psycholinguist

They usually have about a 20% acceptance rate, though it's gone down this year. Can't tell you what they're looking for, aside from the apparent fact that I'm not it. * grins *

I'm a Cornell undergrad, so I'm too biased to vote here. * grins * I agree that it's in the middle of nowhere, but I will say that a) I like Ithaca a lot more than I thought I would, and we're kept so busy here that there isn't enough time to notice that the range of things to do around town is pretty limited.

So here's the quickie version of my grad-school-application experience this year: Send out eight applications. Get two invitations to visit schools. Go to visit Program X and absolutely fall in love with it. Have a professor essentially beg me to enroll in the program. Meet with grad-students and have an awesome time. Start to wish that I could eliminate the other main choice and just commit to X right away. But go visit Program Y two weeks later. Turns out they can't give me any money because I'm not an American citizen. Thank them and realise that the hard decision has been made for me. Go home and email Program X saying that I'm ready to commit but just haven't received the actual acceptance-letter. Receive a rejection-letter in return. Spend a few days getting over the nasty shock. The one remaining option is Program Z, the safety-school. Now, what I could do is to go get my MA in psychology at Program Z, then reapply to the Ph.D. psychology program at Program Y if I still have my heart set on it; updated credentials would make me a far more-competitive contender for a spot in their program, especially as my first degree is in something else (namely, linguistics). The thing is that Program Z has a Ph.D. program of its own. So if I left Z after the MA and went straight over to Y, would it be tantamount to a betrayal? I'm grateful to Z, and it doesn't look so bad, but if I can't get excited about it the way I was (and pretty much still am) about Y, then I'd be feeling more than tempted to give Y another shot. (Incidentally, funding from Z and Y would be almost identical, so money isn't a big issue here.) Any opinions? Thanks!

Yeah, the noise is an issue as well. (I live on North Campus and I'm surrounded by fraternities; fortunately the winter keeps them inside most of the year.) Most of Collegetown is bound to be at least somewhat noisy. It's hard to be within walking-distance (especially without the hills) and avoid the noise. College Avenue is probably going to be the worst, so if you're farther east than that, it should be quieter. I've heard Oak Avenue just south of the creek can be quiet-ish, so that might be a good place to start looking. Maplewood Park may actually be a good bet as well since it's for grad-students, but I have no idea what it's like in terms of noise, price, furniture, or anything. No problem, and good luck!

Wow, that's quite a story! I admire your willingness to share it!

Ouch! I think set-ups for disappointments such as these should be illegal. (Basically the same thing happened to me, so I feel your pain!)

I'm so sorry to hear about your troubles! It sounds as if transferring would be ideal in your situation; you like the work, you like the idea of grad-school, but it's the particular characteristics of your department that are not working for you. I would certainly look into transferring. How about emailing departments at other schools that look better, expressing your dissatisfaction with the one you're in now, and asking whether they take transfer-grad-students?

YAY! Congrats!

I was disappointed. Initial interest from four different schools led to my feeling so overwhelmed that I found myself wondering whether I'd applied to too many. Not so: I watched one after the other of these possibilities fall through, culminating in a brutal last-minute rejection from a department that had interviewed me on the phone and invited me to its open-house and given me strong suggestions throughout that a) its faculty really wanted me, and I could easily count on an acceptance. I'm left with two acceptances: one to a school I can't afford to go to, and the other to my safety-school. I'm getting used to the thought of doing at least my MA at the latter, but I'm still feeling let-down.

Agreed!

Pretty much. The summers back home are nice...though as someone with a certain susceptibility to seasonal affective disorder, I'd rather suffer through a hot and humid Eastern summer than an interminably dark and wet Western winter, so I think I'm more or less out East for good.

All right! Congrats! Enjoy the relief!

Apologies - I should have mentioned that I'm biased in that regard. I'm a West Coast girl, so any summer with an average high temperature of more than about 23

Congrats on the decision! (I think it was a good one, too. I was pretty worried about coming to university in a little town in the middle of nowhere, but I've been kept so busy that I haven't really had time to notice that there isn't that much to do here.)

Seriously?! That's awful!

I don't hate Calgary, but I don't love it either. It's certainly a lot bigger than State College, but it's also kind of isolated in that isn't really close to anything exciting: just lots of prairie on three sides. In State College you'd be within driving-distance of a lot of urban centres. And getting around Calgary without a car might be difficult. And the climate there generally sucks (really cold winters, really hot summers, and rain caused by rain-clouds running into the mountains nearby and bouncing back). If you do really like mountains, though, go for Calgary.

