anthcat

Would the person who posted an acceptance to Duke (or anyone who has a reasonable guess) care to post and say how official decisions will be sent? Did they tell you in the email you got?

:cry: This has not been a good weekend. Two rejections by mail - Michigan and Harvard. *sigh*

Ooh. I am looking forward to that now! I have to recommend a recent edited volume - Lock and Farquahar's Beyond the Body Proper. There are some interesting inclusions of older articles (Marx, etc) that connect very strangely with the current-day stuff.

I think it would be nice if they included in the paper rejection (which, provided it's timely, doesn't need to be heralded by an email) a small pin that said "I was rejected by X University, but I am still an exceptional student" Then you could at least collect them. :roll: ... I'll tell you how I DON'T want to be rejected, though - with LAST YEAR'S form email. Yeah, I'm talking to you, Berkeley anthropology PhD - yes, you, Ned, whoever you are! The email itself was very sweet and easy on the self esteem, but then I notice it says that they couldn't admit me for FALL 2008! :x What, did you not have time to edit a single digit of your saved template before sending it to 400+ prospective students?!? I work as an office manager, mister, and I know exactly how long it takes to make that kind of change. All of about 30 seconds. *@!^)(&$#(*^$*#^&!!!!! :evil: :twisted: :cry:

I have heard that UCLA has NOT sent out acceptances yet, because they are elbowing for more funding. I have also heard from a current student that UNC-CH has sent out all acceptances and waitlistings by email. If you have not heard from UNC-CH, then I'm afraid you have been rejected. I just got my first rejection today (Berkeley), and it was oddly freeing. I'm sure there are several more to follow, but it mostly was nice to be know that the schools didn't just forget about me or lose my file.

Oi, at least you have got a full-time job, OP! Not all of us have got such a pleasant backup plan.

I would also have contacted more people during the application process.

Further confirmed because there have been no other results posted...and I'm sure at least one of us who applied would have if we'd gotten something. Just because the grad director says it doesn't mean that the people actually doing the emailing will make it so.

That'll cure what ails you, alright!

You mean that's just propaganda?? :wink:

I agree with what mrfuga said about temping. It may seem degrading if you've been fully employed, but there are good opportunities out there. I got hired in November for a full-time temp contract paying more than I could make in many full-time jobs. Even with a patchwork of one-day jobs, you can make out pretty well. Being registered with a temp agency means you'll be able to say you are continually looking for work while you collect unemployment, and might even get you some if you choose to take it.

nope, but good luck for you if you did!

I, too, hope that we were obvious choices for admittance and it'll just take a little longer to scare up the funding. But that's plenty scary in itself. All of my applications were to...well, expensive programs. And I qualify for a Pell grant and then some, so no way in hell can I afford any of them without some pretty substantial financial aid. Also no way in hell will I take out a loan. I got through undergrad debt free, and I am not about to mortgage myself now. Work, yes, starve, no. So, big-name grad schools, which of you would like to pay a little extra for a loving and devoted grad student? Anthcat is a bit scruffy, but cleans up well. She has been very friendly with other cats here in the shelter and will do her forever home proud. /self-pity

Furthermore, I would give my right arm for a turkey sandwich and any kind of contact from a school right now. Even a rejection maybe. :roll: Because I have heard absolutely nothing from any school, even though 4 of my 9 have some kind of result posted on the search. It's like I'm slowly ceasing to exist. Off to get oatmeal, cause it's what's for breakfast... Ugh.

Well, I wouldn't be surprised if the different Stanford subfields notify separately. My impression is that the split is not really healed yet, so though they may have to make decisions together, they might well notify on different schedules. I'm waiting for them too. You're not alone.

Fellowships are not the only way to get funding. I think if you haven't already, you should explain your financial situation to your adviser, then maybe you can get some advice about other places an international student can look for money. If you haven't already gotten ALL of the financial aid information from your school, though, remember that it's not over yet. Take a look at the other topics under International House of Grads, and The Bank, for more advice on funding.

What I have been hearing from friends who are working in universities is that there has been a quite significant spike in the number of applications, but that it doesn't really matter for those of us who knew before the recession began that this is what we wanted to do. An ex who is a professor of religious studies says her department has gotten almost twice as many applications as usual, but that the excess applications are, to put it sweetly, total crap. People who are not really suited to grad school, or up on what it takes to get accepted, are throwing out applications just in case. So the vast majority of those extras will get rejected and not even be in competition with serious, prepared applicants. BUT that means it will take longer than usual to sort through everything. It seems like some programs are cutting the number of students they accept, but more often I think they will admit the same number but cut financial aid (bad news for those of us who must have it to attend). I heard that some lower ranked programs whose schools had less invested are actually increasing the number of acceptances.

Yeah, I'm not holding my breath over it. For me NYC is important not just because I've always wanted to live there (for a while, at least), but because my research interests make a big metropolis the ideal place to do incidental research. The other reason I applied to Columbia is because of the faculty who work in Asia.

