brouhaha

Let's play a game to distract ourselves from applications a little bit! Democracy

That's pretty interesting. One thing to keep in mind, though, is that not everyone who gets referred to an MA from political science is in East Asia. They could be referred to many other different MA programs so it's not like all of them are being dumped on one...unless I'm not reading that right.

Ooh great! That's very exciting. Hopefully we get good news and we'll be classmates, waldrop. subrosa, did you do the MA? how did you fund it and what are you doing now?

Any news on when the Yale MA is supposed to release decisions?

Eesh, lots of brutality today. Still nothing from Yale for me but I'm in the hands of the East Asian Studies department now. I have no idea when they'll be notifying. Any news from your side, cpaige?

Academia isn't my first choice. At this point I'm starting to question whether or not I even really need a PhD, which makes me feel awful considering how expensive all of these applications were. I think it's the pressure from all of these big schools to just churn out papers. I'd probably be happy with an MA. I think I want to work for a think tank, or maybe later on at least. I'm really young though and I'm a little scared I'll be giving away my youth so soon. I want to travel. I don't want to be stuck in an office just reading and writing about other places and not actually being there. I love studying Chinese and Japanese. I see how much fun my Japanese professor has teaching English, and I really enjoyed helping my Japanese roommate with her papers my freshman year. I'd be happy teaching English in Japan, China, or Taiwan, I think. All I know is I hate where I am right now and it makes me depressed and it's far too easy to lose focus of what I enjoy.

I seem to be getting rejections from all of my worst fit schools first. I'm totally fine with that if it means there's some good news coming my way from Yale/Chicago/Washington/Cornell!

I don't want to be stuck in an office my whole life doing research on countries thousands of miles away affected by issues that barely touch me. I want to use Chinese and Japanese, and for that I mean more than just reading documents. That's why I'm planning on more of the think tank route right now so I can at least perhaps spend time in China or Japan or Taiwan. Who knows though.

Oh, I don't mean your actual decision- I mean the fact that there are people on the waitlist yet they don't know exactly who's accepted. I suppose some professors and subfields do, but I still don't quite fully understand this process.

I just got this as well. It could just mean we weren't in round 1 of acceptances and there are more to come, although the waitlist thing sounds fairly suspect.

I found my UVA decision on the website with no e-mail, same as Northwestern. Now I'll be checking all of my applications to see if there are hidden rejections I don't know about!

Yeaaaaaaaaaah definitely gonna have to relearn Chinese...

http://www.yale.edu/polisci/gradprogram/readings.html

Thirding, which hopefully means they haven't sent out IR acceptances yet.

That's fantastic! Congratulations!

I just checked Northwestern and there was a decision link for me. Rejected, which doesn't really break my heart. It wasn't that good of a fit and I'd rather go to Yale's MA if that works out. I don't know why people don't like cpaige. I like her.

As someone with a small stomach but nimble fingers, I like this idea much more than the food competition.

Geeeeez. If you're suddenly paranoid about anything, it's probably the horribly difficult decision that will be awaiting you! Congrats! Anyone want to claim the Cornell acceptance? So far I haven't heard anything official...just the Yale MA stuff. I'm assuming I'm out at Northwestern which really won't break my heart at all especially if Yale works out. The anticipation is driving me mad!

Dear Applicant, All indications are that you will do very well in a graduate program in Science. Your academic record shows that you have worked hard for many years, did well in a range of difficult classes, and acquired the research experience that is essential preparation for graduate studies in Science. Your personal statement was well-written and focused, your grades are excellent, your GRE scores are very high, and it is clear that your reference letter writers are impressed with your intellectual abilities, motivation, and maturity. You have clearly met or exceeded all of our criteria for acceptance to the graduate program in Science at Major Research University. We regret that we cannot offer you admission to the Department of Science this year. Why can't we accept you, and all other qualified applicants? We can't owing to factors that have nothing to do with the quality of an applicant's academic record. For example, we have to consider how many graduate students are interested in particular fields of Science relative to the number of faculty in those fields, the number of current advisees these faculty have, and their interest in (and funding level for) advising new grad students. As it turns out, you expressed interest in a field that had the highest number of applicants this year. In addition, our budget is being slashed and we are no longer able to provide a guaranteed financial safety net for as many students as we used to, in the event that an adviser doesn't have sufficient funding to cover a student's graduate program in its entirety. We are therefore admitting fewer students overall than usual. To some extent, it is random bad luck that you aren't getting an offer of admission and a few others, with similar excellent records, are. That may make you feel better, or worse, but we wanted you to know that the reason you aren't being offered admission has nothing to do with your academic qualifications. We have no way of knowing if you were serious about wanting to join our Department or whether this letter is a disappointing blow to you, but either way, we hope you are soon able to launch an interesting and successful career in Science at another university. In fact, we hope that you will do so well that you will make us regret not accepting you into our graduate program. Sincerely, The Admissions Committee

Don't worry about this! Like SP said, just do well on your GRE (600+ verbal, 700+ math) and you should be fine. I'm in the same spot as you as far as that goes and I'm being considered for a master's at Yale.

Both appeal to me for different reasons and I believe I would be happy in either position.

Those articles are very interesting, but you all seem to be primarily interested in jobs in academia. While I am considering this, I am also thinking about working for a think tank. Do you think placement would be different in that regard?

I giggled at your username.

Since we've changed our Yale apps, does that mean we won't hear anything from the political science department? I'd imagine we're at the mercy of our master's programs now.

Hah! That's pretty cool. I do Pacific Rim stuff, especially China-US foreign policy, and I'm dabbling in security issues and feminism and lots of other things. I just love IR. I took Chinese in high school but got to college and there wasn't a program, and I just started in Japanese this semester. I'm actually writing a last-minute composition and studying for tomorrow morning's exam right now. Oops.