UnawareInGeneral
-
Posts
125 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Everything posted by UnawareInGeneral
-
Maybe you have stumbled on the new "budget update request email", wonder if anyone else got this kind of email today.
-
Busiest month of my entire semester, all the "grad school ends in 4 weeks" stuff is happening. No lack of distraction from the waiting game here. Still, it crosses my mind once a day probably.
-
Comment just before this was pretty much spot on I think. Be cognizant of the institutional deadlines, they are almost certainly earlier than Boren will insist on having your letter of affiliation etc. I know of borens from previous years (people I know personally not second or third hand) who have had to change their affiliated organization at the absolute last second so, having that all right now clearly isn't that critical for the Boren people.
-
So many changes that are retroactively not obvious.... functionally the same thing.
-
I know two borens from 2016 who did their entire package in under 5 days and won the fellowship, I don't think 10 days is too short. Hiring freeze was announced 20th or so of January, deadline was 30th or 31st for fellowship and a week later for scholarship. Both were after the announcement. I called Boren this morning and asked and they said they still expected to let us know before the end of April so this announcement is probably not from 2016. I compared 499 with the numbers Boren released inside of the last 7 or so years, didn't go back as far as 2009. Interesting that they've managed to have their website look exactly the same for that long.
-
I am thinking about it regularly, some of that is due to my having online language classes every week at the same school I studied at last fall and where I applied to return to on the Boren. Just constantly reminded of it that way I suppose. I've given real thought the last month or so to whether I should accept it even if I'm offered this one. CLS gives me the chance I wanted to go back, and it fits in perfectly with what is going on in my life and the field I'm trying to go to work in. Boren, which would give me the chance to get my language level to a point close to what is a life goal for me, genuine fluency in Mandarin, would also be a 9 month program after two months of CLS. A whole year back just doing the language..... I could learn a lot more, but I am not well.... "young" anymore. I have been leaning heavily heavily toward turning down Boren (I declined my interview for a Blakemore Asian language fellowship not too long ago for this same reason). I'm still.... 10% or so considering accepting it if offered... but having the chance to go back already, even just for two months then going back to work, is looking preferable to starting my second career a full year later than I already am. Just changing perspective with being 6 weeks from finishing my masters as opposed to 8 months, when I started my Boren application I suppose.
-
Ah ok. Well I had some thoughts if it was Boren...... maybe they are relevant to this other institution. I haven't worked with this ACICIS before and this is the first time I've ever heard of them, really. However, other programs I've dealt with that service many different regions or that are connected to places where a visa can be a real undertaking ask for things way up front just in case the process takes forever. Indonesia is one of the three countries in all of Asia I've never been to though so couldn't tell you from personal experience what getting a visa is like for an American. It's the only thing that occurs to me however, someone else may have direct experience. Have you looked into other avenues of connecting with students who went through ACICIS for reasons other than a Boren?
-
Boren is asking you to do that or one of the schools is asking you to do that?
-
Finalists received an alumnus information email yes, and the follow up that apologizes for the accidentally included extra portions. Odd that the alternates got the apology but not the initial email.... dunno what that says about the way they manage their communications, if it says anything at all. Weird though.
-
Well, the deadline for a lot of things is April 5th. If people don't accept before then for a lot of programs, they'll find alternates around that time it seems. For Mandarin however, if anyone is waiting on that, the deadline to accept the scholarship (requires submitting three different things) by close of business today the 15th. So alternates for Mandarin may get news in a few days. they told the CLSChinese recipients that we had to have our documentation in by the 15th or we wouldn't get a visa from the school, so unless they are just pushing first rounders to accept and they actually can get it on shorter notice or they intend to have Mandarin alternates apply for tourist visas... I dunno how they intend to get in alternates. New laws in China this time last year make it take 2-3 weeks longer to get the host school letter of invitation+PSB approval that is now required for everything but a tourist visa. It DOES take longer these days... but I am not on the inside of that whole system so can't say what they are doing with the three weeks earlier deadline for Mandarin. Mebe its to give alternates a chance to get a visa by a hair's breadth... deadline is 3 weeks earlier... takes three weeks longer to get approval... yeah, that's makes sense... edit: The decline option on CLS accepted student portal has disappeared (it was still an option even you had submitted acceptance until just recently) so there should be some notifications of some sort for a few alternates. The first chance to accept for Chinese at least lapsed at 5PM EST today.
