red_crayons

Given the weather in the area of my first open house weekend, anyone who goes for business casual will end up with some ruined shoes and miserably cold, wet feet all day. Ooohhh, heels in the north in March! I'm going to wear what I wear to my super casual office, which is also what I wore when meeting people in the department before I applied: Skinny black pants (yay Banana Republic for figuring out that market niche!), my look-more-expensive-than-they-are knee high leather boots, collared shirt, sweater. I'll also carry around some black flats in my bag in case we ARE inside one building for an extended period of time. Business casual plus fancy boots: if it works for work, it'll work for a bunch of academics.

The school is notorious for horrible, horrible funding, so I wasn't really expecting much in that department to begin with. They have accepted me; she assured me that her word was binding, and followed up with an email CC'd to a bunch of people in the department. Now, I'm mostly wondering if many others have had a similar experience. Given the huge applicant pools, how often do schools accept people they only kind of like, and why?

Yeah! Realizing that fact as a sophomore undergrad was what made me put off grad school in the first place. So glad to hear this isn't a total anomaly - this whole process has made my ego a little sensitive...

YES! Awesome, fantastic department reacted to my application with enthusiasm and several profs saying, "I want to convince you to go here!" My research ideas were going in a direction that they wanted the department to go in anyway, both in methodology and subject area. Specialized department at another school insulted my 2 Cs freshman year (organic chemistry and calculus, come on.) while still offering me a spot. My topic was related to 3 of the 4 faculty member's interests and recent publications, and I have the right kind of background to approach it more critically than a "traditional" applicant to the program. The lesson I take from this is that even if a school is being snobby about stats, they still can't pass you over if you have a good idea.

I've gotten this question from two programs. The first program I love and is supportive and awesome. I told them honestly that there is one serious competitor that I hadn't heard back from yet, but that it would be a very tough call. They know the other program and understand the appeal, and they are still being supportive and awesome. The second program asked about this after insulting my qualifications and before telling me I was accepted. I told them that I hadn't heard much yet, and that I wanted to gather more information about faculty and programs before I made any decisions. I didn't tell them what specific programs they were, but said they were similar, and that I had researched faculty and general program fit for all programs before I applied. I didn't say anything about their program specifically. I was still accepted. Being relatively honest is usually the best policy, in my experience. People like the general truth, but they don't always need the specifics.

I just found out I was accepted to a program, one of four. I had almost written off the school entirely. They don't have much funding (which I knew from the beginning), their website had very little information about the program, faculty and students, so I mostly applied based on reputation and the fact that there are few programs in this area, AND the support staff was grumpy and slow to respond. I submitted my application a month ago, and I got a letter confirming that they received it YESTERDAY. I got a call today, and after playing phone tag for a while, the program director finally caught me. FOUR MINUTES before the time when I told her I had a meeting. Since I was being contacted fairly early for the program, I assumed I was accepted, but she started out with a mini-interview - again, RUDE, since I had no warning. In the next ten minutes, she pointed out the following reasons that would PRESUMABLY be a basis for REJECTING me: My grades weren't perfect as an undergrad (because I was an Ivy league BIOLOGY major with two minors taking 20 credits a semester - I got 2 C's freshman year, but was 3.9 or above last 2 years!!! and I've taken grad courses during the two years since!!!)I had virtually no experience so far in this field ("...although I guess you did work at XXXXX kind of place, which is relevant...")My essays and background were too academic for this type of programWas I really even interested in the skills they teach?Would I be interested in learning related skills?Aren't these all reasons the program would have just rejected me? Aren't the questions about fit things that I would have thought about before putting in the time to fulfill their really excessive writing requirements? Does this just mean that it's a pity acceptance because of my demographics? If another professor had lobbied to get me in, why didn't that person call me? Do they really think that telling me the reasons they are HESITANT and UNENTHUSIASTIC about accepting me would make me enthusiastic about GOING there? Or did they just sense that my qualifications would work well at other programs and this was motivated by some kind of pathological desire for the other's object? Then, the professor followed up with an email with several misspellings, no contact information for the people she told me to contact, and zero exclamation points. This is mostly just venting. Luckily I'm accepted at another school, where the faculty are fabulous and write clear, friendly emails with LOTS of enthusiasm and care. But isn't that weird? Why would someone do that???

