juilletmercredi

This statement does not reflect the way the hiring process has changed in many industries since the dot com bubble burst in 2000. These changes, which became entrenched during the Great Recession, reflect employers' understanding that they're in the driver's seat when it comes to hiring. Today, companies can, and do, define the requirements and responsibilities of entry level positions (e.g. administrative assistant) in such a way that only those with years of experience and extensive expertise can make the first cut. Yes...but experience and expertise in the specific area. For example a company might hire an "entry-level" administrative assistant with an MS in human resources management and 4 years of experience in administrative assistant roles. That doesn't mean that they are going to hire an MA in sociology mostly with experience doing social science research. "Overqualified" is probably the wrong term here - first of all, the MA in sociology does not appear to have the skills that the company really wants; and secondly, the employer might suspect (rightfully so) that the MA in sociology might be bored or unfulfilled, undedicated to the work, and perhaps always looking to move on. However, OP might get hired for a job that only required a BA in sociology and 0-1 years of experience in research. Yes, technically he's "overqualified," but if the work matches the work he did in the past and the employer can be reasonably convinced he'll enjoy it and not be too expensive for the role, its a bonus to have someone who knows what he's doing already in the role. Also, administrative assistants aren't always entry-level - you can be a high-level administrative assistant. The job isn't just a fancy word for secretary.

Impossible to answer. Some lucky people may have 0-5 interviews over just a few weeks before finding a job; others may have dozens over several months or years before finding one.

This is a difference of opinion, but I wholeheartedly disagree with this advice. Your advisor is not a god and you don't have to do everything he says. What you do need to do is establish enough of a working relationship with him, and do enough of what he says, to graduate. There have been times when i had minor intellectual disagreements with my advisor and other times in which I decided to take my dissertation route in a different path than he wanted me to. For example, he wanted me to add a component to my dissertation that I was uninterested in and that would've added additional time (at least a few months) to my dissertation work; I politely but firmly refused to do this. It wasn't that I didn't do a dissertation that wasn't fully acceptable to a committee of scholars; it was simply that I choose to do a different, but equivalent kind of work for my project. Of course how much you can do this depends on what you want to do and what your advisor is like - if three papers are required for the diss, you can't say you're only going to write one. And if your advisor pushes back and says that you need to do X thing or you won't graduate, then you either need to do X thing or find a new advisor. But depending on what the disagreement is about, you CAN have a professional, collegial discussion with your advisor about your goals. Furthermore, your PhD shouldn't be about proving that you can reach a goal with your teachers beating you away from it. That's terrible. On the contrary, your professors should be guiding you along the way towards your goal. Thinking this way sets up an adversarial relationship between the student and advisor, as if they themselves are an obstacle that you have to get around, when it shouldn't be that way. If your advisor is an obstacle standing in your way (and truly an obstacle- not someone telling you to do something for your own good that you simply don't want to do) then you need a new advisor! (Likewise, the master's shouldn't be some kind of terrible Hunger Games where the students are all beating each other away from the final goal. Why would that even be a thing? It's not like if you get the MA your classmates can't or vice versa. Your classmates should be collegial and professional, or at least neutral. A department in which students and teachers are both actively trying to prevent people from getting degrees is a toxic snakepit from which you should run, not walk.) With that said, OP, I agree with the others that this sounds like a misinterpretation of the PI's goals for you. Helping other less advanced students is just a standard practice in academia AND is good practice for when you have your own mentees and students. Your PI might also be subtly telling you that you need help so you can finish in a timely manner, or even that your work is not up to par and that he is transitioning your project to someone he finds more competent. And it is very common for professors to not approve dissertations if they think you haven't done enough - that's what they are supposed to do. You can't just slap together any old something and get it approved; you have to have your work judged as deserving of the title Doctor of Philosophy if you want to finish. Coming and spending time in the lab is par for the course. Just based on what you wrote here, it doesn't sound at all like you are being harassed or blackmailed. It's curious that your first recourse was to jump to wanting to tell journalists (who, I think, would simply laugh at you and move on) rather than having a frank face-to-face discussion with your advisor, the dean, or the Director of Graduate Studies.

