Cheshire_Cat

Well, it is the *Business* Insider, haha! All they care about is money. But I think it would take a lot more work to examine the qualitative factors of an advanced degree. You would have to do quality of life studies and such... Sounds like a good research paper though. Maybe I'll do one on it someday.

What's with the spammers? This is a form for grad students. We are all nerds. Why would we want muscle building things and age defying serums? If you are going to span, spam us with something relevant at least, like cheap textbooks and free food or something...

I was fuming at my brother because we didn't have gas which meant no hot water in the middle of January. And I was PMS. So that was bad. Then I got the email at work and it made everything better. But then instead of celebrating I freaked out about leaving my cush job for grad school, because I was PMS. Then I talked to a friend who is in a ph.d program about it, and he said it was ok to freak out and that helped a lot. But I didn't really start to get super excited about it until a week or two after the acceptance. So anticlimatic.

I agree, to a point. But I was being lazy and just trying to explain opportunity cost, not use super accurate numbers. It is more complicated than that. Most fully funded programs don't pay you nearly as much as you would make in industry though. For instance, I'll be making over 20k less in my Ph.D than my job right now, so that 20k per year would be the opportunity cost instead of the fully 50-75k that someone at my level could expect to make in industry. But then we are talking averages, and that changes things too I think because you don't start out with your masters making a bunch extra either, and you are two years behind your peers. I think because it is an average then it doesn't matter if your masters is at the beginning of your career or not. But I could be wrong. I'm too brain dead to think that deeply about it. I've run the actual costs for my own degree, but it wouldn't matter. If I didn't make any more money, or even made less, I would still want to be an academic. But I dated a guy who was in an EE program and thinking about quitting after his masters. I ran the numbers and getting a Ph.D in that field doesn't increase your earnings power hardly at all. But he decided to continue because of the qualitative factors instead. Some people hate school and it isn't work 5-15k a year for the drama that it brings. Others, like me, would do it even if it was less because of the lifestyle or other factors. Most people are in the middle, and I think having a discussion on both the monetary value of higher education is important for them.

You also have to consider the opportunity costs of being a full time student instead of employed. So for instance, if your master's degree takes two years full time and is in CS, then you also have to take that 93k*2 and add that as a cost of being in school. Then for a 14k increase in salary, you are looking at 186k+ tuition as the total cost of the degree. That means it will take you at least 13 years to recoup from your investment. It may still be worth it for other, non-monetary reasons, but that kind of gives you an idea of why BI may say it is useless.

Its ok. I know how you feel sometimes. Except I do that with my job, which is worse. There is just a lot of information to take in. I've been lucky here. I have a friend who is in a ph.d program and I've messaged him so much on different aspects I was struggling with.

Glad I'm not the only one crazy enough to keep a dog and a horse through the grad program. I adopted my baby and he is really well behaved. I live with my brother who comes home a few hours earlier than I, so I'm not as worried about him being left home alone. I would like to get a cat though so he'll have someone to play with, and cats make me laugh with their antics. But I don't know how responsible that would be given my financial situation. So maybe after a year in the program I'll reasses and decide then if I want a kitten. I also have bunnies to care for, but they are old, so I'll probably get something once they are gone.

I know! I'll be making less than 3 grand less than my first accounting job, which seemed fine to me at the time, but 20 grand less than I am making right now, so I don't know how I'll make it!

Not only is getting clueless reviewers a problem, but the people we audit seem to give us the run around. Ask for documentation- it isn't correct. How many times do I need to ask? I am so tired of this one auditee I just want to scream. I've spent way to many hours trying to figure out their crap and it still doesn't make sense. At least other auditees have documentation that makes sense, even if it is PDF instead of excel. And I've finally put the pieces of everything together so I understand it better and can figure things out myself.

It took me 6 months to find work with a 3.98 undergraduate GPA and a masters in accounting, so I feel ya. And I had to move too. It sucks, but that is how it is. But you shouldn't blame everyone else for your problems. No one forced you to major in sociology. You could have majored in Marketing if you had wanted to. The internet existed 5 or 6 years ago when you chose your major. You should have done your own research to determine if there were jobs for people with your degree. You should have spoken with people who were in your industry to see what it was like and what things you could do to prepare the best for it. Society doesn't owe you a job just because you went to school. Now you have to figure out what *you* are going to do with *your* life. Whining about your plight and what society has done isn't going to change anything in your life. People don't care about you. It's sad, but true. They care about their bottom line. So you have to find a way to make yourself useful to their bottom line. You need to find a way to market yourself to them instead of expecting them to hire you because you think you deserve a job.

