American in Beijing

Wow! Everyone has some great suggestions! Like artist_lily, I think a lot of my nervousness about this and other grad school issues stems from the fact that I've never visited the school (or the area) before. I honestly have no idea what people wear. Even though it's Berkeley (what I imagine would otherwise be relatively laid-back), the two women I've met from my department both dress on the nicer side. Problem is, I naturally dress on the more casual/comfortable side . . . uh oh! I've spent the year in China and haven't bought any new clothes, so many of my clothes are starting to wear. So when I head on over to the Bay Area (next week!!!!) I'm going to buying a lot of new clothes. I've decided to rid myself of temptation; the most casual items of clothing I am going to own are a nice pair of jeans and a simple, but stylish shirt. Hopefully this will start to cure me of my horrible dressing habits. To matcha: I grew up in New England so I'm quite familiar with winter-wear, . Make sure you invest in a couple good pairs of winter socks, preferably of the camping variety. Also, two or three good pairs of long underwear are definitely worth the investment, preferably from a camping store as well. All of these things may be expensive, but they will last you years and, more importantly, KEEP YOU WARM! I've used the same socks and long underwear for five years, and they're just now starting to show some signs of wear and tear.

down-low

I thought the other thread was a great idea, but it seems very "boy-focused." I figured it might be better if someone started a separate thread for girls. I'm hoping to revamp my wardrobe as well and give it a more "academic professional" look. Basically, I'm looking for clothes that are "nice, but not TOO nice." I'm worried that fancy designer clothes will not only break my wallet, but also make me look a bit too pretentious ("How does she have the time/money to dress like that? Does she even bother to open a book?"). I tend to overthink things and I may be doing so here. But does anyone have any ideas of kinds of clothes that will look professional, but at the same time not look like I have a personal shopper and a 6 figure salary?

Even if for some reason he doesn't remember you, he probably still has your recommendation on file. It's only been two years, and I'm sure that this kind of thing happens a lot. I asked for a recommendation for one of my professors that I'd only had for one semester (he's very famous in the field), and he assured me that he still had my writing samples on file, even after a year.

To be honest, I don't know very much about MPA/MPP programs. However, I was in a similar situation as you when I was applying. My GRE AW score was absolutely awful the first time I took it (in the 30th percentile . . . yikes!). At first, I thought it would be better not to waste my time and money retaking the test when the other aspects of my application were relatively strong. However, I was encouraged by several of my professors to retake the test and attempt to raise my score. One informed me that some schools (especially the ones with competitive programs) use a set formula to decide which applications to look at. They will look at quantifiable factors, such as GPA, rank of undergraduate institution, and GRE scores, plug these factors into a formula. Those applications that don't make the cut are put into the "reject pile" without ever being read. This system, while a bit cruel and unfair, does make sense. Many programs get 400+ applications per season. If you were a professor on the adcom, would you honestly carefully read each and every application? No. You would sort through them to try to find the most promising applicants. GRE scores and GPAs are quick and easy indicators. Maybe Maxwell is the exception to the rule and they really take the time to read each and every application. But do you really want to take that chance? You have PLENTY of time before you have to hand in your applications. Why not spend 2 - 3 months studying for the GRE and improve your score?

I just wanted to point out that not all History PhDs "pigeon-hole" you into one specific field. I actually chose Berkeley because I would come out with a broader knowledge and understanding of the histories of other areas of the world. Berkeley's History PhD program requires both a first field (for example, American History) and a second field that can be either another region or time (e.g. Early Modern Europe) or a comparative field across 3 regions (e.g. rural history in England, China, and the Middle East). However, these 3 regions cannot include your primary area of focus. Also, you're required to take at least one course outside of the department as your 3rd field. So in the end, you come out having taken a lot of different courses. If you're really hesitant about a Political Science PhD, I would take another look at some of the History PhD programs. It can't hurt to apply for both, !

I would take a class. In my opinion, you've shown your commitment to public service already through your previous work. I think it would be really helpful to show that you can excel academically as well. However, getting a good GRE score is far more important, and if you feel the coursework will in any way hinder you from studying for the GRE, I wouldn't bother. The GRE can be studied for, and a bad score, like you said, could preclude you from even being considered for a top program.

Just because her oral English is very good, doesn't mean that her formal writing skills are just as good. Living in a country for decades can obviously give you a lot of great spoken skills and teach you how to write a basic e-mail, but it doesn't mean that you can write a formal recommendation. Formal writing is very different from interacting with people in day-to-day life, and can be very hard to pick up if you didn't spend 12 years in an English-speaking secondary education system (which means extra kudos for you, JustChill, for being able to write so well!). For instance, I asked one of my non-native English speaking professors to write me a recommendation once. She has lived in America for 15 years, has no discernible accent, and only VERY rarely makes grammar mistakes, but I was very surprised at how informal and sloppy the letter was. She's an adjunct language professor with only a MA, so she doesn't often get the chance to write them. So even though her English is amazing and she's one of the professors who honestly knows me best, I don't ask her to write LORs for me anymore. Unless your boss has a lot of experience writing academic letters of recommendation, I would personally go with your anthropology professor. Not only is she a native speaker, but, seeing as she's an academic, she also has greater insight into what academics would find appealing about an applicant.

