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snagsby52

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Everything posted by snagsby52

  1. ps. to running_circle: I think that $200/ a month will be enough for groceries. The town is not really expensive. The best grocery store is Ukrops. I would avoid Bloom even though it is closer to campus... The Fresh Market has more expensive food, but for specialty items, it is sometimes nice to go there. To others: The campus is next to (in) Colonial Williamsburg, but you will only run into tons of people in costume if you go farther down the Duke of Gloucester Street. It is a really a chill town, but some people might think it is boring...and the students are a mixed bag from conservative to ultra liberal. Some of the W&M are kind of "nerds," some of them care too much about their sororities/fraternities, but a lot of them are really cool and just like school. I've met a few American Studies grad students, and one in particular was really awesome. If you are doing American studies then you should definitely take a class from Susan Donaldson. She is unbelievably smart and awesome--love her. If you are going to W&M for History, then you should take classes from Katherine Levitan (19th C. British History) and Dale Hoak (16th&17th C. British). Good luck!
  2. Hi. I grew up in Williamsburg, and it is a nice smaller town. If you want a big bar scene then it is not the place for you, but the William and Mary campus is gorgeous, and the professors are wonderful. The undergrads are really smart, so any teaching experience will be an enjoyable experience. Rent will be cheap. I'm not sure how cheap, but I assume pretty cheap, because my brother has a SMALL HOUSE and they only pay $900 a month. I will get more info and post again. Bars to go to: The Green Leafe; The Corner Pocket (I personally don't go anywhere else when I'm home.) The Corner Pocket is also a pool hall. If you want the intense nightlife, you travel an hour up to Richmond (which is an hour away, but a straight shot.) Here is a list of good restaurants: Nawab (decent Indian food) La Tolteca and Pancho Villa (Mexican food) Soya (amazing japanese food, but about a ten min. drive from campus. Believe me, if you like japanese food, it is worth it.) Thai Emerald (which is a trip up towards Busch Gardens 10-15 min from campus.) The Blue Talon (very expensive, but good french food to have once in a while. Not as expensive for lunch. Giuseppes (not too expensive Italian food) Lighter fare: The Cheese Shop (for takeout sandwiches and good cheese) The Corner Pocket (for salads and sandwiches) and Aromas is a nice coffeeshop downtown to hang out and study in. Anyway, you should visit in order to see whether you want to live in Williamsburg. It is best to have a car, but some students seem to get by without one.
  3. I second that. A professor wouldn't say that you are sure to get funding if they didn't really think so. Not only would that not be nice to you, but that would make them look bad. You can be happy now, but I understand what it feels like when things are still uncertain. I am still waiting for first-year funding from UNC, and am first on the waitlist for Indiana. The prof at UNC said to me that she really believes that they will be able to offer me funding the first-year, but I'm still nervous. I hate waiting! I'm not even sure whether Indiana is going to offer me funding, and I can't go if I don't get funding! Of course we have to care about finances. As a professor recently said to me, it would be crazy to pay your way through any part of graduate school in English with the help of loans, because you couldn't possibly pay back any loans for at least 6 years. Who could possibly afford it except the exceptionally wealthy. And why would they want to?
  4. I was just waitlisted at one of my top four schools. I was told by the English secretary that I should to write to this professor in order to find out where I was on the waitlist. The professor wrote me back and said that I was next on the waiting list for my field and that therefore 'there was a real possibility that they were going to be able to offer me admission.' I think this means that I will be offered admission eventually, but I'm worried that I will find out too late, and if I'm going to go, I want to visit first so that I can make sure that I am making the right choice. I also have no idea whether they are going to offer me funding. :cry: Being waitlisted is so stressful.....and I sort of feel like I should go to one of the schools that accepted me right away.
  5. I understand exactly how you feel. I am going crazy too. I have been accepted into some really good schools, but I need this whole thing to be over, so I'm totally obsessing about one of the schools that I haven't heard from, and checking my email every twenty minutes like it is a completely normal thing to do. I like things to be settled and completely certain. It is what makes me good at writing papers, but bad at dealing with any sort of waiting. I also had a loony moment today when I opened my mailbox and found twisted brown mossy stuff, leaves, etc. I thought someone was playing a trick on me--teaching me a lesson about not checking my mailbox so often. I even started to think it might be my postwoman (who is actually great.) My dad came home and took more of the natural gunk out of the mailbox and started exclaiming about the birds making nests in our mailbox...I felt like the paranoid level had gotten a little too high... :shock: Anyway, that said, you should be extremely happy about Northwestern. That is a great school, and if the Art History program is anything like the English program, I would be totally ecstatic. However, I am glad that other people are freaking out too...it makes me feel less weird about things like mistaking birds making nests for people giving me signs. I think I was just giving myself a sign that it was time to chill, go outside and read a book. After all, reading and writing on literature is the whole reason I got into this admission madness.
  6. I just called Indiana University Bloomington and found out that I was waitlisted. This proves that things are still happening, and it is not over yet! Plus--I saw that two other people got into UC-Davis just yesterday. Congratulations!!
