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There's a lot of talk of comparing stipends... maybe you all know about this already, but I've found this "Cost of Living Calculator" to be pretty useful... http://money.cnn.com/calculator/pf/cost-of-living/ Just throwing it out there. My partner and I have been consulting it when thinking about different offers I've had. So far, I haven't been too conflicted about that though. A useful tool in general though.

IDK for English, but quena said in the comp lit thread that acceptances would be out by the end of this coming week.

allplaid, maybe instead you could just ask for more from each, politely explaining your situation and being specific about expected costs? I'm doing a visit to UChicago at the end of the week and very excited! It'll cost me since I'll be missing two days of work, but I'm really looking forward to it. I'm scared I'll be too happy and just accept the offer to attend on the spot and not be ballsy enough to ask serious critical questions. I already feel like I've made an ass of myself with some of the questions I've asked. There's an allotted time for brief one-one-one meetings with faculty -- is that when people usually do all the mysterious shadowy bargaining and presentation of placement statistics and whatnot? Ugh, I feel so unhip as to how all this shit works. ETA: oops, cross posted with the statements above

While I wholeheartedly agree with your point, and also think the GRE is scammy, useless horse shit, I disagree that it only tells how much money you had for prepping. Yes, its expensive, but I didn't spend a dime on preparation -- I literally just skimmed some stuff from a library book and took a couple practice tests. Yes, I could have worked more on it if I wasn't working a couple jobs and taking classes, but I also definitely could have made more time for myself and gotten better scores if I had planned ahead better. I think plenty of people do well on it without paying for classes -- they just plan ahead and study a bunch. You can get all the prep materials you could ever need for free online or from the library. But yeah, privilege affects this business like any other, unfortunately.

Congrats again to the amazing admits and to any I've missed -- truly impressive! Rutgers, Harvard, Stanford, SC... really knocking them dead, guys. FWIW I'll be at UChicago next weekend visiting (so stoked)... if you're leaning towards Chicago there's a pretty solid chance we could be classmates/workshop comrades... :-)

Yes. Especially since the most selective, elite, monied schools with professors who probably are the least overworked also have the highest application fees. Apparently (at least from what I've read around here, the results pages, and my one outright rejection so far), these same schools have the least personal rejection notifications too. Funny how that works.

Eek!!!!! Thanks for sharing, quena. I'm sorry to hear about your rejection from Cornell but I'll keep my fingers crossed for you on this one.

Congrats to all the admits! Amazing! You're a friggin' animal. Didn't even know you applied there, but somehow I'm not surprised.

Best of luck to you -- both on getting in and receiving all the funding/aid you need! After my skype interview, I thought it went fairly well, and then the more I thought about it the worse I thought I did... then I got accepted. I don't want to unrealistically raise your hopes, but don't torture yourself over the details when looking back - especially if you're waiting for ten more schools! Also, I think most of us wish we had more knowledge/reading background when talking to professors -- we're going to grad school because we want to be as erudite as we possibly can! I kept torturing myself over not being specific enough in my interests, not mentioning this or that author... but your writing speaks to what you've read at least as well as personal presentation.

I'm really sorry to hear that, ictus -- I'm sending good wishes and positive vibes to both your mother and your boss's wife. I teach in a public school and come from a union family, and I can imagine how devastating that can be. Wisconsinites are hardy people though and I'm hoping to see people continue to resist this bullshit. As for the positive aspects of this state: when you live in Wisconsin, where the winter is (almost) non-stop cold as hell and too long for most peoples' tastes, there is nothing more gorgeous and wonderful than the spring time. Seriously, I've never been anywhere else in the U.S. whose Spring is as wonderful as it is here... it's like straight out of some flowery E.E. Cummings poem or something... And yeah, Madison is great if you're okay with living in a college town. Really good restaurants and bookstores, friendly people... Milwaukee's really cool too. Definitely more of a "city" feel without being megalopolis and without the priciness of a bigger city like Chicago -- its really a lovely city with lots of beautiful architecture too. A lot of professors at my SLAC went to those schools, and several creative writing faculty got their PhDs at Milwaukee.

"Then you must begin a reading program immediately so that you may understand the crises of our age. Begin with the late Romans, including Boethius, of course. Then you should dip rather extensively into early Medieval. You may skip the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. That is mostly dangerous propaganda. Now that I think of it, you had better skip the Romantics and the Victorians, too. For the contemporary period, you should study some selected comic books." - Ignatius J. Reilly

There are also international rankings... QS and THE in particular... though I don't know how legit those are or how seriously they are taken in the U.S.

GCers have been killing it -- congratulations to all!

Thanks for clarifying, lifealive. Your perspective is clearly more informed than mine on that matter. I meant it partially more rhetorically, but you're right-- academics, and educators in general, are criminally underappreciated.

Might as well say it here, too - I got in to the M.A. after applying the Ph.D. As I said elsewhere, I don't plan on accepting it since I have funded Ph.D. offers elsewhere. But fwiw, I thought I'd throw it out there on this this thread so that M.A. admits planning on accepting know that I'll be one less person for you all to compete with for a G.A.-ships and other financial aid.

Well, just got the notification that I was admitted to the M.A. program at UMD. I have Ph.D. offers elsewhere, so I won't be accepting it. Congrats to Lycidas on the acceptance to Northeastern!

Yeah, for outreach, I can't even imagine. It's like Walker's funding of voucher programs was just the prologue to some evil master plan to privatize all education... Wisconsin has a lot of great outreach programs done through universities that I really would hate to see get cut.

This point truly cannot be emphasized enough.

The real question: are HelloThisIsDog and SubmarineReflection going to fight?

Somebody upvote Lycidas for me -- great post and totally on point. Walker has been doing devastating things to public K12 education for the past few years -- state-funded voucher systems for charters and private schools is really horrible on so many levels. I work in a public school and can attest to the fact that there are a lot of ridiculous contradictions in the way money is spent (iPads for all the students, but horrible teacher retention rates, etc.) The recent cuts are really frightening, particularly, as Lycidas pointed out, for teachers. Walker has been the enemy of all teachers in this state for a while. I have a feeling though, and I might be wrong, that there will be more resistance to this across the political spectrum -- my impression is that no matter your politics, people appreciate the UW system and don't want to see that get dismantled. Walker is also a college dropout, if that tells you anything. We also have to be careful with statistics like this, and if you contact UW budget people, make sure you see what areas are most affected. People are throwing out numbers for between 3 and 13 percent overall -- obviously, this will translate to higher or lower percentages as you look at specific parts of budgets -- specific schools, specific departments and offices, etc. I would imagine that certain things will be dramatically more or less affected than others. ETA: As badly as this will affect Madison, I would be more concerned for the rest of the UWs, which I could imagine being reduced to mere trade schools if Walker's vision gets carried out...