secretly_yes

Thank you all for your great advice. I ended up giving the paper to a peer in another field to read and to a former classmate. Both had liked the paper and suggested minor edits. I read it over 3 more times, made some changes and submitted. Hopefully it goes well if not, I learned a lot about both about the topic/my research area and about paper-writing in general.

I am turning in my first research paper for a class on Monday. Though I worked very hard on it, it is my first research paper and I am worried that I could fail. Can PhD students get an F on a paper?

I don't know a lot about this, but I agree with Wannabe. Not only does DC have the location advantage, but GWU is also part of a consortium of DC schools, so that if Georgetown for example has a great class that you want to take, you can do that while you're a student at Gtown. I would also add that while DC schools do have a lot of adjunct faculty (especially teaching MA classes), full-time people do have time for students and generally don't also work for government or anything like that.

Hotels in downtown DC are always crazy expensive. Try broadening your search to include places in MD/VA that have easy access to the metro, like Silver Spring, MD and Arlington, VA. Both SAIS and Georgetown are close to Dupont Circle, but those hotels are pricey. There's also the Tabard Inn in Dupont Circle. It's a B&B -type place about a block from Dupont. When a friend came to visit he stayed there for like $100/night with breakfast included. Good deal.

I don't even understand how these came to be the possible options. The funded English PhD seems like a badly paid job you don't really like. If you really want to do public policy, go for it and figure out the funding (or transfer out) later. Otherwise, apply to a job that pays more than 17K a year. Even if you don't come out with a degree at the end of six years, you'll have work experience and no additional debt and that's valuable too.

I am unbelievably happy to be done with the admissions process (especially the waiting) and I am super excited to start at a great Department in the Fall, but it still makes me a little sad to see that the Fall 2011 people are slowly being replaced by people that are just starting in their own admissions cycle. I am sure there's something wrong with me. Any way, it has been a pleasure. Good luck to all of you.

Also realistically, if you are going to live on a grad student budget in DC the chances that you'll end up living in Dupont/Foggy Bottom are slim because these are very expensive areas. Arlington is nice, especially if you stay in the Rosslyn-Ballston area or in Old Town Alexandria. Both are a pretty easy commute to Gtown (combination metro and free shuttle.)

I am not going, but I live in DC. I suggest you try hotwire.com and select the "Embassy Row" area. Generally any hotel that they include in that area is an easy commute to Georgetown. If you want specific hotels, Gtown has a shuttle from the Holiday Inn-Key Bridge as well as from the Holiday Inn on Wisconsin Ave. Hotel Palomar, the Marriott Residence Inn and the rest of the Dupont Circle hotels are close to Georgetown's Dupont Circle shuttle. Good luck!

If finding a job after graduation is your main concern, I vote for GWU. They are both excellent schools and really good at placing people in good jobs. Go to the school that will make you have less loans when you graduate. Unless you really want to work in Europe, then go to SAIS. They have good Europe contacts, from what I understand.

Hi, I did my MA at Gtown and I didn't apply there for PhD. I only applied to GWU and I will be going there. I don't think one school's reputation is better that the other one. I think they are both great schools with really amazing faculty. I made my decision to apply to GWU in part based on the rankings, in part because of the interests of the faculty they have there. Gtown has better Middle East people, for example, but GWU has way better Asian people. I would tie them for Latin America (with a policy edge for Gtown because of Valenzuela) and maybe tie them for European (but put SAIS above both for European.) What do you want to study?

I vote for American University. I don't think DC is inordinately expensive compared to Philadelphia and I think it has many more opportunities to offer. DC has great internship and job opportunities and attracts great faculty, speakers and conferences. But, I graduated from a DC school, so I am biased.