  7. I would agree. I happen to like the cold--but not all year cold. I did my undergrad in Massachusetts and you have to like the snow; otherwise you are miserable and dreaming about California the whole time. Those things really matter when you are choosing a school. You have to be there for at least 5 (if not 7) years, so you better pick a place where you really want to live. That said, see what the schools are like when you visit. If the school that is surrounded by cold weather is 10 times better in terms of academics than the other school, then the decision will inevitably be a difficult one. In any case, good luck!
  8. What schools are you choosing between? Also, are you named after Anne McClintock's book? I think there is also a type of soap named Imperial Leather. I'm into British Imperial Studies, that is why I am asking...
  9. Thanks franktruth...I heard from four of my schools between the end of January and the beginning of February, but I heard from UNC at the beginning of March. I think that there is hope until you receive the rejection, and judging from last year, people were still being waitlisted and offered MAs at this point...some people were even being accepted. Though your truth seems brutally honest to your ears, maybe you should realize that there are people who are trying to hold onto some hope. Your response sounds awfully like gloating.
  10. Is anyone still waiting to hear from the University of Chicago or Indiana University-Bloomington? I wrote to Indiana, but they haven't written me back.
  11. Joining the waiting for funding party. I have a couple of really secure offers, but UNC-Chapel Hill was one of my first choices, and I am still waiting to hear about the first-year funding (years 2-5 seem good, but I am even a little unsure whether all the funding is secure for these years). It makes me feel crazy not to know what I'm being offered! If I don't get the funding, I can't go. I guess it is better to be offered a place without guaranteed funding than not to be offered a place at all, but in a way that is ego (at least for me), because I can't go without funding. If they don't offer it to me, I'm off to Boston or California. Maybe it would be a blessing in disguise. :?
  12. This was initially meant to be a reply to someone who wrote in about declining offers in 2006. I didn't look at the date when I wrote it, and then when I realized I was 2 years too late, I thought that it would be an interesting point of discussion in 2008. Some of the rejections I've received have been pretty crappy--like the one from Rutgers. We get upset when we receive these less than kind letters, perhaps the professors do to, and I want to be bigger than the schools who put your work in a whirlpool of applications only to spit out an unthoughtful rejection letter.
  13. I just wrote my first email declining an offer, and it was made that much worse because they really wanted me. Several professors had written to me (starting at the end of January,) and they tried (but failed) to get me a university fellowship. One of the professors asked me about the details of my other offers, so I had to give her all the information, and I felt sick afterwards. However, I comforted myself with the idea that there will be an ecstatic student taken off the waitlist. I think it is best to write an email explaining the difficulty of your decision. In my case, this was easy. I really liked two of the professors, and would have been extremely happy to work with them, but they weren't offering me nearly as much money as the other schools and there was far too much teaching involved. It was a question of knowing myself, and knowing that I couldn't live on such a small amount of money while also working so much. I think writing a (slightly long) email is best, because it shows that you are respectful of the time they spent on you, and are willing to spend time with a kind response. However, I also hate talking on the phone and have a hard time saying "no," and feel that the conversation on the phone would be painful for both parties involved. What does everyone else think? I will have to decline other offers over this next month--is there really a nice way of doing it? Is anyone else having a hard time declining offers?
  14. You could apply for outside fellowships/ grants, but at this point, you would not be able to get the funding until the 2009-2010 school year (at the earliest). If you want to do this, I would look on both the websites of your undergraduate institution and your grad institution for more help on finding funding. You could also get loans, but this is dangerous territory...I'm still paying back college loans, and don't want to have to pay back anymore.
  15. Not for real?! I have not received any personal rejections. I second that question--did the professor from Harvard really say that? I don't want to read the rejection when I get it if there is going to be a personal note like that. :shock:
  16. English Ph.D. The best package I got was from: UC Davis: full tuition, health insurance, First year: $22,000 + $17,000/ a year stipend for years 2-5, with the possibility to petition for one extra year of teaching + stipend. Competitive dissertation fellowships in year 6. What is normal for English Ph.D.s?
  17. I will be giving up my place at Wisconsin-Madison. I was accepted for Victorian Studies. I hope this helps!
  18. I just heard yesterday by email. I thought I wasn't going to get in because I saw that somebody else posted early in February. However, the website actually says that they have rolling admissions, so it's not over. I hope you get in!
  19. I applied to a lot of schools for English knowing that it was going to be really hard to get in. I would go to the third place school unless you absolutely hate it when you go visit. If you are unhappy, then you can transfer.
  20. Hi. I heard from Davis on February 12th. Someone else on the gradcafe said that they did applications in batches though. It makes us sound like cake batter, but I like the idea of batches better, because then hopefully the schools are really reading all the applications. I think it is so hard to get in this year. I know people with perfect records who are having a hard time. I hope you get into davis if that is where you want to go!
  21. Hi! I'm new here. A little bit about myself: I graduated from a small liberal arts college in Mass, and I specialize in Victorian Literature (with a focus on the novels of George Eliot and Charles Dickens.) I've been accepted into the Ph.D. programs at UNC-Chapel Hill, Boston College, and U-Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I'm assuming that all the rest are going to be rejections...
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