TVDOC

Hi everyone. I've been "lurking" in here for the past 2-3 weeks and thought I might offer a bit of encouragement. I applied last year to 8 PhD programs and it had to be one of the most stressful times of my life, so I know what its like. From my experience, I don't think this is a numbers game. My GRE scores were average at best. I had a strong GPA and good work experience. However, it came down to fit. My current program had an opening for someone with my research interests and I was in the right place at the right time. If I had different research interests I know I would not be in this position now. I have spent a lot of time talking w/ my cohort members about their application experiences and they agree. As an example, I know someone who had perfect GRE scores and did not get in to some schools where offers were made to people with average scores. At the end of the day, you just don't know. Acceptance or rejection should not be taken as a measure of worth. Some advice from my experiences: 1. Plan on waiting, waiting and doing some more waiting. If you plan for the process to take until April 15th, you will not be disappointed if you hear from everyone early. However, if you set your expectations to hear early, you will surely be disappointed. 2. Don't be shy. Pick up the phone or send an email. Most schools have someone that deals with these applications every year and its part of their job descriptions. So, its your right and their job to be available to you. I only got answers from 3 of my schools because I called to find out the status. 3. Ask questions. I had a school tell me the notes from the person who reviewed my file said I would be a good fit for their business school. Really? Obviously this person did not read my SOP or got my file confused w/ someone else. I would not have found this out if I didn't ask why I didn't get accepted. To make matters more stressful at the time, that was at my "safety" school. So, the reviewers are real people. They make mistakes. Not that rejecting me was a mistake, but the mistake was the way this person mis-read or mis-interpreted my SOP. 4. Getting in is not the same as getting funding. Make sure to do your research on funding if you need it. Every school is different. Don't make any assumptions or decisions until you know about the $. You might get an acceptance and get it in your head that you are 100% going, and then later find out there is no $. That would be a let down. So be diligent. Many schools do not come out and say what their funding situation is because it usually changes from year to year. A few have set patterns. For example, 1 school I know makes 8 fully funded offers each year. Everyone in the program is funded. No admissions offers to people w/ out $. Others are highly dependent on state budgets. So, the governor says he is cutting university funding and your program may only offer half the number of funded spots as the previous year. To keep the enrollment numbers up they will offer admissions, but you will be expected to pay. Three to four years of tuition, books, fees and living expenses can get VERY expensive. 5. The great thing about this board is that we are all in it together. Leave the negativity at home. Encourage others and you will receive encouragement in return. This is a stressful time for everyone. I personally still keep in touch w/ several people I met on this board and you never know who might even end up at the same school as you, so be nice. 6. When deciding on schools its ok to talk to current students. If you can not visit the school, call and ask for a list of people who you could call. They should be more than willing. What would they have to hide. The people who are in the program ahead of you are the best source of honest information. You want to make sure people are happy, that its a good collaborative program, that the professor you plan on working with is not talking about retiring the next year, and that things generally work the way you expect they will. 7. Dont just look at the programs website, but the universities general site. There is a difference between courses listed as possibilities to be offered and those that are actually offered. Go through old class schedules to see what you might have taken from semester to semester to make sure your interests are covered. Go thru the syllabus from a required class to see what the work load is, what you might expect in terms of papers, exams, etc... This is your future and you want to make sure your goals match those of the program. My goal is to do research and teach at university level. So, its important to get a research agenda established and get papers presented at conferences and hopefully published. The classes in my program usually culminate in a quality paper that can be used for conferences and journal submissions. So, that is a good fit for me. This is an example of the types of things you want to mesh well. Anyway, I am sure I could go on and on. But, as usual, its time to get back to studying. Yes, I am aware it is Friday night. If I can answer any questions for anyone, I would be happy to try and help, feel free to send a private message.

