studentfromLA

I just did my 2008 taxes, and it cost me about $3,300 to move from Los Angeles to Madison, Wisconsin, including full-service movers (I packed myself but they moved the boxes/furniture), shipping a few boxes, packing materials and cost of gas to drive my car from CA to WI (about 2200 miles). This included a 10% gas surcharge from the movers (around $250) which shouldn't apply this summer, seeing as gas is about 1/2 the price it was last year at this time. Another friend ditched all her stuff and bought new (cheap) furniture when she moved from Boston, MA to New Mexico for grad school, and she spent about $2000 on new (cheap) furniture. She also had driving expenses, so her move cost her about $2,300. However, she complains all the time that she hates her futon bed and misses her nice stuff that she left behind. Personally, I'm really happy I brought my stuff with me -- the cost differential between getting a moving company vs. getting a U-Haul was not very significant last year, because gas was so expensive -- the U-Haul truck estimate was $1,700 but gas for the vehicle was expected to run around $500, and the movers were $2,700, so the difference was around $500. I guess it really depends upon how nice your furniture is, and what your living situation will be in grad school vs. where you are now.

I suppose it depends on where you are going, but I do not think it is too early to start looking, especially if you are going to a tradtionally college town, because in those places much of the housing is under student leases, and the landlords can start asking as early as January 1st whether the current occupants are going to renew their leases for the next school year, and most leases run from August to August or the like. If you are going to a big city, it might be different, but if you are going to a university town, start looking now.

I started looking last year right around this time and I think I signed my lease by May 1st. There is a lot of housing near the school. The off-campus housing site on the UW website is pretty thorough, with lots of listings: http://campusareahousing.wisc.edu/ With your stipend, you will probably want to find places with roommates, as a studio is around $600-650 and 1 bedrooms around $700-750, but 2 bedrooms are around $900, so you can really reduce your rent with roomies. It would be worthwhile to visit if you can to check out neighborhoods. I live south of campus in the Regent area, less than a mile from campus (an easy walk and even easier bike ride) and it's really nice except for Football Weekends, when the whole area is overrun by Badger Fans. Madison itself is a pretty great town -- I moved here from Los Angeles and although Madison has a population of around 1/20th the size of LA, there really isn't too much I haven't been able to find in Madison. Great restaurants, grocery stores, farmer's markets, decent ethnic food options, shopping, culture, sports, etc. Winter *is* a bitch and the cold really blows, but the bus system is pretty good, and you do learn to suck it up and deal. As for biking, yes, people do it all year round, but the past two winters have had a lot of snow, and I for one would NOT want to bike in it, as they aren't the best about plowing the snow. You will want to get snow tires for your bike if you want to bike in the winter. During other parts of the year, biking is great as they have both dedicated bike paths and bike lanes on all the major roads.

In your case, I would say it depends on what you want to do with your life. If you want to go into academia, then when you are applying for positions, a higher ranked program will get your c.v. reviewed much more often than a lower ranked one, unless you do some incredible research while you are in school and/or are working with a top-ranked scholar in your field. The scuttlebutt as far as I've been able to deduce it is that when applying for professorships after a Ph.D., you are most likely to be hired by a deparment that is equal-to or lower-ranked than yours. So, if you go to the #1 ranked deparment in your field, you will have more options than if you go to a top 100 school or an Ivy, if their department is lower-ranked. Look closely at the placements of graduates from each of the schools, and see if you can talk to any of their advanced Ph.D. students to get a sense of how they are recieved on the job market.