Something about this rubs me the wrong way. It's important that - particularly in graduate school - you acknowledge that for the most part, the grade you receive is mostly a result of your own effort and performance in the course. Whether or not the professor likes you rarely has an effect on the grade you get, especially on the graduate level. The vast majority of your GPA is in your own control, and the relatively small number of unprofessional professors or snafus is unlikely to make the difference between a 3.75 and below that on the graduate level.

Yes, and yes. You can briefly email the PI and let them know that you are excited about their offer, and are considering it, but you are waiting to hear back from other programs and will let them know as soon as you've made a decision. (no need to get specific about their order of importance to you or what decision you are waiting to hear about.) You can also contact school #1 and let them know that you have an offer from another program, and you were wondering how long it might be before you hear about funding. Sometimes that speeds things up a bit, since they don't want to lose a promising student.

No, no details. Your parents' health is frankly not relevant to them. Keep the reasons general - you have concerns about the cost of living there, and you don't believe that the stipend is enough to live on. I don't think you need to worry about standing out because most doctoral applicants don't negotiate their stipends. Also, be aware that many programs will not be able to negotiate their stipends because they are already set - either by grant levels or internal process. My first-year stipend was set by a grant and was non-negotiable. Some universities equalize their stipends across all students and thus you can't negotiate for more. My recommendation is that if you are going to try, don't do a hard sell - ease into it gently and allow yourself room to back off quickly if the program seems weirded out by it. Normally I'd say go gung-ho, but academic PhD program offers are not like job offers - negotiating the amount is not the norm. Also, IMO your negotiations should be focused on earning a stipend that is enough for you to live on comfortably but frugally - not trying to squeeze every last penny out that you can. E.g., if Purdue offers you $30K but Indiana offers you $35K, I don't think you should try to negotiate $35K with Purdue just because Indiana offered you a higher stipend, because you can live in West Lafayette on $30K pretty comfortably. That's just my opinion though.

If years 2-4 are $15K, that means that year 1 is smaller than $15K. I think $15K in and of itself is way too low for subsistence - especially if your tuition is not covered and there is no health insurance coverage; that means you will have to buy your own - and less than that is definitely too low. Think about it - that's $1,250 a month before taxes. If housing costs $800-900/month, after that plus utilities plus food plus health insurance you will have at best no money and at worst debt every single month. And that's not even getting into how you are covering the shortfall in tuition. So yes, it's too low. Whether or not its unusual depends on your field - you say you're in clinical/counseling in your profile. I would say that this is unusual at the top and mid-ranked clinical/counseling PhD programs (which usually offer a 5-year package that covers tuition, fees, health insurance, and a stipend of at least around $20K) but is more common at some of the mid-ranked and many of the lower-ranked programs in clinical/counseling. If its a PsyD, though, it's good that you got any funding at all. Either way, I don't think you should take it (unless you are deadset on a PsyD, in which case this is probably as good as its ever going to get).

I was always positive but honest about my department and program. I shared difficulties, criticisms, and complaints while still remaining overall upbeat (mostly because I thought my program was a good one. Every program has weaknesses, of course, but my program was overall good, and I think worth attending). Student colleagues definitely dished dirt, and in my experience we're all pretty open and honest about our programs - even when they suck. If a person asks me over email, I don't ignore them; I will answer politely and kind of neutrally and offer to have a Skype conversation with them if they like, in which I will be more...forthcoming. I also partially disagree with Sigaba; I think it's important to talk to students at all levels of the program. So don't only talk to first and second years - they don't know what it's like to be at the advanced stages of the degree and what support is like then - but, particularly if you are visiting in March and April, first and second years have enough experience to give you an idea of their personal experiences with the early stages of the program and what it's done for them so far.