I use APA style and no the table of contents does not list the abstract. But, check your style guide. You can use roman numerals, numbers, etc.. by doing a section break and each section should act independently. Use the page number feature in the header. Just google it for specific instructions. I sometimes have trouble, so I do them separately in Word, then save them all as PDF's and add all the PDF files together to make 1 pdf will all pages included. Sometimes this is just easier than wasting a ton of time trying to get page numbering to cooperate when you just cant figure it out.

Congrats Commtome. Amherst is a cool area, I'm sure you'll love it.

that's great. Miami is such a cool place. There is no way I would have been able to go w/ out funding. they charge $1,600 per credit + fees so the whole program values out at $100,000. So, awesome that you got funding and have decided to go. No more winter for me either which I am excited about, maybe a bit colder than Miami but not stuck in the house for days on end b/c of snow. I broke my elbow this winter after falling on ice so you can imagine how I'm now anti-snow and cold.

Awesome! So happy for you.

AND......... in the eleventh hour, yours truly snags the final spot at UGA w/ funding! I am so excited. It's been a long 6 months since submitting apps. I have appreciated all of you on this forum and I am really happy to have been able to go through this experience w/ you all. Correction, I should say y'all since I will be going to Georgia. Note to self....work on southern drawl this summer. It looks like many people have been coming off wait lists, getting funding and making final decisions. May we all get what we desire, best of luck to everyone.

Got my 2nd acceptance today, but again no funding What makes it worse is that yesterday it was announced that the cast of Jersey Shore will be taking home over $100k each per episode. So, 1 cast members pay for 1 episode would fund 4 years of my PhD program, but I will probably be flipping burgers at minimum wage to pay for school (not really). Maybe I should stop all this academic writing and get to work on my fist pumping, GTL and ab crunches (not really).

Final week starts tomorrow. Good luck to everyone!

Down to 1 week. Is there anyone else out there still waiting? Seems like a lot of people making decisions in the past few days. Congrats to you all and for those of us still in limbo, just think how long a wait it has been and we can make it another 7 days if necessary!

good luck to you too! 11 days, no funded options here either. Felt horrible yesterday when I filled out the FAFSA paperwork for a loan just in case no funded options come about and my only option is to pay at my 1 accept Hard to motivate and do work these days knowing the last years of work may not pay off, so why do more? I know, I know, stay positive, but there is only so much optimism one person can have. What would I have done differently I ask... well, I think I might have not bothered applying to the stretch schools (aka top programs) and sought out some more smaller lesser known programs to increase my odds. It's tough when the top programs have the best faculty, classes, funding, etc.. and the others just arent as perfect a fit in many cases. Hmmm.

Headline on Yahoo! this morning said "1 month till royal wedding" I thought it should read "15 days till grad school deadline!" but I don't think we will be seeing that headline any time soon although I m sure our deadline is much more important to us than the wedding

Dont hesitate to pickup the phone and call. Maybe there is an administrative contact at the dept. you can start w/ and if you dont get anywhere w/ that, then contact the POI.

At this stage I wouldnt be able to stand sending an email and hoping for a response, so I prefer to call at this point especially with since the clock is ticking away so fast.

3 weeks until decision day.... Ugh! I am still waiting on the following: Penn State Mass Comm: Told I will have an admit decision on Mon 3/28 Temple Funding: Told I will have a decision before 4/1 U Miami: Told I will have an admit decision 1st week of April Univ. GA: Waitlisted, might not know anything till 4/15 or later. I am pretty surprised being this close to the end and I am waiting for so many decisions to be made. I guess I naively thought at some point I would get a letter w/ an offer and funding and make a decisions and it would be that easy. Huh, so much for that nice idea. Now that the process is almost over, how did it compare to your expectations? AND Are you still waiting for a decision on admissions, funding, something else?

I just called again b/c I never heard back from the meeting they had last friday and its now been a week. I didnt want to wait all weekend to hear something. Well, looks like more waiting. There is apparently yet another meeting on Monday and my name is on the list for that meeting. Not sure what that means at this point. Dont know if they made another round of cuts last fri and I survived that, if they never made it to my name or whatever. Hopefully there will be some good news on Monday. Ugh, this is exhausting.