themmases

Definitely watch House of Cards-- and if you like it, the original British series is on there, too. The first seasons are similar but not the same, and the second seasons are fairly different, so it's actually pretty interesting. I finished the entire first season of American Horror Story in a week when I had bronchitis last year. Also, there are several seasons of Burn Notice on Netflix which is one of my favorites. It's not very long, but Jericho is on there. People kept recommending Walking Dead to me since I'm still mad Jericho ended, so even though I haven't watched it yet I assume the recommendation goes the other day too. Buffy is on there and I think Dollhouse is, too.

My partner and I have a lot of books stacked onto books. I think the only thing that saved us was each staying with our parents briefly while we looked for our next place to live, and having giant sprawling book collections that kind of melded with our parents'. We were both able to leave books behind where space isn't at a premium, and I'm sure we both took some books that didn't really belong to us. I will keep a mystery novel I liked for years until I've forgotten the solution and can reread it, so naturally we're planning on buying more shelves. I didn't buy a lot of textbooks as a history major-- just tons of monographs so I could read selected chapters from them. I tended to save those because they were interesting, and because I could sometimes use them in papers in later classes. I never saved science textbooks unless I couldn't sell them back, because they go out of date, and same for any other textbook that wasn't my major (or even that was-- if I took a low level history class just because I liked the topic, the textbook usually wasn't very worthwhile). I saved all my language textbooks. I think if you learned a concept from a textbook, still think of it their way, or even picture where on the page you learned it or the example they used when you recall that concept, that's a reference book you'll be able to use effectively. If not, there's no particular reason to save that textbook and refer to it as opposed to any other source of information.

I did the same. I started with a short anecdote and it worked-- but it was one about a lecture in the field that I attended as an adult. I shared something the lecturer said about the field that stuck with me, and then explained how I got to an intellectual place that that interested me (because I switched fields and discovered this interest at my job). Intro paragraph ended with a couple of sentences stating my specific career goal, and my goal for attending that school. I would recommend that anyone working on this now just write. Then find at least one trusted editor. Make sure whoever you choose is being harsh enough and is willing to make far-reaching comments and highlight every little thing that confuses or turns them off. I was lucky that my coworker and I edit each other for work all the time, and she was applying to med school while I did this so we edited each other's statements as well. She made me reorganize more than one of these essays completely. Looking back at them now, not only was she right, but I should have done even more to follow her advice. Even without someone like that, write a lot early so you can let your essay sit for a while and have the distance needed to cut it down.

I personally wouldn't get a tablet to be my main computer. I have an iPad, and it's the perfect size for renting textbooks and never printing another PDF again. But even already-basic things like Google Drive are stripped-down on it, and increasingly slow after a couple of years of not very demanding ownership. Also, the iPad has some great games but nothing you will really play for a long time like a computer game, and lots of games ruined by in-app purchases. I'm not as familiar with the Surface, but I did try one in the store and even the display model was laggy and unimpressive. Personally, I decided to rent ebooks/never print PDFs and try to get the most computer I could for 5 lbs. or less (well, I ended up with 5.1 lbs. with battery). It was very hard for me to find a laptop with a dedicated graphics card that they shouldn't have been paying me to take off their hands, but integrated graphics are more useful than they used to be if you get a current processor. I ended up with this through an employee purchase program, and love it so far: http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/ASUS-X550LA-DH71-15.6in-Core-i7-4500U-Windows-8-64-bit-8-GB-RAM-1/3213453.aspx#TS It's not worth the money to track down a Windows 7 computer-- you'll end up overpaying for the components just because it has Windows 7. If you don't like Windows 8, the UI can be modified effectively and for free with programs like Classic Shell, which I use and love. You might want to wait until you're enrolled to get Office and any other applications you'll need (although Office 365 for students is $80 for a 4-year license even if your school doesn't give you a deal-- you just must have a .edu address to activate). My school offered us all a free copy of Office and the Windows version appeared to be better than the Mac one, if you think you'll be using those applications a lot.

