FaultyPowers

Confederacy of Dunces. Always.

Hi everyone! Is anyone else planning to apply to OSU? I am!! Is anyone else stressing about the November 19th deadline (for fellowship consideration)? I am!!!!!!!

Nice. Optimize your smart time. Always. 8 am is my relatively smart time....but it is my relatively smart in pajamas time. Shower and pant acquisition is beyond me before 10. I would say just one more thing about the GRE. I'm super happy with my scores and won't be retaking, but my essay score was pretty meh. So maybe read a few practice ones on a test prep website, if you can find one.

Also, I HIGHLY suggest that you schedule a later test. Anytime after noon, but the last time I took mine it was at 5pm and I loved it. I did better than previously. I wasn't hungry or sleepy or grumpy or any of the other dwarves.

...and I have damn near perfect GRE scores and didn't get in anywhere last time! Make your statement and CV as strong as you can possibly make them and go out of your way to make contact with your POIs; give whatever time and energy you have leftover to worrying about your GREs. Only that and nothing more

Yeah, I spent yesterday looking into it and I've concluded that it's just too difficult. I'd have to live in an EU member country for three years prior to applying or I'd be considered American and American only....which I find entirely too frustrating, because it's completely contrary to every other legal right that I have in Europe! So nevermind.

Okayyyyy....so I'm thinking this topic is only going to apply to a tiny portion of gradcafe goers, but what the hell. I have dual citizenship, France and the US. So I can move to France or any other EU member country, get a job, NOT get a job, buy property, whatever. It's awesome. However, I'm wondering what it means in terms of grad school. I know that EU citizens are in a specific and generally favorable category for funding in UK schools, but I think that's based on the fact that EU citizens usually have EU residences...which I don't. Born and raised in the US. So I'm wondering how this would effect my funding. Also, if I get into a UK school, I neither need nor want to be housed on campus. I can get an apartment, buy a house, do whatever I want basically, but I'm wondering whether on-campus residence is required. That would pretty much kill it for me, because none of the housing seems to be pet friendly and if I can't go with my kitties I'm not going. So! Does anybody have experience with this?

I am SO sorry, I completely forgot to keep tabs on this forum after I wrote that!! I had a long, LONG conversation with both Dr. Verano and the DGS because initially there had been some problems with my application submission. They both seemed really into me (if I do say so myself) but then ultimately Dr. Verano told me explicitly that he wanted someone who does exactly what he does. I did not opt to ask about the next application cycle (this one) because I made a few decisions. First off, this was already the second time I had applied. The first time I was told the same thing, such a good applicant but I ultimately want someone doing what I do. And this doesn't just mean an Incan bioarchaeologist, it means EXACTLY what he does. Somebody studying trauma in Peru. Same deal at Vanderbilt. So after thinking the issue over I realized that bioarchaeology programs seem to fall into roughly two categories. Those that emphasize bioarchaeology without regional specialties, in other words those programs where the bio people work across a range of regions, and those programs with bios who work specifically in Peru. I've decided that if the program falls into the latter category I am not going to apply to it because based on my experience, these are programs where the POIs have research affiliations already in place and are looking for people to take on the work, as opposed to new students who are going to develop their own projects elsewhere. So I would say that if you look through the faculty pages and see the word "Peru" it is probably not going to happen if your regional specialty is anywhere BUT Peru!

I have some specific insight into this issue I assume you're talking about Dr. Verano? I applied to Tulane and Vanderbilt last year, focusing on bioarchaeology of the Maya and was initially told by both Verano and my POI at Vanderbilt that they were very interested in my application. My POI at Vandy then became completely non-communicative but Verano kept in contact fairly regularly. I realized when I started seeing Tulane acceptances posted that I had most likely not gotten in, which I confirmed with the grad coordinator, but Dr. Verano sent me an email stating that my application was very strong, my GREs were the highest in the bunch (which STUNG, let me tell you) but that he had ultimately decided he wanted to go with someone looking at trauma in Peru. Which is not only the same area that he works in but the exact same subject. So if you're thinking of applying to Tulane with a focus on anything different I would really say don't bother.

I haven't gotten an official rejection yet, but the DGS told me, in response to my email, that I was not "among the finalists". Which is frustrating, because my POI emailed me on February 11th out of the blue to say that she was taking a closer look at my application and that she'd "update me soon". I wrote her back on February 24th and she has never yet responded.

Hey guys. This year was a total wash for me. Honestly, I know I'm qualified and I know I have a pretty damn competitive application, I really think the problem was that I applied to do Maya bioarch with Andean bioarch POIs. I really don't think they're willing to consider anyone doing anything other than trauma in Peru! So next year my entire application strategy is going to be different. I'm going to focus on mortuary archaeology for those programs with strong Maya foci and apply to bioarch programs ONLY at schools with POIs who work somewhere other than Peru. I've only found two places that focus on Maya bioarch, and they weren't taking people this year. So perhaps it just wasn't meant to be.

