siamesecat

I just need to vent a little bit/inquire if anyone else experienced the same situation. I got into my 2nd choice school early on and was waiting on my first choice's decision before letting my 2nd choice know if I was attending or not. My acceptance in no way mentioned that the timing of you accepting their offer would influence if you got an assistantship or not. So...naturally I waited about 3 weeks right up to the deadline before letting 2nd choice school know that I will be attending because my first choice waitlisted me. The next day I get an email from 2nd choice school sent that I wasn't selected because assistantships are first come first serve. I just feel like I would have greatly appreciated knowing this info back when I got accepted...that would have GREATLY influenced my school decision because an assistantship was really important to me and the assistantship opportunities at my 2nd choice were what made me excited about the school in the first place. I'm just really bummed now. I mean I know I'm not entitled to an assistantship or anything but if all it took was being one of the first to respond, that makes me a little perturbed. Just means more loans for me to take out and more debt. I don't know...I figured assistantships were more based on merit but perhaps I was foolish in thinking this or at least if they were based on first come first served, the school would at least told me that in advance. Anybody else experience this? Just feeling a little annoyed. Rawr. I am very appreciative of at least having offers though, don't get me wrong.

Yaaay! Congrats!!

apple pie

On craigslist, I always go into the apts/housing link and type specifically 'house' in the search so only houses come up..that might help! When I was looking for places that's what I did to find houses instead of apartment complexes. If you're ever in the area, another great way is just riding by the area and looking for 'for rent' signs because they're everywhere. Hope that helps somewhat.

No problem! People in the south are generally very nice, especially in smaller towns outside NC where everyone knows your name, hehe. I'm not too familiar with the communication area in particular, but I do know that the Raleigh area is a booming place for jobs..it's always ranked very high up on places to work/live/be happy so I'm sure that the media world is included and you would be able to find plentiful opportunities here. Sociology is a whole different story since the liberal arts don't hold too many opportunities with just a BA...but you can certainly find something (though you won't be in the Bachelor's boat since you're going for grad school obviously). If you mean graduate majors from sociology, there are plenty of job opportunities in the research field with companies around the area. So in general...I wouldn't rely on my expertise in the specific field you're in, but as a rule of thumb Raleigh is pretty good for having job opportunities available to graduates I hope that helps somewhat! If anything you'll love living here if you've never been somewhere like here before!

I went to NCSU for my undergrad. Anything you want to know I can help you with! I enjoyed my time there, NCSU is a good school with great professors. It is a huge school though so it is easy to get lost in the mix of all the students. I'm not entirely familiar with the communications department, but did take one class in it and loved the professor. NCSU is broken into 'schools' and communication was in the same school as sociology (my undergrad major) which is called CHASS (college of humanities and social sciences). I really enjoyed my professors and the university but like I said, atmosphere wise, you need to be comfortable being in a huge university in a bity city. If that's for you, then NCSU is perfect. Definitely not the small liberal arts type school though...definitely math/science/technology oriented. As for Raleigh, it really is an awesome place to live. I've lived in NC my whole life and I'm partial but if you're not from the US, NC is a great place to be. Raleigh is smack in the middle of nearly everything you could ever want and NCSU is a convenient drive to nearby cities such as Chapel Hill, Wake Forest, Durham, Apex, Cary, etc. My brother in law has a post on all of the food/outings/places to live in the 'city guide' section, his username is Gadheyln or something like that. His post was geared towards UNC Chapel Hill though, but I definitely know of all the good areas to live near NCSU if you do decide to go there. Any other info you would like, just ask, or PM me, I've seriously grown up in this area all my life and spent the past five years living five minutes from NCSU.

Anyone else applied to Wake Forest's masters program in counseling? I figure this is a long shot since most people on here are phds..but I did see someone else had posted an interview invite on the results page right before mine. If you're still on this forum have you heard anything??

Science fair

If you do get in *which I surely hope you do!!* and you want any info on the school or the dept just let me know, I got my undergrad in soc from NCSU so I know most of the professors and the ins and outs of the area/best teachers/etc.

I should also note, yes it was the phd program in sociology...my interests changed to education in case I was confusing. I just went back in the results because I posted it last year, it was February 9th, to be exact. Good luck!

I got into this program last year, I got my acceptance late Jan/early Feb by email.

I'm about to go to work...boo. At least it's somewhat of a distraction.

Last year I got into my undergrad institution's graduate program if that helps...

I would just wait I think it looks better to be patient and wait for the formal notification...last year I got too anxious and ended up regretting asking too many questions of my points of contacts that I think I annoyed them. Best to wait it out, even though I know it's painful!

Thanks far_to_go....I've been practicing speaking out loud and definitely keeping the voice low has seemed to help instead of seeming 'overly excited' which makes me more nervous.

That is true...hehe.

Yay for oms! thanks for the rooting jojobee! rooting for you as well

Whooo thanks! maybe I'll try the earth exercise, I could visualize from what you said...haha I can just imagine doing it right before they bring us in with the other candidates and them going 'is she off her rocker??' "no, I'm just getting calm whoo!'

