davidipse

I've been seeing the same. Part of the award is to relieve you of teaching, while still getting paid, so you can focus on your research. This is why fellowships typically are awarded in the dissertation year, or first year (to allow you to focus on comprehensive coursework).
 
But that's for internal stuff. External money, I would expect, wouldn't take away internal money.

In both of my offer letters thus far it says that they reserve the right to adjust my funding if I receive external awards. I am in the humanities. Mind you, I see you're in California and the schools that have said this to me are Canadian. I know lots of Canadian schools will take internal funding away if you get external but I don't know if they take away the full amount (assuming your external funding matches or exceeds what they were offering) or just part. I have heard - and this is purely hearsay - that because American schools aren't overly familiar with Canadian funding agencies, sometimes they don't bother asking about your other funding and let you hold a Canadian fellowship with internal funding from the American school. Maybe the same applies for Americans coming to Canada? I don't know if that is your situation or not but there are my two cents! No pun intended... although us Canadians did just get rid of our penny this year  

Not a grad phone interview anectdote, but one from undergrad. I remember being so nervous at an interview with a Princeton alum that I said flambé instead of Flaubert. My only advice to you from this is not to confuse your culinary arts with your literary ones

“It’s amazing how many super villains have advanced degrees. Graduate schools should do a better job of screening those people out.” -Sheldon Cooper

Accepted into UPenn! Received a phone call from the DGS!

Accepted at U Michigan Ann Arbor! 
 
I may have accidentally danced my way across campus when I heard the news. This is my first acceptance, and before I got an acceptance...well, the mind goes to dark places. Like, "I'm not smart or qualified enough to be an academic; I'm a fraud; I should give up this fanciful dream of academia and manage a Chipotle" sorts of places.
 
Good luck to everyone else who applied!

Yes, be sure to talk about the unexpected burden that comes along with the rock star lifestyle. You know, the drugs, the endless amounts of women, and the loads of money that no academic knows what to do with. It's an increasingly rare topic that deserves butt loads of attention, due mainly to the increasing number of scholarly celebrities who crack under the pressure. 

Good luck, everyone!

UVA is my undergrad alma mater, and I had nothing but positive experiences in the English department. Charlottesville is wonderful small town too, if you're into that kind of thing.

Par 1:  Good setting of context.  Good introduction to the argument.  Avoid a lot of state of being verbs. Active mode should be most common, with occasional state of being.  Never use the same construction twice.  
Par 2:  Continue using transitive and intransitive verbs rather than State of being verbs, as a rule.
Par 3 should start the second part of your argument.
Par 4 is well thought out.  The same problem exists as in the previous paragraphs.
 
Summary:  Your opening paragraph providing context is appropriate, but make sure you use more active verb constructions.  For each supporting paragraph based on your intro, give a practical example supporting your argument.  Also, you must provide instances when the prompted argument might be true.  Then identify the conditions that must hold up for it to remain true, and finally to give your reasons, already stated above, why the argument will likely not hold up.

I got my first acceptance tonight -- Southern Illinois -- and I'm just insanely happy to have an offer. I had pretty much given up hope, and even though it's not my top choice, it's still a choice and I'm happy to have it. Don't give up just yet everyone who hasn't heard good news; your offer can still come!

"Congratulations, Davidipse! All required questions have been completed and your application has been successfully submitted."
 
That catches me off guard every SINGLE time I check the UVa online app. Can you sue schools for psychological abuse?

I own a hand-crank coffee grinder that was purchased in Germany by one of the world's leading Kant scholars.  I use this grinder to make delicious (fair trade, of course) coffee.  And for me, nothing satisfies like coffee.  My life is probably five or ten percent better because of coffee.  Sometimes I worry about my future, and then I remind myself that coffee is a part of my future.  And then those worries fly away.  Like right now, for instance.  In this world of uncertainty, one thing is certain.  On April 16, I may have no good offers of admission. I may have wasted years of my life and tens of thousands of dollars on this quixotic pursuit of ideals in Massachusetts.  But this I will have: I will have my coffee.

I applied to 7 and found out in the past two weeks that I got into my top two!
 
Washington University in St. Louis for poetry (heard back February 4th)
Columbia University for poetry (got a phone call from Lucie Brock-Broido on February 11th at like 11pm lol).
 
I'm still waiting to hear from Columbia how much money they're going to offer, but it's hard to compete with the full-ride at WUSTL.
 
Good luck everyone

My girlfriend went to Berkeley for a single term but I never visited so I can't really answer but Ithaca has awesome natural scenery.  Beebe lake is gorgeous,  the hikes into the various state parks are amazing and you hike the Finger Lakes trail going through Ithaca and connecting into the APT further east.    I do long runs (10-25km) and it really never gets boring as the scenery is inspiring and refreshing. 
 
If you want bike up the hill then I would suggest looking into something close to the lake front or Cayuga heights-area.   South hill is Ithaca College-area and Townies,  West is just dead ends.   The hill really is the biggest issue into biking but you can always put your bike on the bus and hitch a ride up. 

