ridgey

Well, I have excellent odds of rejection this year it seems - I'm at 3.5 so far (the 0.5 being Columbia, based on their silence). And the odds of rejection overall are pretty good, when they admit ~7%. Sorry, I seem to be very negative today! But no, I've heard nothing. There has been a PhD admit and a DrPH waitlist on the board that I've noticed. My officemate has a theory that they haven't called me yet because they can't figure out how to dial internationally. Ha! Good to know I'm in such good company in receiving Columbia's deafening silence.

Re working as an international: On a student (F1?) visa, you can work 20h/week on campus when school's in session, and fulltime on campus in summer. There is some sort of training thing, where for every X years you were a student, you're allowed to work for a year after graduation.

Well, my Friday 13 is over in terms of possibly hearing anything. I'll probably end up having my Satuday ruined by bad Fri 13 juju.

This process has taken me so far from normality that the ridiculous conclusions I come to based on postings to the results page are amusing me, when they're not crippling. Today: Programme A - someone posted a rejection from a different field of my area than the one I applied to. The decision making at the school is almost certainly separate. My thoughts "well, clearly I'm rejected too because my online status hasn't changed and they don't update the web until rejection letters have had time to arrive by post and if that person from that department has a rejection then all the acceptances in my depratment have definitely been notified." Has anyone else lost perspective and the capacity for logical thought?

Cheers is a very common email sign off; the sender may even have had it as the auto-signature. Still pretty bad, but at least they didn't type[/i "cheers" at the end.

Auckland, pffft. Otaaaaaaaaaagoooooooo!

The first one sounds like some admin department of the uni, not a decision notification. Maybe the actual notification got lost or is still coming, while student services or whatever is bizarrely efficient?

No idea! Also, would such a quota would be affected by the number of apps for PhD and DrPH - are applicants to a given track competing for slots to be divvied up between the programmes? Lots of results from Mailman on the board now, all acceptances. I doubt no news is good news at this stage. Though maybe it takes longer coz PhD decisions have to go through GSAS, while MPH/DrPH are all internal. Gah!

Re: job markets for people with PhDs from lower ranked programmes PLEASE spend some time on the Chronicle forums. Ideally, one's work would speak for itself regardless of pedigree; unfortunately that isn't often the case in the real world.

0. Ridgey 1. Just this year 2. 6 applications 3. 3.5 rejections so far (the 0.5 - acceptances have been posted on the results board from last week, but I haven't heard anything) 4. Writing sample. GPA. ? 1x lukewarm LoR. 5. Probably wait two years to reapply. 6. Polished writing sample. Publish. 7. Find a research job doing what interests me, not whatever happens to be around. Travel.

No notification for me there - was it on the first page? If they've notified the waitlist, they should have finalised rejections, surely? Waiting is not good for me, though in this case it's pretty clear what the result is.

just today I saw an exciting job advertised across an ocean fromhere, fortunately in a place I can get a working holiday visa. It's right up my alley AND would (I think) make me a more competitive applicant in a couple of years. In general, my Plan B is some combination of work/travel/community service. It's almost as exciting as grad school!

I'm doing fake immune at the moment. Kind of the same way I've pretended befor to be completely fine after being dumped. I don't want to give them the satisfaction of knowing they got to me. Which is dumb in this case because 1)I don't think the schools can actually find out how OK or otherwise I am, and 2) I don't think the schools are evil the way I do exes. What's bothering me more than not getting to go is the money I spent on applying, and how my pride will handle telling people about my lack of success.

Thanks FSIA. Good news for you that they contacted you about your app in Feb! Probably less promising for those of us who have heard not a peep...

I only applied exclusively to US universities because funding is determined with admission, while elsewhere the funding has to be chased separately than admission. If I get 100% rejected, I'll overcome my laziness. Maybe I'm being overly defensive and reading something into your tone that isn't there, but it seems like you're suggesting that because they're non-US unis, they're a kind of safety school - you'll go there if you can't get in anywhere better (i.e. American schools).

I'm a native English speaker and international. The GRE just seems bizarre to me - before I can do a PhD, I have to prove I can do maths at the level of a twelve year old and deduce the meanings of words absent any context? BIZARRE! I wonder about the extent the US's reverence of entrepeneurship has played a role in the dominance the GRE has. There is a huge profit being made by ETS, and that profit increases the more they can convince adcoms to value the GRE. Not to mention the spin-off prep industry. I understand the idea that the GRE is a consistent measure,while things like GPA can reflect differences in schools rather than students. Honestly, though, anyone who is a university graduate, and doesn't have disabilities that cause them to test poorly, should be able to do well on the test. The fact that it is so necessary in the eyes of adcoms suggests to me that there are serious flaws in the avarage US undergrad program if large numbers of the people considering graduate study can't demonstrate enough critical thinking to do well on the test (NOTE: that comment was in regard to the education people have received, NOT their ability. I'm NOT saying the GRE is a measure of intelligence, or that doing poorly on it makes one unitelligent). The thing is that in the admissions process overall, internationals are at a very real disadvantage. Finding the GRE easier (language issues aside - most schools will disregard non-native English speakers' GRE v in favour of TOEFL) than US students do doesn't mitigate this. Honestly, I think the GRE is a crock. But it will be a strong point in my applications, compared with the laziness my GPA reflects.

