rosestark

Decision day's tomorrow!  Hope everyone's fall is shaping up to be a great one!

Tax season also brings to mind the importance of keeping your receipts! You can itemize the costs of your move for a possible deduction on your tax expenses.
 
Having moved from DC to Texas in 2013 to do Americorps, I really regret not having done this. Lesson learned! Next time

I agree with the spreadsheet thing. I get paid a small amount of my stipend monthly, but the majority of my money comes in two lump sum payments, in September and in April. This means I have to make the big chunk of money I get in September last for 7 months, basically!! I find that making an annual budget for myself is helpful in understanding how much money I am able to actually spend on certain things (necessities as well as treats for myself) and it does reduce the amount of stress--instead of worrying about whether or not I have enough money for the next few months of rent and food, I have data that tells me it's all okay!
 
What I did when looking at PhD offers was make a spreadsheet that started with the annual stipend offered, then I had lines listing the large expected expenses. I researched the rent market to figure out average housing cost (by far your biggest expense, I think), and then I estimated food costs based on my previous annual budgets. Sure, cost of food varies from place to place, but unless you live in an extremely expensive location, even like a 10% price difference normally only amounts to a couple hundred of dollars per year. I also included other big ticket expenses, like health insurance and if applicable, auto insurance. This can help you determine if the stipend offered at University X in City Y is actually livable or not, and can help you compare two offers from two different cost of living areas.
 
I agree that cooking for yourself, and cooking healthy is really important to save money. I spend about $200 per month per person (there's two of us) on groceries and I cook most of our meals. We can easily feed ourselves on real food at this cost and this works out to something like $2/meal/person. When I look at it this way, I see that going out for dinner can easily cost something like $15-$20 for a meal per person, which is like 7-10 times more expensive than cooking at home! I also have a budget for occasional eating out and social activities with friends of course, but I wanted to point out that cooking for yourself is really inexpensive, even if you get real food and not ramen. If you eat crap like ramen all the time, you might be able to scrape it down to $1/meal/person and maybe this might be necessary over time, but in my opinion, I would rather sacrifice my eating out budget in order to save the extra $1/meal/person to get real food instead of ramen. I also strongly endorse the "cook enough for extra meals" and eating yesterday's dinner as today's lunch is a great plan.
 
Also, I think it's really important to work some kind of "splurge" into your budget, based on your income, even if it's only a small amount. In our first year of living together, my spouse and I realised that when we kept really strict budgets for ourselves, we would be okay for a few months, but then if we ever got a chance to treat ourselves for some reason, we would overdo it and actually spend more money than if we had allowed ourselves small but regular rewards/treats. 

I think it depends on the application (software?) that the school uses. I started but have not submitted all 5 of my apps: 3 sent requests out as soon as I added the recommender's info and they say something like "in progress," as stated above, BUT 2 apps state that they don't send the requests until the application is submitted (to my frustration!). So now I'm rushing to finish those 2 since I told my recommenders that they'd be receiving all these emails...

Hi everyone...this is my first post. Hello!
 
I saw some threads for French grad school applicants for previous years, but not one for this year. Correct me if I'm wrong.  Who's out there and applying to French master's and PhD programs? Which schools? What are your research interests?
 
I'm preparing apps for University of Texas, Tulane, and Vanderbilt--they're my top choices (but very worried I won't get in). I also am thinking about applying to masters programs at 2-4 of the following places: U of Florida, U of Georgia, Louisiana State U...maybe Florida State or University of North Texas...or just maybe Notre Dame or Boston College. [Any thoughts on selecting among those? I haven't seen anyone on this forum who's applying to Southern schools! Hope that means my chances are 100% . Actually I'd love to hear from anyone about their aspirations for, experience with or knowledge of these schools] Though my top choices are those 3 PhD programs, a good thing about getting a master's would be that I'd have those years to refine my research interests and re-apply to my top schools for the PhD - or even decide to go another route entirely. So that's the plan.
 
As for my (admittedly unrefined) research interests... I think my greatest area of interest is religion/spirituality in French artistic expression. I'm also interested in the influence that cross-cultural encounters have had on art & aesthetics (Western vs Eastern aesthetics), AND translation theory! Maybe I could study the reception of translations in foreign places, acceptance of translated versions vs originals for artistic and/or sacred texts - to try to tie it all in. Okay honestly there is a lot I'd love to learn more about. But I'm trying to stay focused here. 
 
Enough about me. What about you?