True story about Philadelphia - my sister, a freshman, had her lease nailed down in December! People DO actually sign leases now, although for grads it's a little on the early side. The apartments available now are mostly geared toward undergraduate students. There are some really nice but overpriced places, lots of apartment complexes, and lots of close to campus apartments available now. July is WAY LATE to be just starting to search for housing, though, unless you're thinking about moving in with someone who has a lease already. April-May is when nice but relatively cheap stuff opens up in the grad/young professional areas of town (Downtown, Fall Creek), which still have good bus service and easy access to less-collegey (but still fun) parts of town. My street is a current grad hot spot, although it wasn't when I first moved there. Historically, a lot of the apartments there open up late March through May. My friends looking for studios/1-bedrooms are starting to look now, since there aren't many and they are very expensive, but since I'm going to look for 2-bedrooms I don't plan to make a decision for another couple months.

As a Cornell alum, current Ithaca resident and very likely future Cornell grad student, I just wanted to chime in on this thread. I really, really love Ithaca. However, housing can be kind of a pain. It's WAY overpriced for the size of the town, and a lot of the apartments are really shabby and depressing. However, you can find nice places if you are persistent and know where to look. I'm starting this process right now, reluctantly. I am hoping to share a two bedroom with another incoming grad if I stay, because I need to be shaken out of my habits and get to know some new people if I'm signing on for another 5 years here. Fall Creek is the best area to live as a grad/young professional, IMHO. It's near a campus shuttle that runs once every ten minutes during the week, the apartments tend to be nicer and cheaper, it's closer to the few good bars, the houses are charming, and there are nice antique stores and coffee shops in the area. Downtown has a little pedestrian mall, with restaurants and several festivals throughout the year. AVOID Collegetown (undergrad ghetto south of campus), with the possible exception of State Street or below Stewart Ave. North is ok, but the bus service isn't really as helpful as landlords would have you think, although it's improved quite a bit since I've been here. Cayuga Heights would be a nightmare for getting to/from campus in the snow - mostly downhill from campus, no real bus service. East Hill has lots of new-ish, carpeted apartment complexes, but again, bus service may not be as good as it sounds, depending on your schedule. If you want to have a social life at all, it might be very difficult to do living in East Hill, North and Cayuga Heights. There's not really parking on campus, and it's super expensive. You may be able to drive to campus late at night or on the weekends, but you will not be able to just drive to your lab on a Monday morning. Buses and hills really start to matter! I don't know much about Hasbrouck. There seem to be a lot of grad families with babies. Also, they occasionally thrown undergrads in there when they admit too many; it's caused friction recently. I remember dismantling the XL bed frame in my dorm back in the day with little trouble. Bus service directly from Hasbrouck to campus runs from 7ish am to 6ish pm. Otherwise, it's more efficient to walk than to try catching the bus. Bus service to Collegetown and Downtown is improving - every 15 minutes on weekends, every 30-15 minutes during the week, depending on the time of day. I'm trying to keep my post short - feel free to send me a message if you want more details about places to live.

Thanks! I was worried I might be too qualitative as well, and that my "interdisciplinary" background would be seen as flaky or too out-of-the-box to fit into any single program at all, ever. But I am willing to have my research methodology directed by people who are more specialized than me - and I made a point of emphasizing that in the fit section of my SOP - so that probably helped. Plus, although the department information emphasizes their quantitative focus, there are people who are VERY qualitative (several ex-journalists/writers, for example), and there is a lot of cross-breeding with other humanities departments, particularly science and technology studies, and through STS to philosophy and history and French. Thanks again, guys! Best of luck!

Yay, I got into Cornell! Not trying to gloat, but I want to introduce myself on the thread. I originally planned to apply to Science and Technology Studies, but near the deadline I realized that there was a LOT of overlap between that department and Comm, so I also applied to Comm, as a back up. Turns out Comm had lots of extra funding from new faculty grants, but STS had had their budget slashed and were only accepting TWO students. My app was quickly moved to the Comm pile, and... yay! FYI, from what I understand they're not done with the process yet. As far as my interests... I am literally taking my first Comm class ever right now, a survey on science communication. I was a biology major, with a minor in French and extra coursework in linguistics. I stuck around campus to work and took some courses in comp lit/literary theory. I have lab experience in organic agriculture, and other work experience at a science museum, as student disability services support staff with deaf students, and with a USDA agricultural grants program that also does outreach. I tried my hand at some science journalism last fall, too. I want to try applying literary theory/reading techniques to the "texts" of medical and food advertising. How are ideas of health constructed, how do people filter through opposing ideas, what agendas are hidden from the public, and what distracting messages are used to convince people to try a new medicine or "nutraceutical" product? Open house weekend is 3/5-3/6, so quite a bit of time still. If anyone else gets it, I'd be really excited to chat before then!