ALL of my spam, almost entirely without exception, is for male-enhancement drugs. But it still cracks me up, because I'm a drag king. While I play a very virile man on stage, my male-enhancement is all achieved with injection molded silicone.

Congrats, barry! I hope you hear back from your other programs soon. I'm waiting on 9, and it's driving me nuts.

You wait, is what you do. The email means that they will contact you with financial information, but that it may be later than usual and that your chances of getting funding are lower than usual. I know you want to know right now how it's going to work out. But your advisors can't give you money.

I like the way you've put this! This is why folks on the left shouldn't forget there are plenty of compassionate fiscally conservative people out there. And while I don't think fiscal conservatism is the best way to concretely express compassion, that doesn't mean that it reflects a lack of compassion. True, in my previous post I did blend libertarians with anarchists, which isn't accurate. I was responding more to barry's "everyone can do anything with no help at all" version and pointing out that a free and bootstrapping individual cannot in fact do just anything without resources and social backup. Some libertarians say "small government" and mean "as little government as we can get away with, even at the cost of others' suffering", and that's what I meant to address. Resourceful individuals may well be able to find themselves a survivable place in the system, but they can't build any of the things we take for granted as a developed society. If you ever went to a public school, even if you never needed food assistance or disability benefits and you succeeded and became a productive citizen without any more help ever again, then you still owe society for the chance you got. Some people are born poor and rely on others generosity and never do anything to help themselves. Others are born rich and never do anything to deserve that privilege. Yet worse are the people are are born into hardship, benefit from public services (like, say, the GI Bill) and then go on to become successful and influential and spend that influence arguing against giving others that same benefit, having convinced themselves they sprang full-fledged and self-sufficient from the head of God. What do we do with these folks? We can't vote them off the island; it's not that easy. So we have to build as system that works despite them: that can keep the innocent children of slackers from dying of rickets, compel tax fraudsters to cough it up, and that doesn't let ungrateful hypocrites deny to our descendents the social supports that helped them when they needed it.

Wow, the fur is starting to fly already! My take is as follows: Folks who are "far right" in the American sense which tends to blend social conservatism with and oddball kind of fiscal libertarianism tend to assume that the status quo, the proportion and distribution of haves and have-nots, exists for a reason. Starving? You must have f***ed up somewhere - good luck. Folks on the left, for a variety of reasons (some of which are purely ideological, some of which are based in compassion and experience) tend to believe that the status quo can be arbitrary or wrong, and that there is a basic level of subsistence and well-being below which no one should have to live. Starving? Tell me your story while I get you some food, and let's see if we can find a way to keep this from happening to you again. I do not understand the rightist combination of free market anti-regulation and corporate personhood. The whole point of wanting a small government, it seems, is that recognition that government can be clumsy and wasteful. It's clumsy and wasteful because it doesn't allow individuals to flexibly change their decisions - because a large group of people have to compromise on the best course of action. Compromises and concessions are what make spending bills, for example, wasteful and unwieldy. In order to get enough votes to agree on the whole, most people have to get their own bit in. But this is not a feature unique to federal government. Homeowners associations, the ideological children of the current-day approach to government, can be just as unwieldy, wasteful, and oppressive of freedom. Inside a corporation it's the same: some people get shut down, many get some of what they want, and the whole thing gets bigger. Why on earth would a cadre of large corporations be any better at deciding how things ought to be for the average person than a government?? So the reason why I identify as far left, even though I don't approve of the kind of big, porky government we currently have, comes down to two things. One, I am incredibly socially leftist, as happens more often to people who are poor, or black/asian/latino/etc, or women, or in my case queer. This is a point that many libertarians who've posted on this thread have made, and I thank you for that. Two, the reason I'm not a libertarian myself, is that if we value having shared services, like sewers and hospitals and trains and the internet, then we need a group to manage and maintain them. This is what government is for - doing the things that individuals need but, whether because it is not profitable or is too capital- or labor-intensive to start alone (or even in a small association). It sounds like a corporation would do as well, but there is a key difference. Corporations do things to make money, which means they won't do something that won't turn a profit no matter how much it is needed. Government does things solely because they are needed, even if that means losing money. So here's a leftist who insists that government is not the solution to most problems, but probably ought to be working on more of the problems we currently have instead of handing control over to the corporate sector. I'm with you on the syndicalism, Tonights, though it can be so hard to get that to work.

I'm right there with you - but it'll be a long haul. What is it that drew you to apply to Columbia?

My undergrad advisor nearly gave me a royal panic attack by emailing me to ask if I'd heard anything yet. When I stopped hyperventilating I wrote back to say, essentially "nowhyshouldihave?haveyou?isitalloveralready?ohdeargodiwillneverbeacceptedi'macompletefailureaaaaarrrgh!" (I actually said: No. Have you got any intel?) The response? No, it's way too early to know. You know how lazy anthro faculty are. Chill out! :roll: