FaultyPowers

YES, I'm applying to Berkeley as well. I have no clue for the personal history. Just... none. Meh.

Me toooo!! I know what I'll be doing ALL weekend.

I agree with that in theory....but I am in my thirties, with an MA already and just want to get ON with this process. I'm not going to pay tuition, but beyond that I'm open to a range of possibilities!

I'm not feeling great about it but I think those sweetheart funding deals are too few and far between to expect, particularly in bioarch. There just aren't enough programs and the ones with the best funding (looking at you Vanderbilt) are in places (looking at you The South) that I'm not willing to live. From my understanding, which is limited, funding is not guaranteed and varies year to year, but there is some sort of structure in place. Looking at the results board it seems that most admits have been funded around 17 or 18 a year. Which isn't brilliant but I'd be fine with it. This is my third round of applications, so I find myself much less picky about funding.

I'm applying there too!

I am!

I'm not even sure you have time to apply at this rate!! The jury's still out on whether I'm even done yet!

Oh but the blunders continue! 5. Give the names, phone numbers, and emails of your Letter of Recommendation writers You diligently list your three recommenders....twice, since you have to fill out the application a second time so as to be able to actually submit an SOP which perhaps should have been an autobiography instead. You click submit and brim with pride over a job...done. You email your letter writers "Hi Dr. Blahdiblah! You should have an email from OSU now!" and go to bed. You wake up and check your email to find three emails from three Dr. Blahdiblah's informing you that no, they have NOT received any emails from OSU at all. You fly into a mug smashing rage and email the website's tech support. Oh! They email back. That's an issue for the grad school! So you email the grad school and OH! they tell you. That's an issue for tech support! A mystifyingly arbitrary 32 hours after your initial submission, you get an email telling you that you need to make an entirely new student account with OSU...despite not actually being a student yet...so that you can set up your letter of recommendation writers. Because apparently the information you listed on the application was for nothing, went nowhere, and may or may not even actually exist.

Hello all! I thought I would inject an element of humor into this awful process and start a thread about the logistical/technological blunders we encounter while applying to these programs. Other than being a place to vent, it could also end up being helpful to people who encounter the same issues. I'm pretty sure Ohio State is the earliest deadline (for fellowship consideration), so I'll just share what I've experienced. Good luck out there! The Ohio State Blunders: 1. Scans of official transcripts must be uploaded! No problem! I'm well prepared, so I've already made PDF files of these guys. Except that they want scans of the front AND BACK of each page. And of course I don't have those, or the originals anymore, so it becomes a two-day errand of going to my old schools and buying a whole new set of transcripts. 2. List previous schools and upload transcripts! Ok, front and back pages scanned, transcripts uploaded....application won't save. Fine, I don't need you to save, I'll just submit...application won't submit. Error messages that reveal nothing about the actual source of error. Through a two hour process of trial and error I finally figure out that if you went to the same school for your MA and your BA, and you list them separately, you break The Ohio State. So you have to list your start date for undergrad and your end date for grad school, making it look like you've been in the same school continuously for the past decade or so. Not a good look, but that's cool, at least the application saves now. 3. Upload your statement of purpose! Don't look for the "Upload statement of purpose" button though, because you won't find it. What you'll find is a request for your "autobiography", that should be three pages long. What you'll need to keep in mind, however, is that buried deep within the Anthropology pages is zero mention of an autobiography, but a requirement that you upload a statement of purpose that is two pages long, max. You will default to the anthropology request, and take your chances. So you upload your statement and then decide you want to make a few last minute changes, now that you've figured out that whole transcript debacle. Well good f&c%i#@ luck, because when you click on the trashcan icon to delete it, nothing will happen. You will click it again and nothing will happen. You will exclaim, violently, and then decide that you know what?, it's fine. I don't need to make any changes after all, it's fine. So you'll hit submit. Error message! You must attach an autobiography! A cold sense of dread will spread throughout your body. But....it's there! You will say, as you point to name of the attached file that you tried, unsuccessfully to delete. So you click on the icon of the paper with the glasses superimposed over it to take a look. File missing or deleted! It will tell you. Your statement will now be Schrodinger's SOP, as it both has and has not been deleted. There's nothing there, and yet because "something is there", you can't upload anything new. You will walk away for a little while, hoping that it's a temporary problem. You will come back to exactly the same problem. You will continue trying for an hour until you remember The IT Crowd, and metaphorically, "turn it off and turn it on again". 4. Create new user log in and do the whole damn application again! Drop one letter from your previous username, triple check every document before uploading, acknowledge that you have spent the past four and a half hours essentially doing two tasks, hit submit and then just WALK AWAY.

