kismetcapitan

could be worse - I was undergrad at NEC and got rejected for M.M....and THEN, the professor who rejected me, I was taking a class (of six students) with him, and had to show up and deal personally face to face with that rejection. In class. And I still had to bust my ass to pass the class for the rest of the painfully long semester. Talk about a sudden loss of motivation!

man, please tell me MBE isn't like Higher Ed where they are way, way more picky - I'm applying for MBE precisely because it's so unique (and I've got 12 years teaching experience so the TEP would offer less to learn)....and I am really hoping to hear some good news! I really should have applied to more than just Harvard - having only one application out is far too much stress, what was I thinking?? I didn't know Tufts had a Ph.D in education; since I went there undergrad I didn't really look at it for grad school. Maybe I should have - Jumbos rule

I can only speak for U Michigan from my sister as a source, but they use it solely for statistical purposes and to work on yield on acceptances. They do not use it in the admissions process at all.

I like those words, because when I applied ED to my undergrad school (highly competitive Tier One school) my high school counselor looked me dead in the eye and said (and I'll never forget) "well, I'll do this, but you don't have a snowball's chance in hell of getting into this school." First thing I did when I got accepted (and my classmate who had a far better GPA got rejected) was march into his office, acceptance letter in hand. He was nonplussed to be certain, and managed to mumble out a "well, congratulations!" There's a bigger picture to a candidate than just numbers. It was a good way to compare metrics as my classmate applied ED - she had a perfect GPA but my SAT was higher. She was active in more extracurriculars but the ones I were in tended to be more involved and I held leadership positions. And our essays would have been obviously different. LORs? My high school teachers liked her a whole lot more than they liked me, that's for certain. And graduate school applications are obviously even more subjective, looking more for "fit" than plain numbers. Numbers are crap anyways - Korean high schools and universities basically use only two metrics - GPA and entrance exam score. Which is why the system is so screwed up. My sister is an adcomm at U Mich (grad school) and her best advice is to just "write the best application YOU can", and if it's meant to be, you'll get in.

That has been my exact argument as to why I have put off grad school for so long. If I'm already successfully teaching, have my teaching methodology down pat, with 12+ years of experience in the classroom, just how much would a masters help me? This degree is going to cost me, in terms of tuition, living expenses, living expenses for my wife and baby who will stay behind in Korea, and lost income...close to $200,000 if my school shuts down without me there. I only applied to one specific program at one school, and my intent is not teacher training, but rather, in research. I'll be able to cross register at the Kennedy School (and I've already picked out a few potential classes), and probably at some of the others if it fits into a cohesive academic goal. Given the things I want to study and research, I suspect I'll be able to find it at Harvard, if not directly through the Ed School, then by cross-registering at the other grad schools with the course germane to what my ultimate purpose is. It is a shame that the best and brightest avoid teaching like the plague (except those who want to become professors, and even then, teaching is secondary to your research). It does come down to money - we put in as much time and preparation as most lawyers, yet there's an obvious disparity in income. But teaching is in my blood <sigh>. I don't have a choice, unless I choose a job that I hate, just for the money. Been there, done that.

good call so mid-March will be the decider. By that time I'll be definitely neck-deep in work, whether or not I got in would be the least of my immediate worries then. The Korean school calendar has the school year beginning in late February; gearing up for it is building; although I personally always have class (one class might be on vacation, but then another won't), I can feel the storm building <sigh>. Teaching seven full days a week is hard. Hard hard hard. btw....am I the only person who has put a link on their iPhone straight to the application website? With push email, no matter what time of day or where I am, I'll get it on my phone. Then I just touch the Harvard app icon (a bookmark), touch login...and then I'll know....within five minutes tops, of Harvard emailing us letting us know decisions have been rendered. Am I abnormal...??

well, if we get emails in exactly four weeks, it doesn't look like good news...but in six weeks? jumping for joy/relief! looking at past results, HGSE seems to send out their rejections at the end of February, and acceptances in mid-March. What's up with that? I'm almost tempted to go completely offline during that time! (of course, I won't be able to, I was the kid who could barely tolerate waiting christmas morning, and spent much of my childhood making arguments as to why we should be permitted to open our gifts at midnight, christmas eve, as it was then technically the 25th....

what exactly do you mean by list? Do mean 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th choice of what to do after graduation?

