Neist

I've had mine for three years and I have no complaints. Still running strong. Mine is surprisingly sturdy.

Is this person still your friend?

I think the rules get fudged a bit if you have a really good excuse to fudge them, but you need more than just a desire. Also, these rules don't apply to graduate students. It's not as bad as it seems, but it is annoying to incoming freshmen, I imagine.

The Univ. of Oklahoma forces freshmen to either live in the dorms or with their parents. Often the latter is not possible. A lot of students end up cheating the system here by claiming they live somewhere when they don't, or their parents rent an apartment and the student claims they live with their parents. Also, it doesn't help that the housing options available to freshmen are far from the cheapest options. It sort of sucks. Good thing I'm a married adult! I get to bypass a lot of these asinine rules.

Sorry for not getting to this response sooner! To be honest, I'm not sure. I've never rented furnished apartments in the area, so I'm not sure if 700 would be sufficient. Kraettli, the university-owned apartments I live in (and highly recommend) are 750 a month furnished, but the 750 is all-inclusive. There's no additional utility costs. Cable TV, internet, electric, trash, garbage, etc. are all included. However, you can find quite a few apartments in the 500-600 range, and some are small enough that buying furniture for them might be affordable. If you want some specific recommendations for very small, cheap apartments. Send me a pm, and I'll see what I can find. You're probably going to have to use laundry facilities in that price range. There's definitely some apartments that have laundry machines inside each unit, but it's the exception, not the rule, and those apartments are usually more expensive. Even so, all but the cheapest apartment complexes typically have private laundry mats that are only accessible to tenants. Commuting to Moore or OKC is actually pretty easy, but would I do it personally? Nope! I hate driving. I'd lose 1 to 1.5 hours a day commuting, and that's time that I could spend doing homework, studying, or spending time with my family. Additionally, if you commute, would you drive to Norman, stay all day, then drive home? If you're in Norman, you could travel back and forth to campus several times a day, if necessary. Living outside of Norman is possible, and I know people who've done it, but I wouldn't claim that either choice is necessarily better than the other. Living out of Norman will be cheaper, and being in Norman will be more convenient. It's a personal, value proposition. All the areas you asked about in Norman are nice. However, these areas are shopping districts, so traffic can get heavy periodically. The areas in Moore are similarly nice, but traffic in Moore can be considerably worse. Moore is a stereotypical suburb, so at the end of a workday there's a lot of cars going through that area because people often go shopping after work. If it were me, I'd look into buying furniture, but I realize that's considerably more expensive. If I were single, I doubt I'd need much. If I were to buy a car after moving from another country, I'd consider visiting a car dealership and see what used cars they offer. There's quite a few very large dealerships in Norman. You could try to find a car off Craigslist or Autotrader.com, but you risk getting screwed, and if I were relocating from another country, I'm not sure if I'd want to take on that sort of risk. However, I'm pretty paranoid about that sort of thing. I'm sorry if some of these answers are kind of vague! If need any specific clarifications, let me know, and I'll be more than happy to help! I like feeling useful.

I would definitely write an apology. I'd be terrified if someone did that to me. I'm glad I don't have friends. Haha.

Social workers definitely don't get the appreciation they deserve. It's unfortunately rather loveless work. It's sort of similar to police officers. A lot of people really hate police officers, but it's a pretty difficult job.

Interesting! That's good to know! Either way, it's a very low-paying field. Libraries are similar, but to be competitive for academic jobs, two master degrees are desirable. Ugh. I think I'm pretty blessed to get into the program I got into.

I know, right? It's one thing if a person want's to become an engineer with a graduate education. But what if I wanted to be a social worker? I'm not sure how social worker licensing works in the UK, but it requires a pretty beefy master's degree in the US. They certainly won't have that large of potential earnings. Yeah, I can't fathom being more in debt than 40k. I've done the math, and just doesn't come out positive. I don't think I could let myself take out 90k in debt unless I was graduating with a very lucrative degree, like engineering. Eh, I figure the college experience is waiting for me in graduate school. I didn't have much of a college experience as an undergraduate, either.

I think it's normal to have some apprehension. It's a big decision, after all! From what you've written, it sounds like you've made the right choice. And although I don't know your discipline, it's always possible that you can converse with scholars from Duke via correspondence. In history, this is not necessarily uncommon. Specialty circles can be small. I'm not expert, but I think you're fine.

You're attending Harvard, correct? I'm sure there'll be opportunity to take out loans. Expensive area, it is! If you ever need any basic advice on loans from a non-bias source, feel free to send me a message at a latter point. I'm unfortunately well-versed.

Same. There's no guarantee that you'll get into any program next year, even if you improve your application. Take the offer and run!

Wow. Congrats on doing that! I think most of us aren't so lucky.

My student loans have actually beefed up my credit moderately. I have pretty good credit. If you have any loans, you might consider running a free credit report in order to see your score.

Finished The Soil Will Save Us. It was okay, but it wasn't very engaging, at least to me. Tried getting into Double Entry, and it's very dry, even if I find it topically interesting. I think I'll have to ration it over time. Decided to start Obsessive Genius: The Inner World of Marie Curie next. It's a short one, so it should be a quick one.

I agree! Besides, if you were going to grad school for the money, you probably wouldn't be studying the humanities. We're here for little reason if not for our passion for study. You should go somewhere where you'll be your happiest.

I think it's normal. It's a big decision! It's difficult to make such an important decision casually. In fact, I think it'd be odd if it wasn't.

I've managed to live without a credit card. I'm too poor to take on more unnecessary debt! In the past I've simply taken out small subsidized loans and put them in a rainy day fund for unexpected expenses. I guess after graduate school I might have to modify that strategy.

Well, I use bibliographies and data analytics to do historical research, so I'm basically a library science person. My methods are library science, but my products are historical. I need to beef up on my data analytics skills, though. I think I'm going to take a few MOOCs this summer.

Yup, or at least is how it works from my experience in the history of science and STS circles. Even if they were worth looking at, I'm not sure if formalized lists exist.

I'm not sure what proper etiquette is during a situation like this, but I'd ask the chair before accepting, assuming you had their offer in paper. What's the worst that could happen? The chair says no? I'm not sure if they could easily or legally rescind the offer if it's already in writing, but I'm not an expert in such matters. My two cents.

Have you recently contacted CMU about the status of applications? Maybe it's worthwhile to send them a email if you haven't recently, considering it's the 11th hour.

I'd wait until the 14th then accept the offer at GA Tech, assuming I hadn't heard back from CMU by then. I'm sure CMU knows that the deadline for most offers is the 15th of April. Also, an offer given is better than a potential one. Would you be okay with the possibility that, if you did hold out for CMU, you'd have nowhere to go in the Fall? If you pass on GA Tech and you get rejected at CMU, it might be the case.

I'm spoiled. I live in university housing so I only have one housing-related bill per month. The only other bills I have is cell phone and car insurance, both of which automatically debit.

Fun reading, go! If not already obvious from my posts in this thread, I try to get as much fun reading in as I can, or at least what I consider fun reading. I'm more cultural historian than anything, and my interests definitely border closer to popular culture. I tend to enjoy for-mass-consumption books because they let me view the perception of certain topics through a popular lens. I just finished Hatching Twitter and now I've started The Soil Will Save Us by Kristin Ohlson. It's a relatively short audio book at the speed I listen, so I should finish it today. Will probably start Double Entry: How the Merchants of Venice Created Modern Finance afterwards.