kismetcapitan

1.98 GPA from a Tier One undergrad school. FML

that's brilliant. My analogy was indeed extreme and oversimplistic. I love yours better! hmm. I can still fire off a couple more apps. Maybe I should go hit the local dating scene? I work in Korea. Koreans (including my parents), think an acceptance letter is like an achievement, getting an award, winning the 1st place trophy. And yes, if we get our first choice school there's lots of screaming, dancing around, and celebration to be sure. But it's really just an invitation, to lots of hard work and deep academic commitment. Feels like marriage So the degree would definitely be like the baby

from some points of view I maybe should have applied to IEP as my work is in education in Korea. But I want to master the art of teaching itself first, plus have more than just experience to back up what I teach in my classroom, so it's MBE for me. But it's highly possible that a ed policy PhD would be helpful in the future. Not all of us can be Michelle Rhee though - I look at me changing the educational world on a far smaller scale!

Just one - Harvard. Ain't hubris (I graduated from a Tier One undergrad school...with a GPA so low you'd think it was a typo). Simply put, I work, so it will cost me, on top of tuition, a significant amount of lost wages and time away from my wife and child, so I chose the program that would be the most useful, and there you go. When a masters degree will cost, in tuition, living expenses, plus all lost income from not working, a quarter million dollars, it better be a good program (also note I said "program", not "the school name on the diploma"). Plus, I don't quite get this applying to a million schools thing. I think universities are like marriage - you get something wonderful, but you have to give yourself heart and soul, at least if you want to have a really proper higher education experience. Do people, when they decide it's the year they should get married, go out and propose to 15 women, see who accepts them, and then choose? I only applied to one undergrad program as well back in the day, early decision. you choose, you commit yourself heart and soul, apply....then hope like hell that they recognize your commitment and that if they accept you, you're a sure thing cause you've applied nowhere else!!!!

throw me in the mix as well. I just clicked submit - I sure hope my SOP is ok, because I started today with my extant 2500 word draft, and revised it endlessly for around ten hours straight. I can't see straight not, and the spellchecker isn't always accurate, but I just uploaded the thing. Ed.M applicant, MBE program. I'm a, what would be the correct term? Unconventional candidate? Old fart applicant is probably a bit more apropos 37 years old, over 12 years teaching experience and founder and headmaster of my own alternative school. I have no backup school - this is my only application. This is not hubris or ego; it's just...being a complete idiot Anyone want to compare numbers? I took the GRE cold-turkey a week ago. 690 verbal, 710 math. My Tufts undergrad GPA....so frighteningly low that I hope that GPAs are like bankruptcies...after 15 years they won't count anymore?? I hope we all get in!!! btw, what's with the decision being posted to our application accounts? So instead of getting an email, we have to login every ten minutes for the first two weeks of March to see if we got in or not???

the thing is (and I'm still writing the damned thing!), is that I am an, oh there has to be some euphemism for it, but I'm applying to HGSE for the MBE program, and I am 37 years old with 13 years teaching experience. So I start a paragraph, and end up with tons of anecdotes and examples of students I've taught as cases to support various arguments. Needless to say, this takes up a LOT of space. I've revised several times, and each time I do, I get back up to the 2500 word mark. Although I've removed it, here was my intro, stealing the writing style (and line breaks) of Marguerite Duras: It was Hokkaido, Japan, my father and I lounging in chairs, drinking in the view of Tokayo Lake from our hotel room, the window swung outwards about a third to allow the unseasonably mild April air waft in and about the room. It was a holiday. It was a four-day continuous conversation, interrupted only by sleep, of a father mentoring his son, giving that blank-check assurance that all children seek, whether the are half a year or fifty years old. It was a time to commit. I flew home, sold the house, and founded the alternative school I always felt should have existed. (and then I get into the meat of the essay) The HGSE SOP requires two things: your objectives for graduate study, and your background. The creative version alternates between the two using non-sequiturs in the style of Stuart Dybek, and includes one section where I step out of the essay completely to comment in "real time" about the writing of the essay (technique stolen from John Edgar Wideman), about trying to complete a Harvard application in between the constant bushfires that spring up daily while running a school and teaching a zillion classes. The other version is just more straightforward. Or another way to do the "straightforward" structure would be to use my more creative language and anecdotes, then wrap up with some very serious paragraphs on ongoing and potential future research in education. btw, my sister does admissions for U Mich psych grad applicants. She says that if an essay is too long, or too florid, it pisses her off because she feels its wasting her time. Needless to say, we are VERY different people!!

wonder if anyone could shed some advice here. I'm stuck with two versions of my SOP for Harvard Graduate School of Education (applying for a masters). The prompt is straightforward - what do you want to achieve, and what is your background. 1500 words. One version is rather creatively written, steals a few structural techniques from Stuart Dybek and John Edgar Wideman, and is easy and entertaining to read, according to friends. The other is straightforward, factual, and dry - definitely not me. However, my sister who sits on the U Mich grad admissions board told me she hates long, she hates anectdotes unless they are very short and hve a direct releveant point, and basically said you say what you want, who you are, and that's it. But I've never been that kind of writer, and what U Mich grad school (different major) and Harvard GS Education are looking for might be different? Should I use judiciously some of my writing wit and creativity? Or should I be dead professional and avoid any attempts to be clever? On the one hand, these have to be read, and a memorable, clever and witty essay is easier on a reviewer than a bone-dry summary of purpose and history, as good as the content might be. But on the other, aren't we supposed to sound significantly more mature as grad school applicants?