StarvingStudentYeah

Regarding BC and surrounding neighborhoods: I'm at BC now, and I can't imagine you're going to find anything decent in a 2 BR along the B or C lines close to BC for <$1600. I was in that same market last year, and everything I saw in that price range that was a 2 BR (not a split) was a dump. We're talking tiny galley kitchens with a mini-fridge and a stove unit from 1979. Really. All the decent 2 BR's I saw were $1700 and up. I opted for quality over quantity - you can find very nice 1 BRs for $1600 all over the area. You also need to figure in a potential fee into your budget. Chestnut Hill Realty specializes in the BC area, is a huge firm, and pays all broker fees. No fee is nice. Still, most of the best units in the area don't pay the realtor fee (b/c they don't need to). I also disagree about the Comm Ave (B line) apts being $200 less than the Beacon St. apts (C line). There is a price differential, but in my experience it's more in the neighborhood of ~$50/$75 less. The bigger drop along Comm Ave. comes when you get out into Allston. There is a reason for this, Allston is a dump. It's an undergrad and underemployed ghetto. Different from an actual ghetto by far, but it's not a great living arrangement for a serious grad student, IMO. They call it Allston Rock City for a reason. Lots of clubs, pubs, and music spots. Nice to visit for a drink or a concert, not so great for studying. Other areas and opinions: Brighton Center: Not a huge fan, for a BC person without a car. It's a decent area, but is esthetically a bit of an eyesore. My friends who live there and go to BC ride their bike, which is about a 10 minute ride, and a 30 minute walk. Not ideal for winter. Cleveland Circle: BC land. Again, not very esthetically pleasing, but it's great for BC. There are plenty of undergrads, but also plenty of young professionals and grad students. ~70 % of the grad students I know live in this area. One very nice thing about it is that from here you can easily access the B, C, or D lines. I'd suggest looking in the Aberdeen section, which is north of Cleveland Circle between Beacon and Comm Ave. You'll recognize it b/c all the street names in this area are of Scottish origin. Cleveland Circle also has great pizza places - can't go wrong with Pino's or Presto's. There is also a CVS, several bars, several minor restaurants, a hardware store, etc. Additionally, the BC shuttle travels throughout this area, and is free. Closest grocery store is a Shaw's or a Whole Foods, but neither is all that close. I recommend PeaPod delivery. 4 stars from me. Brookline/Coolidge Corner: LOVE Coolidge Corner. May be slightly more expensive, but again, you can find 1 BRs for your price range. Full of young professionals, professors, artists, etc. This is the most urban part of Brookline and has lots of BC grad students. Stay away from the Soverign apt building on Beacon. Great building, INSANE manager. No way. In general though, this area is great. Family sort of atmosphere. Best breakfast in town on Harvard Ave - Zaftig's. Sweet. For those wondering if two weeks in temp housing is enough time to find a place: Yes! I know several people whose apt hunting lasted 4 hours or less. You go to Criagslist, you find the major brokers in the area as well as some individual listings, you call them, you look and as SOON as you find one you like, YOU WRITE A CHECK. While still in the apt, or as soon as you're back at their office you write a check. You will usually not get a second chance if it's a good place for a reasonable price. As someone else said, do not flake! Barring any unforseen circumstances a successful apt search in Boston should take 3-4 days MAX.

I applied to the M.A. in counseling at UGA and have not heard a word, except that I called them on 4/15 and the secretary said, "No action has been taken as they are still going through the piles and hope to call ppl for interviews by next week." I already made my choice and accepted elsewhere, but I'm sorry WTF is THAT all about? Of ALL my schools (I applied only to M.A. programs, will do PhD next) UGA had BY FAR the earliest deadline, and has been BY far the latest one with any word - which still has not happened yet. I basically loathe this school now. It is just not acceptable to take 4+ months to go through apps - especially then those 4+ months takes you well past 4/15. Inexcusable, IMO. What REALLY burns me even further is the fact that they were one of my safeties anyway - glad I wasted my time. Have you been checking the tracking screen? Mine hasn't been updated since 2/26 and I couldn't even tell what that update was. BTW, I know of at least one other person who has heard nothing back from UGA - and have seen no acceptances from any psych related field at UGA poster as yet (though I could have just missed it).