Of course, it's not as if it's impossible to live there. Ithaca suburbia is far away from, say, living in suburban NYC relative to Manhattan, meaning you have some kind of hours long commute. I just think it's inconvenient compared to other places in town. A 20 minute bike ride to campus in summer is awesome. What's not so awesome is that most of the academic year here is freezing, and waiting for a long time outside for a bus stuck in traffic and/or having to worry about waiting even longer because you've missed the only one for the next 40 minutes is annoying. And sure, you're closer to the malls...but those aren't really very walkable environments anyway. 
 
There's a reason apartments in that area are priced more cheaply for what you get than those in the city proper.
 
 
 
I haven't been to Berkeley but I think I can address some of these desirables in general. From the photos I've seen of B, I'd say Ithaca is comparable if not better in terms of natural beauty (there's no San Francisco to gaze out upon, of course, but there is a similar hill/vista toward a large body of water setup, plus four seasons, which keeps things varied and fresh...and a ton of gorges and waterfalls, something Berkeley does not have).
 
There are a bunch of supermarkets in town, but they generally cluster toward the southwest, far away from campus. There's no real supermarket within an easy walk of the school. And the southwestern grocery stores require a bus transfer to reach from campus as well (another reason why I find living downtown convenient - since the buses converge here, you don't really ever have to transfer, and there is at least a smallish supermarket downtown as well). If you have a car, any of the grocery stores are a fairly quick drive, though. Beyond larger grocery stores, there are plenty of mini-marts, convenience stores, bodegas, etc. all over, and a fairly cheap grocery delivery service called Rosie.
 
Grocery prices vary, but there's nothing spectacularly cheap. If you've spent time in the SF Bay area you're probably used to Trader Joe's, which is cheap and fairly decent quality. You can get good quality groceries in Ithaca, but prices at Wegmans and GreenStar (the local, somewhat smaller, more health-focused version of Whole Foods) aren't as good a value as at TJ's. 
 
In the warmer summer months there's a Farmer's Market that features a ton of affordable (and also a ton of not so affordable) food. It's an amazing experience, actually; it feels more like some kind of gourmet foodie festival than a rural farmer's market (though you can also get everything you'd normally get at a farmer's market there). The market is also fairly distant from campus by foot/bike/bus, but it's only open two days a week anyway, so it's kind of a special trip.
 
Study cafes - Ithaca has plenty of independent cafes but nearly all are small and don't feature much workspace, unfortunately (they're really more like coffee bars with a handful of tables). That said, if you manage to snag a table you can get work done at nearly all of them. Many people I know who like working at cafes swear by The Shop, which is downtown and sells Gimme Coffee (one of the highest ranked coffees in the country that happens to be locally based) but has slightly more space to sit than Gimme's own two cafes in town.
 
There's a cafe specializing in mate downtown on the Commons which has an amazing interior that feels somewhat like a rainforest. It's also run by a somewhat creepy cult and plays annoying elvish pipe music all the time; the place is also closed on Saturdays for the cult's day of rest, which can make it inconvenient. That said, it has maybe the most space to spread out with a coffee of anywhere in town.
 
Cycling - what ohgoodness said; the hill is something you have to consider. I see people struggling up it on bikes, but if you don't want to do this constantly, I would really consider what you want to be able to bike to most often and plan around that. Other than the hills, it seems like it would be fairly easy to bike all over here. There are not many large or heavily trafficked roads at all. 

Congrats! I'm super happy for you! I got good news today too and want everyone to be happy and have hugs, puppies, chocolate, and coffee!

Cloudofunkowing--wow, you are like telling the story of my life right now, right down to the liberal arts college! Yes, I've been working closely with some Lit. faculty during my MFA time--one is a top ecocrit scholar, and on the poetry side our faculty are very involved in the ecopoetics movement as well, so I've had the pleasure of seeing my creative and scholarly pursuits feed each other. And congrats on UT! I've been looking at Heather Houser's work there and thinking about applying to UT next year. I'm planning to apply to mostly straight Lit programs and throw USC's creative writing/lit program in there as well b/c my department has contacts there and I've been impressed by the work I've seen come out of there. 
 
 
 
davidipse--yes, UCLA is currently my dream school. They infused their environmental humanities program with 4 great hires (one of which is following me on academia.edu, is that nerdy to care about?). And I'm looking at Michigan and Berkeley too. Davis and Berkeley actually co-hosted the first-ever ecopoetics conference in 2013 and it was incredible so it seems like things are really moving at both places in terms of bridging the creative/critical divide via ecocrit. I see Berkeley and UCLA are BOTH on your accepted list--what's your field? I'm interested in how you could decide between two incredible schools.
 
Glad to hear I'm not the only one out there, too! Thanks for the info!