5 would be a huge cohort for my field, unless you are a really big school like UT Austin. My cohort is unusually big at 4. Usually schools only accept 1 or 2 per year.

I know this isn't what you want to hear, but basically, the professor is god. He holds your academic life in his hands. Get used to it. Do what he says. You are not god yet. When you get your Ph.D, then you can make your grad students jump through whatever hoops you want, but not yet. Their job isn't to graduate you. Their job is to produce Ph.Ds who help the reputation of their school. This is how my dad describes the schooling experience (he's a Ph.D) Grade School- Proves you can accomplish a goal with a teacher standing over you, beating you with a stick to get it done. College-Proves you can accomplish a goal without the teacher having to beat you Masters- Proves you can accomplish a goal with the other students beating you away from it Ph.D- Proves you can accomplish a goal with the teacher beating you away from it Also, get used to working with other people and jumping through hoops you consider unnessecary. It is part of life. You need to learn to get along with difficult people. My dad did every bit of research he needed to do, had outstanding teaching evals, and fulfilled every service requirement at his first tenure track job. But his people skills sucked. He thought he was smarter than everyone in his department and wanted to debate them instead of work with them. And so, he didn't get tenure, even though he met every requirement. It isn't just about your work, it is about how well you work with others. So far, I don't think your PI is convinced you work well enough with others to get your degree, and it's his reputation at stake if you go out on market and don't get hired or don't get tenure because you can't collaborate.

Your cohort and the school spirit really does make a difference. It is a lot easier to do things when you feel like you are part of a team and can share your struggles and achievements. That doesn't mean you have to go out every weekend, but having friends in the program helps.

I attended one and later got an offer from that school. So did one of the others who was there. I think you are right about it being a way for them to meet and asses serious candidates.

No, I haven't heard anything from them yet.

I got it.

I didn't have any of mine complete until around the end of December. I had taken the GMAT, but didn't decide to actually put any aps in until after November 9th, and then I had to get my LORs and write my SOP.

Have I mentoned before on this thread how much I hate the project I'm on? I want to find a new job for six months. Anyone have a contract position for an auditor? Except not for an auditor because I suck at ticking and tying. But I'd even take doing taxes over this crap. And a lot of the review notes are his fault, I feel like. I asked my reviewer a million questions when he was here and did what he said. Then I wanted him to look at it and tell me if I did it right, but he didn't until an official review, which means I have to redo a lot of work. I hate this stupid project. It can go to hell. The only thing that keeps me here is that I like my senior manager and I need to feed my horse for the next six months.

I had a school ask for my GMAT scores once because the ones submitted looked too low. I guess they were seriously looking at me, because I was put on the waitlist. This was a couple of years ago, before I really knew all that much about the application process, and I had just gotten a new job, so I didn't care as much then. But I'd consider it a good sign.

25. Will be 26 when I start.

Wanting my profile to be perfect and not wanting to apply unless it was was certainly an obsticle. I have a really good GPA, but my GMAT (Business school's version of the GRE) was bad. I hated studying for that test. And then, I didn't do as well as I wanted to, so I was going to sit it out, study more, and apply next year. But a professor at a nearby university invited me to a informational meeting, and after I went there, I decided to apply to that school and a couple "reach" schools, knowing that if I didn't get in to any of them, I still had a great job. I got into the nearby university and I will be going there, and I'm happy about that. Making sure my LORs got everything in on time was also a little nervewracking. I knew two out of the three of my LOR writers pretty well, but the third was harder, and one of them was retired and I didn't know if I should bother him or not. I wrote my SOP in like three hours one night, and then took another couple of hours over the next couple of weeks to perfect it. It wasn't that hard for me.

Ugh, supervisor giving review notes for workpapers did months before. "Well, the instructions are in that file" Well, they weren't in that file when I was actually doing the workpapers. That file has been continuously updated for the last five months, and I was only told it was being updated after substantially all of my work was done. If you would have reviewed our work sooner, then we wouldn't be in this mess. Plus a lot of the wording for the file is ambiguous. It works there because they can point out exactly what is going on and how it relates to a particular instruction, but being 1,000 miles away, you can't do that with ours. I want to point this out to him, but I know I shouldn't. But it is hard considering I know we have way too much work to get done for them to considering firing me, and I know I will be leaving in 6 months. But, my dad says I should get used to clueless reviewers because it happens all the time in Academia.

Well, my mom was once my dads student, but they didn't start anything until way after the class. Don't freak out too much. Check policy. This isn't the first time it has happened to someone. But remain professional with her until the semester is over, and maybe a little longer. Give it a couple of months to cool off. If at that point you are still interested in each other, then I don't see a problem with it.