Good point! I'm going to sign up today as well! Thanks again for posting! You're a lifesaver!

Thanks so much for sharing this! Does anyone happen to know how long this promotion will last? Ideally I would want to start my year so that I can make the most use out of it possible (i.e. start it out in August right when I'm about to buy my books for school). Do you think the promotion will still be going on then?

What a great thread! How I missed it for so long, I have no idea! I'm not a first-generation undergrad in the strictest sense of the word. However, I am a first-generation humanities undergrad (the few who do have degrees in my family have degrees in practical things like Business and Accounting), and 100% the first person in my family to even think about getting a PhD. Here's my rant about how difficult it can be to deal with academic/non-academic culture shock. Like many who have already posted, the education gap means that I often find it hard to relate to my family. This is nothing new. Ever since I was in middle/high school my parents have been telling me to stop talking so "Shakespearean" (their way of saying that I shouldn't use polysyllabic words like . .. "polysyllabic" and "therefore"). My siblings also never fail to remind me that my topics of conversation are "nerdy" and "boring." It doesn't help that many in my extended family are devout Fundamentalist Christians, meaning that it's even harder to find a point of intellectual commonality. As a child I got by mostly by playing the part of the sullen teenager to my immediate family or the quietly polite girl to those in my extended family. I found the less I opened my mouth, the easier it was to get by. Now that I'm older, it's becoming a lot harder to hide my opinions and feelings. Having lived away from my family and the small town I grew up in, I've experienced what it can be like to live in a place where knowledge is seen as beneficial, rather than threatening or scary. When I go back home (admittedly not very often) it is even harder to be patient and stand by while people say ridiculous things such as "Muslims have always hated Christians," "Czechoslovakia is still a country," and "China used to own the entirety of Siberia." But by correcting these factual errors I get a reputation as being "arrogant" and "pretentious." Part of me knows that I should be more patient with them, but it just keeps getting harder and harder. Needless to say, my family was not exactly supportive of me "wasting" 6 - 7 years of my life getting a PhD in something as "useless" and "uninteresting" as Chinese history. They would prefer that I stay near them, get a teaching certificate, get married to some insurance worker, have a couple of babies, and come home every weekend for family dinner to discuss the new High School Musical DVD. In some ways, this has been a blessing, as it's encouraged me to work that much harder to ensure that I will absolutely NOT have to lead that life. At other times, I just find myself dreaming of what it would be like to live in a family where more than one person knows that Hobbes is not just a cartoon stuffed tiger . . . Living in academia, it can sometimes be easy to forget that academics can form a distinct culture, a distinct society unto themselves. For me, this basic reality really hit home when I invited my parents to a department gathering at my undergrad college for faculty, students, and family members. In spite of my efforts to explain things to them in language they could understand and include them in my discussions with my professors, they spent the entire time standing in the corner looking bored out of their minds. Afterwards, they told me in a shocked tone: "Wow! It seems like your professors REALLY like you! They were all saying such nice things about you, and it seemed like they actually meant it! If only WE could see those qualities in you . . ." I guess I can't really blame them for their reaction. For them, it was a completely foreign culture. How could they possibly understand it? Still, it hurts to know that the people who SHOULD know you best can never know you at all. Needless to say, I'm very much looking forward to returning to the society and culture where I belong! Yay academia!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So for all of you who come from families with a connection to academia, you don't know how lucky you are that your families can at least recognize the good qualities in you that you yourself take pride in. And for all of you who are first generation BAs going on to PhDs, you are absolutely amazing! Your stories were really inspiring! Keep up the great work!

I've had mixed reports on whether Verbal GRE scores matter for international students. One of my professors (at the time an international student from Taiwan) got into a program at Harvard with very low GRE scores. However, a close friend of mine from Japan with similarly low verbal scores was rejected from all the programs she applied to this year. One of the programs told her that her low GRE scores were a factor in her rejection. You have a lot of time until applications are due. Why not try and improve your verbal section scores? Given how competitive grad school admissions have been these past couple of years, it could end up making a big difference.

My department also told me to save the hard copies of my plane tickets to prove I began my life in California at a specific time. Also, I should apply for a CA driver's license the second I arrive . . . but for me it makes more sense to wait until I get my actual apartment first, haha.