These are all so cool! I'd never even thought of student affairs as a place for public health, but it actually sounds like a great one! I'm interested in health literacy and health outcome disparities, particularly race and class disparities, and in finding out what factors will have the greatest effect on outcomes as access increases. (I suspect that a major factor is actually caregiver communication and accounting for differences in health attitudes and literacy.) I also have some experience managing big data sets pulled from electronic health records, and would like to do more of that. I'd love to go on to do academic research in this area, but I'll find out during the MS if that seems likely or if it's really for me. I have experience coordinating clinical research, so my second choice would be to work in a hospital research center providing help to MD PIs on study design and analysis. In either case, I'd plan to sell myself as someone who's good at getting other people's research done and a good investment in getting multiple projects funded and completed.

"Application Materials Received - Please await further updates" This from a school that according to the internet has left people a'waiting until April.

I know what you mean. I am guilty of being overly invested in my work and vulnerable when people disagree with me in that area. Expertise can help a lot with this. When you know what you're doing with work, it's not uncommon to find that few people really understand what you do, they need your input, and you won't do them any favors by not mentioning when they're wrong. You can do the same thing in some grad programs by focusing on your area of interest and just not worrying about other people. People in your grad program probably don't want to be directly compared to you, any more than you do to them. No one should specialize so much that they can't explain their work to other people, but staying focused on your own interests can take a lot of pressure off of everybody. Time helps. You can't learn your job or your field and know what other people need from you overnight, and even if you could most people aren't being constantly tested in this way every day.

My job really matured me. I have a job duty where I go to kids' MRI appointments and ask their parents (who have never met me before) to add research images to the end of the exam. I do this for kids with congenital heart disease and kids with brain tumors. I am a very introverted person and I have probably done this over 400 times. The thing about getting consent in a care setting is, you must act out your personal and professional ethics by recognizing that you have power and demonstrating-- to strangers-- that you won't use it. And the rules are not like clinical rules, so I regularly say no to my clinician PI (i.e. unholy combination of boss and mentor). Expertise can be a really powerful way to feel adult, but it's hard to appreciate the expertise you do have unless you're willing to use it as authority. It's not always pretty, but it did build self-reliance and self-respect that I acutely lacked as a student. I no longer assume I am wrong when someone else disagrees with me, or try to get people to like me without considering whether I like them. I'm not embarrassed that I haven't read every book or heard every band. And when I have to do something I don't know how to do, I pretend I'm at work. I'm 26. I've been doing this work since I was 22 or 23, and had (and won) my first disagreement about this work with my PI when I was 24.

Black bean soup: 1 can refried black beans, broth of your choice, chili powder, green Tabasco, heat through. Serves 2 dieting people or 1 hungry person. Top with dairy (I like Greek yogurt) or use up bottom of the bag tortilla chips. Sometimes I get a small amount of pre-chopped vegetables from a salad bar and make a veggie quesadilla to go with this. Frozen western vegetables, chili powder, and a can of tomatoes turn your can of black beans into 2-4 servings of vegetarian chili, more or less. Tomatoes and rice: chicken thighs, tomato sauce, spinach, bake at 350, shred chicken. Put on brown rice, top with yogurt. White bean and tomato stew: put white beans in your leftover tomato sauce with more spinach or frozen peas, top with yogurt. These corn and basil pancakes, more than once a week all summer: http://www.eatingwell.com/recipes/corn_basil_cakes.html Topped with salsa and, you guessed it, yogurt. Also, those Imagine boxed soups with half a loaf of sourdough usually serve me and my partner. Tomato and red pepper is the best one. Finally, make any stew-consistency mixture of meat and vegetables (I did chicken and tomato sauce with mushrooms and peas last week) and put it in a bowl on top of your stale bread.