Wow, I'm thrilled to see this worked out in a positive way. I was getting quite hot under the collar reading this stuff. What sort of person is this grad coordinator? The rule is that if the mistake is yours you honor it. Period. Call someone to rescind funding during 4/15 week based on a technicality? P'shaw. Outrageous in the extreme. Glad it worked out for you.

I friend of mine was also accepted, and will be attending SUNY-Buffalo in the English PhD program. Small world.

29, 30, and 35 are all acceptable ages to start a PhD. We're not all cookie cutters. I would definitely recommend you decline the current offer and re-apply to next year. I also recommend you do a LOT of research and find ALL the PhD programs that fit your research interests, and then apply to ALL those, but ONLY those. It's beyond me why people are applying to schools that when they get in, they don't want to attend. A safety is not a safety if you get in and don't want to go. I had some safeties that I considered, but I didn't apply to them because I knew if I got in my heart just wouldn't be in it. Anyway, everyone I have ever spoken with has been of a mind that it is a VERY bad idea to attempt to leave one PhD and start another - particularly if they are in the same field. Assumable, people with enough age and maturity to be applying to PhD programs have progressed past the point of making a rash choice then realizing they were wrong a year later. I have talked to many academics, chairs, etc who said they will not even review an app from someone who has already begun a PhD elsewhere. Why? Well, the whole point of a PhD app process is to basically separate those who are serious and will complete the program from those who won't. Let be honest, most all of his who got through undergrad with a >3.5GPA, 1200+ GRE, and good LOR have the mental temerity to complete PhD level work as long as we are truly committed to doing so. So, the primary job of the committee is to figure out who will, and who will not complete the program and add to the program's prestige and line of research and publish. This is a job they take very seriously, because 1) the university will be committing considerable resources, and $$ to that candidate. Plus, let's not forget that the rankings so many of you drool over are based, in part, on ridiculous criteria like % enrolled vs. % completed. Let's also not forget the person who would LOVE the slot you are taking half-heartedly. Believe it or not, there is someone out there on a waiting list who is a real person and has this school as their TOP choice. As I told someone else - if you are really considering doing this, IMO you need to call the chair of the dept and tell him/her that you are thinking of accepting, but that you aren't that thrilled and may well just chuck the school off for a better offer next year, if it comes along. If you tell them, and they still want you then do as you wish. Otherwise, in my opinion you are being deceitful.

Wow, looks like someone has been drinking the Kool-Aid again! Nashville better than NYC or Boston? Pshaw! Just playing man, I had to.

I'll be at BC in the fall and from my research it appears that your options for $1,000 or less will definitely include either a roommate or a living a bit further away. From what I've been told if you find ANYTHING at all in that range around MIT there will be something SEVERELY wrong with it. Luckily, the mass transit in Boston is pretty good, so living a few miles should be a mild annoyance at worst. Most of the outlying areas still feel pretty urban and are generally populated with high percentages of students so you certainly won't be alone in that regard. Good luck!

I suppose it depends on what you mean by Americans. In general, I think we don't think of it at all. It's not really a name in the typical American's lexicon. I am familiar with it, and had a relative who did one of his degrees there - but then, he's Canadian. I think those who know it are view it as a good institution, but I also know several grad students who a year or so ago thought I was talking about a "fake online university." I have to think these are extreme cases in academic type people. The people who will matter to you will know it's a fine school. Good luck!

I'm sorry you've had such a resoundingly negative experience with academics and academia. In fact, I was student rep on the search committee for a new president of my school as a Soph - and no, I did not learn to over-generalize professors and academics as a myopic bunch of boors. Just last year I had intimate knowledge of a search committee that I did not set on, but had first hand information regarding. This was for a literature position - an early americanist to be specific. One candidate had both a B.A. from an elite "prestige" school, and a PhD from a top 5 dept, along with a person recommendation and phone call to the chair from Billy Connelly, former poet laureate of the US. This candidate lost out to a person who in the words of the committee members, "had an intellectual curiosity and flare you cannot find on paper." Not to mention that, as I said earlier, much of my family is in academia and I have yet to hear them profess to preferring a power CV over a dynamic person. As I say though, I'm sorry you have had such a poor experience with academia. It is obvious that you have become cynical, bitter, and that you have some sort of agenda here. I submit to you that, perhaps, this is not the proper forum for disparaging the academe to those of us who still hold it in at least some positive regard. I promise you, for ever cynical faux-elitist there is a true renaissance intellectual. I wish you luck and better returns on your academic investment and bid you that I will not say another word on the matter here as I fear this may devolve into a morass of arguments soon if we keep up the pace, which will likely not lead to any of us changing our opinions in any significant way. At least now the people with questions about this have ample material from both sides of the matter.

