belowthree

Wine prices do not correspond with wine goodness. Just buy a good bottle of wine, if you can get a good bottle of wine for $2, that's fine! I mean don't preclude yourself from throwing in a scarf if you want, but it's the thought from the present, not the amount that's important.

I get the impression that on the humanities side they actually record things like hours and there's "on the clock" times. From what I've seen of the sci/eng side, there is no distinction.

Cheers, academia needs more trouble makers. The undergraduate process doesn't really let a whole lot through.

1) Roll out of bed, straight into the lab. 2) Ethernet connection.

2.7 here. Applied to 11 schools, ranged all around the rankings, looked mostly at any school I felt I could do decent work at and really tried to get a broad range of schools all around the rankings. For the most part, research is the best way to overcome a bad GPA. Just do enough research so that it doesn't matter what your GPA is. Make them want you based on your research alone. Strict GPA cutoffs aren't always as strict as they appear to be (sometimes they are) it really depends on the program. My policy was to apply without considering what they had to say about GPAs.

In my field postdocs are actually very rare.

As an undergrad, I've ended up in the following situations during my research so far. Might give you an idea on how the hours can range: *I've had research meetings that started at 10pm when they needed to. *One of our weekly meetings runs from 5pm to 8pm and sometimes longer. *I've stayed on campus to work on a grant proposal next to a deadline with the prof until 2am, at which point we got done far enough where both of us were able to go home and get the remaining small things done when the department staff came back. *Paper deadlines usually mean you're staying up all night until the deadline. You can stay up all night whereever you want, you don't have to be in the lab unless you're the type who prefers to stay up with friends during the deadlines for a major conference. In large groups after a major conference deadline everyone knows that everyone was tired and you'll actually see group e-mail messages saying things like "this meeting is going to be a lot more relaxed because of all the people writing paper's for 's deadline, we're going to have cookies just show up if you can and grab some cookies." *During some quarters my weekly one-on-one with my advisor was on the weekend. I actually don't mind this at all, but some people think it's a bad thing.

Yes, it's very effective. I've had research meetings that *started* at 10pm.

What's partially funded + stipend supposed to mean? Like they didn't pay part of your tuition but still pay you a stipend or they don't guarantee funding for all years, or?

I think the original poster was clarifying that these figures were all per month and not for the whole year, yeah? Also... $950/month after tax I assume?

I bought wine for most my profs and a bottle of bourbon for one of my other writers, I think it's a good way to go. I didn't spend nearly as much as you did, most people will appreciate the gesture even if you don't hit the top of the shelf, just find something unique instead. A unique choice of something less expensive is an excellent way to save some money and make a great gift. Also just because someone's rough around the edges doesn't mean they can't secretly have a passion for chocolate! Scotch might go over better though. Again, aim for something good mid-shelf that they might not have tried before. This is easy to do with wine, there's so many different wines to chose from you can easily get a unique gift. (I think this is why wine is a fairly common gift.)

Even being familiar with your field, I'd still say Berkeley! UW is good, but the first letter of BSD is B for a reason. I'm not sure you'll really like the weather in Seattle more than you would the weather in Berkeley... unless you'd like to get more snow or something?

Today: Application Indecision Tomorrow: The World

There is no tomorrow.

Where there exist one person to provide actual real decisions there becomes room for an infinite amount of additional people as talking heads to provide commentary and banter. It's not competition, it's coverage.

Did you not like the opinions in the other thread? viewtopic.php?f=67&t=17693 If so... then go to the school you already feel like you want to go to. You don't need convincing.

Muscling in? No no, I wouldn't dream of such a thing. Muscling in would be if I didn't wait for the definitive teaganc snapshot decision-only post before posting my own inane analysis. Everyone knows you're today's most trusted name in gradcafe college decision making, I just sometimes end up swinging by afterwards with a reason or two.

There mere tantalizing opportunity to do this at the school I accepted earlier this evening played a role in my decision to go there. If they outright told you could do it and you're excited to pave the way, wow, what an opportunity with the bonus that they might go ahead and hire someone to work with you or hire you at the end. Cool beans.

Reading your straight up decisions and seeing how many I agree with. You seem to be keeping yourself in good spirits, hope things go well! Undecideds should take advantage of this offer, just don't blame teaganc later!

Pure speculation, but I strongly doubt they even remember. Maybe if there was something terribly unique about your application that shows up again they would, but if they remember you for something unique (as long as it's good) then that's a good thing! If they remember you for a bad unique thing then it's going to stand out in the new app anyways. (And you should try and not have it stand out as much...)

For me it doesn't really hit home until I see frankdux's post on the matter anyways. I wonder what he posts tomorrow...

If you want to ask to see their letters, ask to see their letters. Most people will be happy to let you see them. It is unethical to if you don't ask to see their letters and then go ahead and look at them anyways. There's a big difference. I don't have a problem with people reading their letters if needed, I have with people doing so in ways that aren't appropriate. If you want to see the letter, ask for it. If the person says no, that should tell you something and you'll need to rely on your judgment at that point. No it's called a race to the bottom where everyone starts engaging in this type of bullshit leading to several things: 1) LoRs become less useful for adcoms 2) Anyone who remains ethical loses until the rules change where everyone can view the letters 3) Professors stop writing letters for students because their students keep opening them 4) Professors don't give students copies of letters and insist on 4a) Mailing the LoRs themselves thereby wasting their own time and decreasing the number of people they are able to write letters for. 4b) Only writing LoRs for schools with online LoR processes which allow them to submit the letters directly without giving students a copy, for students who want to apply to schools that don't have online forms, this now becomes a problem as those schools are deemed too much trouble to write letters for. In my field some of these outcomes are already becoming commonplace because of people like you who can't be trusted not to open a letter when you were asked not to. Your childish and selfish behavior has real impact on other students trying to do the right thing. That's why there's haters and that's why it matters. At least one of my referees wasn't interesting in submitting letters to any school that he couldn't submit to online. He did this because he's several states away from me and didn't want to have to deal with physical paper for anything, not because he was worried about what I might do with letters, but I can tell you that it would be frustrating to have had my other LoR writers demand the same thing. Luckily I had four, so some schools just ended up getting three letters. But could you imagine what would have happened if two people had demanded this because they couldn't trust me not to appropriately deal with their letters? (That said, I gave them envelops to mail so I never actually got copies of my letter except from the writers who chose to share their letter with me.) But I'm sure even you have the brainpower to figure out how this type of gamesmanship makes the world a worse place in the long run.

Are you kidding? Take Cornell's offer. I don't even see how this is a tricky decision unless you have tons of money you don't have a problem lighting on fire to go to Stanford where they won't even care about you anyways because no one actually cares about MS students... There seems to be some reasons you really feel like you should go to Stanford? Is it something other than name recognition? If so, what are they?

And my opinion of people in fields that feed to med school plummets further... (Yes, I know of many individuals in these fields that seem like fine people who are dedicated to their education, but I'm starting to be unable to shake the feeling they're the exceptions.)

My experience has been that they really couldn't care less how you teach and that is not important in the least to their hiring practices. They want you or not based on your research. If you happen to be a good teacher, that's excellent and they'll let you teach what you want, if you don't, they'll gently encourage you to only teach classes directly in your field to small groups of graduate students or upper division students. So if you're passionate about teaching you should be a good teacher, but don't always expect that to be relevant to getting a job at a research university. This naturally varies widely between fields and specific universities.