I actually spent a summer in Austria, and I know that there's this great program run by the ÖBB (the Austrian train company). If you're under 26, you're eligible to buy a Sommerkarte. Once you buy this card, you get FREE TRAIN RIDES throughout the entire country of Austria for the ENTIRE summer. Last time I was there, the card was 75 Euros, including the discount card you have to buy in order to be able to buy the Sommerkarte. It's really great, especially if you want to visit parts of Southern Europe. All you have to do is pay for the price of the tickets outside of Austrian territory. For example, I bought a round-trip ticket from Vienna to Ljublijana (Slovenia) for 12 Euros. And I saved even more money by taking a night train there and back, meaning no money spent on hostels, ! And since Munich is relatively close to the Austrian border, I doubt tickets would cost very much. A ticket to Budapest would be practically free, as Budapest is right on the Austrian border. Although visiting cities in Austria, such as Vienna and Innsbruck is definitely worth it as well. Vienna is my favorite city in all of Europe, and summer in Vienna is absolutely wonderful. Also, for travel in Germany I would highly recommend using the DB's online website to buy tickets. If you buy them at least 3 weeks in advance, tickets to almost anywhere in Germany cost only 25 Euros one way. Another way to save money, ! I wish I had money to travel . . . I was originally planning on doing a little bit of travelling in China before I left, until I realized that I need to buy furniture when I get back to the States. In spite of the fact that I am very excited to pick out my very first set of furniture, I'm dreading what it's going to do to my bank account. My stipend doesn't kick in until the end of August, so I have to save save save! So that means lots of reading, TV watching, and dealing with panic attacks brought on by the dreaded impostor syndrome! Only 2 weeks left!

I remember one of my applications saying something about how they use the information for statistics on higher education . . . or maybe that was the GRE. I would imagine that its main purpose would be so the university can keep track of how diverse its graduate programs are. I highly doubt supplying this information would ever hurt you. It may even help you in some schools. If it comes down to a tie between you and another candidate, they might consider taking the candidate whose race is most underrepresented in the department. You'd be surprised at the things that can influence decision-making in academia. I remember hearing a story about a department that was hiring a new professor. It came down to a choice between 3 candidates. Half of the department liked candidate number 1 and half of the department liked candidate number 2. After a while it became clear that neither side was going to bend, so they decided to go with the candidate that no one liked as a compromise. Moral of the story: put down as much information as you can. You never know what will help you. Even being the qualified candidate that no one likes can help you! However, if you don't feel comfortable supplying the information, I highly doubt you would be penalized for not checking a box.

The same here! I've been reading through some of my PDF articles from undergrad. Everyone tells me that I shouldn't even look at anything related to my topic, because that's what I'm going to be doing for the next 6-7 years (History PhDs are notoriously long). But I can't shake this fear that my other classmates will have spent the summer reading and preparing themselves extensively and I'll look like a slacker if I don't. I'm also resisting the urge to e-mail my future classmates and ask them for their stats and what they've been doing to prepare. I haven't started packing either. I'm leaving in two weeks. However, I don't have a lot of stuff, so it probably won't be a major issue.

I was debating on getting one myself. However, for me it would mostly be for my PDF readings, as many of the books I would probably be reading for grad school aren't yet in ebook form. I would seriously check and see if a lot of the books you want to use have an ebook form before buying an ereader. Of course, all the classic literature is there as well as all the new NYT Best Sellers and such, but I found that the collection of scholarly works is not very complete, at least for my field. To be honest, I'm still on the fence about it and am even considering selling my laptop in favor of an Ipad as a compromise. Does anyone else have any experience with ereaders that might be helpful?

Hi! I actually grew up near UConn and I'm surprised no one's mentioned living in Coventry yet. It's actually not too far from campus, is very quiet (if you like quiet) and is about halfway between Manchester (where all the "fun" things are) and Storrs. It would be a quick ride to campus (especially if you live on Route 44) as well as the mall area in Manchester. Stafford's also a nice place to live. It's pretty cute (they've got a Main Street and everything), and also not too far from campus. If you're into NASCAR, they've got a race track either near or in the town itself. However, the ride to Manchester would be a bit long. I have two main recommendations of things to do while you're in Storrs. 1. Walk on Horsebarn Hill on the UConn campus and pet some of the animals. They have a cowshed with young/baby cows that they let people just go in and pet. I believe the same goes for the horse barn. It's also good exercise, and you can even reward yourself with delicious ice cream at the Dairy Bar afterwards. 2. Go see a movie at the drive-in movie theater in Mansfield. Thursday nights are cheap (I believe only $15 for however many people you can fit in a car). You can go to the early show and stay for the late show, so you get to watch two movies for the price of one. You can also bring alcohol and fun snacks and just enjoy the fresh air and beautiful night sky while watching a movie with your friends. It's really great for scary movies, because the entire car will shake a little when something scary happens (due to the high volume). Important Note: Connecticut has a law where it's illegal to sell alcohol in grocery stores and liquor stores and such after 9 pm. Also, no alcohol can be sold in these places on a Sunday. So make sure you stock up during the week! I've never actually been to a bar or a club, but I'm pretty sure the rule doesn't apply there. If anyone has any questions, feel free to PM me. I lived there for 18 years, so I know a thing or two about the area.

