skylarking

Congratulations to both of you! What an awesome way to start the week

Awww, I'm so sorry! Do you have any other schools left to hear back from?

Yeah, just the couple of acceptances. The radio silence is just odd. Things seem to be rolling out later than usual (or at least compared to last year). Also Madison was a weird fit for me. I know you can never really tell, but it was definitely a stretch. I have a friend in a different department there and even they're baffled that I've heard nothing. I've seen things coming to people by post this year instead of email, and I'm on the other side of the country from them, so that may be why it's taking a while, but it's still odd. This time last year I had all but one rejection. I'm already finishing up my MA here and it would be too difficult to move somewhere else, even if I just moved by myself. The only other MA I could get at my current uni just isn't that applicable to what I want to do (it's more security focused). I'm emailing around to some contacts now to see if I can work in industry for a time and then re-evaluate PhD plans. What I really need to be doing is working on my language and getting more on-the-ground experience in my industry/country of interest, so hopefully that's what I can do for a year or whatever.

Thanks, I really appreciate that (and all y'all's support). I've still got shreds of hope left but I'm preparing myself for the inevitable. It may just not be my year again.

Thanks. I totally knew it was coming, so I was prepared for the rejection, but it was nice just having my friends around to help me be at least temporarily less bummed. I've gotten 2 outright rejections now, and if the Columbia and Toronto results posted recently are true, then that'll make 4 rejections. Oh, wait, add in Madison, so that's 5. That leaves me just UBC and given the funding situation for people from the States in Canada, I'm not holding my breath on that one. I'd love to go, but I'm not holding my breath. Thanks. This year is just looking like another bloodbath across the board for me. Oh, well. I'll live.

Hahaha if anyone understands overdoing it, it's me. I'm nursing this glass of gin all night. I'm bit a big gin drinker anyway. My friends were just like "phd rejection? Gin!" And I was happy to take them up on it

Official rejection from ucsd. I saw it coming so I'm not surprised but still really, super bummed. Though being at my second party of the evening, I'm drowning my sorrows in gin

Thanks, y'all. I definitely appreciate all of you being so understanding. I've got some friends going through this with me, too, but they're not in my hemisphere right now, and this week (on top of the shitstorm of travelling to the East Coast in that hellacious snowstorm and presenting about my project I want to take into PhD) has been particularly heinous and just all around not excellent. It'll all be over tomorrow and I just need to get through it. Thanks for letting me vent, seriously. And congrats to whomever got that Madison acceptance today! Maybe I will be among your ranks soon.

Thanks. Everything is just happening at once (like it always does) and all that combined with the waiting is really getting to me. Any news would be good, but I'd love to know even if I'm on a short list or something (there or at any of the schools to which I applied) That's awesome of your advisor. I'm going to apply to work in the industry I want to study in my target country. I really need to get on that (but there's so much more to do this week between classes and extracurriculars and work D; )

OK, I lied about being comfortable with the silence. Now I just want my UCSD rejection to get it over with. And the same goes for every other school. I can't do this waiting thing anymore, and the longer I wait, the more I think about reapplying next year and get terribly overwhelmed about the idea of going through this process again. I've done it too many times already. Sorry for whining. This has just been an especially stressful week :l

Mine updated, though that was once they finally got the last of my materials. They also sent an email a week or so ago letting me know about the status change and that they were reviewing applications

I was reading in a different thread that professors do in fact lurk on here (some post) and watch what people say and all that. So your fears aren't actually that unfounded.

As far as telling them where you think you'll end up, I think it depends on the school. You can say you'll be finished with x level at y time, but it's not like IUC where you can just say "oh yeah I went to IUC" and have them know pretty much exactly what you have learned/will learn. I mean, obviously you're going to have to talk about what you are doing/will be doing for the rest of the year in your SOP, but it's difficult to predict proficiency. Journalism experience I guess also depends on the school. I would talk to POI and see what they think. If you're worried about proficiency and things, you could also try talking to POI or, more informally, current grad students at the programs you're applying for. I would see it as a positive, but that's me, and I'm just an MA student.

Thiiiiiis. Especially when they have such early deadlines for applying. I had a dream that I got rather unceremoniously rejected from UCSD, so I'm expecting that letter to come today or tomorrow. They seem to send out acceptances and rejections at or around the same time. No change in my status on the website yet, though. I'm also still surprised I haven't heard anything from Toronto. It's been long enough for a snail mail letter to have gotten to my house, though this is probably another instance of me speaking too soon and the letter or email will arrive in the coming days.

