feisty

I emailed my future advisors and just asked them straight out. My employment restriction only refers to employment by the University. As long as it's not hindering your performance, they don't seem to know or care what other employment you have. It's a UC. I don't know if they're all the same.

^^^^Good post. One summer I lived in River North/the Gold Coast (for free, long story). There were multiple stabbings around the corner from my fancy high rise, and a serial stalker-rapist in Bucktown/Wicker Park. When people say "safe" in Chicago they too-often mean "white". I have a lot of friends who live around UIC, and my brother's tiny blonde girlfriend lives up in Edgewater, and they are all healthy and alive.

My acceptance (where I will probably go) gave me an acceptance package that included a fellowship, with an amount. However, a few days later I got an informal "congrats" email from a professor in the department who said they were still finalizing funding and were "confident" they could "come up with a competitive funding package" etc. Does this mean that there is a possibility my funding offer could change (for the better, I hope)? Or is this professor just not aware that my acceptance included a funding offer?

Haha, I got that letter too.

That's what I figured. My work now is case-based. So part-time it would be paid-by-the-case, from home, and on my own schedule. I probably could also stop and start as I please. It would be easy to keep it a secret if I had to (unassuming grad student by day, due diligence and risk mitigation by night??). Especially since I would be in school in California, and the company is in New York. I'm just worried that some Omnipotent Someone will notice the extra income on my tax returns and punish me for it.

I've been accepted to a PhD program with a five-year fellowship and tuition waiver. The conditions include an "employment restriction" that states "students may work no more than an average of 25%-time (that is, 25% of each term or 50% for one term only)..." I've been working a full time job for the past year, and things are going well. A superior (not a supervisor, they don't know yet) has indicated that it might be possible for me to telecommute part time if/when I leave for grad school on the other side of country. I understand the school wants to limit my employment, but I don't totally understand this "25%" business. Would as little as 10-15 hours a week for a non-university employer violate this? Is it enforced? Has anyone else had experience working part time outside of their fellowship?

Illinois State isn't bad. One of the finest education schools in the country, for one. It's not the best, and I didn't apply there, but a person could do much worse. Western, I'll give you though.

Try Allston-Brighton

It's not terrible, weather-wise. Compared to the Midwest, I would say Boston is warmer, but gets more snow.

Being from the Midwest, and having lived in Boston and New York, the Big 10 towns (Champaign-Urbana, Iowa City, Ann Arbor, Bloomington, and Madison, specifically) are not-so-secretly my favorite places in America. There's a lot of frat-bar, frat-bar, frat-bar but the mature and stable populations of these places make them unexpected treasures.

Anecdotal, but: My good friend just moved w/2 roommates into a $1500 3 bedroom (so about $500 each) in Lefferts Gardens, right across the street from the east side of Prospect Park in Brooklyn. Less than a block away from the Q. Not much going on in the neighborhood but it seems safe enough. The apartment is very small, but just rehabbed, clean, new oven, new fridge, and otherwise really nice. I was surprised/impressed with that find.

I think my letter said they were taking something like 12 or 13 people

You are probably right, except for the Chinatown bus. It isn't that bad. All sleepy immigrant families and college students. Safer than the Greyhound.

Received a rejection from Cornell via mail. A very nice letter saying I'd made it to the final stage of the review process, something about subfields, etc. There are a lot of fascinating people at Cornell, but ultimately I don't think anyone whose interests were compatible with mine. I live in New York, so I was probably among the first to get the mail from them. Also got a rejection from Chicago's Committee on Social Thought. No surprise. Haven't heard anything from Chicago History though. By the grace of some kind God I've already been accepted to a highly ranked, good-fit-for-me school, so anything else can only be a feather in my cap.

I worked most summers, and most people I know did as well. My college offered a stipend program for internships, which were usually only enough to cover housing. The summer before my senior year I was fortunate enough to "win" an internship through an alumni women's leadership council that paid for housing, transportation + a large stipend that equaled just about what I would make working for a summer.

Chicago used to do that when my UG advisor was there (late 90s?), right? I was strongly advised against getting into such a situation, unless I had some cash saved away and was guaranteed funding after the first year. It's a humanities graduate degree, it's not like there's a job in thoracic surgery at the end of the money pit.

Except for one paid internship at a major natural history museum, I worked menial jobs during my college summers. I feel like the real value of an internship is to explore a career path, not to prepare for grad schools. What I did at the museum was pertinent to what I studied, and I loved working there, but I didn't learn anything new other than what it's like to work at a major natural history museum (it's awesome, btw.) The ideal, I guess, would be to spend a summer as a research assistant. I had a friend who was sent to New York for a semester to collect all these documents for a professor at our college who would be out of the country. If I could go back and do something with my summers other than work, I would either try to make more money or learn languages, since I'm still a disaster in that department.

um.

I don't have anything to add to this other than to say Brookline is totally adorable. I went to school in the Boston area, and I couldn't get out of there fast enough, but I would return for Brookline.

I should mention that the person I sublet from was international, and so were both of the roommates, so it's possible that this was a deal primarily for international students. Good luck! Looking for an apartment in NY was a big pain, but there are gems out there.

In that case, definitely look into the Columbia-owned grad student apartments. I know at a lot of schools they're a ripoff, but I think there it's a good deal. My sublet was $940/mo. for the largest bedroom in the apartment (double bed, desk, dresser and even a couch in the bedroom), utilities included, and each roommate paid the university individually, so if someone else was irresponsible with rent it didn't become my problem. That being said, where I live now none of us are paying over $900 even after utilities, in roughly the same neighborhood as Columbia. So keep your options open.

Also, what school in New York are you going to? I sublet for two months from a Columbia grad student in a Columbia-owned building, and I can tell you a little about that (not much, but a little)

We used Charie Properties. They're a small company, and they may or may not be limited to one or two management companies above 96th St on the West Side. You'd have to look into that. Anyway, our broker was a good guy. We weren't even planning on using one (hoping to avoid it, rather) but we found a great deal through them, off of Craigslist. The only thing, we had to pay the broker's fee up front, instead of tacked onto the rent, which I don't think is the usual protocol. It worked for our situation though. If you're willing to do the legwork, though, you might be able to try doing it yourself in Manhattan. Originally we had a lot of high-flying ideas about going straight to building managers and avoiding brokers, but found a great deal through a broker and never put it to the test. The relationship between brokers and building management companies is odd here, and someone who knows more about real estate can tell you more. Brooklyn rentals, I think, are still done mostly through owners and building managers. There's another company that people I know use--Anchor--which is big. I think the trick is to find a good individual broker, since all of the companies have their ups and downs. I would recommend finding a young broker, since their brokers' fees are usually below the usual 15%. The market is shifting ever so slightly in favor of the renter, and I think if you're fierce enough you can negotiate it down to 10%.

I think you're right. From their website: http://www.newschool.edu/nssr/subpage.aspx?id=9990 Degrees Offered The committee offers a master

Good point. I guess it can really go both ways.