Guys can be exempted from having to learn all about anything that generally falls under the category of 'girl-talk'. * grins * This reminds me of an anecdote. P. and D. and I (all girls) were once standing around before sociolinguistics, and N. (a guy) was sitting on a bench nearby. P.: "I live with two girls and this guy called Adam, and the girls and I play this game called MAFIA, which means Make Adam Feel Incredibly Awkward. So we'll talk about birth-control, tampons..." Me: "Or PMS..." P.: "Yeah, that's the idea." P., D., and me: * giggle ridiculously * N. notices L. (another guy) approach and pretends to be totally freaked out. N.: "L.! Do you want to talk about cars?!"

Yay! I'm so glad!

Plenty of off-campus housing is furnished; this is a college-town, after all, full of kids who move every year. Yes, do check out the link to the OCHO above. The bus-system is all right. It's not amazing, but it's pretty good for a town of this size.

* laughs * Yep. Basically, the centre of the town of Ithaca is in a little valley with Cayuga Lake to the north, and everything else (Cornell, Ithaca College, some residential-areas) is up on the steep ridges that surround the town on the other three sides. If you don't like climbing hills, avoid downtown (all the way down the ridge), West Campus (about a third of the way down) and the western parts of North Campus (lower as well). Check out the large campus map for reference. See the bit marked 'Libe Slope'? Yeah. It's a slope, all right. Now imagine it extending north and south all the way up and down the map. That's actually the case (more or less), so use that as a dividing-line if you want to be able to walk to campus without climbing hills (or giant sets of stairs, the way I do every morning). That does rule out a lot, but not everything. See the area south of campus labelled 'Collegetown'? It's a semi-commercial area home mostly to students. Anything between College Avenue and Cornell Street (to the east) - and not too far south if on College Avenue - would be pretty minimal in the way of hills. (Google Maps doesn't show the slope at all because it's covered in a residential grid, but this is (basically) the area I have in mind, for reference. The College Avenue and Hoy Road bridges to campus would both be a bit out of the way, and the Eddy Dam footbridge in the middle is at the bottom of a creek, with lots of stairs on each bank - but if you're willing to put up with the slightly longer walk, you can avoid the inclines. And it's not far from Biotech, which is nice. I don't really know anything about the quality/pricing of graduate housing (though the [many] screaming drunk undergrads tend to congregate around frat-houses and College Avenue), but I should point out that the complex two-thirds of the way from west to east of the region I outlined is in fact a Cornell-owned graduate community - it's called Maplewood Park. Might be worth a look!

Do I ever know this one! I'm an undergrad in the middle of nowhere in upstate New York. Heck, it takes a good half-hour even to reach the nearest interstate highway! Flying into the city airport, while the only convenient option for getting here, is expensive and hard to tack onto the earlier flight I need from the other side of the continent where my parents' house is. I usually end up taking the train. Here's another example: my Undergraduate University and University of Most Likely Graduate Studies are, according to Google Maps, about five hours apart in terms of driving-time (not including the border-traffic). Yet I'm probably going to be flying into the same airport to get to the latter as I currently do to reach the former. Go figure.

Thanks so much! It was a disappointment, obviously - heck, by Sunday evening I'd started looking for apartments in Toronto - but I think it's going to be okay. The U of T ended up expressing some really vague reservations about me that make me suspect that the problem lies more with them than anything else. I mean, I acted just the same way (as far as I know) around the UCSD faculty and they reportedly really liked me. So who knows? Or maybe the U of T just sensed my underlying plans for world-domination. Those can be hard to contain sometimes. Heh. I've only talked to my potential advisor at Waterloo briefly, but one of the reasons I want to visit is in order to see if we can get along and communicate well. So far, all I can tell is that he's very fond of his BlackBerry, which is no surprise since Research in Motion (which makes the things) is headquartered in the town of Waterloo. Heh. Worst-case scenario: if I don't get much out of Waterloo, I figure I could probably take away the MA in cognitive psychology partway through and begin pestering the U of T again with updated credentials. * mischeivous laugh *

I'm pretty sure I'm off to the University of Waterloo (in Canada) to do cognitive psychology. Barring any major developments from here on.

* laughs * That's amazing. And I thought the annual print-and-map sales at Sibley Hall couldn't've been one-upped! Exploring the campus does lead you straight to some of the most offbeat things: the apple vending-machine, the Foucault pendulum, the lounge randomly placed into the middle of the stacks on one floor in Uris Library, the stuffed lion in Helen Newman Hall...

You could get a menstrual cup! They're washable! * grins * (I guess that implies I'm a girl...heh.)