^It wouldn't be an issue to move, of course, but the advantage to going to school in a place where you want to live is that you can build a local network of professional connections while in school. You can form relationships with companies by working part-time or interning with them, or doing research projects with them. I did my PhD in NYC and towards the end of my PhD I realized just how many connections I had with public health organizations in the city through various projects, connections that I could potentially draw upon for permanent employment if I wanted to stay there. I think either choice is a good one. A top-ranked program likely has recruiters coming from all over the country to offer graduates jobs, so it's not like if you chose UT-Austin you couldn't move back to New York with a job afterwards. But there is a certain advantage to going to graduate school in the city in which you plan to work, if you are willing to maximize your location by networking and working part-time or finding an internship. So really, it's a toss-up.

Sabrosaura's post is absolutely correct. Anything earlier than 4 weeks out is too early unless we're talking campus housing. If you start looking in May, you need to be prepared to pay rent for June through August. @rebekahh - There are two main federal sources for loans - federal Direct loans, which have an annual limit of $20,500, and then Graduate PLUS loans, which allow you to borrow up to the cost of attendance for a given school. So yes, you get more, and you can borrow enough to cover all of your living expenses. Hunter's tuition is crazy cheap so you would only have to borrow a little bit of Grad PLUS loans on top of the Direct loans to pay for your living expenses. @ChiaraWieck - I think that theoretically it's possible, but realistically almost never happens. They have limited one-bedrooms so they try to save those for married couples and people with children. Really, unless you have unlimited resources or something, it's better to share an apartment anyway - it's cheaper. Also, yes, I have heard of I-House. I know a couple of peope who lived there and they all loved it. @holykrp - The guarantor doesn't have to live in the area - my dad served as a guarantor for me and he lives in Atlanta. Many people get their parents or other relatives to serve as guarantors. My roommate and I both had one parent serve as a guarantor (my dad, her mom) and together they made 80x the rent of the entire apartment. Some people sublease apartments from people so they don't have to sign the lease themselves and meet the income requirements. And some landlords are willing to bend the requirements a bit, especially in lower-income neighborhoods like Harlem and Washington Heights and if you can prove that you have a source of income like a stipend or a student loan (or can pay several months up front). There's also a renters insurance company, Insurent, that will serve as a guarantor but you have to pay for it. @Sabrosaura - I am almost certain that Columbia will not serve as a guarantor for students. That would mean that they would be on the hook if students don't pay rent, and they are most likely unwilling to do that for the thousands of graduate students they have. They do have an off-campus housing listing that you can use to find apartments, but they don't assist you with negotiating with landlords, securing funds for security deposits (other than the $500 emergency loan you can get from them) or guaranteeing apartments.

