history?

Ha-ha. True. We ladies come out better on the pattern-baldness end of things.

Damn, I was away for a few days, so hope this isn't...erm...old news. Most of my trajectory has been trying to find things I'm not bored with, which is no small part of why it's taken me so long to settle back down to academia -- it took me longer than some to discern the red thread that connects all my other seemingly disparate interests, and I wasn't about to go back in an area that I would get bored with after two years. (On a not unrelated note, I discovered the origin of 'red thread' as I was reading Goethe the other day -- God, I love history of political thought. High-falutin' philosophy aside, it's really just about people and how they act, which turns out to be the red thread in question. Fortunately, it is also impossible to get bored with that subject, since, no matter how hard one tries, one will never actually understand people.) I did tech support. I was homeless. I worked as an armed security guard at an intelligence agency. I was a technical administrator of a distance learning program. I got certified as an Underwater Criminal Investigator at some point. That was a highlight. And for those who made cracks about the grey hair...I've actually been going grey since I was 19, a genetic thing. So, yes, I probably have more than anyone else in the classroom, including most of the profs! But any sort of existential crisis about getting old doesn't tend to happen when it hits you that young, you just accept it as a thing and that's that. On the other hand, it can be used to hilariously uncomfortable effect on the 22 year-olds now and then.

Hey, now, some of us greyhairs are clocking in at 33. It's never too late.

Chicago funds all of their PhD students with a standard package, unless things have changed dramatically from previous years.

I guess I would offer advice if the question made sense on a fundamental level. Namely, how is it even possible that one could know how to play the game well enough to get those kinds and combinations of offers and yet not understand how to go about choosing between them? As for those who chastised you for bragging, I think they were misguided: is it really bragging to flaunt that kind of basic inability to make a decision? I call troll.

There are several notable differences between undergrad and graduate acceptances, particularly including 1) funding and 2) the decision committee. Decisions for undergrad are often made by, not by faculty who have no time, but by admins whose schedules are structured around this time of year. In terms of finances, blowing an estimation of an undergrad cohort by a few percentage points is not that big a deal, unless you happen to be at a weensy liberal arts college without a lot of money. Graduate departments, like that weensy liberal arts college, are small and do not have a lot of money. So if 3 more people agree to come than they were anticipating, they are SCREWED. Especially considering the current economy and the impact it has had on most universities, this means that departments really, really cannot afford to overshoot their estimation of incoming students, which is most likely why they admit a handful of people, wait to hear back, and then admit a few more if some of that initial bunch declined. This means that sending out all decisions at one time is simply not feasible logistically.

Normally I pop into these things to offer the occasional rational yet ultimately consoling word, but here I simply have to say: we are adults now. We do not need the admissions committee holding our hands and looking out for our delicate feelings. The fact that these forums are anonymous allow us to spew our nervousness on to a lot of strangers without fear of embarrassment, but (I certainly hope) none of us would do this in front of a real, live stranger, and certainly not one whom we are trying to convince that we have the chops to make it in an ass kicking environment like graduate school. We will have to spend the rest of our careers waiting. Waiting to find out if we got the grant. Waiting to find out if our journal article was accepted. Waiting on job applications. We will realize that we are not nearly as smart as we think we are, we are not the smartest person in the room anymore. Sometimes, it will make us doubt ourselves. But we will do it anyway, because we love our research, students, or lives. We have to, because that love is the only thing that will make up for the otherwise unpleasant things we must endure. As awful as this process is, if you cannot ultimately stomach it, if not knowing it is worse than your love for the work, then please do yourself a favor and do not try to brave grad school, because it will eat you. Cold. Ninth circle of hell cold. And eating.

Without meaning to get people's hopes up unnecessarily, the wait between acceptances and rejections is often based on the department maintaining a short list or pool of applicants in case a substantial number of the admits decline their offer. My understanding is that it is rare to pull deeply from this land of limbo, but if you have not yet been notified by a place it means that there is a slim, slim chance that you could receive a very late acceptance. The fact that applicants are not required to submit their decisions until April 15 means that you might not hear until then, or sometimes even a hair after. One implication of this to my mind is that those who are accepted do everyone else a favor if they make their decisions as soon as it makes sense, rather than stringing departments, and those on the unspoken waitlist, along. Of course, if you are waiting to hear from your top choice, or you only have one funding offer and hope to hold out for another to use as leverage, then it makes sense to wait. But if you've been accepted to your top choice with an offer, who cares if you haven't heard from your safety? Just tell them yes and politely withdraw your name from consideration everywhere else.

