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minnares

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Everything posted by minnares

  1. minnares
    Hi ~ I've been lurking this season after getting railed 0-6 last season. But... I got in to Wisconsin this year! I'm thrilled. In response to the post above, I also received the email with the 16-page packet, and in today's mail, a BIG envelope (at last!) with the same information. The letter says we will get a schedule for the visiting days via email. I will be attending and am extremely excited. Congratulations to the others who were admitted! ~ minnares
  2. minnares
    Once again, all well said and diplomatically (gently) so. I'm grateful, intextrovert. And you're right that I made the choices I did for the intellectual challenge and the process rather than thinking there would be any award at the finish and certainly not every time (not just a fluke). And, in fairness, I did say "awards or no," so I think that it's interesting every focuses on the awards part of my mini-rant rather than the TA/RAship, publication, etc. part of the rant. When I mentioned skipping my kids' activities, I meant for things like TA and RA jobs, which also apparently do not matter
  3. minnares

    Your "About Me" section is heartening, lily. Wonderful! Go you!

  4. minnares
    Round 2 for me, as well. Writing a new SoP. Swapped out two of my referees. Retaking the general GRE to try to get my scores into the stratosphere (LOL! ). And I spent the last three weeks reviewing programs for fit. I'll be contacting DGSs and POIs in a few months. This is my game plan to patch all the holes in what I did wrong this time . I'll echo lily's kudos to you for the positive attitude. And also like lily, I'm hoping that the extra year will give the economy time to turn around. I've already had one DGS tell me that they couldn't fund students this year at their "usual level," but
  5. minnares
    Thank you lily (and can I just say that you're consistently very kind and diplomatic on these boards). Well put. And yes, life's so far from fair, no surprise there. I'm looking at this process as a continuation of my ongoing learning experiences. I'm constantly trying to find a way to be softer with my approach and consider others and how they might respond. So this is another opportunity to try to think in those other shoes and see myself however a stranger might. Your point about the end game (icing) is likely very accurate (though it didn't do me a heap of good this year). We'll see how it
  6. minnares
    Wow, thank you, fuzzy, intextrovert, and Jae B. Excellent advice and input all around. I will do it differently this time. Writing a new one from scratch. And intextrovert, I've had several people tell me this after reading my SoP, a professor I know at UCLA (in Psych, but on an adcomm), a recent PhD friend of mine, and two professors who know me. Of course, I didn't think to have any of these folks read for me in advance . Smart, right? Learning the hard way. Also, Duke has an excellent page on what they expect in the SoP, it specifically lists striking a balance between arrogance and ac
  7. minnares
    Yes, that helps. Thank you so much. I will contact the departments and ask. It'd be excellent if they didn't care to see that one miserable term worth of credits. One less thing to put a black mark on my apps. ~ m
  8. minnares

    She got into the MA with no funding (no thanks). I agree with you about the money. And thank you for the good wishes.

  9. minnares
    This is wonderful! Thank you for sharing. (now I'm off to cringe if any of the things I did crop up in this article). ~ m
  10. minnares
    So here is my situation. I went to college for one term wwwaaaayyyy back in 1992, then got pregnant, then left college. I didn't get to go back until 2006, after which point I earned only As. However, the one term back in 1992 was wretched with morning sickness and family upheaval (mostly caused by me), and my GPA was 2.76. Given the different point values for courses and the difference between quarterly and semester, I am wondering how to integrate those 17 credits into my other 126 in order to be more honest or as honest as possible (and yes I've had people suggest I just not send that one t
  11. minnares
    Here's my major question about writing the SoP. If you have many awards and/or publications, do you bring that up in the SoP at all or just leave it in the CV. This year, I explained the work I'd done and told at the latter end of the paragraph that the work resulted in X, Y, or Z award. This apparently was deemed arrogance (kiss of death). Since I will be trying again next year, how does one strike the balance between arrogance and proper assertion of strengths? Or again, is it more appropriate to leave that sort of detail out of the SoP and only have it listed on the CV where the adcomm can
  12. minnares

    So I'm wondering how you faired? I didn't get in anywhere, but I learned a lot about the process. I'll be trying again next year (and of all the schools I applied to only IUB is back on the list). You?

  13. minnares

    Hey, hey. I just wanted to let you know that a colleague from my UG institution got into Brandeis, too. Have you decided where you'll attend yet? I'll be trying again next year.

