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JWalters

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Everything posted by JWalters

  1. Lots of questions here, and I'll respond to a few. Your first choice to me seems to be either A: Finding a perfect program that meets all of your specific interests or B: Finding a program that gives you the freedom to design your own thing. You know a program is a good fit if you visit and like the feel AND the kinds of things people do when they leave the program match your aspirations. Master's programs have a lot of variability, I'd say. Some schools are more theoretical, some are more practice-based. Within each school, different cohorts have different profiles, as well. There may be great schools that are generally a bad fit for your interests, but have a program or professor who'd be perfect. How many to apply to? Find your top 2-3 choices. Commit yourself writing those essays. If you can adapt that work to complete applications for 2-3 more programs that interest you, then do it. The only constraining factors are money for the applications, and time for completing them. There are regularly people who get in to one top program and not another. When you apply to a few extra programs, it just keeps your options more open. Maybe you'll be a " I'm going to this dream school.. or nothing!" kind of person, but I've seen how that can be very challenging. What you believe you want around app time and what you actually want when it's time to decide may not be as similar as you think.
  2. Increasingly, the kind of information you're looking for is becoming hard to find. Stanford, for example, is releasing less of this information, because the numbers are so grim. It's not good for business (or equity) for students to get the feeling that almost no one gets in. I did the Master's program at HGSE, and I would say there were a ton of Ed. Policy students. I heard that during my year, many of the PhD applicants who were denied and pushed to a Master's elected for Ed. Policy. That would make things more competitive. I don't think you're going to find anything official, unfortunately. I don't know you, but the advice I've been given was just to put together the absolute best application package you can, and apply to 3-5 programs. Just my two cents. Best of luck.
  3. My experience with HGSE is that it's a multiplier. I had about 7 years of work experience going in, and I've got a number of really great opportunities based on my track record combined with the HGSE learning and degree. That being said, some of my classmates who didn't have work experience are currently in teaching positions making limited income, and they probably could have gotten similar jobs without HGSE. I've been doing consulting work for a few different companies and I'll be starting a doctoral program at a Top-5 ivy-league program in the fall so it's opened a number of doors for me. If your field and career interests are highly-specialized, HGSE may be a bigger help to you with limited experience.
  4. Decisions available now, how'd it go?
  5. Doctoral Applicants, are you expecting to hear this coming week?
  6. Anyone else on the waitlist? I saw one person on the results page.
  7. decisions in the Portal, check it
  8. Your chances are diminished if no professor has interviewed you up to this point, in most cases.
  9. I've been in pretty consistent contact with a few professors who reached out to me about two weeks ago and can shed a little light on what's happening right now. One of them told me that the process is: from the initial hundreds of applications, about 30-45 (I can't remember the number precisely) get a full faculty review. In that full faculty review, each application gets read by a minimum of two faculty members. If they are interested in a person, they'll set up a phone call. If an applicant specifically mentioned a faculty member, that's brought to the faculty member's attention. One professor who called me was one of the two that I mentioned in my application. In other cases, faculty members call whoever's research interests they are drawn to. This was the case with the other professor who called me. One of the professors emailed me for a conversation the next day and told me that she was in a bit of a rush because she wanted to talk before some kind of... faculty meeting about candidates that week. We talked Monday the 28th, so I'm assuming whatever event she was talking about was Friday the 1st. The other professor reached out the next day, so I had two phone interviews that week. They've put me in contact with a few current students over the past week and have been quite thorough in answering my questions. That all feels positive, but one of them was very careful not to give me the impression that I was in, and made clear they were talking to a number of candidates. Any questions you have, let me know. Best of luck to all. * I should note that all my information is only relevant to CTE
  10. To frame this response I'll note that I'm an HGSE master's graduate (L&L), and currently applying for doctoral programs. From the minute you arrive on the HGSE campus, professors and staff tell you how the year flies by. It's true. Looking back, I can't imagine completing meaningful research in the context of the master's program. I graduated having written approximately 12 papers of 3-5 pages, and about 8 papers from 10-15 pages. In the doctoral applications that required a writing sample, I used a few of the longer papers that I wrote, and they fit within the length requirement. At Harvard, in my experience, many of my classmates were involved in the full-fledged research projects of faculty members. These folks could begin doctoral study with a clear idea of what full-scale research projects require, and what their interests might be. The primary talking point in these doctoral finalist interviews has been, " What do you want to study?", and I don't think that answering that question well requires that you've written a thesis or done research in your Master's program.