Well said!

It is not necessarily the case that you have a late deadline because you made it off the waitlist. Many schools do not waitlist anyone. These schools have $ for x spots, and offer no more than that many people, and if less than that accept then the cohort is smaller that year - therefore it's easy for them to give you extra time since no one else will be offered that slot. Schools that waitlist generally want a cohort to be a specific size - even if that means taking some people they didn't initially feel were their top choice. These schools need to know by 4.15 so that re-offer declined slots.

I agree with the balance of that Minnesotan. Additionally, I respect the fact that you are providing well thought out and reasoned information to those who ask for it.

The simple fact is that there are people peddling irresponsible and uninformed information on this board. Ranking is a SMALL piece of a very LARGE and complex puzzle. In the end, you are better off at a place where you are a good fit with the faculty, and where you can be the most productive version of yourself that you can possibly be. There is a vast array of examples of people who go on to Ivy and otherwise esteemed faculty careers having come from schools with lower rankings. On the flip side, there are large numbers of folks from top 10 schools who fail to produce any meaningful research of their own and end up at SW Missouri State. People on here are very willing to give you "hard and fast" answers to serious questions which are not truly answerable in such a cavalier fashion. Frankly, I find it offensive in the extreme at the suggestion that academia is unaware, myopic, and near-sighted segment of society, Rather, my opinion of academia is that it's a rich and varied sector aware that any construct or two-part logic system is deficient in the extreme. Rest assured, if you are an intelligent person of vibrant intellect you will not be black-balled regardless of where you completed your dissertation. To wit, the substance of the dissertation and the originality of your work will determine your station in the great land of academia. Academia is by no means a land of rigid rules ruled by hard-seated rules from people saying, "him not Harvard, him only top 25 school - him not worthy." When picking a school, look at the entire problem holistically and intelligently. Look at your fit, then look at the fit, and then the fit again. Then, look at finding, location, climate, urban/rural, your specific advisor, alumni profiles, discussions with current grad students in your program, etc. For people to come on here and say that the one over-riding consideration should be ranking is just wrong and again, irresponsible. Ranking is a piece, but only a piece of the deliberation process of true academics.

You have a private message.

Well, this makes me like WM even less now. It appears they give different info to different candidates - which of course means they lie. My letter said they offered "less than 8." 12 is not less than 8 is it? What a bunch of sleaze bags. :x

In my experience the inverse of this statement is actually far more correct. In academia, traditional ratings are so unimportant as to almost be completely irrelevant. It is the non-academic world where rankings pull weight. Here's why: There are various sources of ratings, but among the most common are US News and World Reports, and other publications of a similar ilk. The rankings are based on things that IN NO WAY quantify the actual academic prowess of the department or individuals therein. For instance, these rankings are based on things like 1) How many applicants were there, from the aggregate how many were accepted, from the accepted how many enrolled. This can be somewhat of a measure of general desirability, but certainly fails to speak to quality in ANY quantifiable way. Another measure is the number of publications and presentations (posters, symposia, etc) produced by faculty/students in a given dept. Unfortunately, this is often done one aggregate rather than mean per person. Obviously, this places MIT, OSU, and other schools at an advantage over a school like say William and Mary. Academics are smart people, and they know how to be true consumers of information and judge objectively what is, and is not of value. Notice this primary argument has not even touched the obvious fallacy of reliance on rankings based on individual differences in people, which assumable academics have learned at some point. ROFL. On the other hand, someone from a non-academic field will OFTEN be more impressed by a Yale than a Simmons. A non-academic may think a M.S.W from Pepperdine is preferred to a M.S.W from Bryn Mawr - even though BM is far superior in that specific field. As a result, the institutions you attended will impact the lay person more than the academic who knows better. I can personally corroborate this as the majority of my family are, in fact, academics and feel this way and report that their colleagues feel the same. Another source of corroboration can be found on the faculty web pages and CV's of "elite" universities - they are full of professors from "lesser" schools. That should tell you something. In summation, the reputation or ranking of a school will have far less impact on your future opportunities than will interpersonal factors such as your passion, your output, your ability to do effective research, your ability to effectively network with your peers. This is pretty simple folks, Harvard produces some bums, while WVU produces some presidents of MIT. Go where you will be happy, you will be valued, and where you will thrive.