I didn't study for my first GRE a few years ago, did study for my recent one in October (but only for math), and I think I could have studied even more. The biggest thing I learned from studying was that the GRE test writers are just kind of evil. This was implicit in the Manhattan Prep answer explanations I read, and explicit in the prep reading I did on Spark Notes. 2008: 164V (93%), 144Q (18%), 5.5W (97%) 2013: 168V (98%), 159Q (75%), 4.0W (54%) As you can probably guess from my quant scores, the most important thing I found out from studying was that GRE math questions don't go much beyond high school-- but they dress up that math with trick questions, poor writing, and extraneous information. In 2008, I saw their insane diagrams and thought, "crap, I didn't study this" and guessed. In 2013, I knew that if something looked too hard for me to do in 2 minutes, it probably was, and found another way. I'm sure there are similar ways a person could learn to thwart GRE evil in the other sections as well, if they wanted to (certainly in the writing, where I apparently impressed them on accident as a 21 year old). The verbal section is certainly fussy, and filled with words that are anachronistic and not terribly useful-- perfect for history majors (which I was). My math situation was just too dire to bother.

At my undergrad, history students had two required research courses: a 200-level one and a 400-level one (in a department where grad students take mostly 500-level with some 400). Both were topics courses, and my 200-level course turned out to be more influential for me but both were great experiences. Most 400-level classes in my department also required a research paper, so in the end I wrote several and loved it. I still remember feeling acute boredom as I walked home from turning the last one in. The research is the most time-consuming part, but it's hard to say if it's the most difficult because I think it's also the most interesting and fun. In the humanities, I found organizing to be the most difficult thing. I'd often feel that the concepts I wanted to talk about were connected in a web, not a chain, and struggle to decide how to force them into order. I'd really recommend reading articles for structure and organization specifically in those fields. In the sciences and social sciences, there's more of a prescribed structure which is nice. My first experience with that was as an undergrad research assistant in health literacy (the department was actually aviation/human factors). My awesome PI was nice enough to let me sit in on the meetings where they discussed the results but quite rightly didn't let me anywhere near the paper. But it qualified me for my job, where I learned by observing and being corrected like in anything else. Especially for science/social science preparation, I would recommend looking at review articles and responses to papers in addition to the papers themselves, to get an idea of what others in the field respond to or see as strengths/weaknesses in a study. When I was new to reading these studies I would just think "oh how interesting, good job."

This is a great question! I was surprised when I started participating in these boards how many people were anxiously wondering whether they had a chance at a handful of "top" private schools. I applied to one such school and wish now that I hadn't. I didn't like the organization of their department, didn't have much affinity with their specific programs, and in retrospect it definitely came through in my essay. I didn't talk about the school much because I couldn't honestly say there was much there I wanted to do. My first choice (UIC) is actually lower ranked than my second choice (Minnesota). I like it because I'm from Chicago, largely, although it's still a well-regarded program also. I live here, so I've heard of UIC's public outreach programs and I know that their engagement is effective and real. (I'm interested in health disparities, so this is a big deal to me.) I attended UIUC for undergrad, and the two schools are in the same university system so it's home to me I attended a private school here in Chicago for about a year of a different grad program that I chose to leave, and was very unhappy there. I disliked being in a private school as opposed to a public one, had ideological differences with everything about the way the school was run and its presence in the community, and a big factor in my leaving was realizing that in my field at the time-- history-- working in such a school long-term would be considered a great career outcome. So the fact that UIC is public is a big factor to me, not just for personal financial reasons, but because I could respect them as an employer and I don't feel conflicted about the influence they have in Chicago communities. I'm lucky to live relatively nearby and have decent research fit with them as well, too, but respect for them as an institution was such a huge factor for me that I would have applied either way.

No, I don't think so, as long as you're polite and are contacting the correct person an appropriate number of times. Admissions directors are just regular people, they're not going to get offended by these questions and actually it's their job to answer them. You can avoid being annoying on accident by keeping it short, giving them any information they need to look up your specific application, and mentioning anything you tried already (e.g. if they have an application portal and you checked it and it's not updated). If a decision hasn't been made yet, they should let you know when they think you'll hear, and then you shouldn't contact them again before that.

