Golden Monkey

Rents in Manhattan are ridiculous. It's probably a bit more practical to live in Jersey and take trips to Manhattan for recreation. The NJTransit trains go from New Brunswick to Penn Station for $13 though.

I finally got an unofficial acceptance, so I'm posting about it here instead.

I posted my first rejection. Not sure if I will post any that come from now on.

Oh, btw, one thing that's a bit different in my situation than most is that I was out of school for 18 years, mired in the sisyphean cycle of workmyassoff - avoidlayoffs - getlaidoffanyway - scrambleforworkagain - repeat. So by the time I started my master's I was 40 and finished it a few days before turning 43. So if I were to start another master's, it probably would not be in hopes of making myself a better PhD candidate. I have already decided that if this PhD application doesn't work out, that's the end of it, so in truth, the second master's would be a consolation prize of sorts, I guess. The second master's degree, would, I'm hoping, increase my marketability in academia, or failing that, increase my potential pay scale in industry. Though I guess it could also just make me really overqualified instead. One thing about getting to this age is that there's a Plan A, but there's also a Plan B through... Plan G in place...

Well, good to hear that others are doing this or are thinking about it. This idea didn't occur to me earlier. I guess if it had, I would have tried to apply to a couple of master's programs too, but oh well, one thing at a time. I think I'm addicted to pursuing goals or something. I had the same reaction after finishing my bachelor's. "Woohoo! I'm finished... oh... wait a minute..." I've had phases in my professional life where I've just been going to work every day, going home, trying not to get laid off, do it again the next day. Repeat for 15 years. I'm not sure I can go back to that.

I googled this, and of all places, found a good discussion on macrumors: http://forums.macrumors.com/archive/index.php/t-1045767.html Unlikely place, but people were making some good points.

Wondering if anyone has taken their PhD rejections as an opportunity to get another master's? I have no idea how the finances work out on this, as I know funding for master's degrees is really rare, but I lucked out with my master's by getting a job with the university, which resulted in discounted tuition. There are very, very few PhD programs in my discipline, but I have other interests that intersect very closely with it, so if the financial end worked out (ha ha,) I could see trying to get another master's instead. As one who delayed his master's degree for 15 years and was mired in the deepest recesses of industry work for that entire time, I'm now finding that I really, really enjoy school, academic environments, and working towards a final goal, such as a degree. I even kind of like being the oldest one in the classroom.

I'll be stopping by the store to pick up either some more Maker's Mark or Jack Daniels. Maybe both.

I can't possibly begin to address everything you've brought up here, but I think I can address a couple of things. While the possibility of delaying a PhD until your late 30s/early 40s might seem like a horrifying situation right now, when you're actually in your late 30s/early 40s, it just isn't such a big deal. Yes, you will be older than everyone else. But you will also have more career options open than your younger classmates, since by then, you will have been working for a lot longer. I think these two things balance each other out. I started my master's at the age of 40, simply because I couldn't afford to at the ages of 22-38 and was constantly working my ass off during those years. The concept of not finishing or continuing my education wasn't such a big deal to me, as I was pretty well established in my professional life. This would not be true if I had been 25 at the time. I completely agree with Kotov. The South gets a bad rap due to a few fanatics. I am a minority, but I was also born and raised in Tennessee. For the second half of my life, I've lived in LA and NYC, generally considered extremely tolerant places. I think I've encountered more racism in LA and NYC than I ever did growing up in Tennessee. The thing about places that are considered "liberal" is the fact that intolerance might come from a different group of people, and also that people who live in places considered "liberal" sometimes consider their residence/native status of a supposedly liberal region to be a license for intolerance. So yeah, The South isn't that bad. I'd honestly welcome the opportunity to move back.

I made it through another week without receiving a second rejection. Small victory, I know. Of course, I didn't get any acceptances either.

"We feel your talents could be better used anywhere but here."

"You are free to explore options other than our program." This isn't what they actually told me, but I think it's a good euphemism.

Thanks for that!

Do rejection emails tend to go out on Fridays? My first one was on a Friday, and it seems like something programs might reserve for the end of the week. Likewise, I think I see more rejection results on the Results page here on Fridays. Funny, I used to look forward to them, but suddenly not so much...

I'm in the opposite situation. Everyone at work knows I got my first rejection last week. It was completely impossible to keep the applications a secret, as I work for the same program I got my master's in and needed to ask coworkers for letters of recommendation.

Even then, I'm wondering if a PhD would just make me overqualified for non-academia jobs. I was just applying for a job today that said "bachelors degree preferred," but wondered if listing my master's already made me overqualified. Maybe I should have left it off.

After getting my first rejection, this article is actually somewhat comforting.

Interesting-- I finally found out why my resume got so many hits compared to the rest of my site. I'm reading a job search book (part of Plan B in case this PhD thing doesn't pan out,) and apparently headhunters now use spiders/bots to search for resumes. Searching for resumes on job boards costs them money, but using a bot to scour the internet for key phrases is free. So a lot of headhunters will set up their bots to look for any pdf, doc, or html file, where the name of the file includes the string "resume" in it (like mine does,) and then it will search the file for key words, like "Pro E," or "javascript," or "php" or "IEEE," or something like that. So it's a good way to get found by headhunters, but it still doesn't help you out at all with the adcomms, unfortunately.

The thing I wonder about is if my "safety" schools emphasize things like GRE scores more. If that's the case, I won't be getting in anywhere.

That's not luck. One fully-funded offer is luck. 3 is obviously you doing something right. Congrats!

You got 3 funded acceptances??? Holy cow!

I guess I was assuming that Delarne was applying to visually-related fields (as I am,) because he/she referred to it as a "portfolio" site. If you're a sculptor, theatrical lighting designer, programmer of beautiful fractals, or even someone who just created a really good database system, you can't really convey a whole lot through an SOP. If adcomms won't bother to go to a portfolio URL in those cases, it's pretty much hopeless for some of us.

Heh, I got my rejection letter today from Fully Funded Program #1 today, but I also received a beautiful box of business cards today that I had ordered from an online printer. The new cards were part of my very proactive Plan B, which was to take my non-academic career as far as possible if this PhD thing doesn't work out. I think this is the universe's way of telling me to scrap this and go back to work. If it comes down to a choice of me having to find my own funding, or me just going back to work, I'll just go back to work.

I definitely understand the "aren't going to bother" part, but the "unfair advantage" part kind of eludes me. Websites and portfolio sites are free these days: weebly.com, google sites (amazing,) behance portfolios for artists, free blogs from tumblr, soup.io, wordpress, blogspot, profile pages on linkedin, vimeo for free video hosting, etc. Some of them, like tumblr, require zero computer skills. I am kind of puzzled that a portfolio/work site isn't considered a requirement instead of an unfair advantage. But hey, I got my first rejection today, so obviously it didn't help me at all.