Some of these have already been said. 1. Professors, even the good ones, seem unprepared or unequipped or uninterested (or some combination of the three) in giving graduate students good career/professional advice. Many of them are pretty good academic and research advisors; they can talk to you about the minute details of your projects, and give you guidance about ways in which to go in a thesis or seminar paper. But as far as actual explicit guidance about what it takes to get professional employment post-graduate school - either as an academic or otherwise? At best, they are clueless about how to provide this information to their students, or just don't think about it; at worst, they actively avoid it because they think they don't have to, or it's unnecessary, or think that a student's concentration in post-graduation outcomes is unnecessarily mercenary (yes, I have heard of students whose advisors believed this way!) I had an advisor who I consider to be great - a great mentor, a great person. But most of what I know about academic professionalization I learned by reading online and books about the academic world. My department almost never had any workshops about finding academic jobs, much less things like how to publish a paper, how to submit conference abstracts, how to network at conferences, or why any of these things were important. Towards the end of graduate school, they started offering a few more of these kinds of things because of student complaints and demand. But it still wasn't enough! So the learning opportunity here is that you might be on your own with respect to finding out what the conventions are in your field and what will make you competitive as an applicant. You may have to explicitly and persistently ask your mentors for this information, or you may have to seek it out elsewhere. But make sure you do it, because you don't want to look up in year 4 or 5 and realize that you're uncompetitive for academic jobs. 2. How much I would change as a person, and how much things that weren't important to me became really important to me later on. Part of this was simply growing up - I was 22 when I started my PhD and 28 when I finished. But part of it was the transformative process of the PhD. It changed me in ways I didn't expect. For example, someone commented that their fellow PhD students seem to be more or less obsessed with their work and not given to socializing; then someone else said that's why they are excited for graduate school because they think parties are boring while reading, writing, and studying are fun. While I wouldn't have said parties are boring, when I first started grad school I felt the same - I thought it would be amazing because I loved to read, write, take classes, and study, and would have chosen to do them in my spare time at 22. Now, I still do love those things, but as work. But I definitely don't do them in my spare time (not related to work, anyway - I read, but pleasure books; I write, but fiction and reflective posts). I hated TV in college and I just binge-watched the entire first season of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt on Netflix. The work of graduate school is so complex and intellectual and mentally intensive that I just needed to decompress in a completely stupid, non-intellectual way, so sometime in my second or third year of grad school I bought a Netflix subscription and started binge-watching Law & Order: Special Victims Unit late at night. I think I watched the first 12 seasons of that show in like two months. In college, I wanted to have deep conversations with friends; now when I socialize with my friends - who are all highly-educated, intelligent, politically active people with challenging jobs - we mostly talk about dumb stuff. I had dinner a couple of days ago with three other PhDs and two lawyers and we chatted about movies and cheap wine and people's appearances. Because our jobs are intense and sometimes you just need to decompress! 3. How comfortable I felt despite being a woman of color in a predominantly white department. As an African American queer female scholar I read so much about racism/sexism/heteronormativity in academia, and how uncomfortable some scholars of color/female scholars/queer scholars felt in academic circles, etc. Now, everyone's experience is different, but I can genuinely say that I didn't experience any of that in graduate school. Most of my colleagues were white and straight but also progressive and kind and funny and warm, and struck the perfect note - did not ignore my race, but did not treat me differently because of it. (Gender was not a huge problem because my field is at least half women; and my sexual identity is not readily apparent to people because I am in an opposite-sex relationship, but when I did come out to people they were generally supportive and positive.) I had a lot of interesting cultural conversations with colleagues from different backgrounds (I spent some time explaining my hair to other people - lol! But not in a way that was marginalizing; it was more just like a cultural exchange rather than feeling like a strange curious animal or something). I also felt like there was a lot of support for me because of my race and gender; rather than trying to hold me back, the significant mentors in my life were (and are) actively trying to help me get through because they recognized a lack of black female scholars and genuinely wanted to change that. Most of these people were white. Again, everyone's experience is different - I do know some scholars at other places who felt discriminated against or had issues because of their race, gender, sexual identity or some other personal identity factor. And even with the support, it is tough to be the only one sometimes (I wasn't in one of my departments, but I definitely was in the other one). But...it surprised me how comfortable I was despite some horror stories I heard about before graduate school. And how comfortable I still am, despite being the African American scientist at both of my centers (and one of just three scholars of color; one of the others is a postdoc).

Chesire_Cat...I haven't really gotten to see the world in academia. I end up returning to the same cities over and over again for conferences, and thee days given budget cuts a lot of conferences are in smaller cities (Tampa, San Antonio, Albuquerque) although some are in bigger cities. Actually, I make conference decisions based on location and cost - one of my field's big conferences this year is in New York, and I'm going because I used to live there and still have an apartment! There are international conferences sometimes, but I can never afford to go. If you're a bigwig, maybe you can travel internationally a lot. But most of the junior professors I know who are trying to make a name for themselves hate it. My advisor has the opportunity to go to Vietnam for research and he's trying to get out of it. On the contrary, though, I like writing grants. Yes, you don't always get them, but you're spending time sitting down and really thinking through your project and the way you want to run it, why it's important, and potentially collaborating with other interesting people. Wonton Soup...Stanford is not in the Ivy League. I don't know that that was his implication, although it came off that way. The reason for the statement is that at many non-elite schools, the tenure review process isn't so rigorous - you don't have to be well-known in your field; you don't have to get external letters from scholars who don't know you testifying that you are the rising star in the area; you don't have to bring in millions in grant money. If you teach reasonably well and you publish at a decent clip, your tenure is assured - even elite small liberal arts colleges have very good tenure rates (I went to a conference on teaching at small elite liberal arts colleges, and several faculty members mentioned that they tenure almost everyone they hire). By contrast, at top schools, the tenure review process is crushing and many - if not most - new assistant professors are denied tenure.

