Lycaon

Whoot! Got into I-House. I'm relieved that I'll have a place to go once I get to New York! That's what mine said too for a while. i think they were waiting on my to submit other supplemental applications since I had also indicated interest in International House. Were there other UAH affiliated places that you applied to?

Is anyone else playing the waiting game with financial aid?

As a former foster parent of feral kittens, I understand the temptation, but it is not worth the risk. It's already a bad case scenario if you get caught. You might be fined or have to give up the cat. But by violating the renter's contract, you could be evicted from the facility and/or lose your security deposit. And any blemish on your renter's history might haunt you later in life the next time you want to rent an apartment. Even if an apartment you apply to in the future is pet friendly, you may not be looked upon favorably if previous landlords mention that you have a history of violating agreements.

Awesome, congrats!!! That'll be super convenient. I still have yet to submit my app for I-House. I need to get my loan information first. This process is so tedious :/ At least I don't have to worry about my ticket to NY now

They are?? Where did you find this out? Through UAH?

Pretty much every song of Cocaine 80s. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0WsQUgVymE

This article has been my saving grace as well: http://jcs.biologists.org/content/121/11/1771.full It is titled, "The Importance of Scientific Research". The following is one of my favourite quote: If we really think about it, stupidity and ignorance are the greatest teachers we have. If we didn't have them on our side, we would not have been motivated to pursue the advances in technology that we appreciate today. Back in the day, we had many weird ideas about life.In 1916, we, in the US at least, didn't know that we could be attacked by sharks. "Pardon? You say a man was killed by a fish? *insert early 1900s version of LOL*". It took 4 sequential attacks for us to realize that something was amiss. We thought that mercury had curative properties. We thought spinning mentally ill folks to the point of vertigo was a legitimate medical treatment. There are people who believed (some still do) that potatoes are appropriate contraceptive tool. We thought it was possible to sail off the edge of the Earth. If we were content in these ideas, we would NEVER have made it to this point in civilization. In a real way, the people who were deemed most stupid/crazy were the ones who didn't think like everyone else. But many of those people are heroes to us now: Mendel, Einstein, Galileo; the list is looong. Embrace your ignorance, friends. It may lead you to see things that the rest of us do not. Here are some other nuggets of wisdom from the article:

Hey, so, I'm not sure why the IT page doesn't list Office 365 as a free download option.The page literally says that Columbia has a license agreement with Microsoft but: I don't know if this is just an issue with the page not being updated in the last year or a "the-right-hand-doesn't-know-what-the-left-hand-is-doing" situation. Point being, if you guys need the MS Office Suite, we qualify for Office 365 with our university emails. Up until you graduate or are no longer affiliated with the school, you get access to: Full versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Publisher Access on up to 5 PCs or Macs and Office apps on other mobile devices including Android, iPad®, and Windows tablets. 1TB of OneDrive storage (managed by the school) Collaboration capabilities on Office Online, Yammer, and SharePoint sites You can find out more/sign up here: https://products.office.com/en-us/student/office-in-education Off topic, Chai_latte, what dorm housing are you applying to?

Here's a link for specialty housing as well: http://facilities.columbia.edu/housing/specialty-housing

For the school I will be attending, I received an unofficial acceptance via email mid February and heard back from the Graduate School officially in the first week of March. It's ok, you aren't alone in your paranoia. Before the department had even made a decision, I had had Skype conversations with a POI and the program director, many email exchanges that ended with comments along the lines of "I hope we can convince you to come here", etc, etc. None of that, nor the unofficial acceptance, was enough to convince me that the department/program wasn't just pulling my leg or killing time until the Graduate School decided to veto their decision and send me a list of all the reasons why I was unworthy (just to salt the wound). It turns out my paranoia was unfounded. So my advice to you is, breathe. Relax. Waiting isn't easy, I know. But just trust that the department has gone to bat for you. Only EXTRAORDINARY circumstances would cause the Graduate School to deny you. So as long as you don't have any puppy-kicking, geriatric-harassing, paraplegic-tripping skeletons in your closet, you'll most likely be fine

My first choice in terms of housing is a dorm-style single room. But if that doesn't work out, I'm just gonna go with "the luck of the draw". I've had great roommates that were perfect strangers to me and crappy roommates who I had known ahead of time. I think as long as you set ground rules with the people you will be living with (and adhere to said rules), everyone comes out ok. Great for Ph. D students. So-so for masters students depending on where you are applying to.