Indiana puts a solid emphasis on teaching, and they also have an extremely enviable placement rate. More generically, one tip would be to look for programs that offer competitive teaching awards to TAs (awards as in trophies, not as in funding). It not only telegraphs that the dept is interested in teaching, but it looks good on your CV when you're on the market.

I'm in roughly the same boat -- I did do a one year Master's last year in Political Theory in order to make the transition more smoothly, but I still feel like I'm catching up to a lot of my cohort who majored as undergrads. I have found it very useful to search the net for department comp exam lists. I believe Yale, Princeton, and...(crap, one other...Michigan?) have theirs online. It allowed me to build my own little mini-canonincal list. There's a fair bit of overlap between them, but also differences (Yale and Princeton clearly ripped one another's lists, for instance, even down to the formatting, but they've also included their own works under each section to make them unique). If you're already in, you could ask the department you're planning on entering whether they have the comp lists from previous years.

I'll probably call the grad administrator and explain what I am hoping to do/learn and ask for their opinion on whether anyone on the committee would be willing to oblige and, if so, who would be the right person to approach. Although I haven't initiated this particular request before, in other similar such scenarios (asking for advice, who to contact, etc.) the person usually has a suggestion on who to talk to and even initiates the conversation by forwarding an email or providing a formal introduction. Faculty are often busy and it's not a given they will have time to do this, which is why I would approach the admin staff first to find out whether to proceed.

I'd call his comment less "false" than "misleading but with an underlying and unspoken truth." The advice to seriously reconsider whether this is something one really, really, really wants to do is solid. Academia can be fickle, sometimes cruel and sometimes a delight. For all the great moments we have in it, it will also ask very, very unacceptable things from all of us at one time or another. Given that, one has to truly love it to go in and remain intact. Asking whether this is absolutely, positively what you want to do, and whether you might not be happy elsewhere is a wise move. I could be wrong, but I suspect that the OP knows this and the advice given is with that in mind. All that said, I agree with you that the surface statement that the application has to change dramatically is a gross generalization (true in some cases, not in others). Thankfully, I've got at least one acceptance under my belt this time around, so I don't have to worry about it. Even so, I'm considering dropping a line to some of the committees that rejected me to find out whether there was a particular weakness with the application or whether it was a matter of a great application and just not the right time. I figure knowing that will help me with future grant or fellowship proposals. Seems like anyone who strikes out might benefit from doing the same, give themselves a specific plan of attack for the next go-round.

I am still waiting to hear from UVA.

You're sober? Oh god, I knew I was doing something wrong.

Lurking here for a while, just thought I'd jump in to answer this (and the others like it). Look. It's chance. Luck. Whim. Whatever you want to call it. Maybe half the apps go out the window immediately because the person can't cut it, but the rest of the stack is filled with perfectly capable candidates. At some point, it comes down to "fit," which can mean anything from your project fits with longstanding faculty interests, your project happens to fit with something that a faculty member just started researching in the last month and that neither you nor any of the other applicants have any way of knowing even exists as an interest in the department, they happen to like whatever little bit of personality shines through on your app, or they think that you will happen to mesh well with some of the other applicants they are considering. Maybe you wrote a letter to one of the profs that made them laugh. It could be that the perfect fit you applied to based on faculty X is not actually a good fit because faculty X just turned in her retirement bid last week, something which you would have had no way of knowing. Perhaps you wanted to work with Y because you like his work, but it turns out that he secretly detests Hannah Arendt, whom you have mentioned as your hero. Perhaps the professor whose work you love the most doesn't actually take on grad students, or perhaps they do but they are the giantest douche in the history of douches and only take on the blonde lady types for their students. I don't mean to rant. I'm just trying to make it clear -- a huge amount of this has NOTHING to do with our abilities. Because of the economy, there are twice as many applicants and half as many spots, and so a process that has always been dicey at best is all the more so. Being rejected is not an ontological statement about our failures as human beings. Seriously. I cannot wait to go to a PhD, and I love academia, but this is one of the most toxic streams of bullshit that it feeds us. You are not a failure if you don't get in. You are not a failure if you get in and then don't get a professorship at an R-1 before you've even finished your diss. It would really help if we could do away with the conviction that this is strictly based on reputation and ranking, and that those things are the most important in the process.

