ironshieldmaiden

So I'm actually in the MAPSS program right now and I wanted to kind of offer an honest opinion of my experience so far. I seriously regret accepting their offer. I would rather have not gone to school for another year than experience what I'm going through right now. I love my preceptor, but I despise the MAPSS program. The mandatory Perspectives course is a waste of time and only 18 out of the 270 total students in the program got As on the midterm. They played it off as having high standards, but it really was the result of having a badly written essay prompt, improper course planning, and a badly written article to work off of. The professor teaching the course doesn't finish his lectures and goes off on tangents. It's honestly not worth even attending the course. Course offerings have been abysmal. I've never had issues trying to find relevant classes to take and I'm seriously upset that such a "great" school doesn't offer anything relevant to my areas of research. There are at least seven ethnomusicologists that teach at the university and not a single one of them is offering an ethnomusicology course. We're not allowed to take foreign languages even if it's for research purposes. We're allowed to take any courses in the graduate school, but good luck getting into the classes you need. I got locked out of a methods course because there were only 15 slots and the professor wouldn't give me permission to take the course, but gave me permission to take a computational data analysis course that they would be teaching in the spring. I study anthropology, so I'm really confused as to how they think computational data analysis will benefit me when we don't use that type of data. I do appreciate the chance to do research, but I feel like I'm vastly under prepared to take it on. We have to go through the process of IRB approval, getting approval from our informants, finding a willing faculty advisor, continue working on our thesis, and do our classwork all at the same time. I often feel like there aren't enough hours in the day to do everything I have to do. You do have the option of doing a "ghost course" to work on your thesis, but my preceptor wouldn't let me do it even though I had already made great headway on my thesis. I often feel like MAPSS students are the butt of some joke at the university. Professors don't seem to take me seriously and I feel like a lot of the PhD and MA/MS students feel sorry for me that I wasn't "good enough" to get in through the traditional channels and got passed off to an alternative program. I feel like my "degree," which is a Masters in the Social Science and only exists at the University of Chicago, is going to be completely worthless and I won't be able to teach community college like I had planned to after I receive it because I won't have enough credit hours to qualify. You can try taking classes only in your field, but good luck with that. Oftentimes you won't find anything that interests you or they will all fill up within seconds of course registration opening. During orientation they told us that most of us will be too burnt out to consider continuing on for a PhD. That's the reason why they have a 90% fully funded PhD placement rate. I'm an extremely academic person, but I've begun to hate the culture that surrounds the university. It's very stuck up and people tend to live within a bubble. The amount of income disparity in Chicago is appalling and is one of the reasons for the large amount of crime in the area. I was nearly mugged this quarter and watched a man get beaten up for his wallet. A 19 year old kid was shot in the head in a drive by shooting down the street from me. It's appalling how the university ignores how it contributes to this vicious cycle of income inequality and how they try to shelter the students, especially the undergrads, from that reality. Take my advice and stay away from this program. I took out over $50,000 in loans to come here and the thought of having to immediately repay those loans is the only reason why I haven't dropped out. It's not worth the unreasonable amount of stress and pressure they put on you. If this is your only offer, just try again next year. I'm utterly miserable in this program and wish I could go back in time and convince myself not to accept the offer.

So I'm having a conundrum with Columbia and it's stressing me out. I guess I should explain. Back when I submitted my application I had a professor who decided to do all of his recommendation letter submissions for me at once in a hurry. He forgot to submit the one to Columbia and I didn't catch it until around early March. He submitted it immediately and I contacted admissions asking if a decision had been reported and when I could expect to hear a decision. They told me that as far as they could see the department hadn't recorded a decision and that I should hear something in late March. I emailed the director of graduate studies to apologize for the issue and to gently ask if a decision had been made back on March 10th. I haven't heard back. I just emailed the department chair to see if I could find out more information. It seems to me like the department decided to hold off on deciding until my file was complete and they're now making a decision. I don't know though. I understand that the admitted students were already notified as well as those who were waitlisted, but I think I should have received a rejection by now. I also really don't know what to think anymore. Has anyone had something like this happen to them before?

My craziest back up plan is to get certified to teach and teach at a Title I school since I have experience substitute teaching in those.

I was offered admission into the University of Chicago's MAPSS program, but I was only offered one third tuition coverage. Unfortunately I can't afford to attend if I don't receive more funding, so I was told by the program to write a merit petition highlighting achievements that the committe might have missed when deciding funding. I would appreciate it if someone could help me edit and proofread my merit petition, so that it looks nice and neat for the committee. Hopefully it will help influence their decision concerning my funding. Would anyone be interested in proofreading and helping me edit my merit petition?

I got this offer for anthropology and I'm honestly not sure if I can accept it. It's probably the only acceptance I'll get (I've had six rejections out of eight so far), but I absolutely can't afford it. I'm looking for alternate avenues of funding, but they only offered me one-third tuition coverage and I'm going to petition for more aid. Is it worth even considering if it's my only offer and I can't get more funding? I really don't want to be in debt for 30 years for a Masters degree that won't even matter much aside from getting me into a doctorate program.

I would definitely ask if they're considering adding a faculty member who specializes in your subfield. Given everything that schools have told me concerning my application, I'm not entirely sure if they would have even admitted you if they felt that they couldn't work with you on your research. I got that rejection at least six times already.

How do you make your case well? With how it is right now I don't have anything to use to bargain with them because I'm pretty sure I've been rejected from seven schools, so I can't use another offer against them. Well, I feel awful about it to be perfectly honest. I feel like nobody wants me and they just felt sorry for me and threw me a bone.

Well that definitely sucks for me. I don't know what I'm going to do at this point if MAPSS won't give me more money.

I figured as much even though they told me on Tuesday that they hadn't recorded a decision yet. Maybe I've been waitlisted? I'm just having super bad luck it seems. MAPSS was the only acceptance I've gotten so far and I don't have much hope on Columbia or Rice.

If you don't mind me asking, how do you petition for a scholarship? I was only given one-third tuition coverage and have to come up with over $36k on my own.

I'm still waiting on news from Rice and Columbia. Columbia told me I would hear something in late March. I haven't heard a single word from Rice and it's driving me absolutely bonkers. I've emailed the department as well as the director of graduate studies and I haven't heard anything back. I even tried calling the director of graduate studies and didn't get an answer. Should I just assume I was rejected at this point?

I took the PowerPrep practice test today and scored a 156 V and a 145 Q. I scored a 150 Q on Magoosh. I take the GRE next Thursday and I can't reschedule or else I won't be able to make the application deadlines. I'm scared to death that I won't get into graduate schools due to my poor performance so far on the GRE. No matter what I do I can't seem to boost my verbal score any higher and I'm basically hopeless concerning the math. Other than my GRE scores I'm an excellent student. I graduated with a 3.99 GPA and with highest Latin honors in addition to being a part of Phi Beta Kappa and Alpha Chi. My writing sample is really strong and is arguably one of the best things I've written according to my professor. I'm applying to the anthropology departments at Columbia, University of Chicago, UT Austin, Stanford, Cornell, MSU, UC Berkeley, Johns Hopkins, Brown, and Rice. Is there hope that I'll be able to get into these programs despite my, most likely, bad GRE scores?