Don't feel bad. I honestly wouldn't worry about it. I don't think people are going to consider it a bad thing that you wanted to be well-informed about the program before you apply. Maybe next time you should just e-mail the administrator and ask if there are any students who are willing to field such questions.

It's normal to doubt yourself before a major life change. I myself keep switching back and forth between euphoria and complete panic. Last month was panic month, where I seriously doubted whether I can handle it. This month I'm very much excited, bouncing off the walls and reviewing all my undergrad work so I can be prepared for grad school. In another week or so, you might have the same drastic change I had. Honestly, I would at least try it out and see. It's not like you're spending any money to do this. You've worked so hard to get in, why not at least try it for a semester? Once you enter, you can drop out whenever you want. Why risk burning bridges when you don't have to? Who knows! You might find that you love it!

I'm doing guided self-instruction for Classical Chinese this summer. I have a tutor and we go over the translations of the texts that I read to make sure I actually understand what they mean. I'm hoping to test out of the language requirement so I can focus more on History courses and less on language. I was an East Asian Studies major in undergrad, meaning I had more language classes and less history, so I really want to be able to devote almost all of my time to perfecting my historical methodology . . . in other words, figuring out what historical methodology actually is, lol. Speaking as a person who has studied 6 languages before (but only 2-3 to the point where I would consider myself successful), I would strongly recommend not self-studying a language in which you have no prior formal background. You could easily give yourself a bad foundation in the language, and it will end up hurting you in the end when you're behind the other students in intermediate or upper-level language classes. If you don't want to pay for private lessons, or take a course at a community college, I would spend the summer working on French. It's a whole lot easier to self-study a language that you already have a basic foundation in. Plus, you can do "fun things" in French like watching French online videos or listening to French music, and it will actually be beneficial. But if you do them in German when all you can say is "Ich heisse Mark," it's just going to be a waste of time. Just my 2 cents! Good luck this summer!

I would get rid of the first paragraph. The story is cute, but so many other personal statements are going to have the exact same kind of story that it's not going to be cute to the people on the adcoms anymore. I would use the space to instead discuss your intended area of research. You talk a lot about what you have done in the past, but you don't discuss what kind of research you intend to do on the doctoral level. Pick a topic that you like (preferably one that fits well with the interests of the faculty at the school you're applying to) and show off how much you know about it. Adcoms want to see that you're knowledgeable and dedicated, so keep that in mind when you write! Also, there are a few grammar and spelling mistakes in your personal statement. Before you send it off, you should have a native speaker with good writing skills look it over for you.

Ooooh, that sounds frightening, actually. And you're doing it all without having taken Classical Chinese? Wow! I've been taking CC for the equivalent of nearly two years, and I still think that kind of text would be the death of me. It might help you if you start studying Classical Chinese with the help of a textbook (and your language tutor, !). A friend of mine is a CC professor, and he recommends this textbook: Michael A. Fuller's "An Introduction to Literary Chinese", Harvard University Press 2004 In my CC class, however, we used Gregory Chiang's "Language of the Dragon: A Classical Chinese Reader", Cheng and Tsui Company 1999. However, I don't really like it and would only recommend it if your language tutor does not have excellent English. It's an English/Mandarin bilingual text (well, trilingual if you count CC), so it would be easier for your tutor to understand. Also, a good CC dictionary would be helpful. For CC - Mandarin, I really like this one: 古代漢語詞典，商務印書館，南京2003 . However, my professor friend recommends Mathews' Chinese English Dictionary. It's pretty old (from 1942), but he claims no one has succeeded in making a better one for CC - English. Good luck!

Oooh! Those are hot! I'll definitely be asking for them as a gift as well! When I start grad school (only two months away, :D !), I'm going to try to start strong and dress at least presentably. In the end though, I'm probably going to wear the same kind of comfy stuff I wore in undergrad. However, when I start TA-ing I'm definitely going to start bringing out the professional attire. I feel that your choice of clothes not only has an influence on those around you, but on your own mindset as well. If I just wore the same jeans/sweatpants/T-shirts I wear every day, I feel like I would appear to be just another one of the students. However, if I dress professionally, it would set me apart from the students, and be a visible signal of how seriously I take my job (slacker undergrads, beware!).