I worked in my field for 12 years before deciding to change careers and go back to school. I gave up a 6 figure salary for a graduate student stipend, and I have not regretted the decision for one minute (okay, to be perfectly honest, when I'm up late working on an especially hard assignment, I have thought that my job was actually easier than grad school, but that's a different subject altogether ;-). But for the most part, I am optimistic that when I complete my program, I will actually be able to obtain gainful employment in a field of work that I find much more interesting, relevant and rewarding than what I was doing before. Believe me, if you don't like your job now, the money isn't going to make you like it any better as time goes on. Unless you think you will not have to work for a living for most of your adult life, I'd say go back to school now while you have the chance and are not too deep into life's responsibilties to make going to school too difficult to manage. My friends who are still working in my old career hate it too, but now they have kids and mortgages and don't have the flexibility to change careers mid-stream. One friend has a term for it -- staying in a job you hate because of the $$ -- he calls it the "golden handcuffs." Of course, only you can judge how much benefit the degree will bring to your future work life -- if it will allow you to do something you are more passionate about than the job you are doing now, I say go for it, because the average person works for over 40 years of their adult life. I think I'd have killed myself if I had to do my old job for another 25 years.

I moved from Los Angeles to Madison, Wisconsin for grad school and am now coming to the end of my first midwestern winter. While I'm not crazy about the cold weather, I actually like Madison, and am not upset that I made the choice to come here, despite being admitted to a school in CA, and having previously only ever lived in NY and LA. That said, from my perspective, with the amount of work I am doing as a grad student, I really haven't had that much time to do much other than study. Especially for a two year master's program, I would think that going to the best school, with funding, would be your best bet. A Ph.D. is a longer commitment, and location might be more important in that case. But for a master's, and a choice of funding or no funding, I'd go with your school "A". In this economy, you really don't want to be incurring more debt than you need to, and if your program is anything like mine, you may not see much other than your department and the computer lab/library for the next two years anyhow. Good luck with your decision!

Last year I got two admits in early February, one admit in early March, and one reject that took forever, but I think I finally heard in late March, so I would say, the timeline varies. Sorry I couldn't be more helpful, but I wouldn't read too much into it yet. I think the person who said that the easy decisions, whether admits or rejects, can be made quickly, but the rest of them take time, was right on. Good luck!

That's really funny -- I actually think I spaced between paragraphs and didn't indent. Maybe that's why no 6? If so, that is totally and completely retarded.

Speaking from somebody who is not in school in the UK, but who has just finished her first semester of graduate education, graduate school is HARD. It was hard for everyone in my cohort; even the people who ended up doing very well on exams sweated it majorly before and after the first midterms and finals. If your program is like mine, you will have to study harder than you ever have before in your life, and you will feel for the first time in your life like you are definitely NOT the smartest one in the room. I think the first semester of graduate education is like being thrown in a pool, not knowing how to swim, and seeing if you can figure out how not to drown. Now that I have the first semester under my belt, I AM highly anticipating the second, because from what I garnered in the first semester, I think I'm beginning to figure out how to thrive in my chosen path. Grad school is also great. You finally get to learn from people who are doing what you think YOU might want to do. At my school, all the profs are very bright, supportive and accessible. If you are in the right program, the "aha" moments come fast and furious (i.e., when you read or learn or get exposed to those ideas that make your internal lightbulb go electric ). Go into school confident yet humble, be open to new approaches, and be prepared to work hard, and you will do well.

Double-sigh! "Out of 5,246 applicants last fall, Harvard took only 1,853. Yale's Law School got 2,000 applications for 165 openings. Michigan's graduate office mailed out 20,000 applications, got 12,000 back, accepted half, enrolled 2,000. Chicago enrolls only 1,500 of 6,000 applicants." So, back in 1966, only Yale was still as hard to get into as it is today :-) Harvard accepted 35% of applicants, Michigan accepted 50% and Chicago 25%. Those were the good old days!