Hey everyone, Just wanted to share that the site Uncubed.com is giving away a year's worth of unlimited Metro Cards! Enter the sweepstakes here: http://bit.ly/1CHZMgr The winner should be announced next week on the 23rd.

Yep, regularly, and I haven't even started my program yet. But hearing about others' experiences with imposter syndrome has helped. This podcast in particular helped loads: http://phdinprogress.com/phd-017-were-not-morons-facing-impostor-syndrome/ Never forget, we're not morons!

Yeah, I'm def going for it now! I hadn't been paying close attention to tech advances in the last few years because I'm just finding out about M.2 SSDs. Does anyone have experience with these?

Haha, B appears to be too cool for lists! Personally, I'm going with the Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga. I previously owned a Thinkpad X1 tablet and enjoyed my time with it. The main reasons I'm investing in Lenovo again are 1 ) I wanted writing capabilities, 2 ) I understand Windows operating systems and can usually upgrade, repair, or solve issues that come up on my own (with the help of my friend Google, especially), 3 ) my previous experience with Lenovo was positive and 4 ) I think I can squeeze a decade (or close to a decade) out of this particular machine, which justifies the price of upgrades I will make to it. But if I didn't place a feature like writing/annotating so high on my list, I would probably go with a completely different machine or even a different brand. For example, if writing ability wasn't a priority and a 10-13 hr battery life was, I might be leaning towards a Macbook instead. Or if price wasn't an issue but screen size, writing ability and the overall computer appearance was, maybe I'd be looking at Fujitsu. I agree with the advice that has already been given. So my 2 cents is: figure out what features are deal-breakers for you and build from that. As soon as you figure out what matters the most to you (i.e tablet capabilities vs storage space vs battery life vs price etc), then condensing the list of possible machines will be much easier for you.

Thanks for your responses, everyone! I had heard about the a few of the issues that a few previous models had (ghosting mostly). To be honest I had been giving Lenovo a wide berth until I found out they were bringing back trackpad buttons, which is perfect since I prefer to use the red nubbly thing anyway haha. But thank you for the additional warning, Sigaba! It would serve me well to find out how to disable the trackpad and whether anyone has had trackpoint problems. Thanks for telling me your experiences, Sarochan! I've been struggling to decide how much truncated start-up times matter to me but now that I think about it, as my last one reached the end of its life, it was pretty painful waiting for programs to load up. And having a buffer of space would force me to be more organized. I'll make sure to check out wirecutter.com. Thank you SeanDDavies for your advice! I will be scouring Newegg and the like for good RAM prices. And thank you WhatAmIDoingNow for your comments about SSDs!

Hello all! I'm also in the market for a new computer. I've already decided to go with Lenovo. The last laptop I had was a Thinkpad X61 tablet that served me well over its 6 year lifespan. I can't speak for Lenovo's entire line, but I will say that their Thinkpads are solid machines, at least from my experience. I'm saving up for their new Thinkpad Yoga (2nd generation, 12.5 inch, with writing capabilities). I'm wondering about a couple of things though. 1) In addition to basic stats programs like SPSS, Minitab and JMP, I want to start learning R. I also want to use GIS and maybe population modeling software at some time on my computer. Do you guys think an i5-5300 processor will be enough? WhatAmIDoingNow, you mentioned i7 is bettter for heavier stats work. What would you consider heavy? 2) I'm thinking about splurging for an internal SSD. The computer will come with a 500 GB HDD but I'll prob either sell that or use it for additional space (although, I already have a 2 TB external drive so I don't think I'd need more...) Do you guys have advice on SSDs in general? If you upgraded, did you notice a significant change and is it worth it to you? I'm looking at 500 GB SSDs.

Huh... I'm not sure. Your area of study is part of GSAS right? I just got one official letter from GSAS telling me that info and offering me a small scholarship. Maybe Ph. D letters are different. It is possible you may not need that info since Ph. D students should be guaranteed housing. I would suggest emailing GSAS or your department for more info.

Praying for you guys! I hope everyone is safe

Hi neuro_engineer! I think your official acceptance letter from GSAS should give you a sign-up code (starts with uah) and your Personal Identification Number, PID, that starts with C00.