Musick

Did anyone apply to the MEME program at Brown?

How can I have 58 views and no replies??? Come on guys/girls.

Is it normal to get a rejection letter from the department secretary where the letter is typed in the body of the email and has someone else's name at the bottom with no signature? This seemed bizarre to me, rather than getting an attached letter or something from the official graduate division. And frankly, this secretary did not like me because I occasionally had to ask her questions and follow up questions during the application process because she did not communicate clearly. So yeah, while the institution in question is highly selective and I'm certainly not above being fairly rejected... I see a possibility of foul play here. I'm sort of joking, sort of not.

If you look at the past history of any school on the results search page, you'll find that within a given year, most schools send out both acceptances and rejections on multiple different dates. So these "admits are out" kinds of posts you see around here basically mean "I received my decision." Don't despair! The schools I'm now waiting on seem to pass out decisions throughout the second and third week of March, so I have some time off from the suspense, although I guess it's still there.

So... I've always been a problem solver. I'm good at it and I love it. I ended up in philosophy and the arts instead of math / computer science though, surprisingly to me if I were to go back in time and tell my high school self this would happen. Anyway, I would like to make up for the computer science coursework I did not do as an undergraduate and I'm wondering... (Can / How can) I do this now? I'm wondering if someone can recommend a sequence of actions that would lead me to knowing as much computer science / practical coding as someone with a bachelor's degree and/or someone who is employed at the entry level as a software developer. I have heard of a fair number of software developers with degrees other than computer science and limited coursework in it... or no degree at all. But I recognize that times change, progress is made, and perhaps this is less common than it was when various computer technologies were less common/pervasive than they are now.

So I was just reading over one of my SOPs for a school I'm still waiting to hear from, and... I found a missed comma in a place it obviously should have been! I believe that I demonstrated my ability to use various punctuation including the comma correctly all over the rest of the application in various portions of prose... but this stuck out to me and freaked me out. Not only that, in an additional statement I prepared about some of my work (not required), I found a missed apostrophe (the possessive kind). So my question is... how screwed am I? My worry is of course that this bespeaks carelessness. But I also think everyone makes the occasional typo (including my POI at this place in some emails to me!)... and since the degree I am applying to pursue is not one in K-12 English education... perhaps the rest of my strong application is far more relevant to my chances for success at that school than two punctuation mistakes across an entire application. Of course, it's often said that PhD programs are very competitive and pretty much looking for any reason to not have to consider yet another applicant when so many are qualified and so few can be admitted. Thoughts? Experiences with this?

Bullshit? Why do you think that? And yes funny enough, the particular type of program I'm applying to does not care one bit about GRE, and as long as GPA isn't particularly atrocious it doesn't matter either. That said, you know what they say about guys with big GRE scores. Big...

Wow. You totally caught the reference. I spent a bit of time trying to think of a clearer way to make the reference but then decided not to bother. But hey Fermat is dead and I'm right here making occasional trouble apparently. So feel free to ask for my truly remarkable proof if you're looking to dominate the GRE.

Having achieved a perfect score... I can tell you, don't buy the materials. There are a handful of simple strategies I could fit into one post here that will destroy that test's "challenges".

You should probably eat healthier... it will make your paper better. You know, Maslow's hierarchy, bro.

Are you suggesting the feeling needs to be anything other than short-lived? Let's be clear that it is you talking about emotion, I did not suggest that was the part of the response that people could get something from. But from that, cameraderie, commiseration, etc... What I was actually referring to is the information about why I'm okay with the rejection, the comments about the school. My words were "academic circle jerk". I think those were the words that upset some people here, as in academia, formality fetish is unfortunately common. Anyway, I think for people who hope that their research activities and things they produce will impact others and greater society... it's very important for them to tread carefully with programs that favor "progress" and "innovation" that are not connected to benefiting others, either in or beyond academia. I find that this is especially a risk in the fine arts as well as more theoretical disciplines.

I'm not aware of what you think we disagree about. But I'm not going to insist that you continue to engage if you're uncomfortable.

Oh I'm having a great time here. But I feel sorry for everyone who takes everything so seriously... for our own happiness we should all think about the good we now have access to where we got accepted, and the bad we dodged where we got rejected. I don't personally perceive any negativity, but I'm sorry if you do and I've been a contributor.