I left a masters program in history to work in medical research a few years ago. It's not true that people who leave humanities programs won't be qualified for other things. I think a lot of people interested in academia underestimate the other types of jobs out there that they could be happy doing. One of my classmates in public health works in digital records management now, which is a really interesting growing field. I still do journal research, write papers and presentations, and read and summarize primary sources most of the time-- my primary sources just happen to be medical records now. Even in many STEM fields there are many grant-funded positions, and I think anyone pursuing this path, in any field, needs to think seriously about what they would be qualified to do if they're ever unwilling or unable to keep that funding ball in the air. If you'd be happy with your backup plan, but the completed PhD will make it harder to sell yourself there (e.g. by making you look less sincerely interested in that career path), then whatever stipend you earned as a student isn't worth it. I'd also like to add that the constant "oh well, long-term poverty will be worth it to follow my dream" comments that I see on these boards come off as very naive and privileged. Poverty isn't a romantic, ascetic condition, and short-term graduate student poverty is very different from long-term poverty with few marketable skills, as you grow older and your support network thins. Not only is it off-putting to employers, including academic ones, who want skills, not "passion", it's insulting to other people reading who have actually experienced poverty or plan to use their luck and talents to ameliorate it.

I think so; I certainly do. If you are listed as an author you are entitled to include the piece in your CV (unlike for an acknowledgement only IMO). In contrast, if I helped with something but not at an author level of contribution I would just mention it in the description of the position I held. E.g. "Research assistant: assisted with data collection and subject recruitment in (Topic A) and (Topic B)"

I have average to low healthcare needs I think. My main issue is anxiety/depression, and in my previous experience as a student there were other ways to monitor that without using health insurance (e.g. the 6 free sessions from the school/semester or letting trainees practice on you), so that's usually what I did and what I plan to do as a grad student. If I had a different health issue where I would need to use insurance to handle it, I would definitely be like you in weighing it carefully. However, I should point out that even the "worse" coverage you're considering actually sounds pretty good. Most of my working friends would consider a $500 deductible amazing, and 80% coverage after that still pretty good. As a person with a job, I couldn't even buy no-deductible coverage, and my employer's coverage is considered good. Also, you should look into what the deal is with prescriptions. Just because your insurance doesn't pay for something, doesn't mean you won't get discounts on your out of pocket cost for being a plan member. Some other things to think about: how often has your school changed its student health coverage? My work coverage is good, but it's gotten a little worse every year, so not only does it make me mad every fall it makes it hard to budget. I'd go with slightly more expensive coverage that is unlikely to change over great coverage from a place with a history of hopping between providers every year, or that may decide they can no longer afford to offer that level or service at all. You should also find out what the network is and what the penalty is for going out of it. I can't know exactly what your health needs will cost you, but from my perspective these plans are both good enough to base the decision on other factors.

I emailed Brandon this morning and was told it might be another 2-3 weeks for me because it's harder to pin down the timeline for research degrees. He also suggested I check directly with the student coordinator for that program. Just in case anyone else is waiting... I'm probably going to wait 2 weeks and then email the person he suggested. I'd really like to decline a couple of programs so they can contact anyone who might be on a waitlist, but since they implied that fellowships decisions might still be coming out in March I feel like I need to wait until I either don't get one, or do get into UIC.

Most of the schools I've talked to had a job board or a student listserv that they recommended in addition to networking. Usually the admissions contact for my schools was able to tell me what the most active job list was in their department, because a lot of people ask them about it. I would also recommend looking in the departments of closely related fields, where a psychologist might be helpful to have on the study but not necessarily PI. Other departments at your institution probably have studies involving children or schools, so you could try contacting those PIs and offering yourself as a good person to be in contact with research subjects, in addition to whatever else a graduate research assistant would do.

I really like Quizlet if you are trying to memorize terms. It's a free site and it's basically internet flashcards, with other apps available for your phone or whatever. You can also use other people's public sets, so there is often no need to type in all your terms yourself. There are several games to play with your terms and a few study modes that will flag things you tend to get wrong, or let you star things yourself, so you can keep reviewing the hard terms while adding new words. An instructor recommended this to me a few years ago for a medical terminology course, where we learned 350 word roots in about 12 classes/weeks. Good luck!

