vlad_poutine

@dragon_seed Thanks so much for the reply. I think you're right. I took on a lot of difficult classes last semester and other factors aside I think I was pretty burned out by the time I turned in the application. Looking over my essays again, yeah, there was not a lot of convincing evidence at that point. In fact, I talked more about math than I did about Russian and its surrounding culture, which is a little ridiculous considering that this is the critical LANGUAGE scholarship, haha. But, I'm glued to this language, scholarship or not. Which is something I can definitely not say about math. Congratulations to everyone who did get it and best of luck to those still waiting, I hope they get it too.

Rejected from Russian. Kinda Really bitter about it. I worked so hard to get good credentials - 3.8 GPA, A's in all my classes, including Russian; glowing recommendations, and (so I thought) decent essays. My first professor even made me sign up for this random national Russian language essay contest last year and I won (still don't know how that happened but I thought it would give me good chances.) My fragile ego and I have been going absolutely bonkers trying to figure out what I did wrong. Seriously. I lost sleep thinking about it. Maybe my language skills aren't as good as I thought they were, I don't know. It's entirely possible. I feel like a failure. I wanted so badly to expand my Russian and apply that knowledge in the future but I guess it was a waste of time? I'll get over it eventually I guess.

CS major here. I don't think I was very clear in terms of career goals on my essays (loooollll), but I'd love to use Russian in a research-related field. It's pretty cool actually, my other Russian language classmates are all from distinct disciplines, and I can easily see any one of them getting this award.