LetsGetThisBread

Congrats to all the finalists for all the Programs! As an alumni of the Japanese Program y’all are a lucky bunch. The senseis, homestay families, and staff are all awesome and we all had a fantastic summer. They’ll have a bunch of info sessions for you guys, but if you have any questions or want tips feel free to DM me.

I think at best we can hope for it to be a Tuesday or a Friday and the early release last year was an anomaly rather than a new rule? Also we should ignore that reddit troll. They have made two separate accounts just to post fake release dates.

This is a tough one, and the MAPSS program can be great in some respects, but it isn't a guarantee that you will get in elsewhere afterward. Prestige warrants prestige and you get some great work and LOR and acceptances coming out. But I have a friend who did MAPSS and still got rejected everywhere again, and had to reapply yet one more time. So it's not 100% If you have a funded offer to go elsewhere, I consider that. If you really hate that program, imagine it as a fully funded MA, giving you two or three years to flesh out your project and work on yourself. It's not duplicitous, it's responsible. Worth considering - Chicago's program is expensive, and you won't be applying for PhD programs again this Fall, you're going to be taking classes for a year, then applying that Fall, so you're going to have to support yourself for a year in between not in classes. Think about what you want to plan for that year as well.

I think I would just go. Ultimately, your project is going to change at least a couple times before you actually do it. If it's a great program, it's going to have great resources, and you can read for your interests in relation to what you're taking, and sort of shape it that way. Especially if the funding is also great. You never want to worry about money in grad school and you can always reach out to and corroborate with professors at other universities who do work you want to do.

Actually on that last part, I'm not sure. I was encouraged to apply for the funding, but I didn't really think about how where I planned to use it would affect the application. I proposed to use it at my program, which was okay according to the application.I feel like they'd prefer you to use it at the sponsoring institution, if not in the country you propose to study. But I have no inside indication.

Yea, you can definitely apply for another school's FLAS. The UC I'm at doesn't have FLAS funding for itself, but I was encouraged and able to apply through Berkeley. I think these institutions are just granted the money for a certain amount of fellowships, to distribute as they see fit.