American in Beijing
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Posts posted by American in Beijing
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From what you've written, it seems like Berkeley is the best place. Berkeley does have private funding independent from the state budget, and it seems to be the school with the least amounts of cons apart from that.
Berkeley
- Pro: Top-ranked history program with strong resources in ethnic studies and American art history; two-course load allows for more independent research and work time; flexible academic and advising philosophy (i.e., not tied to a single advisor upon arrival); beautiful California weather; family would be closeby
- Con: Financial risks given state financial crisis; students have mentioned that there aren't enough thematic seminars
Can I ask what you mean by "not enough thematic seminars?" Berkeley's actually have to choose between Berkeley and UCSD, and any info would be helpful.
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I got my Harvard rejection today, too... funny, I got a form letter from Harvard (not a peep from my PAs, who seemed really enthusiastic in the fall)... and I got into Columbia with full funding. Admissions really is such a crapshoot.
Lol, it totally is! Professors will even admit it too! A good friend of mine got into Oxford, but then rejected by her no-name safety school. You just have no way to tell!
I figure getting into grad school is practically like winning the lottery; winning it twice (or even once) is already unbelievable. Winning it four, five, six times? That's just statistically improbable!
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I'm not giving up hope completely yet . . . even though my hope's starting to flag a little. In previous years it seems like people were informed on different days. And that's not exactly unusual for schools to first send out admissions to the candidates they're 100% sure about and leave the more "debatable" ones for further, well, debate. And just because the admissions were for multiple subsections it doesn't mean they're done with all the subsections. At least . . . a girl can hope.
Good luck to everyone who, like me, is biting their nails in anxiety! You never know what can happen!
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Which Columbia school are you referring to? I applied to teachers college, the application was down all day, now when I log on I can no longer click on anything. I used to be able to click on application status, housing etc.
I'm applying to the GSAS, Department of History.
And it does seem to be Complete Enough for Review . . . but why is that changing just now? My department's pretty much done with admissions decisions, I think.
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I just checked Columbia's website for the fiftieth time, and on the Application Status Form page under the Downloadable Forms list there's a line that says: "Status Department." It used to be blank, but as of around 30 min. - 1 hour ago it says "Complete ______ ENOYES".
Does anyone have any idea what it could mean? Could anyone who's been admitted or rejected by Columbia please help me out?
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I feel like with Master's programs it's not so hard to get a deferral. My friend got BU to defer her admission to an IR Master's program without much of an excuse at all. PhD's might be another story . . .
To be honest, deferring had crossed my mind as well, but I'm too scared of losing my funding. And my alternate plan for the year (teaching preschool) is definitely not as good in the long run as doing a PhD. I think I'm just getting nervous about the fact that this dream that I've worked hard for for so long is finally coming true . . . what happens if I get this far and screw it up somehow? I'm sure once school actually starts I'll be so excited that it will all go away.
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I wish I had never seen this topic . . . now I'm more paranoid than ever!
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I got that from Cornell last year, too. While it sucks right now, looking back, it was quite funny. It was almost like they were saying, "just in case you didn't get our first message ..."
But, sorry to hear about the rejection!
They did that to everyone at Berkeley, including the admits. It scared me quite a bit. I think the difference was the first e-mail was from the department and the second was from the entire GSAS. Still, that was pretty nasty of them. One would think they could just have a unified system . . . but maybe that's too much to ask considering California's budget crisis.
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Relax! You're in!
While I have spent countless hours checking websites for news, every admit has come via email.
Congratulations!
Yeah, the website can be misleading. I got accepted to a school over a week ago via e-mail from the department and I just now received an e-mail asking me to check my status on the website. Trust the e-mail! You're in! Congratulations!! Go dance around and celebrate!
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Still waiting to hear from two schools . . . ice cream has become my new best friend.
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I'm actually about to start a temporary job teaching English to Chinese preschoolers. I have a feeling grad school is going to come as a shock after 6 months of nothing but ABC's.
At least this job should be slightly better than the internship I just got off of. I was only there 1 1/2 weeks, but it confirmed my hatred for corporate life. Every day it felt like I was seconds away from metamorphosing into some insane clerk from a Dostoevsky novel. My Russian Lit professor would have been proud . . .
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I have very specific information about the financial aid in hand, but that is not official letter. He seems to ask to me to make the decision first
Is the decision binding? If so, then I would say that you're really excited about the opportunity, but that you need to weigh in other factors before you make your final decision. Say you'd like to have more time to talk to the students and faculty to make sure the school is a good fit for you. They should understand that. And if they don't, then that's unreasonable, I think. I would seriously reconsider going to the program.
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Movies:
An Education -- great story about a girl who comes of age in England in the 1960's.
Precious -- awesome film about an illiterate girl growing up in Harlem in the 80's who is physically and sexually abused by her parents.
TV Shows:
Bones (just awesome) -- A forensic anthropologist who solves murders for the FBI.
