling to make it make sense for any humanities or social sciences discipline, because that's the perspective I was assuming, but the poster didn't have their field listed in their little sidebar thing. They must've been in sciences. That makes so much more sense!

Unrelated to that very nice post, but one thing I've been wondering as a prospective PhD student is why people say you should go into your PhD planning to get an alt-ac job, with a TT job as your secondary/'nice if it happens" goal. (I saw one post on these fora about it yesterday, although I can't find it now, but it struck me especially because I'd seen a couple others before.) The thinking was that many people who professionalized for non-academic careers often did well on the academic job market, but that the reverse was rarely true. Do you all agree? To me, it seemed like weird advice for a lot of reasons, although I admit I have no idea about the issue yet. The main thing that strikes me is that preparing really well for some alt-ac position and preparing really well for a tenure-track job would seem to be mutually exclusive. There are limits to time and energy! Or is that advice for people with limited work experience/straight from undergrad, maybe? I have some professional experience, so I find the idea that I should re-professionalize for a different alt-ac career as my primary goal a little odd. What I want to do in my PhD is spend the next five to seven years preparing to the best of my ability to get a tenure-track job, and at some point if it looks like it isn't going to work out—whether before or after I enter the academic job market—to prepare to go back to some field that wouldn't require extensive preparation during my PhD, beyond what I have already or would get anyway.

Hey! I've decided to be secret about where I'm going, but after PhD applications across three disciplines (yikes!), I'm leaning towards an anthropology option! I think I need to think about it for another week, but I'm very excited.

If AU is willing to have you take 1-2 courses, the cost isn't absurd, you're living in a cheap place given the area, and the courses are offered at a time when you could still have full-time employment after your WaPo gig is up...that honestly sounds like a fine situation to me. If they want you to take a full slate, that's too much and too expensive—I'm thinking night class or weekends. Do not do anything that would prevent you from having a job to pay for the classes! As another option, you could defer a year (FSU)/reapply next cycle (American) and, if you found a paying job, take 1-2 evening/weekend courses both semesters. You could do that either at American or another local university, some of which might have more classes timed to work with a professional schedule. Given that you're employed somewhere prestigious right now, you should be able to find employment somewhere else in DC that could build your resume as much or more than either school options you've got right now. (Unless I am badly misunderstanding the field!) Now, if you end up in one of the many extremely inegalitarian prestigious but unpaid internships around the city, DO NOT pay for classes alongside your work, that's too much money, but I hope you can find something paid. Anyway, I think some of the more "NO" responses were based on the assumption you'd have to move to DC to pursue this plan, which I agree would have been absurd. But since you're there already, if you can fit it around a job, it could be fine.

Nobody seems to think it's weird when idealistic young adults move to New York or LA to spend their 20s trying to make it in Hollywood or on Broadway, even though those industries are far more competitive even than academia. They could have spent those years establishing a career history in something more "sensible," but nobody seems to think it's weird that they'd give their dreams a chance. Film or theater is their Thing. So they go for it! Academia is my thing. Although I wouldn't make half the financial sacrifice my creative-industry friends do to pursue an artistic career, I've been able to get an institution to make a paid, long-term commitment to my training. With that support, why wouldn't I give it a try? You're right, OP, that this forum doesn't have a lot of people who are on the fence about graduate school, at least not who post. (The number of people who are unsure about graduate school but enrolled because of the possibility of a tenure-track job must surely have declined since the recession! One hopes.) But my outlook is perhaps shorter-term than yours was: I'm not going into this because I think a tenure-track position is worth trying out. I plan to try to get a TT job, but even if I end up on the losing side of the academic job market, academia, of which graduate school is part, was worth the attempt.

A trick that works for guilt situations like these is, after you've given the full-ish explanation that it sounds like you want to provide, have ONLY ONE SENTENCE that you repeat every time they try to pressure you to change your mind. "This is what I've decided." "BUT FAMILY." "This is what I've decided." "BUT WHY" "This is what I've decided." Etc. etc. There may be in a tantrum in the middle, but if you sound like a broken record for long enough, eventually they'll get bored cycling through strategies to get more out of you and leave you alone.