abreak

@HGILLS Just got a response on the portal: they said that my info will be passed on to the course provider in the next two days. (What a relief!)

It's the same with me. The last time I spoke with the Goethe Institut they said that it should be this week at the latest, but my course starts in less than a month and I'm really apprehensive about booking transportation if I haven't gotten any further confirmation. I believe that's how it works.

@HGILLS @Andrey Have either of you heard anything back about your courses yet? It's now less than a month until mine starts and the Goethe Institut says that they haven't gotten my info from DAAD. I just called the Bonn office and they told me to send a portal message (my last portal message never got a response).

Thanks for the update! I was thinking of calling them, but I guess I'll hold off a little longer.

Yeah it's pretty frustrating. I also sent a portal message, but haven't gotten a response. I'm glad to hear that I'm not the only one though (as if my file had somehow been forgotten or something...).

A question for anyone who have received the language grant: have you gotten any information from your course provider? I contacted mine the other day (Goethe Institut Mannheim) but they said that they hadn't received my information from DAAD yet and that I'll receive more information from them when they do.

I didn't sign my declaration of acceptance but I still got an automated message saying that it had been received. Does anyone know if we need to enroll ourselves at our particular institution or does DAAD do that for us?

I'm so sorry to hear that you didn't get the grant! You've been a huge source of support and information in this thread. Feel free to send me a PM if you want to talk applications.

My status also changed to funding (language grant)! Yay! Mine changed directly to funding, and I haven't got an email yet. I'm hoping you hear soon!

I think Horb was referring to the timeline for the NY office. Since you're applying to a different office, they're probably working on a slightly different timeline. So there's no need to expect a rejection if you haven't heard anything yet.

I don't either.

That would be awful! Best of luck to @s3v. Here's hoping for an acceptance!

Congrats!! It seems like people usually receive a confirmation email within a few days of their status changing, so I wouldn't worry too much about that.

Yup, still no change for me either.

Congrats!!

You might want to look into if there are any scholarships/grants that are specific to your discipline, whatever it may be. I know that for philosophy the APA has a huge list of funding opportunities that cover a wide variety of universities/countries/purposes.

Well at this point it seems unlikely that we'll hear any new results today. Here's hoping for tomorrow!

Wow, those are some pretty rough odds! How do you know what the odds are for the language grant? What are they exactly?

I hope everyone had a good Easter weekend! Does anyone know if there's a chance that we'll hear results tomorrow, or is Easter Monday also a holiday in Germany?

You make a good point. Perhaps I'm making too many assumptions or reflecting too much on my own experience. Maybe it would be better to say that if you dedicate yourself strongly to a language, then it might not make much of a difference whether you study it inside or outside the classroom; conversely if you don't put in the effort, then attending a class won't help you much anyways.

Like MtnDuck I was also originally trained as a classicist, but currently in a philosophy program. I've studied Latin and Greek for about 6 years, French for about 3, and German for about 2. For all of these I've done a mixture of formal classroom study, and informal study (reading groups, independent study, etc.), and I was also able to do a 5 week intensive immersion program for French. Here's a few pieces of advice: I would strongly recommend not teaching yourself Latin or Greek but taking classes instead. The grammar of both Latin and Greek is significantly different from English as well as many European languages that are commonly studied like Spanish and French (German is an exception, however). If you don't get a good mastery of this early on (which could be quite difficult to do if you're working by yourself), then there's a good chance that your ability in the language will be severely handicapped. You're right that French and German classes usually focus on conversational skills, and it's often a pain to sit through an intro class with undergrads, most of whom are probably just trying to fulfill a requirement. Nonetheless, I've personally found that independent studying (focusing on grammar and reading skills) and classroom work (confusing on conversational skills) reinforce each other really well, if you're able to either make it through the intro classes or skip them somehow. If you want to do some independent study, I've had a bunch of friends speak highly of the book French for Reading. I never used it, but apparently it's the best textbook if you want to teach yourself reading knowledge of the language. I don't really have any recommendations for German though since most my German work has been through taking classes.

I can't speak to exact statistics, but I think it's fair to assume that all DAAD scholarships are pretty competitive. On the website it says that the two most important criteria for selection are: 1. a convincing and well-planned research project or course of continuing education 2. academic achievements It sounds like you already have a well-planed project. As for achievements, I'd say they'd be looking for other scholarships or awards, publications/conference presentations, GPA, perhaps things that your referees say about you (e.g. "graduated in the top of their class," or something like that).

Yeah, that's a good idea. (Testing to see if I did the status right).

Sorry to everyone who got rejected I'm still waiting to hear about the language grant.

My first choice was the Goethe-Institut in Freiburg, my second was the Goethe-Institut in Mannheim (this is the one that is currently listed on the DAAD portal for me), and my third was Speak + Write in Marburg. For all of these I picked a session that runs from the beginning of June until the end of July.