hopefulPhD2017

@ugggggh That's awesome! Sounds pretty promising to me. I did not reach out to any faculty at Vandy. Keep us posted and good luck--I'm sure they'll be calling soon.

First Lady

Great thread @mjl89! Most Likely to Succeed by Wagner/Dintersmith and about to start the new Jonathan Safran Foer.

@ugggggh good intel! How did the interview go? Wondering what your take was... @nashville0808 and @Espeon appreciate you weighing in. I applied because of their work with TDE and their reputation in the areas of data and evaluation. Excited to see where this journey takes us all!

Fruit fly

@day_manderly Absolutely! I was just checked mine on HGSE because I'm still waiting to see that my GRE scores are accurately attached to my file. I have decided to hit each web site once a day just to see and am leaving a window open with all of the logins on separate tabs. Soothes my nerves a bit. Also, I've gone back and read past GC threads for each of my top Ed PhD school choices, and at least one had a delay of one week between updating the web site and sending email notifications, so our compulsive checking is totally justified. Glad I'm not alone!

Over under

No answers but sending sunshine and cupcakes your way because that sucks!! I'm sure once the office opens up tomorrow morning you'll be able to get it successfully sorted.

Oh, were I not out of upvotes. ?? Artificial inseminaton

@VoidInColor That's a good amount I should think! I'm sure you'll get into at least a few I would hope? Also, I totally blew off schools' requirements about putting unique ID's on every attachment. I was not about to reformat my CV 10 times with a different header for each program. Now I'm hoping this isn't an automatic reason for rejection?!? Off to worry some more...

@PhDorBUST I'm also the only person in my real life applying to PhD programs. Most people think I'm insane. Literally two of my cousins yesterday said, "ugh. I finished my bachelors and was done." "Same here!" Second cousin chortled. I did not know how to respond. I do have a handful of friends with PhDs, and some in my family too, so I'm not a total lone wolf. It's awesome that you're the first in your fam to finish higher ed--I hope they're really proud of you! I laughed because I've gone as far back as 2012 on these threads. 2014? Child's play. Plus, I've already had a DQ milkshake today. Catch up!! I myself am terrified of rejection and that's one reason why I've never applied for anything so competitive before. I hear you about not sucking.

@PhDorBUST I'm glad my neurotic overplanning is helpful to others!

Happy New Year all! I'm snagging an idea from the sociology thread. If my nerdy research proves correct, we will start hearing about PhD in Education acceptances/interviews as early as mid-January. Rejections seem to come later as do Master's notifications. Thought a thread focused on fall 2017 education admissions and cheering one another on would be fun! We also might get more conversations going than in threads about individual schools. And, of course, this thread might help pass the time as we await the congratulatory phone calls and embossed envelopes. Upon checking the results board it looks like we're all still waiting...

@Jeewan I just found this thread http://forum.thegradcafe.com/topic/6541-sop-introductions/ It might be helpful to you

@eternalwait I was just on web sites checking. And it's a federal holiday! ?

@DBear nope it's in a few weeks. Lots of time to make my list of questions! Already started my doc with the above advice, of course.

I'm afraid hookup means something else altogether my friend. I'll let you google examples of that word. ? I'm guessing you mean a hook, or an interesting starting sentence that "hooks" your reader, yes? I always struggle with my intro. As a writing teacher, I recommend writing a solid draft of your essay and then fine tuning your first few sentences to lead into your statement. Common "hooking" devices include using a quote, surprising fact, or a statistic.

Fishing rod

@Quickmick You are not wrong in that it may indeed be a nuisance. That being said, I have to beleive our application fees allow for some exchange of information. I want to make sure I don't have any missing/outstanding application information (not all schools have emailed me to say I'm complete, others don't even have an online system to track application status), inquire about scholarships I should be apply for (one of my schools has a Jan 16 scholarship app deadline so I'll need to apply before I even know if I'm admitted), and also ask when interview invitations will go out.

Pot smoker

I've spent a lot of hours in the car this holiday season. Aside from navigating, I've also made a new doc where I've compiled research from the results threads hereby and grad schools communications into predictions for when I'll hear back from each school. Then I turned that into a checklist of sorts; now I'm 98% sure I won't hear from any program before January 13, and that several send out responses on Feb 24 every year. This research and checklist both took a lot of time to make (distraction!) as well as helped me feel a little better as I now have a solid grip on my results timeline. I'm also going to call schools next week to see if they'll tell me when interview invites will go out. @VoidInColor curious how many you already applied to?

Kids' table

Sworn oath

@eternalwait exactly! Was I the only one yesterday who quickly took a simple "Happy New Year!" and spun it into a mind-swirling cycle of anticipation that sounded like this, "Happy New Year! OMG it's 2017, where am I going, who will reject me, what if no one accepts me, this is the year, arghghghfg?!" ??

I didn't apply to this program but I did apply to other PhD in ed programs. I also worry what my letter writers said--2 of them gave me copies, which was a very kind thing to do, 2 did not. It's quite nerve-wracking.