flatnwhite

ipstar, that's just right: the body of the department's email mentioned I had been both admitted and nominated.

Hey, thanks so much for your generous replies! It is great to hear your ideas and to see that others have had to think about this byzantine process as I have had to myself. historicallinguist: i am still hopeful, if cautiously so! i don't think it is entirely so doom-and-gloom, even though the competition is STIFF. and, from what i have learned, i think MarieC's got the right of it: the division selects beneficiaries, then pairs them with partnering colleges conditional on the courses offered and the fit with fellows' interests. for example, a few colleges explicitly say on their scholarship information page that an admit who accepts their clarendon funding, even if they've been admitted to a different college, will need to migrate in order to receive the award. i think it is unlikely that a nominee would be admitted to a given college before the clarendon decisions were made. it seems to me that colleges would vouch monies to the clarendon fund in order to get the best candidates. then, after each college has won/bought/been paired with their best-fit nominees, the rest of the college places are filled by the students who are self-funded or who come with outside money. MarieC, it looks like we've used similar strategies. i searched the database and learned the frequencies of awards per year in my department, as well as the frequency awards per year in my department at the college i'd like to be admitted to. advanced search works for filtering on college names. note of caution: the database holds about 50 per year--about a 3rd of total awards. so the data is quite limited, actually. i'd be delighted to hear from you and others as more information becomes available to you.

anyone else get into a program in the social science division and was nominated for the clarendon? i learned that last year, the website changed on apr 3 to say that the majority of successful nominees had been notified. so perhaps this topic would be wildly unproductive way to spend the next couple of weeks waiting. personally, i'd love to know how many nominees departments/programs can have, and what proportion of these nominees are awarded.

Northwestern reject hurrrr.

Hi , Admission decisions should be announced by the end of the month. Thank you, Ryan Ryan Sawicki Graduate Program Assistant NU Sociology Department

hats off to you! that's excellent. which program in SHIPS are you in, if you wouldn't mind sharing? feel free to be absolutely dreadful to the other admits to scare 'em all away! it was courteous of you to drop by and check in. would be interested in hearing how admit day goes. enjoy it!

just brilliant! here is an updated approximation with generous rounding (usually to the nearest ten bucks): (sorry for the misinformation in the previous post!)

Hi, friends. On (why) money matters: So I spent some time really investigating what exactly the UC Irvine package meant: in tangible, in-pocket terms. I will share with you the results and, along the way, give some useful sources. Givens: min. 5 years' tuition, healthcare, guaranteed on-campus housing (not sure if it's subsidized); the first year of out-state fees is covered. Since I am focused on lived experiences on the PhD wage, I will not translate the value of these givens now even though they are necessarily part of any compelling offer. Since Irvine is no elite school, "stipends" usually come as work like teaching assistantships (req. teaching) or research assistant ships (req. researching), but sometimes also as fellowships (free money). I basically got at least 5 years of 3-quarters of teaching at 20hrs a week. This amounts to, then, $19,280 per year before taxes. But my letter said I also had to pay $260 per quarter in some kind of fees. That means $780 per year. To learn what happens to that sum above after withholding, I found this really nifty state tax calculator (https://smartasset.com/taxes/), which then gave me an approximate picture of my state and federal income tax and social security withholdings based on my salary and location. This amounted to $2,580 per year. So what does that leave me? $19,280 -$780 -$2,580 = $15,900 in pocket per year (based on 9 months' wages) = $1,300 in pocket per month This "bottom line" is kinda tight for food and accommodation and textbooks and transportation, in my opinion, especially given the 20 hours a week 9 months of the year for five years alongside PhD work. I suppose one could also work in the summers and add a sizable increment to the in-pocket per month sum (say, $400). But that raises the question whether there develops a trade-off between TAing and the quality of one's learning and research.

email. the response was quite literally within 45 seconds of sending it.

Seems so. Say, are you of the same opinion that "official" means rejections? As an admit, have you got more complete information on that front?

did anyone apply? any insights into interviewing (when, how)? what is the topic of your proposal? did you also apply to US programs?

I also wondered whether we'd have to wait until after 4/15. I did ask Grace a few questions, and learned that the alternates are not rank-ordered and are placed into opened positions only after considering the dynamics of incoming cohort. what's particularly unclear to me is whether SHIPS has a pool of alternates to be selected from after the yield becomes clear, or whether individual programs (Econ, History, ICE) have their own lists which they select from themselves. While SGSE seems like a huge school with many PhD research/study possibilities (Anthro, Econ, but also POLS, etc), I think it highly unlikely that each individual program has a sizable cohort of PhDs each year. I say this for several reasons: (1) they don't have many master's students (400ish compared to HGSE 800ish). So the demand for teaching assistants, but also the supply of PhD advisers, is kind of low. (2) SGSE doesn't accept new students into every program every year. One year they could admit two new PhDs in, say, history, while the next three years, none. I don't think I have ever seen anyone accepted on here into the sociology of education program. So I also have a sneaking suspicion that some programs are phantom--on paper but, in practice, not really fully implemented PhD training programs.

i contacted ron eyerman at yale to ask whether all admitted students have been notified; he said "not yet" and that "official notifications" won't be sent out before the end of next week. i see this as cause for hope. though, the results board usually looks like 2-3 informal acceptances one week, 10 formal rejections the week after. so it is likely that the end of next week will actually be reds, and that there is, in fact, no cause for hope.

take a look at this very useful chart from yale: http://gsas.yale.edu/sites/default/files/page-files/comparison1.pdf i get the sense the true difference lies in whether the final stipend includes summer funding (most public colleges cover only the academic year) and how much teaching you are obliged to do (most private colleges are very lax). so, for example, when i compare my UC package with that of yale's or any other elite uni's (by way of that chart above), i see that i don't get summers for free and i actually gotta do a fair bit more teaching. would summers be included, the figures would be comparable, though the teaching still far more at UC.

(i ask about 5+ years because of this: http://news.yale.edu/2015/01/29/graduate-school-provide-funding-students-their-sixth-year)