Are you following me around the forum talking about this? Why do you care so much? If it's that person's dream school, great, I'm happy for them. I only speak for myself when I badmouth the school. Why should they care so much what I think? By the way... you assume that I'm just talking about the "Best Rejections..." thread, but in fact at least one of those users has been chiding me in other threads and downvoting all of my posts. Maybe I should have pursued a career in writing instead if I'm this good at getting so many opinions raging and emotions boiling over a few sentences I typed. I'm flattered.

Hmm... what's the sample size of reactions to reactions to rejections that you have observed? Anyway you just did it yourself actually. I think if someone wants to remind themselves and suggest to others what's not good about a particular school they were rejected from, that's perfectly fine. It's informative and useful and makes that person and possibly others in the same situation feel better. Of course if you describe it with the word "smear" it seems bad. "Don't yell at me."

Here's a vent... So many people on this forum get self-righteous about how people react to rejections. Why? I don't really think it's the right idea to go around telling others how they should feel. I make it a policy not to do that. I think it helps some people here feel better about their own rejections if they convince themselves they're doing a better job reacting to it than others are. Competitive even after the competition huh?

Personal question... how old are you? I kind of feel like our generation is suffering from the final years of the reign of old conservative musicians and scholars... in which I include the so called rebels that basically wrote music that doesn't connect with an audience. So yeah, I fear that those of us who are the prime age for entering the last phase of education or the first phase of an academic career, are stuck with those as our judges... and in the next 5 years or so people might fare better. Sorry to hear you got two rejections man, I'm 0-2 so far myself.

Hello everyone, I've realized the obvious, that technology is starting to pervade all disciplines pretty much, including my own. That said, IT jobs are also an excellent fallback if I were to get tired of the idea of academia (I'm studying philosophy and fine arts simultaneously with the goal of joining a philosophy faculty specializing in aesthetics and epistemology). I have some experience with coding, having studied Java and C in high school, and I want to get back to it. So I'm wondering, what does everyone recommend for a self-study plan? Is there any chance of building the knowledge that would compare to a four year degree in computer science? I'm perfectly well comfortable with the idea of studying some theoretical stuff too because I figure that's part of the common difference between self-study and university study. Anyway, I've heard of many who studied math or one of the sciences in college and then went on to a career as a software developer... but I fear that is getting more difficult to do then it was in say, the 90s. Computer science four year programs are much more common and well ironed out than they were at the dawn of the internet I figure. Does anyone have some advice? Some honest words about how this might turn out? Some optimism for me? As I said, whether or not I continue on my path to being a philosopher... I see computer science and programming as something worth my attention and I want to do it thoroughly rather than in a piecemeal, disorganized way that would never stand a chance at rivaling a school curriculum and environment.

Oh, right... you're musicology. I'm composition. I'm 0 for 2 so far, with 4 to go. Almost every program so far seems to be responding later than usual.

I had this conversation with my MA thesis committee after my defense. It depends on your field somewhat, but they all assured me that it's more about your personal connection with your advisor. I applied to four programs with fancy names and two that just had a person I was interested in working with. One of my mentors referred to a difference in the past and present academia... the past being a "good ole boys" club where if you didn't have an ivy league PhD, your career was over or had a thick ceiling imposed on it... the present being more diverse, more symbiotic between different schools, and more about you than your school name.

Where were you accepted? I didn't apply to Columbia but I do see on the results search page that Columbia just got through a round of waitlisting people.

Wow, this thread is dead.

Hahaha I hope not. Stanford is late for previous years for sure but I did see that someone got accepted in March once... and I ended up not applying to Harvard so I wouldn't know. Princeton has everything happening in February, but ranging from like the 10th to near the end of the month. So, I guess we'll all be plagued with insomnia until further notice?

Yes, thank you for correcting that... that's what I get for juggling two different sentence formats and rushing to post between other activities. Note that I said Berkeley musicology "isn't what it used to be." Fact: Taruskin retired = change in the department = the department is not what it used to be (i.e. a department that had Taruskin as active faculty). Anyway, let's look at my comment for the purpose it was meant to serve. I was trying to make a rejected musicology applicant feel better. It appears that in the process I have offended multiple people... so from a utilitarian perspective, I fucked up. I apologize to anyone who was upset by my comments about Berkeley and I assure you all that you don't need to get defensive about the program you are in or soon to be in. I respect everyone's individual paths. We all have a place in the soundscape.

That is correct, if I were a musicology applicant I would not directly work with Taruskin or any of the other musicologists, of course. Remember that there are musicology applicants here as well.