Flashpoint -- A Canadian drama about a First Response Unit for the police. It's mostly about hostage situations. For the guy within us all,
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What do you guys think about Harvard--if we haven't heard, we're rejected (which is my guess)?
I e-mailed my PA and she told me about my rejection. It sounded like they'd made their decisions already . . . at least about East Asia.
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Thanks for asking on our behalf!
Lol, why they couldn't just send out a mass e-mail telling this to everyone is beyond me.
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If anyone's waiting on Columbia, I just got an e-mail from the secretary saying that the committee is going to make decisions "by the 25th" and that "applicants will be notified shortly after that."
I'm assuming that means if you find out after the 25th, it's probably not good news,
. Here's to another week of suspense! -
I just got my first rejection today too (from Harvard). I'm definitely relieved it's over with, and even though I'm still waiting to hear from two schools I'm definitely a lot calmer now than I was before. A good chunk of the uncertainty is gone now, at least.
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The character of Dr. Temperance Brennan (on TV) is based off a character in Kathy Reichs' books, which is based off her own life as a forensic anthropologist. Although there is a HUGE difference between the books and shows, it was actually written by an academic. As a funny aside, in the show Dr. Brennan is also a famous author and her "fictional" character is called Kathy Reichs. Sorry - I watch way too much Bones. I went through the whole series this winter.
Lol, me too! How's the book compared to the TV show (i.e. which is better)? To be honest, I can't imagine anything better than seeing Dr. Brennan playing with a baby and saying: "Dancing phalanges!"
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With a PhD in history, professorships are pretty much the only thing you could possibly do (unless you want to get another degree in archaeology or as a museum curator and work at a museum). However, I'm fortunate enough to be in love with a field that tends to be the exception to the "life of academic poverty" route that many seem prepared to follow. Chinese history is a relatively small field in the U.S., but given China's rising importance also a field that is currently in growing demand (I'm told even in spite of the financial crisis). Do I expect to come straight out of grad school and become a tenured professor at Harvard? No. But I am expecting to be able to find a relatively stable job at a minor university and maybe even work my way up to the "top",
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So...to lighten the mood:
I had called last Friday to check on the status of some of my apps. Overall, a pretty disappointing venture. I was really surprised that the majority of the faculty or staff I talked to sounded frightened to talk to me. These are my theories:
1. The English Departments at various schools are holding their admissions committees hostage. My inquiries were blown off because those in the department were in the midst of tender negotiations over securing food and/or water and bathroom breaks. They have not been allowed to see their families since the last week in January.
2. Everyone I talk to is frightened to tell any inquiring applicant that they are rejected--this is because someone either threatened over the phone to consume a gallon of ice cream in retaliation OR they somehow fear that one of us is extremely talented at casting voodoo curses. Needless to say, neither is true and we are calling just so we can go to sleep at night reassuring ourselves that no relationship will ever be as abusively cruel as that between us and English grad school applications.
3. Because our parents' generation has told us all our lives that we were truly special and "everyone is a winner," the admissions committees fear that breaking the collective bubble of our youthful naiveté will result in a galactic catastrophe the likes of which has never been seen. Either of two will happen: 1. the universe will collapse and life as we know it will end OR 2. we will all be markedly jaded and each one of us will be the mean parent at pee wee football that insists winning IS everything (resulting in future NBC specials about our generation's unhealthy expectations for our children to be everything that we weren't...including succeeding in things we never even wanted to be good at in the first place--international Boogle champion anyone?).
Thought everyone could use a little upper. Please add your theories because I do admit that mine may not collectively explain everything about the application process...
Maybe people have become violent and threatened them in the past. You never know! I mean, everyone here has sacrificed a lot to apply to grad schools and in many cases have planned a good portion of their lives around actually going to grad school. People are sometimes desperate to get in, and under such circumstances, it's hardly surprising that some would react violently.
Or maybe people just don't like to tell people that they've been rejected. I mean, you'd have to be really sadistic to enjoy crushing someone's dream, right?
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I can't believe no one's mentioned the TV show Bones yet! Dr. Temperance Brennan basically catches criminals with the knowledge she gained while doing a PhD in forensic anthropology (and then presents papers on them at conferences . . . there's literally one scene where she jumps up and down for joy with her lab assistant about presenting her findings in a prestigious journal).
Basically Dr. Brennan is your stereotypical academic: slightly cold, rational, distanced from popular culture, uses big words on a regular basis, wealthy, etc. Still, because of this show part of me wants to change specialties . . . then the fact that I fail at all the sciences gives me a reality check.
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Luckily my puppy doesn't (yet) demonstrate a taste for envelopes! Yikes!
I received an email from my top choice, and in the subject line it was just the name of the university's college of public health. When I anxiously clicked to open the email, it told me to become a fan of the public health program on facebook! Seriously??? I did, on the off-chance someone on their end will notice my unending devotion...but if things don't work out, it's a definite "unfriend"!
LOL, this cracked me up! I fortunately have not had any of the above things happen to me. Although I did almost delete an e-mail from a professor asking for a phone interview. The subject was: "Phone call?" and the sender was some ambiguous screen name that I did not recognize. Thank God my ultrasensitive spam blocker did not put it in spam!
