birchleaf

I got the same thing but for UChicago! I figured I might as well go for it. Still waiting to hear back but hey, definitely worth the effort!

My mood goes between biting my fingernails and working out excessively (who knew I could run 10 miles?) to get the stress to be manageable. If I don't get into grad school I'm literally moving to another country and pursuing an entirely separate type of degree so the stress can get to me sometimes!

Hello! For me, my writing sample was a full, polished chapter of my still-in-the-works thesis. It had the pertinent front matter (title page, abstract, date info (it's an archaeology one, not sure what your intended field is!) full chapter, works cited). My thesis adviser okay-ed it before it went out. I'm not sure how long a 2,000 word chunk for you would be formatted, but most of my programs requested a minimum of 15 pages of writing (my chapter was straightforward and 16! Whew!). I would recommend checking each program individually and making sure that you see all of their requirements. Sometimes, different departments would like different things for your samples. For instance, one of the schools I applied to required the inclusion of a newly-assigned Student ID at the Top Right-Hand corner of every first page of every document. Talk about busywork!

I don't want to rehash of course, but I'm with you all on this one! I've been told by my thesis adviser that I'm a wildcard simply because I don't already have a MA. But my relatives, only a few of whom have degrees, all of which were obtained online, tell me that I'll get in to everything I apply for. Which is really sweet, and I appreciate that they're encouraging me. However, what I don't appreciate is my mother's attitude towards the grad school process; basically, she doesn't think it's been difficult, stressful, or that it's taken a significant amount of time. I try and explain that I'm ~only~ applying to six schools, and she's mad that I'm "messing around" on my computer instead of coming home and doing housework. I don't really know if there's any solution or advice which would fix or in some way aid how I'm feeling, but I do believe that her inexperience in applying to grad schools makes her unprepared to respond to how I'm feeling, and her basic response is to try and get my mind off of it somehow? My mom is really great. I'm not at all saying that I wish she was smarter, or had another degree or something which would prepare her to deal with my feelings about this process. I just wish that her response to my anxiety and stress wasn't to disregard the situation altogether.

Hey! Another Wolverine here - lived in the Metro Detroit area nearly my entire life! If anyone has any questions, feel free to comment here or message me. I haven't read through the entire thread, but I can help with everything but anything specifically related to engineering!