wreckofthehope

You can get to BC on the D - get off at Chestnut Hill stop and walk the 12 minutes up the hill (also on the C, via the shuttle at Reservoir) but, coming from JP, you can get the bus to longwood and then walk to Brookline Village for the D - total journey time is approx 50 mins. So, JP is an option...not necessarily the simplest commute but do-able.

It's expensive but it's do-able... If you're a couple and both have an income (stipend plus a wage) then a one or two bed apartment is easily within reach. I don't know... I moved here from London, so it seems fairly reasonable to me, but no-one I know in my department has had too much difficulty finding a place they can afford. If sticker price is a serious worry, then look in Allston - it's close to BC and cheap, but it's very student-heavy. Edit: Sorry, I just read the posts further down...those prices are NOT representative. I've seen plenty of studio apartments for $1000 per month, a nicer one will probably be about $1200. You can get a one bed in Allston for $1200, though, and a two bed for around $1400 to $1500. My two bed, is $1700 but it is in a nice building in a nice area, on the Brookline border. Look in Brighton Center/Oak Sq - it tends to be a bit cheaper because the trolley doesn't go there, but there are good bus links and it's a nice, non-undergraddy area.

Poking my nose into this thread to say: Yes. I have an actual debilitating phobia of flying. I can't fly alone because I simply cannot get on the plane. If I have to fly somewhere, I have nightmares for about four months prior to the flight, and obsessive thoughts about plane crashes for about two months prior to the flight. It's awful. I try REALLY hard not to let it rule my life, though (I'm doing my PhD outside my home country ffs!). I do take valium, which makes it just about possible for me to board the aircraft...I can't offer much advice, because I feel like my experience is so far out of the norm that it's not that useful to others, but just wanted to speak up in solidarity

I just saw your funding offer on the other thread... WOW! What an amazing fellowship. You must be so thrilled!

CUNY is an amazing school, that said - the couple of things that would worry me, if it were my only option, are its graduation rate and length of time to degree (certainly not its position in a relatively arbitrary ranking system)...I have no idea what the numbers are, but I get the sense that CUNY has quite a large intake and that there is quite a lot of attrition; on top of that (and probably related to it) it seems to have a pretty long time to degree. I'd want to look into what the actual numbers are and whether or not it's good attrition, if there are positive reasons for the time to degree etc. My sense of this might be wrong, in which case - there's pretty much no down side to CUNY, but those are things to think about before accepting.

I think definitely USC, I know of a few people there doing related things.

Also in Boston : BU, BC, Tufts and Brandeis have a similar arrangement.

I read pomo's post as talking about the process from the adcomm's p.o.v. - i.e. they get 500 apps and they know people are applying to 10-18 programs so there's a lot of randomness in the makeup of the final cohort... they may have a top 10 but all those people might go elsewhere, and this might happen at multiple schools, because a fair few people have multiple acceptances. I read it as encouragement that there could still be a lot of movement at schools that have notified; but I can see, for sure, how some of the language might have riled people up. Anyway, I'm rooting for you girl who wears glasses... you only need one and you're halfway there with two already

This is the reason I down voted pomo's post... it was uncalled for and needlessly snippy. I agree that girl who wears glasses took the original post kind of in the wrong spirit, but it's enough to point out that it was not meant in that way, and hopefully room to take into consideration the fact that people are all stressed out by this process; there's no need to make condescending accusations about forum members' supposed lack of experience or understanding of the discipline. Also, 'reporting' and 'down voting' are different, right? If they're not, I've been doing this thing wrong forever.

Seconded!

I also did my undergrad late (worked after high school), so totally get this. It's pleasantly out of the norm for me to be solidly within the average age range for students in my department I was 29 when I started the PhD, btw.