Living expenses and financial support are necessarily at the top of the list for me. I can accomplish what I want to at any of the 4 programs I applied to. I figure the schools will decide if I'm a good fit for them, and that's good enough for me.

Jonathan Swift - Gulliver's Travels (tons of public peeing and pooping, GREAT to distract from stressful things) Zizek - Violence (can only read 5-10 pages in one sitting, so I read it on the bus every day)

Marketing!!! I know it's soul-sucking, but I have a friend who is in marketing, and they have a whole team of linguists at his company. I'm sure you get paid well, allowing you to pass the time and re-apply next year. You could DEFINITELY spin the anthropology angle to support that kind of (temporary) career path, too.

FYI, you can't do that unless you've been working full-time for a certain amount of time already, I believe. Clearly this is a big problem these days... My plan B1 is to move with my boyfriend, IF he goes somewhere good like Austin, Madison, UMass-Amherst where I can get a job and be in a good city. Being with him would be a HUGE plus that would balance out being rejected. I wouldn't have to make the choice, and we'd at least have a base income from his grad school. Plan B2, if he ends up in Minnesota or Ohio or INDIANA or somewhere else too friendly and with no jobs except food service*, is to find a job in science/ag/food policy/outreach in the DC area. Undergrad networks will help to accomplish this; $$$ will help the rejection process. I'll make probably 10-15% more than I do here, and pay 10-20% less in rent for nicer apartments, in a more pleasant climate. There are easy flights to everywhere in the country, making it easy to visit him. Not a bad option. Plan C1 is we both get rejected. Then, we move to Brooklyn. I try to continue living a comfortable adult life, and he regresses to being an undergrad. We fight about balancing money vs. socializing. Plan C2 is that he moves to Brooklyn, because he's really set on that, and I move to DC area as above and visit via commuter train/flights at least twice a month. I would continue casual job searching in the NYC area and move there if/when something came up. All options lead to some amount of happiness and more experience to be used for at least one more round of grad school applications. I think I've posted something like this before, but it's gotten more fleshed out recently, because I think about it all the time. *Midwesterners, I know you love your region, but it's just NOT for me.

Yeah. I've relied on slightly-above-average stats but really strong writing and storytelling skills since... as long as I can remember. Elementary school? It's gotten me pretty far. Making yourself seem interesting is really important in life. Writing dozens of cover letters in 2009 and seeing which ones got responses REALLY drove that home for me. One of the Communications departments I applied to had really helpful tips for applicants. They stressed "fit" and explained what it actually MEANS to them. They stressed that they also want people interested in doing some sort of community outreach related to the field - that's part of "fit" for them. They also de-emphasized GRE, saying that 1200 is the AVERAGE score. That seems pretty unexceptional to me, and to think that half of applicants fall below that put me very much at ease. I don't want to mention the school and jinx myself. Surely you all understand the temptation to be superstitious right now!

I like your post, and I agree. That's why I'm glad SOME schools are including socioeconomic diversity along with ethnic/racial diversity as points to consider, as I pointed out in my earlier post. Also, the school I work at treats other things, like disability (including physical, learning disabilities, chronic illness...), as elements of diversity, too. Maybe it's unusually progressive, but it might be worth looking closely at some of these policies before getting too worked up about them. After the Michigan debacle a few years ago, lots of people have caught on to the fact that NO ONE was happy with how AA was a decade ago. There's an opportunity to highlight something interesting and unique about yourself in some of these more progressive policies, without necessarily having it be specifically about your RACE, and it's up to you to recast your own experiences in a way that makes you seem interesting and unique. Not all policies, YET, but it's heading that way.