Yes, all of this. Burn Notice, American Horror Story, and House of Cards are all on Netflix and addictive IME. I also need something to do with my hands while I watch TV. If you don't want to do a craft, I recommend drawing, writing, or petting a cat while leaving your phone safely in another room where you can't check it constantly. The Sims can be very immersive and older versions are still great fun if you have a laptop or an older computer that can't handle TS3. There are even still somewhat active communities for TS2 on bigger fan sites like Mod the Sims, which can give you ideas for more interesting ways to play it rather than creating a Sim just like you and then getting bored with them (what I would do otherwise). For example, people try to recreate movies or I like to start a town with only a couple of custom Sims, with the town growing organically and those two basically being the town founders who end up related to almost everyone. Also, look into games you liked or just wanted when you were younger that your computer can probably run with ease now. (Yoot Tower/Sim Tower is on iOS!)

For people wondering about the size and competitiveness of different programs, the ASPH actually puts out comprehensive reports of applications and admissions for accredited schools of public health. The 2010 report is here: http://www.asph.org/UserFiles/DataReport2010.pdf Even if you're into your top choice already and are no longer stressing about percentage admitted, the reports are also informative on the racial, gender, degree, and specialization mix of each program-- as well as each program's entering class and total size. They might be helpful to some who are making decisions now, too.

I had the same problem as altermunster, emailed them with as much information as I had about both tests, and they fixed it in a couple of days-- it was no big deal. I found ETS pretty accessible for website problems, I'd really recommend anyone having problems just send them a polite email with the details about your testing dates.

I used Manhattan Prep (the giant book of practice problems) to study for the math section and it helped a lot. I also used just the Spark Notes overview of what types of questions would be asked, particularly what types of trick questions and things that sound harder than they are. I did not study for the first time I took it, about 5 years ago, because I registered too late to get the ETS materials and was naive enough to think it would be just like how I did well on the SAT without studying. Ha! Anyway, despite not having been in a math class in years, I worked through every Manhattan Prep chapter on a topic I wasn't sure about, stopping maybe every quarter of the way through to check my work and redo missed problems the right way. Then I used one of the free practice tests (I think from ETS but I can't remember now) as a test of when I was allowed to go to bed the night before. I moved up from 164V (93%) 144Q (18%) 5.5W (97%) (all estimates, before the revised test) as an undergrad who didn't study but presumably should have had this stuff fresh in her mind, to 168V (98%) 159Q (75%) 4.0W (54%), years removed from those classes but with about two weeks of dedicated studying. As for the essay... I realized I was writing basically the same thing as last time and it threw me off, is all I can say. I didn't use it for GRE, but I really love Quizlet for learning vocab generally. It's basically internet flashcards, but there are other games you can play with the lists you use and you can use other people's lists rather than type in your own. I used to play the vocab games whenever I needed a break at work.

I have-- I went to a conference in SF for work and then extended my stay after the conference was over. I wasn't presenting, so I also was on my own doing what I wanted most of the time during the conference, too. I have to say, I loved it and would totally do it again if it wouldn't be kind of mean to my partner. I picked three museums and went to them all in one day at my own pace, and went out to the Sutro Baths and climbed around them by myself (and ended up walking halfway back myself when I misunderstood the route!). In between I just kind of wandered around, picking cafes to read in and pretending I lived there. It felt like a longer vacation than it actually was, it was so good. I highly recommend traveling alone. (Also I am a 5'3" lady and I was probably 23 or 24 when I did this.)

Thanks! I've heard from others that they are not reliable about communicating decisions after they've been made, and it's definitely true from the results posted here-- lots of people said in their notes that they found out the decision by calling or emailing and asking for one. I applied a little before the deadline, so they're really only about a business day late in getting back to me. I'm scared of being a pest after I contacted him about whether they got my application (and after a year of planning, I'm scared to know the outcome!) so I think I'm going to wait until the end of this week...