I wouldn't worry so much about the GRE writing grade if your verbal score is high. One of my friends got into 4 Ph.D. programs in American Studies (she got in everywhere she applied, with funding), with a 4 on the writing. She was shocked at her score, like the OP was, and otherwise had a high score on the verbal. It didn't affect her application. I got a 5.5 and was surprised that I didn't get a 6, personally, since I like the OP have a JD and already was writing for a living when I took the GRE. I know that isn't really helpful since my 5.5 was a very good score, but I really don't know what they are looking for in a 6 if not what I wrote. If the OP is still following this thread, my technique on the writing was straight outta law school. I IRAC'ed (Issue, Rule, Analysis, Conclusion) and it worked for me. I also tried to throw some metaphors/similes/big words in there, in the intro sentences. But I truly believe the GRE is a crapshoot on the writing, because IN grad school, I have gotten the highest grades in the class in my two classes where we had paper requirements. So your JD experience will help, once you are in. I find I have a much better comprehension of what a "paper" should look like than some of my cohorts who don't have that background.

I'm not really familiar with the programs you are applying to, but want to reiterate that 17 schools is a LOT of applications. I would really pare it down. As an aside, I noticed one of the schools you are considering applying to is UW Madison, where I am currently attending. Just want to put in a good word for Madison, where the cost of living is very affordable (it's pretty doable to get by on the graduate stipend), and you can easily get a place in a good school district for your kid. New York, on the other hand, will be next to impossible, especially with a kid (I attended NYU for college).

I'm a little concerned about why you would be asking this question. Any paper you submit for anyone to read should have correct citations. Whether the schools reviewing your applications are apt to check them is beside the point. Why would you EVER want to put yourself in the position of having somebody check the references in a paper and find them to be incorrect or inexact? Just do it the right way when you draft the paper and never look back. It's so not worth the risk to short-cut on citations.

It definitely depends upon the field. I think it's more common in the sciences. Also, I think it is dependent upon if an interview is required, and on how bad they want you :-)

All schools work on the same April 15th acceptance-of-offers deadline, at least for students from the US. You should know by early February where you stand with the schools, and will have a couple of months to investigate your options. I personally wouldn't call a school and tell them I was admitted elsewhere before they'd gotten back to me. I don't understand your hesitation to apply to a school other than the select few you've chosen. You've already done all the work for the application process anyhow. Unless you've decided that you only want to go to grad school if you can get into a particular school or study with a particular professor, it doesn't make that much sense to me. Even for the best-pedigreed students, there are so many factors out of your control that go into an offer of acceptance, such as whether professors in your field of interest have funding in a given year to take on a new student. Unless you have an inside line on the schools you are applying to -- i.e. have had communications with professors at each one and know that your field of interest is at a premium, I personally wouldn't limit my options if I were you.

It cost me about $4,500 to move from California to the Midwest for grad school (not including books and student fees, which were about another $500). Moving costs were about $2,500 (I actually moved furniture for a 1 BR apartment, as I had the furniture already and a lot of it was nice, heirloom stuff, and it would have cost me almost as much to replace it with crap in the new apt, plus I didn't want to get rid of it, and storage was more expensive than moving it). Plus, you need first month's rent plus a deposit. In my case that was $1,400, ($700 per month rent + 700 deposit). Gas, one night at a motel, and incidentals on the three-day drive was around $400 (I moved this summer when gas prices were crazy -- with prices what they are now, you could probably shave $100 off that cost). If you are staying in student housing where you don't need to buy furniture or don't need a deposit, it will be a lot cheaper to move. You could probably do it for the price of a plane ticket/drive + whatever they charge for housing. However, if you are getting an apt., and aren't bringing furniture, count on at least $1,500 to buy what you need (it will cost you that at a minimum, even on the cheap), plus transportation costs, plus apartment costs.