Trying to keep my two year old nascent school from falling prey to the insidious cram-school industry in Korea, trying to convince my student's parents that this "new fangled" dialectic education may not yield higher TOEFL results (and...why the hell is EVERY Korean kid cramming for the iBT...in 7th grade??). What else? Proselytizing the World Scholar's Cup to anyone that will listen, and prepping for my son's 1st birthday which is coming up in a week. And of course, spending lots of time here! commiserating our worst anxieties....

when one looks at schools, rankings (which are admittedly largely arbitrary - since when is a news magazine the leading authority on ranking one school over another??), and acceptance rates, there's a linear correlation. This is true for undergrad admissions, and it holds true as well for grad schools - the higher the school's reputation, the lower the acceptance rates. WITH, the glaring exception of masters education programs. The Ivies and other top programs seem to center around 55~60%. But then take U Michigan, with a great program, and they accept 87%....far more than Michigan State, and go down the list further to Ohio State, and you start seeing acceptance rates in the 40-ish percents, while U Penn took 77% in 2008. I've tried to correlate GRE scores, as that's the only metric available to me, but it still doesn't present a clear picture, as all education schools in the top 30 or so don't vary too much. This is extremely confusing. Top schools have low acceptance rates. Schools down the list have ever-increasing acceptance rates. Fits conventional wisdom, and the numbers support this. The only metric I can't see are what kind of students are applying. Does everyone throw in a Hail Mary app to Harvard, for example? And of course there are yields, which are not published for graduate admissions. But these are factors that affect all schools. For example, in undergraduate admissions, if Harvard had yield rates more along the lines of say, Northwestern or Tufts, then they'd have to bump their acceptance rates to nearly 20% or more to insure they can fill their freshman class. For law and business schools, most people I know apply to at least ten schools. Since a person can only attend one program, yields become a significant factor. So why are education schools so statistically anomalous?

the key aspect of a panopticon is not that they are watching, but that you THINK that they are watching you. All the time. In your head. Jeebus, I **am** developing paranoia!

this waiting period is introducing not only new levels of anxiety never before experienced, but a new sensation I had previously relegated only to the ranks of the schizophrenic - paranoia. do adcomms browse these forums? do they go check out your Facebook (I had a stream of odd people I didn't know add me as a friend around deadline time, and a couple of them happen to be...students where I'm applying to!). my sister is an adcomm at U Mich in one of their most competitive departments, and says she gets irritated when an SOP is too long or there are too many additional letters, essays, research papers, etc. (she reviews every word but her opinion is that such an applicant is selfishly "stealing" time away from other applicants - this is for masters programs btw, PhD candidates get lengthy scrutinizing)....so in her case clearly not, but then again, they're reviewing thousands upon thousands of applications. But other schools and programs may see only a couple hundred applications....and it's quite easy to google up someone's name, ID, etc....

of course I did this, I am a severe perfectionist. But to make sure I could look at everything objectively, I waited two weeks. I read all my supplementary short essays - exactly how I wanted them. My fellowship essay - couldn't have done any better, it's got 100% of my heart in it in it. Then the only really required essay - the SOP. What a mess! With 20 hours left before deadline, I had a 3500+ word draft that I had to pare down to 1500 words. I got in all my basic ideas...but the flow is completely screwed up and there is one grammatical error. If I could only get it back and add around 10-15 conjunctions that would at least clarify how one idea connects with another, and two key paragraph main idea sentences are nearly gibberish after being pared down to squeeze into the word count. The conclusions is sudden and abrupt - I had to take out about 150 words that tied the final body paragraphs to the conclusion and was far too sleep deprived to see straight enough to try and smooth them together. I was also afraid to touch it further; every time I cut something, I'd suddenly spit out 500 new words. The essay was like cutting heads off a hydra.... I have never cried over my writing before, but I did over this one. It's the writing equivalent of dad cutting your hair at home - the general shape is there, disregarding the fact that it was cut and hacked with a blunt axe! If this essay had come from one of my students I'd have drenched it in red ink. FML

Once upon a time, 14 years ago to be exact, I was a musician studying at one of the top conservatories in the US. I knew the chair of the department wasn't too fond of me, but what the hell, I applied for my M.M. - I was an undergrad there, surely they'd accept me and just let me continue? Nope. In a very lengthy rejection letter (a whole page, single-spaced, as to not only the fact I was rejected, but lots of explicit details as to WHY - rub salt in the wound why don't you *** *****!!). It concluded that I ought to be a writer instead of a musician. Totally gutted, I didn't even bother to finish my B.M. and just graduated with a B.A. from the university in the other half of my dual degree program. Gunshy for years, it is only now that I've tried to apply for my masters again. I've been a teacher (not music! just about every other subject, especially.....writing) for most of these intervening years, so now it's for an Ed.M. I can't believe I only applied to one school....

that makes me feel a lot better. I got a 5.0, but I've always thought writing was my ace in the hole. But I do use unconventional essay structures to emphasize and strengthen certain arguments when I see fit, and all in all, I'm told my writing tends to indulge in creative approaches, and is far from formulaic. I am absolutely NOT going a waste a minute of my life to train myself to write in a dull SAT I Writing or TOEFL essay format, especially when my writing classes spend so much time trying to break my students of that damnable five-paragraph essay format that makes an essay completely predictable by the time I'm done with the first paragraph. As I like to tell my students, "who the hell wants to sit through a two-hour movie, when you already know what's going to happen?". If adding interest by varying structure and building suspense parallel with building one's argument, you have a far more interesting and readable essay....by a human. Screw that computer thing.

I'll be giving up a six-figure net income every year I'm in school. Sounds insane but I'm maxed out - nowhere to go from here. I'm not talking about money per se, it's just that I can't accept that what I know now will be all I know; I need to learn a LOT more. Furthermore, I've got a lot of ideas that I'd like to apply formal research to. Can't really do that anywhere but a university.

