jltomato

Winter has been (surprisingly) mild here, for all three years I've been here. In my first year, our cohort walked out on the ice when the lakes froze over, but it wasn't cold enough last year. So far, it's been too mild this winter as well. Other than that, Madison has been good (busy, but who isn't?). We're a very word hard, play hard kind of department, so I have two papers due this week, but on Saturday the grad students are having a "summer in the winter" (tropical themed) party, so that'll be my mid-final break. Glad you've had some good convo with our faculty! Research-wise our professors are incredibly helpful/responsive, and it's nice to be able to work on projects with them through research groups rather than just classes. Hope you've been able to take a post-12/1 break!

Just a heads up, UW-Madison Comm Arts designates by slots, but UW-Madison SJMC does not A majority of our recent cohorts have been Pol Comm oriented (at least, within the past three years), specifically in the deliberative democracy/contentious politics/cmc area.

Hi all! Not applying this year, but I am a Ph.D student at UW-Madison (SJMC) and thought I'd post here in case anyone had questions about applying to Wisconsin-Madison. I did my Master's at Syracuse University (Media Studies program). The comm "programs" in UW are fairly different (School of Journalism & Mass Comm vs. Comm Arts vs. Life Sciences Communications), so if you have any questions, please let me know!

Filling this years two years into my PhD (procrastinating and reminiscing, during the end of the semester). FIRST - You as an applicant 1. What did you study in undergrad? Master's (if applicable)? For my undergrad, I studied Political Science + Mass Comm (with a focus on journalism & critical/cultural studies). For my Master's, I studied Media Studies, but gravitated to media effects and public diplomacy research. 2. What were your grades like in undergrad? Master's? My undergraduate cumulative was a 2.9, my graduate cumulative was a 3.88. Shout out to all my below 3.0's! 3. What are your research interests? My research interests in undergrad was economic and political news framing effects and more media studies culture and power. My research now is about computational content analyses and applications to critical studies questions. 4. What teaching experience did you have before applying? I had been a TA for four undergraduate courses, and had some secondary ed test prep experience 5. What about research experience? In my undergrad, I presented at a national conference and published in a second-tier journal. By the end of my Master's, I had published two more papers (and presented at every consecutive AEJMC and ICA, so about 3 years of conference experience) 6. What about miscellaneous experience (unrelated to Comm/corporate/private/etc)? I have a background in non-profit PR, working mostly with Kiwanis International and US Funds for UNICEF 7. How old are you (or, what is your age group)? Applied for my Master's when I was 22, and my Ph.D when i was 24. SECOND - Deciding to pursue a Ph.D. 1. What made you decide to pursue a Ph.D. in Communication? Communication is the wild-west of social science research. It is a good home for interdisciplinary research, and it provides forced exposure to many other fields. 2. Did you contact faculty at the programs you were interested in? What did you say? How often did you communicate with these people (POIs)? I contacted one faculty in each department I wanted to apply to. Most did not respond. I also met a few during conferences, which was a much better way of meeting professors (in my personal experience). I did not maintain regular contacts with any programs prior to submitting an application. 3. Did you visit or contact graduate students? How did thaaaat go? I did not do either, but in hindsight, I wish I had. From the flip side, graduate students seem to respond about 75% of the time, depending on the grad student you are trying to reach. 4. How did you decide who to ask for letters of rec? Were they all professors or did you get letters from outside of academia? I got all of my letters from professors. I first went to professors whose alma maters I was applying to. Then I asked professors who can speak to certain projects in detail. Then I asked professors by rank. For me, it was important that the letter of rec could situate me as an eager student who would fit well in the department. THIRD - Actually applying 1. How did you look for programs? Meticulous note-taking of professors, their past publications, and review of how they did research. When applying to my Ph.D, I asked a lot of young professors in the department of my Master's program about what they liked and didn't like about their Ph.D programs. It was important for me to end up in a program with a lot of autonomy. I also looked at top scholars from conferences like NCA and ICA and figured out where they came from. 2. How did you decide where to apply? I looked for professors who would be sympathetic to my work, who also had a record of producing students who could get a job. 3. What was your biggest priority in a program? Professor-fit. I wanted a program that could handle both qualitative and quantitative research, that was fairly large, with an active and diverse research community. 4. How many schools did you initially set out to apply to, and how many did you actually apply to? For my Master's, I wanted to apply to 6 and I only applied to 3. For my Ph.D, I wanted to apply to 8 and I ended up applying to 7. I did not apply to Ohio University. 5. What were your GRE scores like (either specifics or vaguely)? How many times did you take it? Did you feel good about your scores? I took the GREs once, and got a 163 in Verbal, and 160 in Quant. My writing was a 5.0. 6. How did you frame your experience/interests/fit in your statement of purpose? Did you focus on something more heavily than other stuff (like faculty or experience)? I have a broad research agenda, so I tailored specific statement of purposes to specific topics, base don the faculty I wanted to work with. For example, if I wanted to have an advisor who research media effects, I focused on research I had done using experimental methods or that talked about agenda-setting effects. 7. Did you feel good about your applications? Why or why not? I did not feel good about my applications because I was doing them at the same time as I was putting together a thesis proposal. I'll be honest, I'm not sure I've met a person who didn't feel at least a tinge of concern about how their application would be taken. 8. If you knew then what you knew now, what advice would you give yourself? Panicking just means you care. FOURTH - GETTING IN (OR NOT) - feel free to update/answer later 1. How many programs did you get into (and which, if you don't mind sharing)? For my Master's, I was only accepted to the one I attended (Syracuse). For my Ph.D, I was accepted to three of my eight (UPenn-Poli Sci, UW Madison, University of Florida) 2. How many were you waitlisted for? Did you make it off the waitlist? I was not waitlisted for any of them/ 3. How many were you rejected from?I was rejected from five Ph.D programs (University of Washington, UPenn-Annenberg, Stanford, USC), and two Master's programs (NYU, Illinois Urbana-Champagne). 4. Did you get into your top program? Did you expect to get in? I got into my top program for my Ph.D (UW Madison). I didn't expect to get in, but it was the best fit given my research interests and had the best research production strategy (we use research groups, rather than clear advisor-advisee projects). I did not get into my top program for my Master's (U-C). 5. Did you receive funding? I did not receive funding during the initial offer from Syracuse. After I accepted, they gave me funding (because their top choice did not opt to attend). I received full funding for all my Ph.D programs. 6. Once you've made your decision...how did you decide which school to attend? UW-Madison was already my top choice. 7. If you didn't get admitted to a program, will you apply again? N/A 8. What do you want to do with your Ph.D.? Rub it in people's faces, and also pursue a career in academia. I am big on stitching scholarship between semiotics, rhetoric, content analysis, cognitive linguistics, sociolinguisitcs, semantics/syntax, and computational linguistics. I suspect I will be doing similar research for the rest of my life. FINALLY 1. In retrospect...what was the best part of the application process? Getting any acceptance letters. It is a hell hole otherwise. When talking to students who are dissertating and doing prelims/qualifying exams, they still say the application process is worse. 2. What was the worst? Waiting. When you are waiting, try to focus on other things. I think it's really easy to get lost in the application process, and become depressed, and let it get to your work. I definitely started to negatively associate the quality of my work to the rejections I was receiving, and it makes it hard for you to still have passion for your research. 3. What advice do you have for future applicants? (1) Ask the honest questions, such as living expenses. How do professors interact with students? Does anyone in the department actually care about the work you do? It's really easy to tell how you'll be treated when you see how professors treat students when you visit, or see them interact in conferences, and you don't quite get to see those relationships when just emailing a person. (2) Know what the up and coming trends are in research, and try to fit your research agenda in that vein of thought. That doesn't mean picking up the latest fad (if you don't want to do social media research, don't say you do), but framing your research in the context of what other scholars are interested in is important. A

