Tonights

There was a significantly higher amount of reading material - I'd say two to three times as much. Instead of being a textbook or a couple of books, it would usually be pdfs of journal articles. Instead of essay exams, we'd have term papers. Classes would be in the roundtable seminar style instead of lecture. Sometimes the students would take turns facilitating discussion, with professor assistance. Class size would be under ten as opposed to ~30. Gosh, I loved my grad classes. Now I feel even more anxiety about getting in, I want to get back to that atmosphere so much.

Oh lord, March. This is when I start wishing I was in a hard science so I'd hear this week. :wink:

I wish I had interviews just so I would be doing something besides sitting on my can next to the mailbox, but in reality I know that if I had them I'd feel exactly like you are now - terrified. I nearly puked before my campus visits, and they were totally informal. Social phobia for the lose.

I had a campus visit before I applied to one of my schools. Two of the professors were ALL OVER my research - even discussed sharing my advisement - so I started to feel really encouraged, and then I had an interview with the chair of the department and it was the biggest downer ever. He was all "we don't have any money, and even what we have, we probably won't give you. See ya, kid." Okay, that's an exaggeration, but... I don't know if he just disliked me at first sight or what, but it was terrible. After such an expression of enthusiasm from the two professors I visited with, I'd expected to hear positive things, but he was so negative that I'm expecting a rejection from that school.

I'm from a top-100 UG department. So not too, too awesome. But I also always took the most difficult classes available, including ones that were composed of primarily graduate students. Hopefully that'll go in my favor.

Well, yes and no. I feel like you guys on this board are sort of my comrades - so no, I hope for good things for y'all. But the faceless "other" folks who get admitted instead of me? Well, them I hate.

I feel the same, trust me, but "five to nine" was the quote at most of my schools. One department had a guy who'd been in the program for 25 years on and off!

Yes, and we have no idea what the job market's going to look like in five to nine years. In this country at least, we have a new president now who theoretically is going to do big things for education. Who knows what the atmosphere will be like when we're graduating? I'm going to worry about just getting admitted, for now. :wink:

Ewurgler, yes, it definitely does depend. Liberal arts institutions tend to be less concerned about your pedigree from what I have heard. Luckily, I will be very happy to spend eternity in some out-of-the-way institution if that is what fate bestows on me. Then again, I applied to a couple top ten programs and if I get into one of them, that's where I'm a-headed!

The distribution of this poll is so interesting.

Liberal arts.

I'm not very concerned. I was the undergrad representative to the search committee when my department was hiring. I read resumes, interviewed, participated in votes, etc. Do you know how much emphasis we placed on their school ranking? One metric sparrowfart, that's how much. It was alllll about department fit and how much we liked the person and their work and their ideas and their classroom demeanor. And I figure, if we were like that, some other places must be too. I hope so, anyway. I hear things that make me hopeful that at least in my field it's not all about numbers.

I thought it was "don't give a fig." Now I'm hungry for figs. Anyway, I don't give a fig/fink/funk. My field has too many specializations and niches to make rankings very accurate, imho.

I am actually a little bit insecure about applying with only a BA. I hope it will not count against me that I don't want to pay to repeat classwork I have already had. Some days I convince myself that I will be rejected outright because I'm not applying with a masters. Today is one of those days.

How weird, t_ruth! I don't know what to hypothesize. It seems really shitty of them, if they were selling the list.

I sort of wish my field had interviews. Then I'd have some sort of feeling about my footing instead of just the interminable silence.

No problem, fenderpete. Everybody needs supportiveness during this circus of anxiety. I distracted myself today by fixing my toilet and baking soft pretzels. Eek, a 4-5 page statement of purpose? That's the first time I've ever heard of one that long. Mine were one and a half to two pages, and I was under the impression that this was the desirable length. Is the pointless chatter on the results page bothersome to anyone else?

Oh, balls. I only just got my W2 from my layabout of a boss. Here come the all-nighters! Thanks for the heads-up.

I'm putting off buying a new cell phone until I find out if I'll be in grad school next year. If I do manage to get my sorry ass accepted somewhere, I think I'm definitely going to be buying an email-capable phone with a QWERTY keyboard so I can stay on top of things and take notes on ideas as they occur to me. Here's a funny story about how fried my brain is and how stressed out I've been. When I typed "QWERTY" up there, I thought to myself for a second "Gee, all the keys for this word are right in a row!" :roll: I think my statement of purpose is fairly strong. I have a clear research interest, which is good, and I talk about my fieldwork, in which I have confidence. My adviser told me it was really interesting to read, which made me let out a big breath. It's my writing sample I'm not too keen on. I HATE my writing sample, but I also hated every other piece of writing I had to choose from. My best research hasn't been written up yet because I'm saving it for grad school, and I've been out of academia for a year and a half and I just hate everything I've ever produced and I feel like they're going to laugh me right out of the "maybe" pile.

I wish all schools did that so there was no 3 seconds of anxiety while viciously tearing open the envelope.

Linden, thank you so much for talking some sense into me. My blood pressure is a lot lower now than it was 15 minutes ago.

In a perfect world, letters from people who really knew your work would trump letters from known names, but I'm informed that apparently it isn't a perfect world. :? Your letters seem like a really good mix though.

I was feeling so good and now I'm in a funk because none of my letters are from well-known folks. I picked people who know my work really, really well - the professor who supervised my fieldwork, my undergraduate adviser who is my biggest fan, and a professor from the school that I transferred out of, but had for three classes. But none of them are exactly famous, so I'm paranoid that their recs will mean nothing. The only well-known person at my undergrad (who my adviser initially recommended I ask for a letter) is a really terrible professor that I do not get along with one bit, so that went into the bin. Now I'm like "maybe I should have tried to suck up to her more." :/

I'm applying with a BA and fieldwork research experience. My professors advised me that if I knew I wanted a doctorate, it was best to just go for it directly. I took a lot of graduate classes my junior and senior years of undergrad, so I feel like doing an MA would be repetitive at best (not to mention unnecessarily costly).

I think if it happens for me, I'm going to stand there in stunned shock, call everyone I know, and then go out for margaritas.