I've noticed this to! And...I have no idea what the answer is, but perhaps it is because education programs do not seem as hung up on GRE scores (maybe GPA too) and seem to have more emphasis on your experience working with children. Because someone who has extensive volunteer experience in a school or being a camp counselor with a 3.4 gpa and say an 1100 GRE would probably do better in the education world than someone with no experience working with the population they seek to work with but has flying colors with the GRE. Working in education for me warrants needing to KNOW you like working with children, or students in general depending on the age group you seek to work with (and having the experience working with them to back it up), and not as much on GRE/GPA as most other fields do. That being said, it also seems that a lot of high ranked schools may be ranked highly as an overall graduate school, but their education department may not be. One school I know of is very, very highly thought of and regarded in the education field but is probably never even heard of by people who live outside the state (so they are VERY competitive to get in...but in contrast, one of the most recognizable schools in the country right down the road is actually much less competitive). Just a thought for the explanation as I've noticed what you're saying from applying and researching the field.

So I have a few interviews coming up. I am a pretty confident person speaking in front of people/groups, however for some reason whenever I do, I LOOK like I'm nervous. I'm not nervous on the inside but my body appears to be by the whole fidgeting, or obsessive 'ums,' etc...but I always have everything planned on in my mind and tell myself there's nothing to be worried about, but my heart never seems to not feel like it's going to burst out of me in situations like interviews. Does that make sense...anybody else feel that way? Or have tips to help you body stay calm and appear the way you FEEL on the inside (aka confident). I keep thinking of Ceasar Milan's calm submissive state and would like to apply it to humans... Anybody have any advice for speaking calmly, yet persuasively in an interview? Any general tips would be helpful. I've always been phenomenally better at writing out ideas than speaking them, and of course I have to speak them at my interview so I need to get over this quick. Yay for interview yoga! no really...breaaaathe.

Ugh, so I went back into the application system to see if these new guidelines were there when you upload the statement..and they aren't. There's specific information to include in your statement for each program, and under school counseling it's a completely different paragraph. (I followed the one on the actual application). I think best bet will be what you two said and email anyway...if anything they'll be informed there are 2 different instructions for what to include. They're not entirely contradictory, it's pretty standard stuff, but the one on the website is just very specific with the items asked for. Oh well, time to email!

Hello all! So I'm applying to school counseling masters programs just to give a little background. I'm in a bit of a predicament and was wondering if anyone had any advice as to what I should do between two options. Here's the situation: I wrote my SOP back in the summer, and uploaded my SOP/submitted the applications around September. I 100% devoured every school's website for guidelines on the personal statement making sure that I had everything in order and did everything correctly. I even specifically remember going through each page of one program's website (the one I'm about to talk about having a problem) and writing my statement accordingly. Well....awhile ago I was cruising the website again as I usually do when I have nothing better to do, and I came across a rather new looking link on one of the pages on the website that said 'sop guidelines' or something like that and I clicked on it and went....@_@ shnickey! There are 4 specific items to address, 3 of which I addressed anyway without having seen it so I was fine there..but one guideline however, I did not specifically address in my statement. Should I email the program and mention that I had looked high and low for guidelines before writing it and was wondering if that was added after September? Most people in my field tend to be later applicants (as in not in the summer) so I wasn't sure if maybe that's why they changed it. I mean it COULD be that I simply missed it but I highlyyyyy doubt it. This page looked completely unfamiliar and I swear I ransacked every page of every school's website that I'm applying to. This is one of my safer schools I'm applying to and I definitely don't want to be thrown out simply because of not including one item in my personal statement which I did not know was a requirement at the time. Would you play it safe and just hope they don't mind, since I answered 3 of the 4, and you could probably deduce the answer to the 4th question from my essay? Or would you specifically bring it up to the program director and ask if those guidelines were added later/if you could re-send an edited personal statement? The deadline hasn't passed yet but I've submitted the application online already. Any thoughts? Sorry for the longwinded explanation.

Aw, just keep swimming! My mom had kidney cancer about 3 years ago and had her kidney removed, and it recently came back within the past year stage 4. She's fine but the side effects of the chemo pills are obnoxious as heck of course so it definitely puts a big rain cloud over my day sometimes. I just have to think though, that at least she got this kind of cancer now and not ten years ago because the outcome would've been not so great. So I'm just happy she is doing great with the medicine and should be just fine and that the side effects will pass eventually (we're starting a new kind of medicine soon). It sucks lemons having to go through hard things when you're applying to grad school and you're so wrapped up in yourself but don't worry it's doable...just compartmentalize...when it's grad school time, it's grad school time, don't burden your mind with the other things distracting you. And when you're done thinking/stressing/filling out applications/reading emails/whatever then open your mind up to other things. That seems to help me though, just focusing on the task at hand at the time. Hope that makes sense, and keep swimming!

I'm applying to school counseling programs for fall 2010! All my applications are in...now just waiting to hear Good luck to you!