I used Manhattan prep almost exclusively, and would highly recommend them. They have vocab flashcards (basic and advanced sets) and also a couple verbal strategy guides. As a note, each strategy guide gives you online access to 6 of their full tests, which is a pretty good deal for 20 dollars. So you could pick one in an area you want to focus on and still benefit from full test practice.

http://www.manhattanprep.com/gre/store.cfm

The diversity of opinions on rankings held among faculty probably reflects—more-or-less, approximately, [qualifier], [qualifier], [qualifier]—the diversity of opinions held among hiring committees, since these are primarily composed of faculty members.

PBR

No acceptances yet, but I thought I’d share some positive vibes (even at the risk of veering into sickening sentiment):
 
To be certain, this is a anxiety-producing, sleep-losing, self-esteem destroying, and emotionally wrecking process. I’ve said on here a couple of times that I just don’t know if I could do this again if I don’t get accepted. That being said, however, this afternoon I had my moment of clarity and comprehension.
 
I'd sulked up to campus feeling the pains of yet another implied rejection. I didn’t want to see anyone, I didn’t want to talk to anyone, and I most certainly didn’t want to put on a brave face for a group of college sophomores who just wouldn’t understand why their teacher hadn’t been as “zippy” as of late. But I went to class anyway and I smiled and I started in on a new lesson that I’d never taught before--and my students responded. They loved it. We laughed, we debated, and we learned. I realized that I feel more at home and more like myself in the classroom than I do in any other context. I walked out of that room smiling because my students were smiling and because I was genuinely happy over something so silly as an effective lesson plan.
 
And now, in this moment, I couldn’t care less that I may never become a tenure-track faculty member or that I might have to spend another $3000K applying to PhD programs next year. It just doesn’t matter because even though I’m a lowly Master’s student who didn’t get into Berkeley or Duke or maybe anywhere else this year, I still get to wake up every single day and do what I love.
 
For that reason, all of this temporary agony is so, so worth it. 
 

I was wondering which adult beverages all you applicants out there prefer as a personal prescription for stress management (for those of you who partake in the use of intoxicating beverages, that is).
 
I find that when I'm at a medium level of stress, I go for craft beers. When it gets to be really bad, I go straight for the overproofed bourbons. 

I just heard back from UC Davis! I got accepted into their Creative Writing Program for fiction!! This is the first time I've heard back from a school, so I'm feeling really optimistic. I just hope this isn't some weird and twisted trick. 

I just finished reading Joan Bolker's Writing Your Dissertation in 15 Minutes a Day: A Guide to Starting, Revising, and Finishing Your Doctoral Thesis and found it immensely clarifying and helpful. I haven't started a dissertation or master's thesis yet, but for what it's worth, I did do an undergraduate honors thesis, and wish I had read that book back then.
 
If you don't want/have time to read the whole book (it's actually rather slim: 184 well-spaced pgs.), here are my notes/summary (some of them redundant) I wrote while reading:
 
 
-       Write 15 mins a day, everyday, at least.
-       Write at every stage of the disst.
-       Take own work habits as seriously as the disst topic/material.
-       Write about these habits: what does and doesn’t work
-       Choose a topic that matters to you persnally as well as professionally.
-       Take notes in class. Rewrite notes for dissertation.
-       There are going to be dark times, inevitably. Write during/through the dark times.
-       I don’t have to read only what I’m writing my dissertation about. Or, I don’t have to write my disseratation about everything I’m reading.
-       Write about advisor meetings right afterward; not just disst. related, but relationship related.
-       How best can you use other people’s talents and input?
-       Seek what you need, not what you ought to need.
-       How do you start writing? First you make a mess, then you clean it up.
-       ”Park on the Downhill Slope”: near the end of each writing session, summarize, state unanswered questions, and sketch out possible future paths. This jump-starts the next writing session.
-       ”Write first” (before doing other big things in the day).
-       ”Choose a work style that suits who you are, not who you’d like to be; do not try to create both a dissertation and a new working style at the same time.”
-       Write about the problems you’re having with writing your disst.
-       Can each paragraph be summarized into a sentence? If yes, then you have the para’s central idea; if not, it has too many ideas to be covered in a single para.
-       Make a realistic, tentative time-table.
-       Set easy goals and generous deadlines at first, and reward yourself upon their completion. The point of these is not so much to improve the work as improve your working habits.
-       “Pay close attention to who you are, not who you might like to be.”
-       Writing is writing; if at a certain point you can’t write your dissertation, write anything (temporarily).
-       Try to end a writing session on beginnings, so you don’t have to begin a session at the beginning.
-       “Write one day at a time.”
-       Glorified proofreading VS. Revision
-       Advice for Advisors: “The fundumental principle of dealing with students in the midst of their dissertations is to assume paranoia.”
-       Advice for Advisors: “Don’t write anything on his dissertation draft that you wouldn’t feel comfortable saying to his face.”

Lets be honest, this may be a necessary option for many of us even AFTER we finish our Ph.D's.