Haha, glad to oblige It's needlessly confusing, the reason for some of these issues is that Ox and Cam give their undergrads an MA automatically ( well you have to pay £10 or something) seven years after matriculation (at least those are the Ox rules, maybe Cam does it differently); because of that they then have to rename their normal Master's degrees, and so, for instance, in Cam M.Phil gets used for what would be MA or MSc elsewhere, and at Ox MSt gets used (so they keep MPhil for the two year degree). It's ridiculous, but if you get a Master's from Cam the confusion can occassionally work in your favour

Not always, and not at Cambridge where it is a one year taught Master's degree (mostly...and I mean taught in the sense that UK universities mean it: has a substantial element of coursework that requires class attendance - but usually also a substantial dissertation component)

I think the first ones are the old NRC rankings -so, 20 ish year old data. The second ones are the latest NRC rankings, and with these the data took so long to compile that some of it is still maybe 10 years old, but they're more up to date than the last, and definitely more reflective of actual program strengths than USNews, However they definitely still need to be scrutinized rather than taken as gospel.

Totally. Philly is absolutely my favourite East Coast (ish) city, I love it and would be super excited to move there, if that possibility arose.

Usually waivers don't apply for international students; but I suppose you could always ask... It would seem a bit uncharitable for them to outright refuse.

YAAAAAAAAY!! I check this thread just in the hopes that I'll see posts from you and girl who wears glasses, cos you both are in somewhat allied fields to me. So happy for you!

Did they say in what ways they weren't equivalent? Because, contrary to hustlebunny's point, my impression is that some UK universities, especially the ancient uni's, consider the US Master's degree to be roughly equivalent to the final year of a UK Bachelor's degree. The thinking goes that a UK Bachelor's is specialized from day one and so, in the three years, your subject specific knowledge and skills are developed to a greater extent than they would be during a US degree, where you spend a huge amount of time studying other subjects. Also, a fair number of US Master's degrees don't require a thesis, which is a central requirement of a UK Master's degree (almost universally). So, for PhD admissions in the UK, a US Master's might not be seen as sufficient preparation for the UK PhD, which is solely research based. I've heard of Cambridge not recognizing US MA's before and requiring PhD applicants to complete a second UK Master's degree before they will accept them for PhD study. Of course in the States, they think a one year Master's degree is too short to learn anything useful and tend to consider UK MA grades as a very, very small aspect of the applicant's education during admissions, or so I've been told. Honestly, as an international student, I find the levels of ignorance about other country's higher education systems from within the academy pretty depressing. I think the OP's question was specifically about a practical field, though, in which accreditation issues abound, and not about UK degrees more generally (which are certainly considered equivalent to US degrees in general). I would be especially careful with something like this OP, as you could end up spending a lot of money on a degree that will not allow you to do the kind of work you want, and you may then have to spend more in order to become accredited in the US. Sweetpea makes some really great points - definitely think about what she/he has said.

INTP here....In my department the most overwhelmingly shared letter among grad students and faculty seems to be I ( from my observation...not enforced institutional testing ). Makes for great parties

TA-ships are additional to the stipend??? Jealous! Don'thate - I don't think anyone was fighting about first year fellowships... and I'm not sure that is what Datatape was referring to, but maybe I'm wrong?

But the foreign language departments already have their own grad students to teach language classes. At the comp lit programs I applied to, they said that there was the possibility of getting a TA position in a foreign language department, but it wasn't something they could guarantee because they are a separate department.

It's more common for there to be no teaching in the first year in comp lit programs, or at least that's the way it seemed to me when I was applying (to a mix of comp lit, interdisciplinary and English programs). It's also more common for private schools to offer a package with a teaching free first year (as a general rule), so with your discipline and list of schools you were more likely to be applying to places where they don't require teaching in the first year. That also happened to me - none of my schools required first year teaching - interdisciplinary programs and comp lit have less undergrads to teach and wouldn't be expected to cover freshman comp, so they just don't have the same need to draw on grad students as instructors.

It all sounds vaguely Blade Runner-ish; do they augment you or fully digitize you? I kind of want in on this action....

I think you're right to be a bit confused...it's not an outright acceptance, but it's an indication that you're pretty close to being accepted...I think it's a bit weird that they invite you to visit when they haven't quite decided if they want you, yet. It's not going to be easy, when you're located overseas, to justify going when you don't have an actual acceptance from them.

Wooooooo!