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This is an excerpt from a post in art history that mew27 put up for the 2008 cycle:
"it's amazing and very aggravating how shady the whole admission process can be. there's a lot of under-the-table stuff going on that i was completely unaware of. my advisor called me in one day recently because he 'had something very important to talk about.' apparently what happened is that a professor from school X had called him over the weekend and expressed great interest in my application. he really wanted to work with me, but so did professor so-and-so at school Y. so what happens? between the 3 of them - the two professors and my advisor - they work out a "deal" as to which one i'll get into. both schools can't accept me because it lowers their chances that i'll go to either one of them, but if i only get into one, i'll probably go there (god knows we can't ruin their matriculation rates). so i ask my advisor whether i get any say in the matter/get to decide which school i want more, and he tells me no. the "deal" has already been worked out, and i'm not supposed to know anything about it. he just wanted to tell me so i wouldn't feel bad when i get rejected from school Y. i thought this was unbelievably shady - here they are treating applicants like freakin' business deals.
so anyway, i shouldn't be ranting, but hopefully it makes some of you guys feel better knowing that there's a LOT of fishy crap going on here. everything is so political..."
Anyway, I do not know if whether or not this scenario was true, but in my opinion, it does kind of make sense if you're applying to "top" tier programs, ya know?
That's so crazy! I didn't realize there were so many back deals going on. Although I guess if I were this student, I would feel quite flattered (after, of course, being annoyed that I had to just take which school ended up winning out). Her application was worth a back door business deal!
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Wow, compared to some of the responses here my situation was not horribly bad, but at the time I didn't know how to carry on.
One of my classmates passed away at the end of October. Although I didn't know him personally, my program put me in charge of organizing some things for his parents and helping with the memorial ceremony. Reading and/or translating his essays, blogs, and the letters of his family/friends left me almost as devastated as if he'd been a close friend. It also resulted in me effectively missing a week's worth of class and the final exam, all of which I had to make up.
The day after the memorial service my parents came to visit for a week. Needless to say, between taking them around a foreign city where they didn't speak the language and making up my homework so I wouldn't flunk out of my program, I didn't have much time to work on my apps. When I finally got around to working on my writing sample, my parents would whine: "Do you really HAVE to do that?" . . . Needless to say, I don't exactly come from an academic family.
After my parents had finally left, I thought to myself: ok, crunch time! You can do this! You still have two weeks! All you have to do is edit some things. That's doable, right?
The next day my host mom kicked me out of my house, because she needed the room for her sick mother-in-law. She gave me 2 days to move out. I was so exhausted and stressed, I just cried for three days. In between crying, I went to class, studied for my final exam, and found a place to live. This essentially left me with 1 week to do at least half of my application work.
In the end, it all worked out. The school with the earliest deadline, the one where I had the least time to prepare, has given me a positive response. Before, I contemplated writing to them to explain my horrible situation, but in the end I realized that in life there are probably going to be lots of times like this where unexpected and even tragic things happen. Can I always use them for an excuse to not get my work done well?
Basically, shit happens. But, as many others have pointed out:
"When life gets you down you know what you gotta do? . . . Just keep swimming! Just keep swimming! Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming! What do we do? We swim! Swim!"
I love Finding Nemo.
2 Questions
in Decisions, Decisions
Posted
So I've gotten into two schools (Berkeley and UCSD) and I'm still torn as to which school I should actually go to.
After talking numerous professors and students, I've gotten the distinct impression that the question pretty much comes down to resources vs. mentoring (or, as my roommate puts it, the library vs. professor question).
Berkeley has a lot more resources (in terms of finances and library resources), a lot more prestige, and has amazing faculty and brilliant students from all different history subfields that would give me a real opportunity to do some fantastic interdisciplinary work if I should ever have the urge. However, the faculty for Chinese history is going through some generational changes. Of the two professors I am interested in working with, one is middle-aged and doesn't do particularly interesting work, and the other is very young, but his work seems fascinating and very cutting-edge. Problem is . . . will he still be around when I'm actually writing my dissertation?
UCSD on the other hand seems to offer a lot in terms of mentoring. Their training in my specific subfield (Chinese history) is really top-notch and seems a lot more effective than Berkeley's. Their students have recently been receiving a lot of recognition (this year they're 3/3 in terms of Fulbrights and a grad from 2008 is now an assistant professor at Oxford). The faculty is also amazing, and one professor in particular is REALLY famous. However, with the exception of the Chinese history subfield, the rest of the department does not seem very strong. Also, there's the problem of less resources. They've offered what I think is a reasonable fellowship . . . but Berkeley's still offering me a lot more.
If anyone has any suggestions, I'd be really grateful!
Also, is there any good way to ask a professor either when he/she's going to retire or whether he/she has plans to move on to another school in the near future? I kind of need to know to make my decision . . . but I'm struggling to find a way to word the questions that doesn't seem rude.
Thanks!!!