kant's mistress

I contacted an advisor via email the other day. I sat there and drafted the email "Dear X", as I couldn't recall the name of the "starter advisor" the program had assigned me. When I was happy with my draft, I copied the email from my acceptance letter into the address field, reread the email, made a few changes. But as I hit "send", I literally screamed with a momentary brain freeze-- all that drafting, and I couldn't remember whether or not I'd changed "Dear X'" to, you know, "Dear Professor Smith." This would be a better story maybe if I had, in fact, failed, as I feared, to address the thing, but I feel like it's pretty telling about the mania of this process that one of the biggest moments of relief I've had the past few months was the moment when I double-checked the sent email and saw that I had, in fact, corrected "Dear X" to read "Dear Professor Smith." I'm losing it.

Talk about the wait getting to us.

I don't know anything about the waitlist, but in terms of funding, I've heard that about half of the admitted students will get funding that is significant (tuition, stipend, some combo with TA stuff, etc, for 5 years). I am still waiting to hear about funding-- anyone else heard anything?

May I ask when you heard you got in and also what kind of funding you received? Thanks!

Does anyone know what the stipend packages are at The New School? Comparable to NYU?

It's really ludricrous to suggest that one must attend one of 20 programs (each of which only accept 20 people or less) to have a meaningful or successful (by any measure) career in this field. In my experience, people who typically hide behind that kind of academic elitism are those who have spent their academic lives at the middle of the class, people who know not how to distinguish themselves intellectually outside of the rank of the institutional name on their degree, which they flaunt as a badge. I say this as someone who has attended (by choice) both a graduate ivy (top 5) and a public research institution (top 50-whatever-ish, let's say). Sure, the old guard in the ivory tower is more likely to hire from within their own pool. But seriously, if you are one of the people on this board who has spent the past month berating yourself for not getting into Princeton (whether you're coming from an ivy or a little-college-that-could), what are you really worried about? Your education is what you make of it, and I'm actually very wary of political scientists, of all people, who would argue otherwise. If your career is motivated by your relative placement advantage, I can only imagine the leaps in logic you must be taking in your articles. I mean, good luck. You'll need it.

actually, CUNY did require a writing sample for those interested in being considered for a fellowship.

I like that the revolution has learned levity.

Don't work if you can manage not to. If you have decent funding, accept that you will have a low income for 5 years and it's a trade-off to a more stable career track than much of what is available in the workforce (and that's true no matter how many academics complain about being underpaid). While I was doing my MA fulltime, I worked about 15 hours a week, and I found it very intense. When you consider that you're in classes for the balance of your time, you start to realize that you need that 15 hours (and time associated going to and from the job, including the non-measurable stresses associated with even part-time jobs) to actually prepare for class. School should really be your fulltime job at this level.

well, you'd have to commit treason. that's how you maintain "university in exile" status.

I'm applying to the PhD program, too. The office admin just told me vaguely that decisions would "start going out by mail on March 15," but it wasn't really clear if that meant all decisions would go out or if funding offers would be included. I haven't seen numbers, but my impression is that NSSR does not fund many students and that those they do fund are not funded very well (i.e., sometimes it's just a tuition waiver). Does anyone know about the funding stuff? While I'm on the subject, I'm also just curious if people have the impression that NSSR is outside of the mainstream of poli-sci to a fault, or if their approach is successfully integrating unconventional approaches into mainstream poli-sci (this is especially important, I think, in terms of placement and publishing prospects).

Any news? I was told I'd hear "by April", but I have offers elsewhere that demand the typical April 15 deadline. I'm curious if those who already have been accepted have received funding packages?

Anyone heard from The New School?