First, yes, they do ask for proficiency level when you apply. You don't have to be super specific (i.e. indicating a JLPT level) but you do need to be able to describe how well you read/write/listen/speak the language, both on the application and on your CV. My experience has been that the more proficient you are in your target language(s), the better. Many programs want you to have at least 2 foreign languages. You can be a little less fluent in one, but you definitely want at least an intermediate-advanced proficiency. That said, if you're a competitive candidate, programs will invest in you learning the language to get you up to a high level (to near-native/native), but you generally do need a good foundation going in. I know for a fact that one of the reasons I wasn't considered as strongly for programs in History last year was because my third (or fifth, depending on how you count it) language (the one in which I want to do a majority of my research) wasn't as advanced yet and I didn't have a great deal of experience doing original research in that language. Assuming you get in, you'll probably do some language classes at your uni and then get sent to IUC for a summer or a year (or both). With six months of study, you could easily get up to an intermediate proficiency, Depending on what you study, that may be good enough to get you in. More is really always better, though, obviously, so if at all possible, do as much language study as you can. If there are language schools or programs run through unis that do short, intensive language study (generally two week sessions), do those on your vacations. Programs also do seem to like people with life experience, and people come back to academia with all kinds of work experience, so I would say if you present it in the right light, it can be quite beneficial. I have two friends who took a year between their MA and PhD to do language study in their target countries and it made them much more competitive candidates (they also worked on their theses and things and firmed up their SoP a lot, too, obviously). Their language proficiency was quite good before that, but the year abroad in directed programs and immersed in the language gave them that edge, and made them much more appealing to PhD programs. Depending on how this cycle works out, that may end up being the route that I take, as well. Language is absolutely vital. You can generally go into an MA with little to no language experience, but for PhD, it can be make or break. This is all, of course, based on my experience, and your mileage may vary.

This is a great post full of many truths. When I've had to live overseas for language study in Asia, this is what I've done and it's worked out really well. It's one thing to talk about the places I am/am going, but it's another to show the other person. I took a lot more videos than I ever have in my whole life (on our anniversary, I went and recorded what I did that day and made a video blog for him, with everyone in my class saying "hello" and "happy anniversary" and just the mundane things like riding the bus and the subway and going to the store, basically narrating my day. It even had a dance break!) and whenever I had wifi, I'd FaceTime and take him around the places I was at, even if it was just a little coffee shop. It's so much easier now to be in a long-distance relationship than it was five or six years ago. Skype was just barely getting to be a thing then and it was hard to keep in touch. Little packages back and forth were great, too. I'd get candy and other things from home, and I'd send him candy and other munchies from where I was (which was good for both of us; I can sometimes be so unadventurous when it comes to food). I really have nothing else to add. Communication, as others have said, really is the key, and sharing all the good and bad parts of being apart together. It didn't make the time go by any faster, but it did ease the pain of being apart at least a little bit. And being honest about what you want and seriously taking the other person's feelings into consideration. I've also worried about which one of us is going to get the short end of the career stick, but I've stopped being afraid to talk it out. We're genuinely supportive of one another's careers and each of us has sacrificed certain things at certain times to help the other person get to where they need/want to be, and, at least for us, it's worked out great. I have quite a few friends in the same situation, too, and we've all basically done the same things. We all knew it sucked, but we all went in with the knowledge that it's only x amount of time and when it's over, we'll be in better places.

Wow, congrats, everyone~!

Wisconsin I'm super surprised about. My friend is there in a different department and they got back to him later last year, but I don't remember it being this late. He's surprised it's taking this long, too.

This was my problem all the time in undergrad. We'd talk about U of M and MSU and, when out of state, have to clarify for people that we were talking about Montana and not Michigan.

Definitely. The radio silence has gotten to be deafening at times. If I'm wait listed, or even on a short list, I would be thrilled to know, but the silence has just been unbearable. Sending rejections via snail mail still bothers me, too. Especially when you get that envelope, you already know what it is, and it's like thanks for spending all that extra time and effort to not only write out my rejection letter, but print it, stuff it in an envelope, and run it through a postage machine and send it to me. Really makes the rejection seem that much more personal and real. After my long weekend away, though, I'm kind of just preferring the sound of silence. Hello, darkness, my old friend...

A friend applied in a different department and their results keep getting delayed because of all the snow. You'll probably have to wait a bit more for U Penn

Let me know if you have questions about the program Congratulations to everyone who got acceptances today!

That's what I'm going to (at least try to) do. Waiting and anticipating things is just so mentally exhausting. I'll probably make it about a day before I'm back to refreshing everything every five seconds, though

You and me both, dude. I really do feel like tomorrow is the day, though. Monday's a holiday, so it makes more sense to be tomorrow. (Also what up PNW)

That's wonderful, congratulations! It's an amazing school