Oh yeah, it's way too early to worry about this. And it varies from program to program. I had an external committee member on my dissertation committee; he was literally across the country, although he had been a professor in my department when I began my dissertation. His contribution was limited to reading my dissertation proposal, approving the proposal (and giving me feedback about directions in which to go), and then reading my final dissertation draft and participating in the defense by asking questions and providing suggestions about publication. He didn't read drafts; we didn't have weekly or monthly or semesterly meetings; none of that. However, it's varied with everyone. Some people's outside committee members did review drafts and had significant input on the direction of the project. One colleague actually worked directly with their outside committee member on research from her lab, and the only reason she wasn't the person's dissertation sponsor was because she couldn't be by the rules of our university (your sponsor had to be in your department). But this outside committee member was the true director of his dissertation research. So really, it just varies depending on your relationship with them and your own desires.

Both are important. Which one has more clout totally depends on who the advisor is and the programs you're comparing. Comparing a top 10 school with a top 30 school is different from comparing like two schools within the same range; also, some famous professors have extensive networks that will get you where you want to go regardless of where you are coming from (assuming that you are also good). At this point it's not much of a "choice" since you have only been accepted to one of the two.

There's also the detail that you've already accepted Ryerson's offer.

I don't think a Harvard degree will necessarily open more doors in public health than a Johns Hopkins degree. They have about equal reputation in our field. Harvard might have an edge if you wanted to leave the field of public health and/or do something prestige-driven like consulting. No, employers don't look at program rankings; but they do think about the reputation of a specific program in the field and JHU is widely known as a leader in health and medicine. JHU is like, synonymous with medicine - tons of hospitals and health coalitions associated with Hopkins too. And it's the leader in the world for health and science funding, according to the NSF. I have a couple of friends who got their PhDs at Hopkins; one is actually headed to start a faculty position at Harvard in the fall. I also don't think smaller class sizes, in graduate school, necessarily translates to superior training (just like it doesn't in college - I wouldn't say that Eastern Tennessee State University has superior training to Columbia, even though the class sizes at ETSU are smaller on average). You really can't go wrong here. One way to narrow it down is to decide whether you'd rather have a degree in epi or a degree in international health. A lot of jobs I've seen really ask for someone with a degree in epidemiology.

I did this, and the program figured out pretty quickly that I wanted the PhD and was applying to the MPH as a backup.

Going to a department with many people who can advise you is almost always better than going to a department at which only one person can advise you. What if you don't get along, or he moves, dies, or retires?

I think if it doesn't feel right - and it's not just cold feet or imposter syndrome - you shouldn't go. Life is too short to spend years in a PhD program you feel lukewarm about. OP, I've done long-distance with my husband but not 9 hours (or at least, not 9 hours for longer than 6 months). He was in TX while I was in NY for the first 6 months of my PhD program but then he got stationed about 3 hours away from me. Now we live about 4 hours apart while I do a postdoc and he finishes his degree. You're not excited because you don't want to live apart from your husband, and that's fine! 9 hours is a long time and 5 years is a long time to be 9 hours away. I'm fairly certain that I would not make that choice at this point in my career, and there's nothing wrong with that.

