edost

Since I'll be moving well before the school year starts, I wouldn't have school-provided health insurance for the first few months. I'm moving with my sister.

Before I decided what to study, I noticed that I spent a lot of my free time following politics and political coverage. That made me decide to study PoliSci, with communication as a minor. Then, I studied PoliSci for my MA, but ended up writing a thesis that could just as much have been written for a Communications program. After I had already applied to the PoliSci program, I got my grade on a Communications seminar paper about political satire on Israeli televison, and the professor wrote that it's a topic worthy of further exploration in a thesis - and I took his advice. Now that I want to continue research in the same area, the best fit for me would be Communications rather than PoliSci. I hope you're right that they just didn't send it out to applicants outside of North America. Thanks for the compliments about Israel. I visited Toronto last April and had a great time there.

It looks like I'll be moving to the United States from Israel a few months before school starts (perhaps even before I'll know where I'm going to study). I'd be happy to hear some advice from international students . What do I need to do before I move (and how) and what do I need to do after I'm already there? I'm referring to the technical stuff: bank accounts, housing, health insurance, etc (but not the visa part, since I'm a US citizen).

Same here. I keep telling people I probably won't hear anything before February, yet they ask again anyway the next time they see me.

The problem is that I couldn't make it to my POI's conference, even though I wanted to go.

Since I'm not in the US, I haven't seen T-shirts and such, but I've started noticing whenever someone from one of the universities I've applied to is mentioned in the newspaper. Also, two people I've been in contact with regarding my applications have been to conferences here in Israel (one of my POIs, plus a former grad student at my dream school who does exactly what I'm interested in).

Yikes, I didn't get that e-mail. I hope it isn't a bad sign. You do mean the University of Pennsylvania and not Penn State, right?

I second whirlibird's advice. I chopped off my opening paragraph, which was mainly meant to get the reader's attention, although it did introduce my research interest. Also, I shortened the descriptions of my MA thesis and different relevant courses I took. Whole paragraphs were reduced to two or three sentences each. It isn't easy, but it is doable! By the way, you might find this New York Times article interesting. It's about undergrad essays, but it's also relevant for graduate SOPs.

How did you decide which results page will be your home page? Top choice or the school that's known for earliest decisions?

Thanks, I hope you do too! I see we both share UPenn as one of our programs. I applied to George Washington, Princeton, Duke and Harvard for PoliSci.

I'm applying to seven Comm programs (UPenn, NYU, Ohio State, Indiana, UConn, Rutgers and Albany) plus four PoliSci programs. I'm interested in the link between entertainment and politics. I'm coming to this after two MA's (one in PoliSci and one in literature/creative writing). I've decided to spend the next month or so (i.e., the dreadful waiting period) reading classics I've never read before. I'm starting with Macbeth.

By the way, is it better to e-mail the program or the graduate school?

I've been a TA and nobody asked me for a LOR. In fact, I'd be surprised if they did. I think LORs should be from professors, not grad students, even if it isn't an application for grad school. Wouldn't people reading it find it suspicious that the letter is from a TA?

black tie

I'll wait till Monday to e-mail the program, in case she successfully submits the letter by then. They won't answer me during the weekend anyway. Plus, because my time zone is seven hours ahead, I can wait till Monday afternoon and still send the e-mail before the secretary even gets to the office. There's good news, too, though: except for this one letter at this particular university, all other letters (including by the same professor) at all other universities have been submitted.

Today she e-mailed me, saying she tried to log in today and couldn't because of password problems, but it doesn't really matter if the deadline has passed anyway! Maybe I shouldn't have told her that it passed. I should have claimed the deadline is fast approaching. Anyway, I'll e-mail her back asking her to try again. Hopefully, she'll see the e-mail today. She's a very nice person, but she almost gave me a heart attack!

As far as I know, most communication Ph.D. programs don't do interviews at all.

My recommender is Israeli. We didn't have winter break here. Anyway, I'll e-mail the program.

I have one recommender who hasn't submitted her letter of recommendation for a program with a January 3 deadline. I've e-mailed her and she hasn't answered. I haven't been able to get in touch with her otherwise either. Am I already screwed? How long is the grace period for letters of recommendation, usually?

Double jeopardy

Another irritating thing: when application forms asked me not just for the months and years of attendance, but also to specify the day. How am I supposed to remember these little details?

I agree that Harvard was horrible, and I wasn't crazy about Embark in general. I was pretty happy with ApplyYourself's systems (except that some of them didn't tell me when recommenders submitted letters, which was kind of irritating). I was quite frustrated with Ohio State's system. They use ApplyWeb, which also Princeton uses, but I don't remember being as frustrated with Princeton's application site. OSU's system had four slots to upload materials, and it didn't show either a preview or even a file name, so when I discovered I needed to change something on my Statement of Purpose and upload it again, I had to rely on memory to remember the statement of purpose was in Slot No. 1. Their post-submission system is also very cumbersome. You have to wait for an OSU ID, then once you have that, request an activation code, and after getting the activation code you have to fill out another form to choose a password, then wait two hours until the password kicks in. Also, for some reason, the application status website only works certain hours, and can't be accessed during other times of the day. By the way, universities wouldn't thwart our applications because we're dissing their websites, right?

Letters of recommendation are very important. That and your Statement of Purpose are the two best ways for admission committees to evaluate you beyond the dry numbers of the transcript. But like rising_star said, since there are three weeks left, the fact that they haven't written letters yet doesn't mean the letters won't be good.

I asked Peter how many graduate schools will accept me. He said he only answers those who believe, so I wrote in the petition "Peter, may God help you answer this question", and then added "God willing" before the question itself. Didn't help. He said "That is beyond my knowledge".

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