erudite crudite

i love love love papers! i think it's mac only, but their iphone app is awesome. http://mekentosj.com/papers/

For physical, I know George Washington and CUNY were handing out lush packages (>$25K, including tuition, health insurance, etc.) I'm going to UT to work with a badass in paleoecology, and they're giving me $13k (plus tuition, health, and a $5k research award) for 5 years as a TAship. UT Austin and ASU were throwing money at me. But the fact that all a in physical are funded (and therefore competition between students isn't unhealthily crazy), along with the guarantee of that same funding for 5 years (as opposed to the gamble of having to pay out of state tuition in subsequent years if I couldn't land a TAship) ultimately helped me decide.

hey tistre, i'm keeping my fingers crossed for you! if you end up going to UT we should get a cup of coffee or something!

After sending in my letters to decline programs, and accepting at UT, I got a call last night from my advisor at my number 2 program. He wanted to let me know that they found even more funding for me, and that although he didn't want to "send me spinning into a tizzy" he wanted to let me know that the offer will stand until the end of the month (what good does that do me?!?). So what did I do? I went spinning into a tizzy. It was a really hard decision to turn them down, and I found myself second guessing everything that I had signed up for. I called two of my LOR writers and they talked me down from the ledge, but it's still just as painful to decline them a second time. I feel like either program would be a good fit, but the departmental climate and security of the funding they're offering are very different. I'm sticking with UT, but I suppose it's flattering that they would go out of their way in the final moments to try and score another point. I knew something like this would happen, as soon as I thought I could breathe easy and rest assured that everything was OVER.

officially accepted my offer yesterday!

Officially accepted the offer from University of Texas at Austin! Hook 'em horns! Hopefully this will free up a space (and my funding) for someone still waiting on ASU.

I know exactly how you feel. I keep telling myself that no matter where I end up it will be more about what I do while I'm there than where it is I'm doing it. Plus there's always room to collaborate with some of the faculty you've established contact with at other schools. That's one of the main reasons my advisors encouraged me to contact everyone I was applying to work with, getting your name out there early in the game.

I'm still deciding/waiting. I had all but accepted at my #2 school after an absolutely fabulous visit, when I learned that I was waitlisted at my #1. That kind of threw a wrench into the situation. The program coordinator assured me that I'd most likely hear yes or no before the 15th, but I'm unbelievably antsy. Plus, all this extra time to think has made ms re-evaluate my options. I was at the AAPAs this week in Chicago and was able to meet one of my prospective advisors at a top program that I had previously discounted due to their inability to compete with funding from school #2. I've already declined two offers with hopes that other on the waitlist could get spot, but this waiting is driving me nuts.

I know it might be a little soon, but does anyone know where they're going yet? April 15th is 17 days away!

99% sure I'll be there this fall! Where are you all looking at housing?

hey! i think we met! where did you accept?

Has anyone admitted to OSU heard anything about funding yet? Had any sort of contact with the department?

He said on Thursday that they'd be contacting "early next week"... Fingers crossed!

He said I was still in the running. I know the list before the most recent round of cuts had 12 people on it, and they're offering admission to 5 or 6.

I got a call from a Columbus, Ohio number last night at 7, but they didn't leave a message. I'll be damned if I know anyone from Ohio, it has to be the school! Do I call the mystery number back? Or do I just wait for them to call again? They *will* call again, right?

I emailed Brian Richmond after I got back from the conference and he said they went through a round of cuts this week and will make the final decisions next week. Not exactly "concrete" but it's something...

I spoke with a professor at a conference this weekend that said they were holding off on offers until they got their new budget straightened out. Then I missed a call yesterday from my prospective advisor saying that he had good news for me that he'd rather not leave on voicemail, so apparently either they got the budget straigthened out very recently, or there are varying degrees of being clued in amongst the professors. My status still hasn't changed and I called that faculty member back and left a message, but he hasn't called me back yet. I'll update when he does. EDIT: I'm in. No word on funding, though. In other news. OSU = WTF? One of my friends got invited to an interview weekend this week and assumed since I wasn't a part of this it meant I was either out or waitlisted. Then I checked the status site and it said I'm in. No correspondence yet though.

Here's some recon: -NYU can't have made all of their decisions yet. Maybe for one subfield, but they're still set to meet after the NYCEP conference. -Each of the three schools in NYCEP will be taking 3 students, give or take. -GWU will be meeting Tuesday to make final decisions, they'll be taking 5 or 6 students instead of the usual 3 or 4. -ASU is waiting on their new budget before making offers, so it may be awhile before anyone hears from them. Happy Monday! Here's hoping the mail/email/phone gods smile in your favor!

Thanks fieldwork and sunshine, I'm very excited! Although it's funny how at one school, I applied for a PhD and got accepted for a MA (Arkansas, because they lost part of my application and it wasn't considered in time :evil: ) and at UT I applied for a MA and got accepted for a PhD. This whole process is so mysterious.

I got a call from my prospective advisor at UT Austin asking to set up a time to chat about my interests, and after fielding a few of the usual questions he let me know that the committee had met that afternoon and accepted me with funding. I'm not sure if only the physical faculty met or not, but I do know that they're looking to fill up to 5 more fully funded positions within the subsidcipline. .

I didn't forget to change the name of the school, but I did manage to misspell the potential advisor's name (Steven vs. Stephen), but luckily I got accepted there anyways. I also accidentally sent one program two letters of rec from the same professor, one of which was meant for another school that was also due that day, and resulted in me frantically emailing the grad secretary to disregard the erroneous letter and begging my professor for another copy to mail off quickly!

we could use some now. for your consideration, i give you:

I got an email this afternoon inviting me to the NYCEP conference on behalf of CUNY, in order to meet my prospective advisor and other faculty in the program, and they're footing the bill! Wahoo!

I know this is a severely punctuated list, but if I tried to list every single obscure pocket of anthropology I'd be here all day (which I am already, but that's another story). You can choose as many as you see fit. Let me know if I grossly overlooked anything major!

I asked my undergrad advisor about this early in the application process and he told me to absolutely contact possible advisors. Even if they didn't respond, there might be a chance of name recognition or a snippet in my email that they would remember when making decisions. I identified the faculty member that most closely matched my research interests from each school and sent a short email introducing myself, hinting on my background, and asking them if they were accepting students for Fall 2009 admissions. I received word back from all but one, several even replied within the hour! I ended up emailing a few faculty back and forth for about a month and even got a chance to have an informal interview with one of the profs before I even applied. Two called my undergrad advisor to get the scoop on me. So far I've gotten two acceptances and an interview at my top choice and I think contacting them definitely helped in the process.