If they are otherwise equal professionally, then live in the fun place. I don't think Cornell is more highly regarded in engineering than Wisconsin - both are very well regarded on the graduate level.

I would at least try. What's the worst that could happen? FWIW I accepted a 3-year funding offer. I inquired about it and was told that students in years 4+ usually find external funding. I was given specific names of sources through which students found that funding, as well as a rough approximation of how many did. They also explained to me that so many professors had grants on which to put RAs and project coordinators. I was in a field where NIH funding is very common and funds most of the work in the field, so I knew there was money. I was also fine with the idea of leaving the program with an MA and reapplying somewhere else with better funding if I couldn't secure any. I hadn't originally intended to go straight for a PhD anyway. I would ask for specifics - how are advanced students supported, what percentage of them find full support, what percentage are on partial support, are there ever students who have to leave or drop out because they can't find support? What other departments do they TA in? Can you give me examples of students who have found viable research support in years 4+ - what forms did that support take (an RA job, a job as a project coordinator, a fellowship, a grant)? What does "work hard" mean - do you actually seek out opportunities for students to get funding and maintain infrastructure that supports that (like fellowship and grant-writing workshops, professors who are willing to review drafts, etc.) or does "work hard" simply mean you think about it really hard and hope everything works out? The potential for TAing classes in a doctoral program doesn't really cut it for me, because TAing individual classes doesn't always come with a tuition waiver and also doesn't always pay a big enough stipend to cover costs. I'm personally of the mindset that we shouldn't let these grad school professors and administrators get away with giving us half-answers to important questions and assuming that you're desperate, so you'll come. It's a mutual decision, and they should be forthcoming with information, and questions should be asked.

I agree that it'd be good for your career to go to Cornell. You already have a network of people at Michigan based on your prior work there; going to Cornell expands your network significantly. For me a decision matrix is not very useful for the reasons pointed out here - it's difficult to assign the weights, so they end up being arbitrary. I'm a quant person but this is kind of a qualitative decision to make. For example, I don't like weighting the excess living stipend so much because that's kind of irrelevant - I'd rather go to a great department I loved that met my needs (but not much more) than a department I was lukewarm about but had a big stipend. The number of PIs...for me it would be more about number + desirability. 2 PIs that seem likely to stay and that I really, really want to work with is better, to me, than 4 PIs who I could work with but am not as enthusiastic about. That's just me though.

Whoo, this is tough. Honestly to me none of them sound great. #1 might be the dream school, but you have a 90-minute commute - which is going to make it difficult to socialize and network with the department - and has the potential to create a custody nightmare. Any additional income you make will be offset by the high cost of living and the potential nightmare custody case, plus the costs of flying kids back and forth. #2 moves your entire family to a situation that's similar to #1 in terms of travel and your husband's career potential, with the additional con that the program is only for two years and there's a good possibility you'll need to move again afterwards. And nobody likes #3 - it sounds great for your spouse, but you sound unenthusiastic about it, and I presume your children don't like the idea either. Given that all three of your options have serious cons, if you are deadset on attending one of these programs this year I would go for the #1 program. If you are going to deal with significant life setbacks them it's probably better to make the sacrifice for the dream program than for a master's program and/or one that you are not enthusiastic about. It doesn't make sense for your spouse to establish a new practice for just two years - by the time he's got it up and running he'll move again. But first I would ask what the likelihood is of you getting your ABD phase funded, because you absolutely shouldn't pay full tuition for that. I also might ask what the admit rate is at the other two PhD programs from the master's program. #2 wouldn't be so bad if it were nearly assured that you would get into the PhD program given satisfactor ycompletion of the MA program - mid-ranked school, whole family loves the location, and a longer-term period for spouse to transfer the license, with cheap flights to bio-mom. I think (and you probably already have) I would also talk to my spouse about the actual likelihood of a custody case that would be costly and terrible for everyone involved. It changes things a lot if you don't have to worry about that. Also, if your goal is academia, it doesn't really matter where you want to end up long-term. You will most likely have to move again anyway. If you don't want an academic job, though, the place that you want to stay long-term is probably a good place to go. That way you can network and make connections within the city. It's my experience that I made lots of connections within Graduate City - both personal and professional - that would make it the place of least resistance to return to, other than Hometown, for non-academic employment. But the academic job market is likely insanely competitive because everyone wants to live in Grad City.