So is anyone else applying? I've got my absentee letter writer issue sorted out and my SOP about two sentences away from completion. Today's the day!!

Have you tried calling them?

I just decided yesterday that I'm going to apply after all. I'll get a letter from another member of my department and write my POI to explain the discrepancy. So that means I should get cracking on that SOP I guess!!

From what I heard from her last time she is able to serve as a co-adviser; which I assume happens often enough because I see 'bioarchaeology' listed as a departmental focus. My introduction was much more fully-developed this time around, so I was planning to wait to hear what she had to say about the specifics of my research interests and whether or not I would want to align myself with a particular regional archaeology. I'm interested in the prehistoric Mediterranean and southern Europe, but mostly in the biocultural approach and paleopathology in general, which can be studied anywhere. My next step will be to reach out to the archaeological faculty...

I've opened up a dialogue with Janet Monge, though I haven't actually heard back from her yet. It's only been a few days since my email so I'm not too discouraged yet! I spoke to her last time about the possibility of doing bioarchaeology at Penn and she was very encouraging, I just didn't actually end up applying then.

Boston U is my only repeat, and since last year I've reoriented my regional focus, so I'll be applying to essentially a whole new core of faculty. I'm not regionally focused at all in some of my applications as a matter of fact, depending on the specifics of the program.

Whoops! "4 to 5".

Ugh. I'm here and I'm mired in SOPing. Congratulations on getting feedback from your POIs! I'm having pretty good luck in that regard this year. The more I think about it the more I think that that really is the essential element in these applications. So far my list is at 5, even though I was planning to do more like 10 or 11 this year. But the more I thought about the daily realities of living in some of those places I thought.... no. I think 425 is the ideal number for anthro anyway.

Hi Daisy123! I remember you from last time. What are your schools so far?

Actually our interests are highly similar! Most of my programs have encouraged me to emphasize the biocultural approach itself, but I'm interested in development and ontogeny, bone remodeling, the biological consequences of developing social complexity, the emergence and spread of infectious disease and the social consequences of those diseases on the individual and within the larger population. I'm ALSO interested in diet, particularly in differential access to dietary resources and diet as a reflection of social status or social circumstances (including disease), which I imagine would be well served through a combination of stable isotope analysis and zooarch. Regionally I'm ALSO interested in the Mediterranean! I actually hesitated to list out everything because our interests are weirdly similar! It would be super awkward if we were also applying to the same schools, but I don't believe we are. And actually, it's looking like I won't be applying to Ohio State after all. One of my letter writers, who has known me longer than either of the others, told me on Friday that he would be out of the country and out of all email contact until the middle of December...and that he leaves tomorrow. And since Ohio doesn't send invitations to recommendation writers until after you submit the application, I don't see it happening. I would have to submit the entire shebang today...which I could probably do but it would be a real rush job.

Psssh. You're done with sacrificing your money to the GRE gods. As for the schools, definitely apply to more. If the POIs haven't written you back, write them again. Send one of those second letters that makes it sound like it totally must have been an accident that they didn't get the first one but... seriously. What's up. If they completely refuse to respond think hard about whether you want to apply to work with them!

I think that question needs to be addressed along a couple of different lines. 1. What are you applying to study? Obviously anthropology, but a paleoanthropologist is going to have more reason to aspire towards a higher quant score than a cultural anthropologist. Your verbal score is really good! So if you're cultural, STOP. If you're bio...mayyyyyybe consider retaking but I wouldn't say it was a must. 2. Where are you applying? 3. What does the rest of your application look like? If you have a killer GPA and have done research, I say you're done. 4. Have you made a connection with your POI? This is probably the absolute most important aspect of your application. If you have, and if they have expressed interest in your research, I'd say don't retake.

I'm interested in biocultural bioarchaeology, with an emphasis on paleopathology. What's living in Ohio like overall? I'm from the Bay Area so I kind of thrive on a...I guess I'd say "weird", eccentric vibe. I'm kind of thinking I'm not going to get that in Columbus!

No kitties = no me. And I like how Cambridge specifies that you must either live on campus OR within 10 miles of campus. In the most expensive area in the town. Where.....just guessing....they probably own every single apartment building. How about no, Cambridge.

I really enjoyed Out of the Easy. I'm not sure whether it's YA or not...the main character's mother works in a brothel but there isn't anything that graphic about sex or violence. But it's about a girl in New Orleans who aspires to get into an exclusive college on the East Coast and I found many, many parallels between her experience and this...MESS that we all find ourselves mired in.

....I should specify that that's a book recommendation, not a generalized complaint about the application process.