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TheGnome

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Everything posted by TheGnome

  1. Good points above. I will try not to be too repetitive. I can't say I was hugely successful this cycle, though I think I did fine so far. 1) My previous cycle wasn't last year. I have a better grad GPA and some stats courses this time around. I think stats courses (and good grades on them) helped. 2) I have a better GRE with a full quant score. However my previous scores were good too, so I am skeptical whether this changed much. 3) New set of letter writers. No idea whether this changed anything. I am sure they were very good, but than again most people's are. None of them were big names. 4) New stuff on the CV, like conference presentations and a few relevant items. Very skeptical if that matters at all. 5) New SOP, new research interests. Much more familiar with the field this time around. Everyone says a good SOP is very important but I think the key to write a good SOP is about doing your homework and familiarizing yourself with the literature in your area of interest. If you know what kind of questions are being asked in the literature, what kinds of tools people use to address them, where the gaps are, what the debates are etc. it shows in the SOP. Maybe not directly, but if you know your stuff, people who read your SOP will know that you know your stuff. Or to put it more accurately, they know that you did your homework, and they need people who do their homework. The rest of the "read your SOP 120312 times, make others critique it etc" suggestions are really more about toning than substance. Both are necessary, but the former is ultimately more important - at least that is what I think. This cycle I believe I was more successful in this respect. - I didn't mention anything about applying again and I didn't ask committee members for ways to improve my application. I can also take PMs a la jeudepaume
  2. M stands for mygrotianmoment. Everyone knows that. Pfft
  3. First, CONGRATS to Columbia people. You rock! Both are important, no doubt, but subfield ranking may be more important depending on the case. For theory, subfield ranking is definitely more important given the significant disparity between subfield - general rankings of many top theory places. Obviously, rankings are rankings, so both are as important as one should take rankings seriously. First of all CHYMPS is supposed to be a derogatory term for the kind of ranking-obsessed elitist culture in our discipline. The CHYMPS schools were, I guess, the poster child of that, being the "top" ones in terms of rankings, while the ranking craze is obviously rampant everywhere not just in those schools. So there is that. C used to be Chicago when this term was coined first. Chicago had an amazing program (still a great school but, you know, it used to be AMAZING). After Chicago's apparent decline, it became increasingly unclear what the "C" stands for. There is no answer, nor there is a consensus. Columbia, Berkeley and Cal-tech are all great programs, and no-one would be surprised if C stood for either of them. However, the very fact that people are fighting over the letter C in CHYMPS is quite ironic and a bit self-defeating. (I am not referring to you guys, you don't have a dog in the fight yet)
  4. While I applaud IRTheoryNerd (and her/his very confused deer) for stepping in, I think filling this form out when your cycle is over / very close to being over is a good idea to provide the maximum benefit to future folks - especially since it is not possible to edit your posts after a short time period. Thanks veritaserum for starting the thread.
  5. The anxiety about grad school decisions is apparently so insurmountable that no one cared about the impending Ragnarok, the Norse apocalypse. By the gods people, we are talking about the appearance of the World Serpent, the end of the world as we know it! By Odin's beard, what has the world become! No? Anyone? *sigh*
  6. I believe none of the points you raised above (apart from "ugh" I think, I don't know, I am a foreigner) are necessarily contradicting my position. So.. Road trip for the win! And props to James for the idea!
  7. 1) Not doing it != finding it inappropriate and weird. There can be a multitude of reasons why someone might not want to participate in the trip, which may include things like "a dude I don't know" factor. 2) Finding it inappropriate to do it yourself != finding it inappropriate being asked. I think James' question (and my comment) pertains to the latter, not former. Though I will admit that my comment may have been a tad bit too harsh
  8. If someone from my prospective cohort offered that to me, I would be game. In fact, I'd say, anyone who thinks this is weird and inappropriate is probably not someone you would like to go through the agony of grad school with. So I would experiment away.
  9. Speaking of Nords, did you guys hear that RAGNAROK is THIS SATURDAY!!!
  10. Hopefully this is the case, but it wouldn't be wise to rely on that. I don't think you are, but in case someone reading this thread does. The reasoning may simply be that they think you are a smart student who would be a good addition to the cohort and that your interests will kind of sort themselves out in the years to come. This line of thinking does not take into account the student's best interests and it will be the student who will bear most of the costs in the end. You simply cannot know which one was their rationale based on the fact that they accepted you, so you have to pry information from the folks over there.
  11. I have just spent exactly 4 minutes, staring at the screen blankly and trying to understand why the heck schools would talk about the pdf of their enrollment figures with a recent admit. Time to go to bed? Affirmative.
  12. Sure; if by mixed methods you mean formal + quant, NYU can be a great place!
  13. Oh I thought it was supposed to represent IR theory (I kid)
  14. Do not want to come across as bragging but I think this info might be useful for someone out there. I just declined an offer from Pitt. Their admission letter said "...we would greatly appreciate knowing your decision as soon as you make it. We have a number of highly qualified applicants on our waiting list that we cannot accept until we have a better sense of the composition of our incoming class." So at Pitt, I suspect that there might be a more direct link between people declining offers and others getting in from wait-lists. You know, at some places, especially when the money is a bit tight, schools may not want to play the "accept Z number of people and expect X to come, give or take Y" game and may opt to remain on the safer side. Just saying. Oh and IR subfield.
  15. Congrats guys! Northwestern is a great program especially for theory, congrats!
  16. I just visualized a very fat lady with a viking hat yelling at me: "YOOUUU GOT REJECTEEEEDD FROM STANFOOOORD!!"
  17. Nope no Stanford today. I mean, realistically, there is no point for me to even wait for Stanford. Still, I just want to be put out of my misery and concentrate on my current options and be happy.
  18. So far, many schools have released their decisions and the remaining ones will come very soon. Given the circumstances, I thought opening a thread where the "already attending" users can out themselves for us newly admitted folks in an easy-to-access manner would be a good idea. In Grad Cafe we have the good fortune of having a number of supercalifragilisticexpialidocious people who keep providing us counsel and extending help in reducing the uncertainty of this process from the other side of the fence. We have seen a number of them inviting us to nag them about their current institution in the main thread and elsewhere. However, these messages tend to get lost in the monstrous main thread, and can be difficult to track down. So if you are one of the "already attending" folks, who do not mind sharing your institutional affiliation and are OK with Grad Cafe hopefuls nagging you with questions, please drop a note. This way we can know who to contact when we have questions about your school. Let's say graduate students only - for the faculty members have their own thread. Also let's not turn this thread into a chit-chat venue for individual schools.
  19. So everyone is not entitled to their opinions then? I thought I was entitled to mine! Damn. Now I am curious who is entitled to my opinion..
  20. What a bizarre, bizarre process this is for those of us on this side of the fence. However many times you go through it, you can never get used to it. You have the memory of it being exciting/painful/stressful, but it fools you again when you have to relive it. I am pretty sure that in the future, humanity will find a way to tap into all that energy released by the emotional outbursts of PhD hopefuls during the application season.
  21. Claiming a Notre Dame acceptance. In case this helps - Seems like a form e-mail. Funding etc. info came attached. IR subfield. Oh also, I didn't interview with them, just got the acceptance. So if you didn't get an interview that apparently doesn't mean anything.
  22. While I was posting a Princeton reject, I got another one from Michigan.. what a day
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