chessie, I would ask the department head you are in conversation with how much value they put on the GRE, and if it they consider it when making funding decisions. As rising_star noted, if you have a line on the department (or they have a line on you), that's a very different situation than if you are just sending out general applications. From what you posted, you sound like you have a competitive application and departments that are already interested in you. My personal insight comes from the perspective of "shooting blind" so to speak -- when I applied to graduate school last year, I knew where I wanted to study and what I wanted to study, but had no connection to the schools I was applying to, so assumed my applications were going to be judged on all the merits. If you have info that your GRE score won't be relevant, then don't worry, but I wouldn't make that assumption personally, unless I had direct info from the source. After I was admitted to three programs last year, I visited and talked to them before deciding, and one school told me that my Q score worried them, and I had a 690 (it was an econ program, so understandable that they were looking for high quant scores, and despite the number, a 690 last year was 70th percentile). I was accepted to that program despite what they thought was an unimpressive score, but didn't get funding. If you took anything I said to be unnecessarily negative, I'm sorry about that. The good and bad thing about these forums, is if you ask a question, people will answer. You might not like the answer, but it's great that we have a place to talk about it. I didn't find this site until after I'd submitted my apps last year, and in a way I'm glad, because in retrospect, I broke a lot of the "rules" in terms of what one is supposed to include (or not include) in their personal statements, for instance, and still got accepted at 3 out of 4 schools. I may have changed things for the worse if I'd been asking for feedback prior to submitting the apps if I'd found this place sooner. Or, I may have just chickened-out altogether, if I'd gotten negative feedback during app time. So take what people say for what it's worth, and go with your gut -- only you truly can gauge how well your app represents you for the particular programs you are applying to!

When I applied last year, I applied to four schools. All had email applications, some had better on-line notification programs than others. School 1: I got a letter of admittance via mail, with no notice on the website of update in status, and that was an acceptance. School 2: I got an email directly from a professor in the department I'd applied to, asking if he could interview me about a potential research assistantship, and that was (obviously) an acceptance. From that school, I got an official email of acceptance like two days later. School 3: I got an email that my admission results were posted on their website, and I should go check, and that was an acceptance, too. School 4: The only school I didn't get into, posted on their website that "an admission decision had been made and you will be notified shortly." I got a letter of rejection like a month later, and nothing in between via email or otherwise. In other words, all schools are different, and I wouldn't get my hopes up until you hear the actual response from the school. Sorry I couldn't give you better news!

I posted that link to the GRE website stats as a gauge only. The stats include seniors and people who have graduated in the past couple of years. No sophomores practicing on the exam are included, and the major categories are identified by the test takers -- i.e. people who said they were applying for graduate study in American Studies. I would venture a guess that the average scores at actual schools of students who were accepted are higher than those posted on the GRE website -- I know that my department's GRE scores were higher than the ones on the GRE website for my field of study. In any event, I didn't say the OP shouldn't apply, I said he or she should consider re-taking the GRE. Personally, I couldn't see going through the application process with those scores. It's too time consuming and I wouldn't want to burn recommender bridges with an application that I was not at least somewhat confident would get me admitted. You can't go back and re-do your GPA but you sure can re-do the GRE. Some people post on here fretting about 10 points here or there, with generally decent scores, and to those people, I don't even bother to reply, because 10 points higher in Q or V is not going to make or break an application. This poster had below a 300 Q, and a 570 V, which is well under a 1000 combined. Maybe some schools and some fields of study don't put weight on the GRE, but all that I applied to did, and if the OP is turning in an otherwise competitive application, why handicap him/herself with a bad GRE score? You can re-take the GRE up to 5 times in a calendar year and can retest the next month. There is still time for the OP to retake for this application cycle, assuming their app deadlines are in January/February. I tested in early January of last year for Jan. 15 and Feb. 1 deadlines and was fine in terms of timing. In other words, unless the OP has a line on a department that wants him or her and the application is a formality, I personally wouldn't send out general applications with that GRE score. But that's just me, YMMV.

