miratrix

Wow, that program draws dedicated applicants! Good luck, I'm sure it couldn't have hurt and may have helped put a face to your name when she read your application.

Congrats, Tonights and Lizzle! Great news for both of you! Tonights, if you move up to Cambridge I can give you lots of advice on living in the area! (But it's a 20-30 minute bus ride from the BUMC campus, so maybe out of the way compared to the Boston side of the river. Still a GREAT "greater metropolitan area" to live in.) It was a mixed news day for me - rejection from one of my top choices, acceptance to another program but with poor funding. Oh well, at least this will make the decision process easier. Only one more school I'm really eager to hear back from. *twiddles thumbs*

I got my first rejection today. It's not too awful, because I've at least been accepted somewhere, but it's still a bit of a bummer because it was really one of my top choices, and I'm disappointed not to have the option. *sigh* Now I have to get in touch with my friend whom I was going to move in with if I went there and tell her our wonderful plans are out the window. (I wonder if starting my SoP out with a quote from a fantastic but kind of ridiculous and obscene novel relating to the program's location and focus was a bad idea. Not that the quote was obscene, and it was totally relevant, but you know, maybe someone on the committee HATES that novel. It was a risk. I figured if someone on the committee loves that novel as much as I do, I'd be a shoo-in.) Now I'm debating calling the last school I'm really eager to hear back from next week...it has a similar program to the one I got rejected from, so I just want to get the bad news over with.

I just got into a program in which the letter outlined the minimum funding possible, said they were looking for more but couldn't say if there would be any at this point, and asked for an acceptance within a week if possible. Alas, due to the first part of the letter, I will not be able to fulfill the second, but I'll at least write right away to tell them that. (And yeah, this is an MA program and, I think, not subject to the April 15 rule.)

I think you should go if you like the program and would consider it even if you'd gotten into other schools, and not go if it's your absolute last choice and you would rather go ANYWHERE else.

brown's decsons are not on the webste. (sorry, as you can tell 'm mssng a couple of eys rght now.)

Good question, but I won't feel safe revealing all this until around April 15 (or at least until I've heard back from all my schools)....

Why would you look bad? It wouldn't even occur to me to think that.

I hear you. I fell asleep on the train home from work, and last shared my bed with a cat. Not even my cat, one of my roommates'. I'm actually hoping for a *better* quality of life in grad school.... I'm getting so sick of waiting to hear from schools, though!

Okay I am going to continue hijacking! I've never heard of Odin's Raven, but it sounds pretty neat. Also I <3 Havhingsten fra Glendalough! I wanted to apply last year as well, but didn't find out about it until the crew was full...then I happened to meet most of them, and they were almost all much more experienced sailors than me, so I didn't really have a chance anyway. They were also awesome, so I was very very jealous. However, I've heard the Roskilde museum does smaller and less well-marketed summer voyages with some of their other four replicas fairly often. (There is a photo of me steering one of them, for around 30 seconds, on one of their round-the-harbor day sails ) So keep an eye on their website! Also, I've heard they're going to be making a new replica of the Gokstad ship at the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo...so maybe by the time we're finished with grad school, it'll be ready Someday I would really, really love to go on a historic ship voyage...Viking replica, American tall ship, I don't really care that much. *sigh* Wow, this really distracted me from waiting for about 10 minutes. And also made me question whether I really want to go to grad school, because clearly it's better to be a Viking.

If you can, try contacting current grad students and asking if this is typical of the school's bureaucracy that they have to deal with as students, or if the headaches were over after admission. I think trying to get a feel for whether the administrative offices at a school tend to make life easier or harder is important for any school.

Recycled Viking, what ship are you hugging in your picture? It's too small for me to tell if it's one I'd recognize!

haha, you would be the second person to tell me the grad center bar is a reason to go to brown. i went there (with the first person who told me that) and wasn't that excited, but maybe it's good for regulars.

Congrats! Which UMass did you guys apply to? I heard that Boston's admissions committee will only be meeting this or next week (can't remember which)...you probably are talking about Amherst, though, right?

My family doesn't give me that kind of talk, thank goodness, because some of them are going through the same thing trying to find jobs in a small town. When I say "the same thing," I mean it's actually EASIER to get into grad school. I've applied to programs with acceptance rates as low as 6% and as high as 40%. Meanwhile, my relatives go to a job fair for a plant that's opening, and 1000 people show up for 30 jobs. They go to a job fair for an office that's hiring 10 people, and there are 700 applicants. It's awful. And in a way, they're more screwed than a lot of us, because they can't even support themselves and have to rely on relatives. I think RUPA is going to be the philosophy of our generation, educated and blue-collar alike.

I just made summer plans, and they may make moving immediately after they end in mid-August really inconvenient and difficult depending on where I end up...but I'm sure it'll be worth it, and I'll deal with that issue when I come to it. (This forum is making me realize that that has apparently become my life philosophy, since I write it A LOT. Hmm, wonder if that's a good thing.)

It usually takes a while to get a job, from application to interview to offer, so the odds that you'll have one by the time you hear back from another school are pretty low. There are six weeks between now and April 15, and I know very few people who've found full-time jobs in that short a time. Get started with job applications early in order to play it safe, and deal with the problem of having both a job offer and a grad school offer in hand only if and when it comes up.

Apartments near Porter/Davis: sorry, I can't recommend any...unless you want to move into mine next year, but it might be on the wrong side of Davis for you, and you'd need 4 flatmates Weather: what's so bad about winter? So it's cold and it snows, I like it. The biggest problem is people who don't salt or shovel their sidewalks, so when you do get those 50 degree days it's like you're walking on a thawing pond. Grr argh public nuisances.

This is hard to answer while I'm still waiting to hear from 3! So far I'm definitely visiting one, trying to get time off work to visit a second, and would visit two more if accepted before April (fingers crossed).

...and that Harvard entry has disappeared from the results page. Iiiiiinteresting. (I didn't apply to Harvard, I'm just nosy.) It looks like this week is already showing a huge spike in anthro notifications. Hopefully there will be more news, and more of it good.

Aw, I'm sorry to hear this! At least it was the bottom of your list, not the top. If it makes you feel better, I grew up near Binghamton, and although their anthro department is very good, so I'm sure it was competitive, you're really not missing out by not going to live there for 5 years or more. Cornell or Vermont would be better, so I'm rooting for you to get into those! And you have a lot going for your application, I'm sure there will be better news to come.

Just checked, and "5 years of funding, 70000 a year" - this HAS to include tuition and health premium, right? I have a friend who gets a generous stipend from a Harvard humanities department, but it's nowhere NEAR that.

Yeah, I have this feeling, and it's a little sad. I'm finally starting to hit my stride where I am now, meet new people, and have a generally pleasant and busy life...and I'm most likely going to be leaving in 3-4 months (doing fieldwork this summer, regardless of where I go to grad school). Knowing I'll probably be moving makes me feel a bit better about being single - it's not on purpose - but worse about how settled I'm getting in my current life.

I think you should go to the interview, get a feel for whether you want the job and how flexible they are, and deal with these problems if and when you are actually offered the job. I had similar concerns this fall, but for the most part it wasn't an issue because I wasn't offered most of the jobs anyway. Get as many options as possible, don't endanger any at this stage, and make your decision when it's clearer what your choices are.

My mother came and visited me this weekend! It was awesome, she's never seen my apartment or met any of my friends here, and of course we went out to eat and bought ridiculous amounts of food from the [our ethnicity] grocery store. Also, she's very supportive and reassuring and full of "we're so proud of you" talk, it makes waiting easier