wednesdaybythesea

This is last year's blog topic concerning the wait list and the supplemental items you can use to bolster your application. I imagine there will be a similar post made soon for this year's list. http://news.fletcher.tufts.edu/admissions/?p=477

<br /><br /><br /> as liz lemon would say, "blerg". as tracy morgan would say, "live every week like it's shark week". i really don't know what else to say...

dear woodrow, my inbox is waiting. thanks.

oh, enough already! i just want to know! now!

and by "seven" and "one-ish," i was referring to weeks.

Helloooo fellow applicants! Good luck bearing the final bit of waiting! We've made it seven thus far and only have one-ish to go. Let us remember this as the time when only possibility lay out before us. Seriously, though, good luck to all. May Fletcher choose well.

I'm applying from Morocco. Amazingly, everything made it in on time, but I had a few snafus along the way. I found out in November that I had an outstanding library fine at my undergrad institution... still have my conspiracy theories about that as I graduated almost three years ago and am fairly certain that one cannot graduate/receive a diploma with outstanding fines. I had to clear that up (ie, my mom had to send a check on my behalf) in order to request transcripts. In late December, after receiving my October GRE scores, I noticed that they only reflected my most recent test date and not my first from Feb 2008 (which were actually better scores, arg). I spent about 20 minutes on a shaky Skype connection trying to convince ETS that I was the same person who took the test in Feb 2008. The annoying thing is that ALL of my personal information was the same (name, date of birth, SSN) except for my address. Since when is an address used as a primary identifier?! After they merged my accounts, I had to pay $20 for each updated score report so my schools would get the Feb scores as well. With my spotty internet connectivity, I spend way too much time trying to log in to my email to check for updates.

thank gooooooodness it's not a leap year. that would be unbearable.

sooo.... who else is playing the fletcher waiting game this application season?

Do you know if any of the schools you applied to or want to apply to have late deadlines? It seems like there are plenty of schools that have a deadline with funding consideration and a later deadline for applications that won't receive funding consideration. Maybe that's something to look into?

If you Google my name, not on the top of the results, but somewhere in there, is the results of a half-marathon that I ran and during which... got completely lost. At one point I gave up, decided I was done wandering around town with a number pinned to my shirt. Then saw a boy - an official runner as well - who had been separated from his group and was equally as confused as I was. We somehow managed to find our way back as he sang James Brown tunes and often chimed in, "We are soooo late". We ended up approaching the finish line from an intersecting, but wrong, street. I decided to wait and cheer for my full-marathon running friends before the finish line and ended up only crossing much later, more symbolically than anything. Which is why... if you Google my name... it will appear as if it took me six and a half hours to run 13 miles. Take that, adcomm!

I was reading mine a few times a day following their respective deadlines. I've toned it down to reading one in particular probably about once every other day now. I had to start lying to my friends who - surprise - think I over-think things. Friends: What are you up to? Me: Oh... just reading the news / checking my email / reading a book / cleaning my kitchen / it goes on... It's now laughable to me that I thought that I'd be able to breathe once my applications were all taken care of.

On a related note, any fun stories of explaining the process of applying to grad school to HCN friends? I attempted to explain it once to my host-grandmother. This is a woman who never received formal education of any sort. She just patted my knee and told me to rest. I got confused looks of all sorts while studying for the GRE. "What do you mean you're studying words? Don't you already know English?". Once a friend came over while I was in the midst of a quantitative practice test. She went to a rural school until the equivalent of junior year of high school. I looked a bit frazzled and she asked to see what I was working on. I showed her my book and she said, "That's easy". Huh.

I was wondering about this too. It certainly has not been easy applying from here. I suspect there are probably more RPCVs in the applicant pool than those still in service. Connectivity is a huge part of applying - from researching programs, to requesting documents and recommendations, to hitting the submit button and not having the network connection time out. Applying for Fall 2010 Morocco 2008-2010 Rural Community Health Education Four more months of service. Crazy crazy crazy.