Tahuds

I'm quoting just the two most important lines. 1) 10th ranked Penn State is a top-ranked program, in any field. Ask yourself, 10th out of how many? Dozens? Hundreds? It's a damn good school no matter how you look at it. 2) No, you doing a good job will not cause PhD programs to totally ignore your undergrad transcript. It will help mitigate a poor one however, but nothing will totally erase your undergrad transcript from consideration. If you're funded at Penn State, and you like Penn State then go to Penn State. Spending a year or two on a Masters has the opportunity cost of your salary for that many years when you get out of your PhD, because those years could have been spent getting through a PhD sooner. It's not worth it.

I can only dream!

I've just accepted Yale's offer. It'll mean 40K in loans, but I don't know what else to do.

Nope, not yet!

The linked PDF contained the information I referenced, but it was located in an unreliable source, or at least to me a source that appeared to be using the report in a biased way. I'm including a link to the report here from a less unknown source.

I'm not sure if you are being coherent in your argumentation. Earlier in the conversation you claim all things being equal men make more than women. Above you seem to have an issue with the attempt to define a roughly "equal" set of data, those who (1) work full time, (2) are year-round employed, (3) have college degrees, and (4) are over the age of twenty-five. I think your reasoning falls apart at the application of specific data sets and relies upon obfuscation of the heart of the issue; equal compensation for equal work. As was clearly stated in the labor department report, in the US at least, there is a clear trend for an arbitrary woman in the data set to receive less pay than an arbitrary man, but this is due to a number of factors. No least of which is the fact that women, again on average, received more non-pay compensation from a company and furthermore seek out positions that offer that sort of compensation over positions with higher pay but less non-pay compensation. The problem is not, and never has been about equal pay, because of the aforementioned reasons. We need to be more careful in our thought than that, and focus on the harder to define and quantify but more useful metric of total compensation.

Yeah I totally need the money to cover my living expenses and housing. That's ugly but what can ya do?

Just got my Yale Financial Aid info... 13K scholarship a year... which just leaves me with 18K in loans + 4K work study. I'm not sure if going into 36K for a masters is really worth it. I'm going to wait and see what the PSR will give me.

Honestly I have no idea what I'm gunning for! I applied to the ethics program because that's where the strength of my U-Grad work was, that and modal logic, but I want to teach at a lib. Arts school and as such figure that no matter what specific thing I get my PhD in I'm going to be teaching a little bit of everything.

I've been accepted to both and I'm torn between the two. In Yale's favor: Name Recognition Excellent Faculty, Name Recognition again Graduate Placement rate - important as I want to move on to a PhD In GTU - PSR's favor: Smaller student body, more interaction w/ profs 10k a year cheaper More "friendly", actively trying to get me to come there. Is there anything I missed? I've been accepted to the MAR comprehensive at Yale, and to the GTU's Religions and Ethics concentration. What would you do in my place?

The Boston Theological Institute, which is a consortium of theology schools in the area that allow cross registration, including Harvard.

I can't be the only one who didn't sleep all night! I choose to channel that into writing 11 pages of my senior thesis which I should have written last week but oh well at least I was productive!

For you it may be true that your prof's are just professionals doing a job, but for many of us these people are family. I think of my advisor as family, I have lived in his home, he has at times supported me more emotionally than any blood relation of mine and I would be deeply sad to reject an offer of admission if he made it. This level of personal relationship isn't normal I know, but some of us have become FRIENDS, true friends, with our professors and making a decision where you have to reject "your friends" because of money is hard for some of us. Please try and respect that.

It strikes me as a bit rude to wait until you visit every program if you get into your first choice with a financial aid package that makes sense. Why cause someone on the wait-list that much more stress if you know where you're going? If you don't have a strong opinion then I guess every school is your first choice.

Just got an email from Vanderbilt's GDR for the masters program, I was rejected.

Please read the thread, or at least the OP. It's about MA programs which are a whole 'nother ball game from PhD applications.

The OP is posting about MA programs which are typically 1) unfunded/poorly funded by the program in theology and 2) much less selective but retain huge applicant pools. So any individual applicant is less meaningful to the program as they are taking courses not teaching or serving as a research assistant. No need to put a bad taste in anyone on the admissions committee's mouth by being presumptuous enough to ask MA programs to compete for you based on funding before they've even admitted you.

I wouldn't, especially if the funding isn't need based. It would seem like you are either bragging or think that you are so awesome that any program you would consider has to fully fund you.

With regards to your writing sample, were you slightly hesitant to write on Derrida after John Searle & Alan Sokal's thrashing of deconstruction? I know that Yale was in the 70's a strong proponent of postmodern literary critiques of religion but it was my understanding that those scholars have subsequently left.

I don't have a real specialty outside of interfaith work, I'm a Jewish student in a Christian school and department interesting working in interfaith relations b/w Muslims and Jews. UGA has Alan Godlas who is one of the most promenant scholars of Islam and interfaith interactions between the three Abrahamic religions.

Sigh... another day and nothing. I really want to go to UGA, I just wish they'd give me an answer.

I still haven't heard back from the graduate school... I'm getting really impatient. It's been 19 days since they received my materials, almost a week longer then I was told I would have to wait for a decision.

You aren't getting away with getting a JD anywhere worth going to that won't require the LSAT. That and are you really wanting to take on ~$100,000 in debt? Because that's what the top programs cost, and in this economy if you aren't graduating from one of those you're going to be in deep shit. There is a glut of lawyers right now and even those with years of experience are finding it hard to keep or get jobs.

Here's the thing... everyone has it shitty, but you have it just a shitty as one of those humanities people, but make twice what they do in grad school, and many more times what they do later on for an "equivalent" amount of training. Furthermore it isn't as competitive for you. It simply isn't. There are many more positions for graduate students in Science/Math/Engineering than there are in the humanities and they are better funded by both the universities and the federal government. This means that not only are there more spots open, but a higher percentage of those spots are funded, even at the masters level. As to the "showed Obama more progress" crack, well what kind of progress do you purpose? Because so far as I can see the main progress we get for funding graduate students in engineering to the degree we do is that we train people from other nations to go to other nations with their degrees and have essentially wasted our money.

mimetes are you thinking of going to UGA even with yout PhD acceptance?