Oh, man, that's just scummy. The official "poverty level" for someone living alone in the US (the point at or below which a person is considered to be living in poverty) is $10,488 a year. A lot of schools will give you juuuussssstttt enough that you won't fall under that level - but not a penny more. Sounds like UMass falls into that category. At any rate - yes, it is possible to live there on that amount of money, but you will be living very, very frugally. If you have other debt or outside bills that you have to pay every month, that answer is probably "no," but if you can get rid of any extraneous monthly expenses outside of the bare minimum (no pets, loans, etc) then you can do it. Getting a roommate will be crucial, because your rent and other shareable bills will be cheaper. Also, when you fill out your employment/tax forms (the W-2, which you will complete before you are allowed to work as a TA), put yourself down as "Head of Household" or otherwise increase the number of exemptions you claim. This way, you will have less money taken out for taxes each month (though you will still have to pay them at the end of the year). I always thought that it goes without saying that you should shop at cheap grocers, but I am constantly dumbfounded at how many poor college students shop at places like Trader Joe's or Whole Foods. It is likely that your cohorts will push you towards places like that. Ignore them. Find the local ethnic groceries (Asian and Latino markets are best) and do your grocery shopping there. You will save 1000-2000 a year (I am dead serious).

I put a mini-dissertation on my area of study (history of information) over at http://forum.thegradcafe.com/viewtopic.php?p=9845#9845 . I have a BA from Sarah Lawrence College. I like CHSS because it would allow me to do interdisciplinary study - I can do history of philosophy as well as study an information science (ie cognitive psychology or information theory) in depth enough to earn an MS in it while I work toward the PhD.

Just a little section for the UChi waiters. I'm waiting on the Committee on Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science. Anyone out there hear anything yet? I think on Thursday or Friday I may give a call just to see where they are in the process.

There are cheap alternatives for lodging. Many schools have a "faculty house" or "grad house" where visiting scholars can room. It is basically a dorm, but the cost might only be $30 a night. Or, you can get in touch with other students who will be visiting and offer to share lodging, thus sharing the cost. Much of the food (though not all) will probably be supplied in the form of a dinner one night, food at lectures you get to attend, etc. etc. It is possible to get at least half your meals this way. Yeah, you'll still have to pay some stuff, but there are ways to mitigate the cost. If possible, visit both schools during the trip. Maybe you can get both to reimburse you in part, thus making up the cost of the whole thing.

Oy, as a fellow older-returning student, I am totally afraid that this will work against me. I feel your pain re: wtf do I do with my life now? I haven't heard from my school yet, but I know what you're thinking....I have no clue what I will do if this doesn't work out. Anyway, here are my suggestions for next year: + Scores and records and transcripts matter, but they are not everything. Don't put 100% of your faith in them. Among other things... + Academics want to know that you will continue to be productive once you are in, and once you are through. Do something else "academic" in the next few months, if at all possible. Perhaps you can get a new paper published. + Academics not only do not care about personal reasons, they believe they are contraindictions to academic work. Look at schools in other areas. If you look at your local school for personal reasons, don't mention them. Academics have a shitty attitude that 110% of your life is devoted to academia. And nothing else. This is of course not reality, but play along. + Don't give the impression of being needy. Advisers want someone who will fawn over their awesome ideas, be cool to work with, bring glory to them indirectly by doing amazing work, etc. etc. They do not want to get the feeling that they will need to hold hands and babysit, however. + It's who you know. Try and figure out what conferences the academics in your dream program attend, and try to make it to at least one. Hand out business cards to every person you meet. Also, get on some professional mailing lists for relevant organizations that these people might be on, and make the occasional intelligent comment. People notice these things and sometimes remember. Well, that's it for now. I'm about to get off work and go home (and...uh...check my mailbox). ugh. Good luck with the MA program.

Yeah, but the percentages were almost identical: 2004 - 11.4% 2005 - 11.2% 2006 - 11.1%

Just got officially rejected from Berkeley. I wasn't actually expecting to get in (that whole "writing the 15 page writing sample the night before it was due" thing fucked my app up), but it does mean that there's only Chicago left.

This is my first time applying for the NSF. Do they send all the replies at once, or do they start trickling in slowly?