I'm still waiting to hear from Vanderbilt but I've broken down and emailed them. It's March 24th and I want my life back!

Sorry to hear that screencheck

Just got my official rejection. If you haven't heard yet I'd just check the website. So in love with the school but I won't be applying here again next year.

Ouch. Just saw some official rejections on the results board. Sorry guys.

screencheck, are you still waiting to hear official news from Vanderbilt and Tulane? What is UP with the waits this year!!? Especially in anthro, a discipline that typically involves partial or entire summers spent in the field...

Dark and sullen here, In the ignore-o-sphere. I wait, dejected. Now my waiting has a haiku.

I'm not, and I did!

It's largely a self-fulfilling prophesy as well. If you're frustrated with applicants who are clearly unprepared and don't know how to properly craft an SOP, how do you imagine that ignoring their inquiries about how they could improve their applications will result in higher quality applications?

Did anybody else read this part..."OP, I'm curious -- what kind of reasons do you give to the university for rejecting applicants? The safest we could come up with this time 'round was "incomplete application," even when there were more obvious problems ("can't figure out subject/verb agreement"; "GRE scores lower than my dog's IQ"). Not even touching the whole dog reference, I certainly hope this person isn't implying that Ad Comms are indicating applications are incomplete when they're not, just to save themselves the effort of stating an actual reason for rejecting an applicant. That's just disappointing.

Since I have little to do but obsess over every aspect of the final application I'm waiting to hear from (except my job...I guess I could be doing that...) I'm curious how everybody would interpret what just happened. I uploaded my unofficial transcripts when my application was due (January 15th), including those from my MA program, my BA program, and my junior college. I'm never sure how necessary those last ones are so I always figure I'll err on the side of caution and upload them. The next day I saw that they had processed all of them EXCEPT my jc transcripts. I thought maybe I hadn't labelled them clearly enough or perhaps they didn't upload properly...? So I uploaded them again. I checked back a week later and they still hadn't processed them so I figured, they must not need them. I've checked the website off and on since then and they never processed them. Until Monday. I checked the website for the hell of it and saw that the jc transcripts had been uploaded on March 3rd. So........yeah. In the total absence of communication from my POI or the department I've been trying to figure out whether that's a good sign or a bad sign! First I thought, why would they bother uploading them now if they weren't going to make me some kind of acceptance/waitlist offer? But then I thought...maybe they uploaded them so they could officially close out my file and reject me...but then I thought AGAIN, if they had to do that for every reject, why wouldn't they have just uploaded everything initially? And THEN I thought...what does gradcafe think?

I KNOW! I'm hoping the best for me too but I'm also thinking I might have to wait another year . And I'm at the point where the whole, 'I'll get more experience and my application will be even stronger!" thing is starting to ring a bit hollow!!

For everyone who has decided 100% that they will not be attending a certain program...if you haven't actually gotten a decision from that program yet, you may want to email the department, or the grad coordinator and just ask them to please remove your application from consideration. Obviously this is only if you are 100%, absolutely positive that you would not accept. The reason I would suggest this is that plenty of schools (I'm thinking Brown specifically, because they told me they did this, but I'm sure it applies to other places as well), when they make an offer, that's IT. So even if you decline the offer they can't open it back up to the next person on the list.

You can definitely PM me. I think there should be way more transparency in this whole process; I have had...I'm just going to go ahead and say it...TERRIBLE advising thus far in my MA program, and have had to figure out everything on my own. Ohio State for sure should have been on my list...and it WAS too, I just got completely carried away in the wrong direction this year!! Yes, I'll be applying there and everywhere else in the English and/or French speaking world next year

It's WAY easier than people think to get invited to present. Just submit an abstract when the call for presenters comes around. I have never once been rejected. Did your MA result in a thesis or was it just coursework? If you wrote a thesis, choose an aspect of your thesis research and draw out relevant details to present. A conference that I particularly recommend is the annual archaeology conference at U Calgary (Chacmool). It's 100% student run and they WILL accept any appropriate presentation. You'll have to get yourself there, but they reimburse or partially reimburse you for your flight, and each conference results in the publication of conference proceedings, so there's your presentation AND publication. It's not the same as presenting at AAA and publishing in a peer reviewed journal, but it is better than nothing and there are some surprisingly big names that present each year. Yes, I actually did get some pretty valuable advice as to why I've been rejected. It basically came down to the fact that I had applied to too few programs and had failed to realize how reluctant bioarchaeologists with specific regional foci would be to accepting students working outside of those regions. I had contacted each of my potential POIs to ask them about this beforehand, so I wish they had made the situation a little more clear, but I see now that I should have focused more on applying to work with those POIs who had specifically stated that regional focus *did not matter* to them, versus those who had been more vague about it. So long story short, FIT.