miratrix

I had a meeting with a potential advisor like that before I even sent my application - I decided to apply anyway because it's a great program, but referred to the meeting as "the disaster" and assumed I'd get rejected. And I got in, with a nice email from that very professor to let me know! So don't lose hope, we can be way too critical of ourselves sometimes.

Supriyasingh, I've been told that Texas A&M plans to notify officially in mid-March, if that helps with the waiting. (I wonder if we're in the same archaeology subfield!) Medianerd, that's messed up. At least you can demand a refund, I agree.

Cooking, talking about nothing with my roommates, TV on the internet, running, contradancing, and church stuff keep me pretty busy. I haven't really had to do much *trying* to relax though, it just happens! Alas, tonight I'm feeling high strung and am going to have trouble going to sleep in half an hour, which I need to do in order to wake up tomorrow morning for work.

It kind of amazes me to look at the number of results posted each day...and realize that they're only a tiny number of the decisions that went out around the country. There are SO MANY of us!

This may be the point where the results board becomes more a curse than a blessing.

During the application process, I sent each of them a packet of printed forms and addressed envelopes for each school, and I included a hand-written thank you in the packet. I feel like it might be weird to write another two months later out of nowhere, so I think I'll get back in touch when I've heard from more schools (maybe before I decide where to go, so I can get advice on decisions, or maybe after so it's like "thanks for helping me get into My New School!").

I am totally having these thoughts right now. It's really the idea of crazy work hours that kill me, I want to go to grad school but I also want a life rather than 12 hour work days....

I am in no way an expert, but I think your original strategy was good. If something is by far your best piece of writing, of course you want them to see it! Your SOP and transcripts and such will give them information about your background in the topic you want to research. (I made a similar decision, in that I'm applying to archaeology programs and sent a historical sociology paper, but those might be a bit closer together. Anyway, "send your best" was my professors' advice.)

I bet they CAN be still considering all those applications, in that they have full-time job duties in addition to graduate admissions and maybe haven't had time to finish going through them and making decisions.

I just got an acceptance from the one school I was so sure I wouldn't get into that I convinced myself I didn't want to go there anyway. I'm bouncing off the walls. Predictions: becoming more optimistic.

I've been very lucky, in that the loans I had to take out for undergrad were very small and are now paid off. I'd like to avoid accumulating debt because the job prospects are not great in my field, but I'm well aware that if I do, I'm fortunate to be starting from a blanks late.

I answered "no regrets," but now that I've had a couple days to think about it I have a few: One is that I didn't study harder for the verbal section of the GRE - "ho ho, I've studied Latin and Greek and rock at standardized testing!" - because my score was decent, but I'm not in a field where my math score should be 80 points higher than verbal. Another is that I went to meet with a professor at a nearby school and the meeting was so bad that I expect to get rejected, but it was my third meeting and based on the first two I really had no way of imagining it would be so disastrous. Also wish I'd gotten in touch with more professors from that school. And the last is that I didn't apply to any schools in Alaska. I figured I didn't have the nerve to move to Alaska on a whim, and I'm not that positive I want to specialize in the arctic anyway, but now I find myself daydreaming about it ALL THE TIME. No way I'm getting there now, unless I do an MA and then somehow link whatever I end up researching to the arctic and apply there for PhD.

I'm so sorry. I hope something good works out for you next year.

I think it depends on funding - if you'd have to go $80,000 into debt, no MA, but if there's tuition relief at least, it could be a good bet. I know English students who've done this and successfully gone to PhD programs afterwards.

I definitely feel like the clock is ticking - I got my March work schedule today, so the window for asking for days off and going on visits that month has ended. My fingers are crossed to get into the two far away schools and also manage to visit within the small window of the first week of April.

I don't know. Anywhere with full funding is great to me, the amount doesn't matter nearly as much as fit/reputation/location/etc. However, one of the programs with great fit and location funds tuition but not stipends, so it would require me to take out some loans to live on for a year or two. This is worrying me, but I haven't even been accepted yet, so I guess it's a problem I'd like to have.

There's a replica Viking ship that sailed from Denmark to Ireland a couple years ago, and a lot of the crew got little red Viking ship tattoos on their forearms. I was SO envious of the experience and the tattoos both. I think perhaps there should be Vikings involved. Perhaps it could be a naval battle.

Harder! It definitely encourages obsessing instead of having a life. (...and yet here I am. Hi guys!)

Maybe it wasn't your best chance...there could still be other acceptances coming in. Whoever posted on the results search about Brown - "was told that 10 people have been shortlisted and already emailed; no email by 23 Feb should thus mean rejected." - not cool! I would like to be rejected by the school itself, not the internet first and then eventually the school. This makes me feel more like an afterthought, and thus makes the waiting process and rejection worse. Please only update when you actually have news of your own.

I'm really sorry to hear that, Tonights, what a bummer...fingers crossed that the next news is an acceptance from your second choice.

Is everything ok? :/ I'm reading about a major employer in my industry struggling with hiring freezes, closing down branches, and considering layoffs today. It's really scary, because the smaller players in the field are doing badly too, and I'm at the bottom of the hierarchy. I have no idea how long my job will be safe, although it's already basically underemployment. I haven't told people at work my plans, partly because if I go to school locally I might keep working part-time...but inside, I'm incredibly grateful that I have one funded acceptance that would give me income and benefits for a few years while everything else goes downhill. That makes me feel very secure.

one of my schools just "received" my last document this morning, which is great because after checking the status page i was planning to call them and beg to send it in electronically or something (deadline was feb. 1 and i figured they lost it). it takes a while!

I have been craving a giant burrito for about a week now. I'm going to a thing with one of my roommates tomorrow night, and I'm going to try to convince him that it'd be better to get a giant burrito on the way than cook pasta at home. It's Mardi Gras tomorrow! More dancing and burritos! Tonights, I hope you hear something today!

Yeah, especially because at a lot of workplaces you need to give advance notice to get time off for visits.

In a PhD program, do you still pay tuition after you've finished classwork, taken the qualifying exams, and started your dissertation? I assumed it was for the entire graduate program, but I heard from a friend doing an unfunded MA that she only paid tuition for the year she was taking classes, and isn't paying it for the two years spent studying for comps and writing the thesis. Also, I got an acceptance with funding that only provides tuition relief for the first two years, which makes me wonder if after that they expect you to pay it out of the same size stipend, or they just don't charge you. It may vary from program to program, but what have you all seen?