The schools I applied for that took "diversity" into consideration (and it was only for FUNDING, not admissions) asked for the following information: Are you the first in your family to attend college?Are you black/hispanic/Native American/etc etc?Did you receive any of the following scholarships as an undergrad, or participate in Upward Bound?Are there other factors that should be considered? [blank space to write or option to attach a supplemental essay]I think that would give applicants the chance to cover social, economic, AND racial/ethnicity considerations. One school SPECIFICALLY mentioned socioeconomic diversity, too. Of course, this must certainly vary by school, but the schools that looked for this info included an Ivy and a state university. At least SOME schools are asking for holistic input that will help them fairly navigate the poor white man/rich black woman scenario.

Someone in the department has a big grant. One department I applied to has $4-5 million in new faculty/research group grants, so they're accepting tons of students (relatively speaking). Yet, another department at the same school (that I also applied to) is taking 1-2 instead of 3-5 because they mostly fund through university fellowships and TAships, not through grant money, and the university is making a big show of being poor (although they're only "poor" in relative terms, because they had at least one ex-Goldman executive calling the financial shots for a couple years and - surprise! - getting the university into a lot of highly leveraged debt; I could rant about this a lot). My application quickly got shifted into the richer department's pile; since I had another option, faculty were willing to do that to give me a better shot. I'd imagine this is a possibility for someone interested in several "subfields", too - that you could get shuffled to a slightly less perfect fit if they want you and if a slightly different lab has grant dollars.

I had yet ANOTHER dream about getting in. These dreams are mocking, torturous constructs of my secretly inflated sense of self worth, and I hate them. I came to dream-campus (I have dream versions of all kinds of familiar places - dream campus is a version of the place where I work, and it just appeared in the last 6 months) with my little sister. I was in one of the older buildings, and I met up with someone in the department I applied to. He told me that admissions decisions would be out soon, and that I could just wait in his office until they came to their formal decision. I sat in his office using - and I remember this specifically - his brand new, 17-inch Toshiba laptop, reading this forum. My sister got bored and left to go to a party. As I waited, a couple other candidates, who seemed to know this professor well, also came in to wait. We were all waiting. They were talking to each other, I was on the computer still. I left, thinking that I was going to be late to work. I turned back halfway across the quad, to just go double check. The committee had almost come to their decision. I accidentally went into their meeting room, and the chair - a very made up, middle aged woman with bleach blond hair - gave me a speech about how great I was and how they couldn't wait to have me. Other candidates came in, and they all got a pep talk, too. We were all accepted. But I knew it was a dream the whole time, so instead of making me feel good, I just woke up annoyed that I DON'T actually have a decision yet, and I couldn't go back to sleep.

I'm super curious about who had the interview with Cornell Comm yesterday...!

I WAS hopeful about hearing back from one school this week. But now it seems unlikely, due to factors outside my control. This weekend has been SOOO LOOOONG. This week will be EVEN LOOONGER.

Yeah... I like that strategy, too! I work with professors right now, but I am not a professor. It's a constant struggle to get them to respect me as a professional. For better or worse, one of the ways I try to get the point across that we're on equal footing is by using first names in emails, once we meet face to face. It's going to be strange to have to think of myself as an inferior again, especially with profs who I've recently worked with as an equal (if I go to the school where I work). That being said, I take criticism best if it comes from someone I know well personally. For me, it would be easier to develop my graduate work if I can trust the professors critiquing it, and calling someone by their first name (to me) is a marker of that kind of trust and comfort.

The town where I live right now is sort of isolated, so family life gets a lot of attention. Family and professional life closely intersect for a lot of faculty I've known here. The university where I work recently changed "maternal leave" to "parental leave", and built a brand-new, state of the art day care facility with 200+ child capacity. There is a special category of leave for caring for sick/dependent family members, and departments are required to allow you to take that time if necessary. Otherwise, staff/faculty can sic the entire hugely bureaucratic HR system on the inflexible supervisor and "suggest" that they do sensitivity and leadership training programs. I'm not sure to what extent this applies to graduate students, but I would suspect they have more rights here than elsewhere. I'm sure it varies by department, but faculty are under pressure from the administration to be flexible with family issues. Clearly, if I go here, having children would be a LOT easier than at other universities or workplaces. Also: Lauren, I loved your post. Lots of food for thought, and very well said!

That's the best way to approach it, in my experience.

I'm glad someone brought this up. I wish I knew how much it matters.