  14. minnares
    Hey all, since I'm going to have to reapply next year, I'm starting to hunt for information on programs. I really like the look of Northwestern (no idea why I didn't look at them before). Would any of you mind sharing information about the program, what you drew you to it, anything else you've learned or would care to share that maybe isn't available via the website? I'm in touch with the DGS and a professor already but would appreciate a peer-perspective. Thanks! ~ m
  15. minnares
    Congratulations on your acceptance to NYU, pea-nay! That's fantastic. Everything in this post is so familiar to me (with the exception of getting accepted anywhere this year ). The tensions this decision creates in marriage can be brutal, and my job performance has tanked it over the last two weeks, as well. I hope you'll get funding for the program and maybe another offer. I choose to believe all of this will be worth it. We'll look back and ten years and know that we made the right choices.
  16. minnares
    Thanks for this recommendation, Sparky. I just added it to my GoodReads, sounds right up my ally. I have a similar situation to many of you. My inlaws (who hate me) and my own father, stepmother, and stepsister all have masters or PhDs in the sciences. Then here I am wanting to get a PhD in English. They all think I'm an alien, wasting my time, being frivolous, incapable of pursuing "worthwhile" academic study (read: sciences or math). So, yeah, I get it. And Sparky, my dad's a fundamentalist Christian on top of being a physicist (how's that for a combination). So get the double wammy from
  17. minnares
    Right! I'd totally forgotten about that. Doesn't the Dalai Lama's brother live there? I recall driving by a notice about the TBCC on my way into town. ~ m
  18. minnares
    I haven't been invited yet, but I've visited the campus several times (my dad lives just north of there). It's a lovely campus and every interaction I've had with faculty, staff, and other grad students has always been welcoming, helpful, and generous. Just my two bits. Bloomington is just a tiny town in the middle of an Indiana valley, so it is kind of the middle of the nowhere. However, the culture is there if you look for it. There are some decent performance companies, an excellent area of town with good restaurants, etc. But again, it's also kind of like being on a liberal island in the h
  19. minnares
    I just received this from Bev Hankins: Some of our more urgent offers (most of our fellowships) have been notified by email &/or phone. But all admissions results will be mailed in hard copy. We just started our notification process at the end of last week and not all notifications (including some of the offers of admission) have been made/sent yet. If you are at all anxious about your status and need to find out where you stand before you receive anything from us, you may feel free to contact our Director of Admissions, Jennifer Fleissner (jfleissn@indiana.edu). *************
  20. minnares
    I'm wondering about this too. It appears that those of us who applied to the joint program have not been contacted? Can someone confirm or deny that? Has anyone on the boards who applied to the joint MFA/PhD program at Cornell been contacted, or are all the current contacts for the straight PhD alone? Thank you. ~ m
  21. minnares
    I sent a PM to several posters on these boards who have been accepted to 4 or more schools this season and asked if I could see their SoP. Some said yes (lovely of them). Some said they'd prefer not (understood). Some didn't deign to reply. Can't hurt to ask. The three who agreed to share scrubbed them for identifying information and asked that I not share with anyone, which again was more than fine. I just wanted to get an idea of what was expected and what was successful. ~ m
  22. minnares
    After 15 years of working in both criminal and civil law firms, I'd not only like to echo what Paper Chaser brought up but point out that the process for making partner or gaining advancement in law is as bad if not worse than gaining tenure. In many firms, it's also an "up or out" attitude. There are so many lawyers getting churned out of law schools that we have a revolving door of new associates who get hired, don't hack it (as far as the higher ups are concerned), and get let go. Nice people and hard workers all. That said, I lucked out and have worked for my current firm for almost a deca
  23. minnares
    This exactly. I've met several "department darlings" on this board who weren't encouraged to balance their application group (myself included). If I have to apply next year, I will be doing as others have suggested and focusing more on the fit of each department for my interests and less on the rankings. Also, I had several advisors pushing me toward schools because they would have liked to go there. Kind of like parents, it was about their interests and not my own. I applied in order to keep them happy. MISTAKE. I should have listened to my inner lights and applied to programs that made sense
  24. minnares
    I feel compelled to say what a downright nice person Bev Hankins is. Anyone that's had dealings with her will probably echo this. Of all of the grad dept. assistants I've had contact with, Bev is consistently the nicest, not to mention she'll actually give information, which is nigh unto a miracle. Thanks for this info, VT. Definite results is a good thing. I am so ready to be done with this process. ~ m
  25. minnares

    Yes, I did. When I spoke with her in the fall, she mentioned that she's been unwell. Such a super nice lady. I also spent some time with John Lincoln Schilb, also a very nice man, and a professor from the Religious Studies dept (that would be one of my subfoci). I'm still praying (and I'm agnostic! Snort!).

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