synthla

Well riss287, I am keeping my fingers crossed that you find either a grad school acceptance or a new guy over the weekend - although I will put special emphasis on the former, as finding the latter first could cause complications in about 6 months or so. In the worst case scenario, I recommend using the whiskey to make a Manhattan or two. I'm addicted to those... figuratively speaking. :wink:

Sharing a hotel room? Eek. Yeah, I think until decisions are actually made, ignorance as to the other prospective students is probably more blissful (gradcafe is bad enough :wink: ). Who knows, maybe you'll go and come away feeling really good about yourself, but I think there would be a great risk of increasing one's insecurities. At the end of the day, if NYU is a school you're into, it sounds like you don't have much of a choice but to go and endure, but I think there's probably a reason NYU is sort of on it's own with this type of event.

The NYU thing is bizarre. I can't imagine it will be a great deal of fun socializing with faculty by whom you're being judged and other prospective students with whom you're competing. I understand why it's beneficial from the department's perspective, but one would think the same benefit could be gained by a half-hour or hour phone interview. Obviously this doesn't impact me one bit as I didn't apply there, but if I had another offer I was pretty happy with, I doubt I'd jump through their hoops.

Seems like Berkeley is sending out those rejection emails one at a time.

Re: burnout, I went straight through to my first graduate experience and definitely felt the burnout factor. Seemed that my classmates who had a year or two off first were in a much better mental place, and probably got a lot more out of it. Now that I'm going back for a second bite at the grad school apple and have been in the working world for several years, I know this is true from my own perspective. Having had the chance to compare academic life with some of the alternatives, I know I'll be far more dedicated than the first time around, and my mind is fresh and ready to fully engage in the deep learning process, as opposed to having this desire to just be done with school and get on with things. (Don't get me wrong, I don't plan to be an eternal student, but the working world no longer holds any exotic mysterious allure for me.)

Fair point, but my guess is that most funding "contracts" have sufficient outs for the university that they could find a pretext to cut you if they really wanted/needed. Sure it makes them look bad to future prospects, but there are probably 6 or 7 people out there who would trip over themselves to get your spot no matter what the school had previously done.

Thanks Auzzfest! PM me if you want any more specific details so I don't bore everyone, but I came away with a great feeling about the UCSB department. Had lunch and/or met with most of the people in my field, including my initial advisor, and had coffee with a couple current grad students. Obviously the environment is beautiful, but that's just icing on a cake, not a reason to go one place or another. There's a good fit between me and faculty interests, so spent a considerable amount of time just talking shop, which was fun. I'm not leaning too far in any direction at this point. I'm visiting Indiana next month, so I'll have a better evaluation of them at that point. They've been very helpful since the admission decision was made, but I've been in touch with the people in my field at UCSB for weeks on their initiative, so that gets them points. On the other hand, Indiana's already given me the funding details - 5 years of tuition, insurance and stipend (2 years fellowship, 3 years with light TA duties). I got the impression that UCSB students have a much heavier TA load, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, given that teaching experience is very valuable when going out on the job market.

But you don't want to be stressed out about making your rent every month while you're in grad school either. One of my POIs, in a department where full funding isn't a consistent offering, said that they wouldn't recommend accepting an offer that didn't include a funding committment from the school solely from a practicality standpoint, and this is someone who would otherwise really like to see me attending their school.

Yes and yes... never thought I would compare the financial condition of states in making my decision, but my understanding is that Indiana is in much better shape, fiscally, than California. And what's a guarantee of funding really worth if you have no confidence in the guarantor? Most grad students aren't going to have the resources to sue the UC system to compel them to honor the funding letter. :wink:

Welcome to the party - don't overlook our History Admissions 2009 thread under the History subforum...

I'd stay positive with UCSB too; the letter was dated Monday (2/9), but wasn't mailed until yesterday (2/11), and I imagine a similar letter would take longer to get to you than to me. Also, the website still hasn't been updated because apparently that doesn't happen until it gets official Graduate School approval.

Exact same thing happened to me when I got rejected by UCSD, before I'd heard from anyplace else. Tension disappeared to a large extent, even though the news was bad.

Just found out I was admitted to UCSB... nominated for funding, but that info won't come until later this month.

As a soon to be grad student, and eventually T.A., I can under no circumstances allow my significant other to read this discussion thread. It would confirm all of her worst fears.

I'm willing to start living on $15,000/yr. at age 30.

[quote name="Louiselab

I certainly didn't enjoy it at Columbia. Of course there I received the deadly combination of New York City pretentiousness and Ivy League snobbery. Hence why I fled to California shortly after completing that degree.

I too went to a small liberal arts college; unfortunately for my first graduate school, I let the highly-ranked school wow me too much over the visit, and ended up not liking my experience at the school at all. Don't regret it, but I certainly learned from my mistake this time around. Ironically, Northwestern was my top choice before I visited the higher-ranked school (this was for another department - not history), so if you end up not going to Northwestern now, I have a lot for which to atone.

I'd definitely wait until you have that letter in hand before burning any other bridges, though that might just be the play-it-safe lawyer in me coming out. Also, your visit to campus is the school's chance to sell itself to you; even if you're 97% sure you're not going to attend there, they certainly saw something in your application that appealed to their department, and it might be worth exploring that. At both the undergraduate and (first) graduate level, I made an unexpected choice of school based upon a campus visit.

Overwhelmed in a very good way, at least. Congratulations!

Congratulations, that's great! ... Although I've now lost the only person I was going to know at Indiana (so far).

Haha, me too... someone posted on another thread that if you're going to grad school, being in an archive surrounded by primary sources better make you tingle in a way that nothing else does (or something like that; I'm definitely loosely paraphrasing). But it does me. And I had the chance to have lunch with two history professors yesterday and being able to talk about obscure historical facts and the current state of the field was a thrill and something I'm looking forward to doing on a regular basis. If all I get is the 7 or so years it takes me to finish my doctorate, then so be it - I'll do my utmost to work in this field afterwards, but it will have been worth it nonetheless.

ARE YOU A HARVARD PERSON AND WHAT IS YOUR FIELD?

I'm sure it does depend on department to an extent; if it's a department where everyone is funded as a matter of course, I'd guess competition is much lower.

That was probably one of the weaker parts of my application because I was/am in the same position. I used a nice seminar paper with some primary source work as my writing sample, but it certainly wasn't "thesis" level; however I think my SoP made it clear that I've become pretty well read in my subfield on my own time and had critically thought about my research interests, and mentioned that law is research and writing at it's most basic level. Apparently one school, at least, has looked past my lack of evidenced historical research and thrown in a nice funding package as well. EDIT: I should also mention I didn't even major in history.