kaoticfen

Well hope everyone else is doing good. Im headed to MSU! It was a tough decision as i received funding offers from both schools but ultimately went where the funding was the greatest. Thanks to everyone for the advice and support through this process!

Not yet but getting close to a decision i think.

This is awesome. I came up with a few questions on my own but I really like these questions and will used them for my own evaluation. Just got back from my first visit to Michigan State and it was awesome. I thought i knew a lot about the department since i did my MA there but I had no idea. Hope everyone else is having a good times at visits and decisions.

For PhD programs if you get admitted the funding and acceptance are the same at Annenberg as all their PhD students are considered Annenberg fellows. For the MA however, I think the funding is pretty limited.

Man everyone seems to want to go to UPenn :-) its funny cause when i looked at it i couldn't find anything i was interested in. It just shows you how diverse the field of communication is.

So in the interest of sharing something personal, I currently work full time and I thought that getting offers from universities would be the hardest part. I was wrong. I'm learning that it is significantly more difficult to remain working while you have been accepted. If i had been rejected, the disappointment would've been tough but ephemeral. I would then focus on work knowing that next year i would try again. However, I'm finding now that its really hard to care about work at all. This is due largely to the fact that i will be leaving this job and my career as a software developer in the near future. I think the real difference is that instead of putting in two weeks notice I am waiting for the next 3-4 months before i do so. I've never had to wait that long before starting a job so i suppose this is all an exercise in patience? Anyways, this was just a thought i had rolling around.

I agree with @A Librarian that there are mini departments within a department as i've seen evidenced by several schools and that most seem to not pull from their own MA programs. My own department at MSU would let in about 1-2 students from the MA program into the PhD but i think that has to do with how the department is structured. The Comm school at MSU contains Communication, Journalism, Advertising and Media & Information. There are several MA programs within the school but only two PhD programs: Communication and Media and Information Studies. The Media and Information Studies PhD is shared between the three departments: Journalism, Adv, and Media and Information. Each department gets around 5-7 students to admit to each department so from what i can tell most of the students are not from the MA programs. This wasn't clear to me until i was told by one of my committee members at my thesis defense that i was only one of three students in my MA program that was doing a thesis where most had chosen to do comp exams or project. Since most PhD programs require a scholarly written work as part of an application requirement it makes sense why so many were not from my department. Either they didnt desire to put in the time to do a thesis or they simply viewed the MA program for what it was: terminal. I'm sure there are other factors that i'm leaving out or unaware of but this of course is my understanding... I'm sure there is also some voodoo/magic/prayers involved there somewhere

im assuming this response means you aren't going to UPenn? :-)

i would double check with the department. you should have gotten an acceptance email too.

Sorry to hear that I know you've posted some of the schools on here but what do you have left? hahahaa I like the hunger games quote but only the sentiment cause if we adopted that analogy wouldnt that mean we would be killing each other for a spot in a program? hahhaa

Definitely! I have so many questions. I think it was @gradswag Anyone else apply there?

Also got into more Humanities-based Media Studies programs, but won't list them here. DO NOT ERASE THESE INSTRUCTIONS1) Click quote on the most recent acceptance list.2) Delete the quote messages at both the top and the bottom.3) Find the school of interest on the list. If it is missing, add it in alphabetical order.4) Write your name next to the school you were admitted.5) Click submit.6) Once you make your final decision, change the font of your name to green beside the school of your choice. Arizona State University: Gradswag Michigan State Univesrity: kaoticfen Northwestern University: cikkatikkaskwarr Penn State University: Gradswag Rutgers University: Gradswag University of Connecticut: Gradswag University of Michigan: cikkatikkaskwarr University of Oklahoma: kaoticfen University of Oregon - Cat_Robutt University of Pittsburgh - cikkatikkaskwarr University of Texas-Austin: Gradswag, cikkatikkaskwarr

Just got my acceptance letter to Oklahoma University!!! Weird too as i got it late 11:30pm central time. Thanks so much @God (see what i did there =) ) headed out to their welcome weekend too. Should be a fun next couple of weeks.