Hi, I am not too familiar with either of these schools, but I know about Latin American studies. I graduated from the MA program at Georgetown, along with a bunch of journalists. Even though Gtown has a pretty amazing career center and excellent internship placements, in the end what got me my internships and my job was the name of the school, the people I met while I was a student (everyone likes to meet students, it turns out) and the city where the school is located. Applying this to your problem, I would go to NYU. I think NYC is likely to offer you better opportunities than Chicago can and I think a 2-year program will give you more flexibility to intern while you go to school. Lastly don't worry too much about funding. I was accepted with zero funding and by the second year had full tuition remission plus a stipend and an internship. Best decision I ever made in my life. Buena suerte!

I haven't received mine either. I am going to start worrying intensely right now.

If you have three really good recommenders, use those for everything. I tried to use different recommenders, and I don't think that worked well. For one school I used a former supervisor at a research project that was an alumna of the school. I am pretty sure that the letter she wrote for me was not half as strong as a letter another professor wrote. For another school I had a professor who had also served on the state's board of education for two terms. That also didn't work. Out of the seven people that wrote letters for me there was only one combination that yielded acceptances (ie, I was admitted into both programs where both of those professors submitted letters.) I think it's more about how much your recommenders believe in you and want you to succeed and less about how famous or well connected they are.

People from my grad program (at a DC school) put together a list of people looking for housing. It was one of the nice things that the grad students did for the incoming class. It worked for a bunch of people. I also know a few students that signed the lease of a 2-bedroom, then advertised the spare bedroom on Craigslist and found a roommate that way. This worked out well because they could be picky about their roommate and because most rental places will let you add a second person to your lease after you move in. In DC-MD-VA people are ALWAYS looking for housing, so filling a room is not difficult at all.

Hi slacktivist, I have lived in DC for four years. At one point I was a housing coordinator for an internship program here. Since then, I have helped friends and friends of friends find places in and around DC. I would be happy to help in any way I can. I know that most UMd students look for housing along the UMd shuttle route. This includes housing around the Prince George's Plaza metro stop and housing towards downtown Silver Spring. If you are bringing a car and will not have to use the shuttle, that can bring down the cost of housing considerably. I would consider looking at apartments in Silver Spring that are not connected to the metro. You pay a high premium to live close to the metro here. A studio in downtown Silver Spring, for example costs about $1000 to $1200/month. Prince George's County is a less expensive area to live in, but the crime rate is much higher. There are some newer properties in this area (towards the College Park Ikea) but the last time I asked their prices were similar to downtown Silver Spring and the location was not as good. Finally, since not all properties are listed on rent.com and Craigslist can get very shady, I suggest searching for management companies and seeing what they have available. Southern Management Company, for example, has some reasonably priced apartments around University of Maryland. Camden, another management company, has much pricier apartments in the area. I hope this helped.

Hi, I am not sure if you have already had the chance to check this out, but this website gives you the option of sorting and ranking programs according to whatever criteria you choose. I really liked it because it helped me compare schools based on only the factors that are important to me (research productivity, student placement, time to degree) and disregard some that I am not so concerned about (first year funding, insurance, diversity). Maybe it will help someone else too.

I don't think we can guess too much about their placement since the website says that they have only placed 11 students so far.

I called the number listed on the website. I spoke to a person that said that 15 people were admitted and that I was on the wait list and should receive something in the mail soon.

You want to study resources, right? Who do they have at FSU? I know MSU has some good people.

Accepted at GWU. No funding, but I have a great job that's literally across the street. I officially don't care about anything else and will be sleeping soundly tonight for the first time in a long time.

I agree 100%. I am not sure gradcafe has been the best thing for me because it has made me worry so much. I wonder if the other 400+ applicants that are not in gradcafe are more or less stressed out than I am...

I am diving my time between worrying, working, playing sudoku and thinking about my law school applications for next year. I don't remember any other application process to anything being this stressful and I have had three different jobs and have attended three different schools. I really know about applying and waiting and freaking out. Nothing beats this process for the waiting and freaking out part.

I called. (I call everyone). The lady that answered said she couldn't release the decisions over the phone because she didn't have "that authority." I took her tone to mean that I was not accepted. I can't remember if I even told her my name, but her voice sounded like a no to me.