Yeah, it actually amazes me how much my motivation has waned since the grad school acceptances started coming in. It feels weird and alien to me, but on some level at this point I'm having trouble caring. Just under a month 'til the last day of class and then a relatively light finals week (lots of practica this semester) is all that's standing between me and the next phase of life. Unfortunately, I do have several major projects/presentations to make between now and then. No worries about this carrying over to grad school though, I'm chomping at the bit to be in a new place involved in more specific study of my passion! Still, at this point graduation cannot come fast enough!

Try not to stress just because I was turned down. My guess is that, for whatever reason, the professor I was interested in working with was just not interested in me, or found someone else in the applicant pool he thought was a better fit. Just because we think we are a good fit, doesn't always mean the professor will agree. Or it could even be that he's too low on the totem pole to get a student he wants if more senior people need one and find one they want. If anything, you should feel better that I didn't get in because that is one less person you have to worry about. Good luck and hope you hear soon!

Having not read the email it's hard to know how you sounded, but I'm sure it's nothing to worry about. How many people are we talking about here? A lot of them could just be real busy, and have an interest in writing and just can't get to it until the weekend. Also, what is your field. If it's philosophy, or English, or creative field I could see you worrying a bit, but if it's law, or accounting, or some other field known to be inhabited by less than personable folks I'd say it's norm not to hear anything back. Regardless, I wouldn't stress. I doubt friendliness and enthusiasm will get you docked many points.

It came via regular snail mail and was postmarked 3/31. I gotta tell ya, my opinion of WM certainly went in the tank when I got that letter. lol. Good luck to ya, maybe we'll meet up at a conference at some point. Let us know when you receive it. *fingers crossed for ya*

Yeah, I can definitely confirm that I have a very different idea of how things will be in Boston. As an FYI, my wife did her undergrad at BU, and I'm quite familiarl with Boston. I can't say how your dept will be, but I can tell you that all of the students in my program have reported that they are a very cohesive and close-knit who go out quite a bit together. Regardless, Boston is the premier academic location in the US (nowhere else is even close), and Boston is literally a city made up of college students (of all ages) and young professionals. The scene in Boston is an young and educated as you will find anywhere. There are literally over a hundred schools in Boston. In one short bike ride you can pass multiple campuses. What this means socially, is that just about any bar/coffee shop you go into you will be surrounded by engaged and interesting minds having interesting and lively conversations about anything you can think of, and from a very multicultural perspective. Of the ridiculous number of schools, many of them are HEAVY hitters. Aside from BC (named one of 25 new ivies) you have BU (most nobel laureates on staff in the US), Harvard, MIT, Wellesley, Tufts, Brandeis, Northeaster, etc, etc, etc. In my view, it's a social boon. Academia and college type realities drip from the walls in Boston.

It's official, I'm sending my acceptance and deposit in tomorrow. I'll be in the M.A Mental Health Counseling and will hope to continue onto a PhD in Counseling Psych following that. Anyone else choosing BC?

Got the letter today, rejected. Whatever, I'm glad the letter came as now I can be 100%, instead of the 99% I was a few days ago. I'm a Boston College Eagle. The acceptance letter goes out today. Good luck, CrazyCot - I sure hope you get the letter today and that it contains good news. Let us know!

I have seen several schools that state up front something like, "deferment of one year is possible, but funding is not guaranteed after deferment and you must notify us by a certain date." In my experience schools in more expensive places like NYC, Boston, SF tend to be more lenient about deferment. I've seen MANY other schools that state upfront that a deferment is not possible - the vast majority I saw said that in fact. Some said your app could carry over and that you would not have to pay a 2nd app fee if you notify them by a certain date.

What program are you accepted into at ASU, Lara? I am still to solidify my decision, but am leaning heavily towards BC. Please post your experiences from this weekend - I'm still not ready to sign on the dotted line anywhere. I've heard from a lot of grad students in my program and they have been the most negative group I have spoken with yet. They're not bashing the program, but most are just satisfied rather than thrilled and most had a generally bad opinion of the university in general - but as a grad student it's really the dept. that makes all the difference. In the end, I just hope we ALL make the decisions that are ultimately the best for us - good luck to us all!