Hahahahahaha..... this is great though of course I'm hoping its not prophetic. Also nice work on setting up the grad cafe member as God. I'm a bit surprised that name hadn't been taken yet.

Alright I just received an email notice that OU released my application to the department for review. Does that mean that they are just now reviewing it? I need to pray more now right? This is my prayer "Dear God, I pray that my application may be judged on its merits and that i get accepted with funding. I pray that you help everyone else here in this forum get in to the program that they want. Amen"

Congrats! My initial response is to go for Michigan. Nicole Ellison is one of my former professors and she would be awesome to work with. Congrats as well! Is the Gender & Women studies at UofA in their comm dept? I would say that UCSD is an awesome place to live but super expensive (la jolla)

Yeah i've wanted to know but I kinda want to live in ignorance =) Yeah maybe a little paranoid but this whole process is crazy. =) I don't think they get annoyed cause they get hundreds of emails a day unless you are emailing them everyday that is.

Thanks! for the feedback. Alright well hopefully i just get good news then =)

Just added mine! It'll be interesting to see the list as it gets filled out.

DO NOT ERASE THESE INSTRUCTIONS1) Click quote on the most recent acceptance list.2) Delete the quote messages at both the top and the bottom.3) Find the school of interest on the list. If it is missing, add it in alphabetical order.4) Write your name next to the school you were admitted.5) Click submit.6) Once you make your final decision, change the font of your name to green beside the school of your choice. Arizona State University: Gradswag Michigan State Univesrity: Kaoticfen Penn State University: Gradswag Rutgers University: Gradswag University of Connecticut: Gradswag University of Oregon - Cat_Robutt University of Texas-Austin: Gradswag

I see what you mean. I think the idea would be that you move up the pecking order and they would secure funding for you first before the next incoming class. That is the logic that i've heard used before. Its a difficult decision leaving without a guaranteed funding but where does NC State rank on your list of schools? My best friend a few years ago faced a similar decision where he was accepted with full funding to a MA program at the Claremont Graduate School but was also accepted to Yale with 1/3 scholarship. He ultimately chose Yale as the job prospect post graduation was much better. I know for me I consult the NCA doctoral program guide like its a COMM bible. I don't think I've seen anyone post on it so i'll share the link here http://www.natcom.org/DoctoralProgramGuide/ For me it has become essential on where to apply. I think from what i can tell @cannedheat , you are a person of great character as it really takes fortitude and determination to apply two years in a row, improve your gre scores, and get accepted to more schools than the previous year. To me that is the quality that is required to complete a PhD program and i think if you did go to a program that funding was not guaranteed you would be able to secure it someway somehow. Didn't mean to write all of this but just wanted to encourage you and by extension everyone else in similar positions =)

If you look at the http://cas.msu.edu/misphd/ They have a link that has program statistics http://grad.msu.edu/apply/PHDDataReporting/PhD%20Data%20-%20Communication%20Arts%20and%20Sciences%20Media%20and%20Information%20Studies%202012%20cohort.pdf It basically says that 93% of PhD students have funding. That being said I have several friends who are there now who are all fully funded and im not sure i know anyone there that was not funded. Are you going to the visitation weekend?

Hmmmm that is curious. Usually schools take notice of applicants they didnt admit the previous year and make an effort the second year. I agree that @the_queer_ecologist go and do amazing things for free. Quick question though did they say they haven't given you funding? cause Im still waiting on my funding letter as they make the funding decisions at a later date.

Okay! The difficult part is waiting of course. Do they interview students there for the PhD or is it an outright admit? This whole admissions cycle has been interesting how each school responds with offers, funding and rejections Yeah international makes it difficult but not impossible. More than half of my cohort in my MA program at MSU were international students and most had funding opportunities (usually the ones who did had good GRE/TOEFL scores) If i was not successful this iteration i was hoping to apply to LSE PhD in media and communications as I've always welcomed the opportunity to study abroad. Well hopefully you'll hear good news from UPenn and you wont have to worry about next year =)

Yeah the only one i really care about is Oklahoma. Have you heard anything from them yet?