m2alc: $35K is very livable in the city - my stipend was around $32K. But don't plan on living in the area...if I recall correctly Weill Cornell's academic stuff and Mount Sinai are on the Upper East Side, and NYU Sackler is in like Midtown East. I would plan to live in East Harlem or maybe a close neighborhood in Queens - you should still be able to get there relatively quickly (30 minutes or less depending on how far into Queens you live). But UES is not going to be affordable. I don't think you are going to find a reasonably priced apartment in Park Slope. You maybe would in Gowns probably would in Astoria and Ridgewood, and definitely in Bushwick. Astoria's a really nice neighborhood - a friend lives there. You should definitely consider finding some roommates and sharing, though. I only know a very small handful of people in NY who live alone, and most of them have assistance from their parents in one way or another. I see you were accepted to Emory, too - Atlanta has a very low cost of living, although you would really need a car to get around most efficiently there. Warm summers and mild winters I've also heard good things about the Twin Cities.

I grew up in Atlanta and went to Spelman for undergrad, which is right across the street from Clark Atlanta. I can't comment on the program but I can comment on the area surrounding the university. CAU is located in the West End of Atlanta. Atlanta, itself, is a great city - lots to do; low cost of living; great nightlife and restaurants and attractions. Great for the arts and music. If you are African American (which I mention since CAU is an HBCU), there's a large proportion of highly-educated African Americans in the metropolitan Atlanta area. There are also lots of other universities in the area, which means opportunities to socialize with graduate students from a variety of different grad schools. I got accepted to Emory for grad school, and while I do not regret my educational choices at all, I sometimes wish I got to experience my 20s in Atlanta. It's such a great city. Now the neighborhood that CAU and the rest of the AUC is in - the West End - is not so nice. There was a public housing project called University Homes that attracted a lot of crime and poverty to the area; they've since been boarded up (right after I graduated, in 2008-2009) and demolished but not rebuilt. I know they were planning to replace it with a mixed-income development but I'm not sure whether or not they did. The rest of the area around West End/the AUC was in a state of urban decay when I was there - liquor stores, fringe banking, none of the nice grocery stores and attractions other areas of downtown Atlanta have. Wikipedia claims that the area is going through some urban renewal, which wouldn't surprise me. They built this new condo complex right down the street from the AUC called Sky Lofts, and they are building parts of the BeltLine project through West End (the BeltLine is a new Atlanta project to install walking trails, bike paths, and public parks along a "beltline" through and around Atlanta, with accompanying retail and attractions). Trees Atlanta - a notable Atlanta public service organization - planted a bunch of trees as the beginning of an arboretum in West End, which makes me smile because West End was one of the most tree-less places in the City of Trees. Another positive is that the place is a hotbed of African American history; most of the streets in the area are named after civil rights pioneers. The thing is, the AUC and Clark are easily accessible. the West End MARTA station is walking distance (bit of a walk - about 15-20 minutes) from campus; I think Ashby or Vine City might be closer to CAU's campus though. And honestly, CAU is pretty close to some top Atlanta attractions - like the Georgia World Congress Center, Philips Arena, the CNN Center, Centennial Olympic Park and the World of Coke. Also looks like they built some new nice apartment complexes sort of nearby. Also the I-20 exit is right down the street from CAU, so if you lived near I-20 (or any of the connecting highways, which is all of them) you could drive in relatively easily. I grew up in the Stone Mountain/Lithonia area and it was a 20 minute straight shot down I-20 if there was no traffic. (Atlanta traffic is horrible, though, so if you have to go during rush hour I wouldn't recommend living too far from campus.)