snes

okay, it's done! Chicago it is! (Perhaps with purpledinosaur??) now to try to turn my fear/nerves/nausea into excitement! ajksdsalkdjsakldjsaldkjaldksjdlajskslajdksaljdsakdasl

Now that you've decided (congrats!) tell yourself or write down all the reasons you chose that school. Aspects like prestige and program fit are factors that are more or less long-lasting and significant for your future. Your regret might just be a mixture of nerves and fear because the program is in a new geographical location, and maybe guilt for turning down someone you really liked. Those feelings are not long-lasting, and will likely melt away as you adjust to your new program. (I made a very similar decision and it's helped me to think of it this way!)

congrats E.S.! I am in agony over my decision, which I had planned to have by today.

UCLA's sending me their decision via carrier turtle.

whoa, UCLA's moving again? I STILL HAVEN'T HEARD FROM THEM! *twiddles thumbs...while frantically trying to decide between other offers, luckily* But that's tough...congrats on deciding, though!

hahaha maybe!!!

nope, not me. It somehow is becoming more difficult.

ALSO! The search function seems to have broken. I tried searching for something and found no results, and I didn't believe it so I searched "school" and, likewise, no results came up!

reputation point count on individual posts seems to have been reset, although it accurately remembers which one's I've already voted upon (and my reputation point total hasn't changed).

fair trade

Ah yes, the confused airplane fellows! No one assumes I'm a [future] graduate student. As a female, I appreciate that. But actually, I was caught off guard when someone had a son in a PhD program, too. I'm usually not prepared to relate to anyone! My brother is auditioning at undergraduate schools, and I've come with him to most of his auditions, and at every school people tried to direct me to my audition room. I don't think I look 17-18 at all, either in face or dress, but as long as other people think so, then HOORAY!!

I'd say accept the offer, because: As far as I can tell, the prestige issue is a concern when considering job placement. If they have good job placement, why worry? Also, it sucks to reapply, and you can't guarantee you'll get accepted ANYWHERE, again.

One of the biggest differences between the programs I'm considering is the amount of freedom students have to create their own course of study. For me, it might come down to choosing between - A - a program that is very structured and guided, offering a traditional education in my field that has most of my interdisciplinary interests built into the curriculum. I do have some fear that I could be more or less locked into studying whatever topics I fall into within the first few years. B - a program that is smaller and with less structure, each student essentially an independent scholar who does whatever they want and freely takes classes outside of the department and the school. The professors are very supportive of this and help you do it. They also allow you to change your mind constantly, and you don't have to specify your subfield until your 3rd year (and even then, it doesn't really matter). Let's assume all other factors are the same. My question is, which style would you prefer, and why? Personally, I can't decide. I'm coming in without a master's, so my idea of what I want to do can and will change. So I feel I'd benefit from some structure, and would welcome a lot of guidance from people who are smarter and wiser than me. But I also want to be open to changing the direction of my research. Decisions, decisions.

Hahaha I've been buying tickets!! So I can have a grad school experience completely focused on school and not $$!

admission offer!

Is the M.M. a stepping stone to something else? DMA, PhD? Follow the money (or reapply). If not? Follow the money. That's my opinion, but I'd like to see the opinion of others here who know more about performance degrees. Brand-names might mean a whole lot more for you.

I'm not in art history, but I took two years off! I actually meant to only take one, but last year's app cycle didn't work out as hoped, haha. It absolutely helped me gain the outside perspective I needed, to know for sure that I wanted to go to grad school. I also was able to save some dough. Drawbacks: it's so ridiculously difficult to be motivated to do academic-y things when you're not IN it, you know? It was for me. I had to write essentially an entirely new paper for my writing sample, and while it was enjoyable to get some ideas down on paper, the actual part of formulating it into good scholarly writing, with good scholarly sources, was SO PAINFUL! I also intended to LEARN ALL THE LANGUAGES I didn't learn as an undergrad, and I barely did anything. For me, a lot of difficulty stemmed from having a job that was completely outside of the realms of my academic areas of interest, and so if you do museum work, you might not have the same problems!

Hmm, I'd usually say "follow the money," to the master's program, but you say you have the money to go. I know $$ is always a sensitive question, but I'd try to make contacts among the current students at UCLA asap to gauge the situation. I'm personally inclined to believe that the professors wouldn't care about which students are funded and which aren't when they're all in the same program, but I don't know anything about this particular program and I've no experience with any program that doesn't fully fund all acceptees.

Hi! I don't know too much about those programs, but you might get better responses in the music forum here: http://forum.thegradcafe.com/forum/81-music/ (also check out old threads)

Yep, grad admissions is wayyyy different from undergrad and more like a job search. For one, you're not just competing for a spot, you're competing for funded spot. And as others have said, there are a million factors out of the applicants' hands -- the amount of spots that year, the kind of cohort they want to make among you and the other applicants applying, which profs are leaving and coming in, yadda yadda yadda. It's not good enough to just be good enough; hell, it's not good enough to be stellar! You have to be qualitatively what they're looking for, in your interests, outlook, and background, and we often don't know precisely what that is for any given year in any given program. All it takes is 1 acceptance. Congratulations on 2!