Hi all! I was in the cycle last year. I'm now a student at UW Madison (Mass Comm, but I happen to work with a lot of Comm Arts students). I also attended the Media Studies program at Syracuse (Newhouse). Please let me know if you have any questions

Congrats!

Second semester (Spring 2014) of my first year. I'm currently in my second year now. But I kind of knew where I wanted to apply since the Fall semester before that.

So as of now, this means they've given all the financial aid offers they can. Once they hear back from people (if people have accepted/rejected Newhouse's offers), the school may have some to give, although I anticipate this won't be very many. If you decide to attend, your next chance to get awards would be July. They didn't do interviews for my applications, so I'm assuming it rests largely on your materials. This might not be true for all departments though. There are PR IA-ships, but they are very limited. The largest two departments offering would be communication (COM) and television, radio and film (TRF). From what I remember, there were about 40-50 non-TRF IAs (COM, PR, etc). Hope this information helps! Let me know if you have any questions.

I saw that you have been accepted to Syracuse, so congratulations! Syracuse funding for Master's students is relativity limited. Their main source of "funds" are teaching assistantships and research assistantships (I have done/am currently doing both). Sometimes, NH will offer you a TA-ship (the official title is "Instructional Associate," or IA) in the acceptance letter. These are 1-year long assistantships. However, once every semester, they also post several TA opportunities for the coming semester (so Spring 2014 would post job listings for Fall 2015), which are open to all the Master's programs in Newhouse (so it gets competitive). TA-ships (IA-ships) come with 9 credits tuition remission and I think the pay currently is $16.25 an hour (an IA is expected to work 20 hours a week, but it ranges from 11 to 28 depending on the week). Research assistantships are also available, but don't offer tuition remission. Some PR professors do research, so that could be another financial route (although it would act more as a financial buffer).

Congratulations on your decision!!!

Sorry to hear.

Me too (in terms of sympathies). I heard the cohorts are smaller across the board. The other school (SJMC) I think didn't cut their cohort size as much, but did cut the number of people getting funding (from like 25% to 10%). Congrats! More options are always way better than less

Yayy! Having lots of of choices is the good kind of problem. I'm sorry Are you still waiting for applications elsewhere?

Thanks! I'll be visiting in March! Best of luck to everyone still waiting. Congratulations!!!

Was recently accepted to Wisconsin-Madison (in Mass Comm, not Comm Arts) with funding. I am still waiting for a few applications, but I've been told my POI is extremely interested in taking me on and the program is an ideal fit for my research, so this is likely where my hunt-for-a-program ends.