hreaðemus
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Posts posted by hreaðemus
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Oh dear. I'm sorry, y'all - I should have realized my comment might strike a sore spot at this time of year. I should clarify: the professor in question is a deeply kind, thoughtful, and compassionate man, and his comment to me was given in the context of critiquing MY writing sample, which he said was very strong except that I was self-effacing - I undermined the actual strength of my work by understating both my stakes and my real contribution to the field in my intro and conclusion. I'm quite sure that saying "I personally, read the first and the last pages first, and if they don't grab me, I don't read the rest of the paper" was his way of motivating me, not demoralizing y'all - and I'm also sure that it was an exaggeration. Please don't take it too seriously!
Also, mollifiedmolloy - you're right, there are other, very important things happening in Berkeley... and they are on my mind/in my everyday life as well, of course. But since this is GradCafe, my grad school thoughts are the ones I tend to share...
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Ack, I'm just putting the finishing polish on my WS intro and conclusion and it's SO STRESSFUL - they're such tiny details that I feel bad asking my professors to give the OK one more time, and yet they're my hook and final word! My honors professor literally said that if he's not captured by the first and last page of a writing sample HE DOESN'T READ THE REST (and he's on the adcomm! At Berkeley!)
*tears hair, crawls under rock*
On the bright side, this will all be over soooo soon... deadlines are a blessing as well as a curse!
- hypervodka and fancypants09
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I know hreaðemus already got into Cambridge (but is the UK system just generally earlier?)
Just a quick note to say: the UK system is not much earlier than the US system, as far as I know. But! At Cambridge (and, I think, quite a few UK universities), admissions are rolling. I submitted my final materials on Oct. 28th and was accepted Nov. 12th -- I don't think I was early acceptance, exactly, but some people apply in Oct. and are admitted in April, while others get a timeline more like mine. It seems to be a very opaque process.
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Okay. I need someone to tell me that a score below 600 is no big deal. I was preaching this psalm a few weeks ago, but now I'm starting to worry again. Reassure me, good people!
I just want to add some extra reassurance!
You're such a strong applicant, Wyatt's Torch, and your scores are not bad at all! But more importantly (heh), my professors have all had exactly the SAME reaction, even my mentor, to my 650: "Oh, good job dear! Now your admissions committees can forget about your scores." One professor who sits on the adcomm at my school explicitly said that "we don't distinguish between similar scores," as long as the student is in the right ballpark. It really is just a hurdle; unless one's scores are abysmally bad (which yours are not) there is NO cause for concern. -
What? No, they have to be! Did you try resetting your cookies?
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I GOT A 650!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
OMG I too am going to go collapse into jelly now. That was the most stressful thing I have ever done.
Congratulations, you guys!!!!!! We survived the last horrific hurdle before the actual degree committees!
- 1Q84, jhefflol and Dr. Old Bill
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Aw, I bet you can just shoot the admissions department an email and correct your mistake! I made a pretty stupid error on my Cambridge application (I said my supervisor was doing work on a writer he had definitely NOT done work on - they had almost identical names, but it was still dumb) and they let me submit an addendum before it was considered.
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HS grad : 75 lbs
UG Grad : 105 (and it has been 3 years since I graduated).
Currently : 110 but this is all from muscle. I lift a lot of weights and I do a lot of cardio. I eat very healthy every day.
To maintain a thin frame, I work out about 3 - 5 times a week - cardio & weight training & ab work out. I also eat extremely healthy : a lot of salad, vegan, and lean meat (predominately white). No snacks & alcohol maybe once a week, if that much. No soda, no sweets, no ice cream, no candy...trust me, life is not worth living without sweets & alcohol.
Oh yea, I also forgot to mention that I am 5'5.
Um... kittythrones, perhaps I am missing something. All of the weights you list, at 5'5" - even the 110 lb you say is "all muscle" - would be considered medically underweight. Perhaps you're simply an extremely small-boned person, but I find your comments to be a bit concerning. Please take care of yourself!
If life is not worth living without sweets and alcohol, it sounds like you could absolutely afford a few indulgences. -
It's very true! But judging by the number of wonderful medievalists on this forum alone, I'm glad I'll be representing the period just afterward...
Yeah, it's funny -- everyone I talk to has said that we medievalists are a rare breed, but I know so many personally that it seems hard to believe sometimes! On the other hand, there are only 4 grad students out of like 50 in my school's English department who list Old English as a specialty, so maybe I'm simply prone to stumbling over the few of us who exist...
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On that note, where do you see that it's been sent? I don't see any new notifications in my online GRE page.
Oh! Well, in the "Scores and Score Recipients," or whatever that section is called, ETS lists out the schools you've ordered scores for - so mine says Berkeley, Yale, Harvard, and Cornell (because the British schools, bless their hearts, don't ask for GRE scores). And then, next to the school name, the Subject Test scores have all had a "Pending or not available"label - until YESTERDAY, when they changed to a date: 11/22/14.
Now, I don't know if that's the date ETS sends the scores, the day the school receives them, or what - but it means THEY will know if I bombed the test before I do.... *crawls under a rock*
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Sorry!! I have the flu, so it's just me, my homework, and my anxiety holed up in my apartment this weekend... I had to worry out loud somewhere! At least we can all be scared together, right?
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Ack, the GRE Subject Test scores for October get released on Monday. I can feel the nervous energy building...