Good: I'll call my dad, he's footing the bill. He will cry - tears of joy, or the fact that he's not only looking at my grad school expenses, but my brother's as well (who's applying to MBA programs at the same time). Then emails to my recommenders. Then....start to freak out over all the planning I have to do - I've been out of the country for seven years. My wife will celebrate (no, our marriage isn't on the rocks, she wants me to get my masters and has been an instrumental part in getting me out of my comfort zone and better myself, strive to make my life more extraordinary), but I'll probably cry when I hold my little son, barely a year old, and he'll be going on three when I get back. I know it's all for the best, and Skype is pretty damned effective at feeling in touch over long distance, but emotions are emotions, and I love him totally to death. Bad: I'll call my dad, let him know he's off the hook for a huge chunk of change! Then emails to my recommenders to thank them again for their time. Then...wonder if I should despair over not getting to study what I've been wanting to, or relax and celebrate over the fact that I won't be separated from my wife and baby son for 1-2 years.

celebrate? I'll feel a true dualistic state of mind - profound satisfaction in acceptance, yet apprehension at the enormous amount of academic work that has suddenly been thrown on my plate. While dancing a little victory jig, I'll be on the phone with my sister in Boston, asking her to pick up certain textbooks at the Coop so I can get a head start on some work. An acceptance isn't a prize or an award for your past efforts - it's simply an invitation for greater academic challenge/difficulty/struggle/misery/education/contribution to the sum total of human knowledge....

my application is now complete, all documents are in my file. EEAP!!!!

I think objectively, TC is the better school. Harvard isn't #1 in everything. That being said, I did not apply to TC, somewhat based on not wanting to live in NYC, but mostly because I just felt the Harvard programs were more of a match. For what I want to do, I'd have to commit at least two years to TC, and since I'm already running a school, I can't really afford to take two years off. But had I applied BEFORE founding my alternative school, I'd have given TC a harder look. How would one not get into Harvard but into TC? That being said, my college roommate, in applying for engineering PhD programs, got shut down at UCSD and MIT, but got into Harvard and Tufts. I suppose there's a lot of subjectivity in the process!

this may sound odd, but I'll come back to doing exactly what I'm doing now - running my alternative school. Basically, I want to improve and refine my teaching methodologies, and although I'm doing just fine right now without a grad degree, will I be able to evolve and grow in the next ten years without further education? Plus, I want to establish relationships with people in educational research, and get more involved with that. There are several studies I've dreamed up that I'd like to do, find some answers.

for IR...why not the Fletcher School??

what kinda guitar? I have ten Hamers; I used to be pretty serious about rock, and studied classical piano and jazz improvisation at the New England Conservatory. Haven't played a gig in about four years; teaching has completely sucked up all my time. aren't you in a bit of a catch-22? Grad school = better job = Veblen goods galore I tune cars, specifically the Nissan Skyline GT-R. I've squeezed over 700 horsepower out of the thing. I studied engine building and programming ECUs on my own; it's a very deep and complex field, this whole thing about internal combustion engines. Especially when you add a pair of turbos to make a 2.8 liter engine act like a 9 liter engine! I'm also an avid sportbike rider, and around the time decisions come out, my preordered BMW S1000RR will arrive; the most powerful production sportbike on the market. So that'll either be a congratulatory self-gift, or a prepared consolation prize to commiserate on if I get rejected! I used to rock climb, but gave that up after watching someone fall over 3500 feet off of El Capitan in Yosemite Valley; I was on a somewhat easier part of the Southeast Face when I saw the person take the ultimate crater, but I suddenly lost the desire to be pasted tenuously to a huge cliff. Haven't climbed since. Anyways, that's two out of three "real" sports, according to Hemmingway. I don't plan on bullfighting, so I think that pretty much caps it off.

I'm old (37) so what I really have going for me (I hope) is experience. 12 years teaching and two years ago I founded my own alternative school. Strong LORs, including an extra one from someone on Forbes list of "Revolutionary Educators". Top 25 undergrad school (but godawful grades ). I'm confident in my SOP, and I'm pretty damned committed to not only grad school, but to a single school and a single particular program - I've applied nowhere else. GRE is 97th percentile which I took last minute without prep, and I overhydrated before the test, so I kept having to run out to pee, losing time. I wonder what they'll think of my Mensa membership - it's extremely polarizing. Some find it extremely elitist and furthermore, based on questionable measurements of intelligence. I think I'd be a shoo-in, if it weren't for my GPA. Or the fact that it's Harvard, and even with all the numbers, if you don't come alive in your application (or come alive as someone not so desirable!), you'll get passed over (same as all other ultra-competitive schools). I had completely given up on ever applying to grad school due to my bombed (though still graduated) bachelors. But someone told me that lots of experience in my chosen field and the passage of a LOT of time can possibly compensate for an uncompetitive undergrad record. So I figured, hell, why not? I really want to do the program, so I guess in two months we'll find out