-
@rallisonI sent you a PM
-
It tracked really closely with whether or not you were a finalist for the fellowship or the scholarship in 2015 and 2014, but last year it did not. Last year every student I know who applied in my graduate program received the email (around 15 people) only two were finalists. There is also, somewhere on this forum as I've seen it before, a link to a spreadsheet where people tracked the status of 15-20 2016-2017 applicants who use gradcafe and there was no relationship between receiving the budget email and being offered a fellowship or scholarship. They all received the email, few of them got the final offer.
-
Last year decision came out April 15th, don't know about years before. I didn't even know it existed before I started my graduate program so I don't know people who participated other than some folks in 2016-2017 year, but a decision should be forth coming around that time. If people can start a Boren in May, unlikely that decisions are released just days before people would need to commit and then leave the country. Not impossible mind you, but it'd be damned silly. Edit: looking at the conversation in older Boren threads from 2015 and further back.... April 15 is a pretty solid date.
- 309 replies
-
- 1
-
-
- boren
- scholarship
- (and 2 more)
-
Classes are taught in simplified no idea how much homework, the amount of work per night from what I understand is 3-4 hours per night It is not easy to delay your return flight, pretty sure that if you do that you pay for the return flight. Just staying beyond the end of the program requires more than I'd like to travel from what I understand. However you can ask these questions of the program contacts you were given in the email from CLSChinese. They can tell you the answers to that kind of thing. They won't drop you from the program just for asking, but I will say at least from what I have read that we are going over on a very specific kind of visa (possibly just a student visa or a modified version of it) that does not allow for any kind of overstay. Staying longer would involve getting your visa switched while you are in country and the flight over and flight back is all booked by the program, set dates not terribly flexible. But, you don't ask you don't get... so go for it,
-
@mastersbound in case you haven't heard from a friend or classmate, it says right in the email they sent everyone else 'with the exception of AFLI and SAFLI applicants' so you shouldn't have received it.
-
As Hobakie said, most of the trip is mandatory outings. But with a free weekend, I have heard really good things about Hangzhou, a few of my friends went there last year while I was in Guilin studying and they loved it. I was too busy to go at the time. Shanghai is the easy option, but every time I've ever been to Shanghai I always felt like I should've gone somewhere else. It's Shanghai, but IMO Shanghai is basically just a huge financial sector surrounded by pollution and suburban sprawl.
-
Ooooh I gotcha. Yeah, as long as you your Boren can move to start or already did start after CLS. Ez.
-
There is a Chinese language CLS group, and another one that's an alumni group, just toss out a search on Facebook. Have grand plans for the weekends yet? I only just looked up Suzhou on the map.
-
Well, I wouldn't turn down either CLS or Boren if offered both. I finish my masters in foreign policy and international affairs in May and with hiring freeze that was absolutely perfectly timed to prevent May graduates from seeking federal employment, a two month intensive language study in Suzhou is perfect. I'll be able to get the lay of the land and see what the hell is going on out there before I find myself going into the private sector instead of DOS or USDA where I wanted to go. CLS has given me the buffer to avoid committing to something that wasn't what I really wanted, Boren would just make it that much longer that I can wait and see while still improving myself in someway.
-
Thanks! I'm pretty excited! I applied for a few programs, CLS was the one I felt like there was no way I'd get, of course that one comes through since I wrote it off the moment I submitted the application. Boren is a one in five shot if your application is a good one... CLS though, 8 or 9%? I just assumed I was not the sort of applicant they were looking for. I didn't realize till I did more reading that they do award many of them to grad students. It will make it a lot easier to get bad news for Blakemore or Boren, but fingers crossed on doubling down and winning
-
The CLSChinese people sent out the decisions on which city we would be going to already, anyone else headed to Suzhou?
-
Now that CLS results have been announced, commence making a fetish of obsessing about the Boren.
-
Well it is how it was explained to me by the organization that makes the decisions.... sooo.... as far as I know, that's the process. I asked about a month ago, this was the explanation I got.
-
Congratulations mrs12, I read some of your posts from previous years when I was browsing the boards to understand the scholarship better and I know it's been a process for you in many many ways. I'm glad to see you got it!
-
So the alternate selection process works in this manner. Since you are an alternate for Arabic, (and the level you applied for matters too), they basically chose you as an alternate and lined you up behind someone or someones who applied for both Arabic and at the same level as you. They also look to replace people of similar backgrounds. Diversity is the buzz word that sums it up best I suppose. Someone like you in certain ways. If one of those people drops out, the ones you are lined up behind, they'll reach out to the alternates.