I'm genuinely terrified that I'll have flunked the damn thing. I mean - I felt ok after the test, but I took it under such stressful caffeine-deprived circumstances that I've been doubting my initial confidence ever since... I would be grateful for 550 or above, even though I never scored below 600 on a practice exam, but AUGH. It's so scary!!! *fidgets*
Update: AUGH they sent my scores today but they won't let me see them until Monday??? How cruel is that???
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OMG unræd you are my favorite. Also, if you ever end up coming to Berkeley and talking to my mentor (you know who I mean) please, please, PLEASE make a joke about dragons and giants being your true motivation. You will make her so happy. <3
I actually second most of what you said - particularly the puzzle-ness of medieval lit. And I don't have time to write a long story of my own right now. But I will say - I resisted the lure of the English department for many years, mainly because of buzzwords like "unemployability" and "impracticality," before I discovered Anglo-Saxon England and fell in love. But at the end of the day I'm really good at writing essays, at piecing together analytical and verbal arguments that require a pinch of creativity. Ultimately, I figured it was better to aim for being a brilliant student of literature than a mediocre student of a more monetarily practical discipline.
I'm pretty into the crazy animals in manuscripts, myself.
Is the teeny flying mole in the top corner not the cutest thing you've ever seen????
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It depends on the school, as far as I know - when I applied to Cambridge, I had to submit my application before I could send my letter requests, which were automatic. But all my US applications have allowed me to send the letter requests before I submitted the application. You should be able to tell once you create an application account for a particular university which situation is on your hands.
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Thank you!!! I'm so grateful for our little community here - it makes successes much richer, and failure less scary. You all are terrific! (Also, I did as instructed! The acceptances thread is officially begun...)
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a.) Thank you!!! b.) This succession of .gifs is deeply entertaining to me. <3
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Well, with the advent of my conditional acceptance to Cambridge, it seems I have been assigned the duty of starting an acceptances thread for our little GradCafe cohort! I'm not sure how this works, but here goes nothing.
I'll update my list as results come in.Schools applied to:
Cambridge - accepted! No funding info yet.
Oxford - ?
Berkeley - ?
Cornell - ?
Harvard - ?
Yale - ?
As I said to Wyatt's Torch, I can't wait until we are all doing our happy I-got-in dances!
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Eep, Cambridge just made me a conditional offer of acceptance!!!
I know the real challenge is yet to come: funding, oof. There's no way I could attend unless I get the Gates or a College scholarship or something similar. But!!! Still!! It took my entire application less than two weeks from the time I submitted the last of my supporting documents to be processed and accepted -- that seems like a compliment. And, also, Cambridge!
This will make the rest of applications season sting a tiny bit less. <3
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I should clarify that I in no way meant to diminish the LGBTQ experience of discrimination either inside or outside of academia. My original response was simply a paraphrase of my mentor's answer to my own question about whether being an LGBTQ applicant myself would be counted towards minority fellowships and funding; her answer, as I said above, was no. (I'm an English major, so the situation may be different elsewhere.) She did mention, as Between Fields also kindly pointed out (thank you!) that it would be worth mentioning if coming out or being a sexual minority had had a profound impact on my experience as a student - but because in my case it didn't, I decided not to discuss my sexuality in my application. I'm sorry if I offended anybody! I only meant to share the feedback I received from a professional.
- Between Fields and unræd
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This is most likely a diversity issue, in which case sexuality will not have an impact on your chances of admission or funding - I asked my mentor the same question for Berkeley's application, and she said that LGBTQ folks are no longer considered an underrepresented group in academia. However, a history of extreme financial hardship and/or non-white ethnicity/race both have the potential to qualify you for diversity scholarships -- people who grew up in working class/impoverished households and people of color ARE still underrepresented in university settings. So! Mention you're gay if it suits you, omit the information if it doesn't; your chances should remain approximately the same either way. But if you come from poverty or identify as anything other than white, it may benefit you to share that with admissions committees.
- trogdorburninator and Cookie
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I second unræd's question.
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Thank you unræd! That's promising, at least. Here's hoping the Board is feeling generous!
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Hey you guys! Are any of you familiar with the steps of the Cambridge admissions process? My application just went from "under consideration by degree committee" to "under consideration by Graduate Board," which is supposedly the last step (!!) in the process of admission. But! I'm thinking the Graduate Board probably makes financial decisions - so would this be the step where they reject me if they don't have money for me? Has anyone else applied to/been accepted by a Cambridge program? I just can't figure out if I've made it through the most harrowing application step, or if I'm in the MIDDLE of it as we speak. Eep! Help!
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Fall 2015 Applicants
in Literature, and Rhetoric and Composition
Posted
It's also a.) finals week, b.) the start of the holidays, and c.) the start of application deadlines - so a lot of us are just too busy to post! Between learning two new languages, trying to process and engage with the protests happening in my town, finishing my applications, turning in final projects and developing an honors thesis I just don't have time to post unless I REALLY have something to say! But I do check in on the forums at least once a day.
Today I turned in a 20-page research paper for my favorite professor 15 minutes before the deadline, which is really pushing it for me; it's a strong idea and pretty well-written, I think, up until Page 14 - and then I crumble downhill to a VERY weak conclusion. It's driving me nuts. I'm thinking about giving her an edited version on Friday just for the sake of my pride and her eyeballs... she's seen a ton of my drafts and works-in-progress before, but somehow every time I write something terrible I'm just SURE I'll disappoint her forever...
Also, the "storm of the decade" hits tonight in California! All the schools are having a "rain day" in the Bay Area tomorrow, which I find mildly absurd. But it is Berkeley! We don't really have weather here, I guess.