And also, when did you talk to them FSIA? I emailed waaaaay back - August or so - and was told they planned to take seven. But then the economy imploded, and I wonder if they will now take even fewer. Does anyone know whether they rank all applicants together, or they decide first how many each of the social science tracks gets and admit independently?

No news here. The results page has someone accepted by phone today, which doesn't look good. Maybe different advisors will call at different times, but I'm preparing for rejection. Sigh. 3 more to go.

Yuck. I used to be involved with a brand of Christianity that incorporated this perspective. If you were a good enough Christian, faith, and the words you spoke, would get you whatever you wanted. If you didn't, clearly your faith was lacking, or occasionally God was teaching you something. Now, I find myself a lot like UnlikelyGrad: trying to expect the worst, but my brain insists on daydreaming about the acceptance(s) that are surely just around the corner. I have been able to get to the point where I accept that whether I go to grad school is in someone else's hands, but my future and happiness etc is still something I get to control.

Tues-Fri: Wake up ~6 am, check email and applications and gradcafe obsessively, alternating with news/weather forecast/other useful things. Planned time on internet first thing in the morning: 30 min; actual time: has been known to be up to 6 hours. Shower, dress, breakfast, go to uni: sometime between 6.30 and 12. On computer at uni: between 7.30 am (variable) and 2.30 pm, with start time variable. During this time I am supposedly writing my thesis, but as you may suppose, large chunks of this time dissappear as I check email/applications/gradcafe. 2.30-5.00pm: research in archives. No internet access here. Some solid work, though mostly making notes for future work - "look up XYZ" "Compare doc A to doc B". 5.00-630pm: Back to office. Plan to work till home time. Open appropriate word documents, but more of the normalchecking application related things (despite it being ~midnight in decision making time zone. Feel guilty for lack of work, take lots of reading home to make up for it. 7-7.30: Watch incredibly trashy local soap. 7.30pm - midnight: Have appropriate books/journal articles strewn around, while watching TV/talkiing to flatties/wasting time on internet/otherwise not accomplishing anything. Get ready for bed, ponder staying up a couple more hours until it's business hours in the US. Saturday: as above, but starting later, and without archives. Sun-Mon: similar to other days, but with less disappointment at not receiving any results from appplications. Eagerly cancel going to archives/writing thesis during the day to do social things. BUT, decline other social things, especially evening/weekends, to work on thesis, then don't do any work but instead the inevitable emai/application/gradcafe results obsession.

Did they offer you any kind of funding for the masters? Do PhDs in the programme normally get funded? Is the masters programme secretly (or not so secretly) funding the PhD students? Anyway, I don't think it's a good idea. If it were a matter of a course or two, they could have made that a condition of acceptance to the PhD programme. And, if you've kept your tagline here uptodate, you'd be fudging it to try and say other schools have expressed interest and use that as a negotiating point. Also, many schools - not all, but plenty; you'd need to figure out whether it's true for your school - are reluctant to take their own masters students into their PhD programmes. So if you do your masters at this place, make sure you have other places to apply when your done; don't assume that the masters from there will give you a leg up if you need to reapply.

I applied for health policy at Yale. And I freak out evertime I see the "deadline has passed" message - glad I'm not the only one!

Except that there is no overall school ranking for Penn State in this case - not being an accredited school, USNews didn't collect data on them. C.f., for example, the University of Oklahoma, which is on the list because it is an ASPH school, but with no data reported. All the two USNews lists tell us about Penn State's Health Policy is that it's not top ten. A&F, if you take USNews' rankings seriously, you could pay and find out exactly where the programme in question stands. Better though - talk to your advisors, if possible. Is the school hosting a visit day - that's another source of information. A proxy for the quality of a programme is how often students publish. If their record is great, they'll have a list prominently displayed on a webpage; good to average to mediocre to poor, you may have to do some digging. Ditto for jobs.

Yeah, that made me angry!

The second link ranks ASPH schools, but there are many more individual programmes (accredited by ASPH, presumably including Penn State)that aren't considered. Gutted! Sounds like it wouldn't have been great for you anyway. And JHU is still keeping you in suspense?