I'd say you really should retake the GRE to give yourself the best shot at getting in somewhere where you would want to go. Even in a non-math based major field of study, I think getting below a 300Q will hurt you, and you can definitely improve on the verbal score as well. The GRE website has good statistics on average GRE scores by intended graduate major. For American Studies, it's Verbal 548 Quant 560. Here's the table (American Studies is on page 7): http://www.ets.org/Media/Tests/GRE/pdf/gre_0809_guide_web_table%204.pdf

From somebody who is currently in a terminal Econ masters program, take it from me: if the programs you are considering applying to are anything like my program, you will need two recent semesters of calculus, linear algebra, and intermediate statistics courses, in addition to intermediate level econ classes to succeed. I had all of the the above classes, absent the linear algebra, and I find my coursework wicked hard. Graduate level economics -- even at the master's level -- is very theoretical and very mathematical, and matrix algebra plays a big part in all of your core courses, at least if your program requires microeconomic theory and econometrics, which most do. I'm in a program at a top 15 school in economics, so maybe it's different if you apply to lower-level departments, but I doubt it, as they all have to cover the same material. I'd highly recommend you wait a year or two to apply, and get some of the above classes under your belt first, even if you are only considering a master's. Something else to consider is that many schools do not fund master's students. Only one of the three schools where I was accepted offered me money, and they did so because at that school, I applied for the Ph.D. track (switched to the master's track after being admitted with the support of my advisor, so I kept my funding offer). Edited to add: Real Analysis and Differential Equations would definitely help as well, even at the Master's level, although many of my cohorts who are on the Ph.D. track are taking Real Analysis in their first semester. Oh, and I'd probably re-take the GRE as well, as your verbal and writing scores are not nearly as important as your quantitative. Most people accepted to my program had quant scores of 750+, and if you don't break the 70% percentile (around a 690-700), your application may not be considered. I had a 690, and was told at one school I visited that they perceive a strong correlation between your GRE score and your success in the program; I barely made the cutoff. Edited again to add: I read your GRE score backward. I wouldn't worry about your verbal/writing. Your Quant score is obviously good enough with an 800 :-)

You might start by browsing the results posted on this site for admissions this past year. Most people indicate whether their offer was accompanied by funding. My experience this past year was that terminal masters programs have a MUCH lower rate of offering funding than Ph.D. programs at the same schools. Certain fields rarely offer funding at all for master's programs, like MPA programs. http://www.thegradcafe.com/survey/

The GRE website has a chart giving average scores by graduate field of study. Geography appears on page 7: http://www.ets.org/Media/Tests/GRE/pdf/ ... le%204.pdf Your verbal score is only slightly lower than the average for your field. However, if you think you can improve that score with practice, you should do so and take the test again -- you'd rather be above average than below. Given the state of the economy and the job market, I would expect this year to be very competitive, so you want to do everything you can to improve your chances.

I haven't lived in ABQ, but visited a friend of mine who is a graduate student at UNM this summer. My impression is that the cost of living is low and housing near the campus reasonably priced. Airline travel to and from ABQ is expensive, however; it is a small market and there aren't too many direct flights there from anywhere. If you are into tattoos, rock and roll, southwestern-style mexican food and lots of beer, you will like living there. If you are looking for a more sophisticated atmosphere, it might not be to your taste.

Quarex: if you can get into a house/condo for $150,000 or under, are doing a Ph.D. and so are going to be staying in the town for 4+ years, and are NOT carrying a mortgage from another property, I think it would be a great idea to buy (assuming you have the down payment). In the town where I am going, 1 bedroom apartments rent for $700 -- that same $700 would be about the monthly payment on a $100,000 mortgage, and you have to live somewhere while in graduate school, so it might as well be in a place where you get a tax deduction. Now, I would assume that most graduate students don't have $20,000-$50,000 sitting around, but if you do, I think it would be a good investment to buy, if the market in your town is affordable enough. After the 4 or more years of Ph.D. work, it's likely the real estate market will be better. Even if it isn't, a house/condo in a college town will always have a market for renters. When I made my first post on this subject, my assumption was that there's no way any place has houses for $150,000 and under (I currently live in Los Angeles, so my real estate market value experience is colored by the still HIGH price of housing in the L.A. area). However, since then I have looked at the market in the town where I will be going (Madison, WI), and indeed there are properties close to the school that are selling for under $200,000, so it would not be entirely infeasible to consider buying there.