  11. This is an important post. Now as I'm thinking back to my time at HGSE, I can recall a few doctoral students explaining this, how they'd earned their master's degrees within the context of their doctoral work.
  12. Curriculum design, language & literacy.. mostly things under the CTE banner.
  13. A second Stanford Professor reached out to me for a Doctoral interview today.
  14. My POI from Stanford GSE contacted me today, CTE/ LLE applicant.
  15. Anything that is required for all applicants does not tell you much about how likely you are to be accepted. Your focus should be going to this event, and making a good impression. In my experience, it doesn't hurt to e-mail a few professors with whom you'd like to work or study and let them know you'll be around. Maybe try to meet with them for 15min or so.
  16. From an old post (2012) on the now-removed Penn GSE admissions blog: "We promised we'd let you know when invitations to the Ph.D. and Ed.D. invitations went out, so we're keeping our word and posting to confirm that invitations to the Ph.D. weekend went out via e-mail today. For those who received invitations, we can't wait to meet you in February!If you were not invited (check your spam/junk folder, just to be sure!), you will not receive an e-mail. While not being invited to the weekend makes it less likely you'll be admitted, it's possible the faculty will go back to the pool after the weekend and we will communicate final admissions decisions in early March. We anticipate invitations for the Ed.D. weekend going out within the next week and will let you, our blog buddies, know when that happens. :)"
  17. EdLD is almost completely different from the PhD. Consider the accepted student profile: the average age, amount of experience, and GRE scores are all quite different. The way that the cohort is selected is also quite different. As far as I know, there is no group component of the PhD interviews, and the group component of the EdLD interviews is a critical part of building the cohort. Training to be an educational leader vs training to be a researcher and professor limit the amount of overlap in terms of the application process.
  18. If you don't get invited to doctoral weekend at Penn, will you feel the same way? I'm trying to understand how much of your opinion is Harvard-specific, or more of an overarching ivy-league sentiment..
  19. It seems as if Doctoral Weekend invites for UPenn are going out today...
  20. If you have the resources ( time, money) to study for a better score, you should retake it. People will say lots of things, and they may be correct, but you are the one who has to live with the results of your choices in the end. My GRE math score wasn't great, but I committed to studying to improve it. I went up a little bit, but the more important thing is that the score I submitted was the best possible one that I could earn at the time. I won't have to wonder, " Gosh.. if only I'd gotten a better score, maybe I would have gotten into that school".
  21. For Master's students, in my experience, they don't ask the blanket question about language. You won't hear anything until March.
  22. Just a note from a 16-17 HGSE alum: I know for a fact that not all of my peers had top-tier GRE scores. I know for a fact that not all my peers went to top-tier universities prior to studying at HGSE. I looked at this forum when I was applying, and I got so worked up comparing GPA and GRE all of the things that everyone shares. What I realize now is that it's more the things that people do NOT share that matter. Once we got on campus, a few of us shared our statements of purpose, and the ones that I saw were all absolutely wonderful. As you see from this forum, there are many people with 80th and 90th percentile test scores and high GPAs. If you return to this forum after acceptance letters go out, you'll (usually) see a few people who sounded like ideal candidates not get in. Personally, I attribute that to the LOR and the SOP. If any of you have questions, shoot me a message.
  23. Having been through this whole process now, posts like these bother me. Firstly, because the great majority of the folks on this thread have been through all the statement nonsense. We've passed it. So, I think it's just inconsiderate to inject that back into this conversation now. I can promise any 17-18 folks lurking, you have plenty of time to fret. Don't start now. Enjoy your spring. Read books about education. Read books that aren't about education. Read classics. Read poetry. Think deeply about your own experience. Once you think you've come to some great conclusion, go deeper. Show your writing to the people who know you best. You need to get to the essence of what makes you different, and that's the majority of the process. Or just start the 17-18 thread and fret together. Not here, please.
  24. A recent graduate told me that, while he was there, many of his classmates had to dig into personal saving to make it work. He is married, so his wife helped him stay afloat.
  25. Why would you receive financial aid information for a program that is completely funded?
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