theresatwist

woah! all these posts! i'm from Portugal actually, but i haven't really heard anything very concrete from our local Fulbright office about how the home residency requirement works or how it has been for local Fulbrighters in previous years. i suppose they will mention it when the time comes, though what Raddles is saying makes quite a lot of sense, and i imagine the requirement won't be enforced too strictly. it'd be lovely to go somewhere nice and warm for the orientation thing. i'll be moving to New Haven, CT as soon as the J-1 visa allows and i know i will sit there in july and august bracing myself for the winter to come, so Miami for orientation would be really nice..! Tobson, any word on your school yet? i'll keep my fingers crossed for you!

on housing: did everyone sign up for Elm Campus Partners housing yet? if you haven't and you're interested in the yale-owned properties, then sign up! http://www.elmcampus.com/ they are running some apartment viewings this week (monday and wednesday i think?) and for those of us unable to attend in person, they send info. via email and put people in some kind of a queue. apparently there's no benefit in being there in person, the queue is actually set up based on order of website registration. i registered on their website a while back after hearing from yale and yesterday got a list of properties to rate according to preference. i'm mostly interested in cheaper one-bedroom flats with leases starting in july, but they also had a small range of options for june and august entries. you need to register and send in your preferences by tuesday morning it seems, so hurry!

congrats to all those who got in where they wanted! margrett, where else did you apply?

this is interesting news! i'm also going to be applying for extra funding (24k), though like mmpottiehill i now realise that even if i did potentially win that extra scholarship, 50k would be too good to be true, darn! i guess it's fair that these values are adjusted, though i keep thinking that with only two years of 50k, i could pay off some debt, kill my old student loan, save up some money... sigh

yikes! that seems scarier than here! how about your visa though? you guys get the same J1 visa? could you stay on in the US for PhD study and delay the 2 year residency requirement back in Europe? i wonder how they even enforce that requirement, since they can't really track where in Europe we are? i dunno. weird system.

HGS should be Hall of Graduate Studies i guess? our plan is renting something cheapo cheapo through the university now (over the internet and all!), then depending on how good/bad it is, searching for something else over the first semester, and subletting the university place over second semester. that way we can have some kind of a base once we arrive, and possibly move somewhere nicer later on once we know the town and see how far the cash stretches. it's a bit messy to move during the first year, but since we're going to be in new haven for quite a while and planning on having a kid at some stage in the next few years, i'd like to have enough time to find a decent place to live.

you mean you can only apply to one school? we had to apply with the same application form (and SOP, etc.), but we were allowed a pick of 5 schools. any word back from your applications though?

that really sucks. though i'm biased because i didn't get in harvard and now suspect them of every evil imaginable! out of interest though, how much does your on-campus grad housing arrangement come to? i wonder if i should look into this... as for the funding issue, i always thought humanities people got a lot less than the science people too, but isn't the discrepancy less pronounced at ivy schools? i have a friend at harvard in the humanities who gets around 27k as well i think, though i don't know how they fund their sciences people there. then again, i have another friend doing physics at berkeley who's getting around 35k+! so who knows.

i'm particularly interested in this spouse job thing as well. it's annoying that they don't do spouse job placements as i was under the impression they actually did (part of my "OMG yale is best" mythologizing). they do have this career day though - http://www.cis.yale.edu/hronline/CareerDay.html - should be the same in 2009.

same as mmpottiehill (i think it's the standard one, yeah?), plus an additional fellowship of 2.5k for the first two years. i'm particularly impressed by yale's policy on extending lots of student privileges (healthcare, etc.) to "spouses and same-sex partners". over here that's pretty much unheard of and it'll feel nice to be in a place where this sort of thing is decent for *all* students. in the end i think things like that really contribute to people feeling appreciated and happy with what they're doing, it probably makes them more productive as well.

sigh, same feeling here! i've done quite a bit of asian studies too, but still feel like i will totally bomb this.. but to answer the question, i've got an undergrad and an MA in chinese studies from a UK university, have a good (but now rusty) level of mandarin chinese, and speak intermediate-level cantonese. i never learned japanese or korean, but did do 2 years of classical chinese. however, i'm also curious about how people are dealing with this feeling of inadequacy, i noticed on some other threads that folks are planning to study quite a bit before gradschool comes around. i too have embarked on the get-smart-before-gradschool mission with (moderate) fervor. i've decided i should do an hour and a half of modern chinese language per day, plus read a lot of modern literature in translation, and force myself to do around 4-6 hours of classical chinese per week. i find it extremely hard to stick to my own decisions, so i made a little study map that i try and follow. of course there are treats and stuff for good work (chocolates, gummy bears, chai, a good non china-related book etc.). i know it sounds absurd, but hey, this is how i managed to write an MA thesis and pass all my exams, so the method works for me any one else with ideas on how to fight the inadequacy feeling?

wow - i remember living on campus with my mother when she was studying back in 1989. being a student's kid was the coolest thing ever! i hope your kid enjoys it as much as i did! on housing: we applied for some of the university properties through the elm campus people but have only got an automated reply back. grad housing applications only begin april 1st, right? we'll be applying to those as well. i wanted some place less grad/faculty and perhaps a little more urban, possibly close to a source of late night falafels and/or kebabs. though i'm coming at this from a UK/european point of view, and i wonder about sources of food at 3am in a town like new haven, CT. friends in the US keep telling me 'urban' in the US almost always means 'rough', though i'm not entirely convinced this is true (or perhaps 'rough' in itself is a relative concept..)? on moving: late july/early august i think. we'll need to ship some stuff (ie. BOOKS!) from euroland to new haven, which i expect will be *extremely* expensive. on the grad scene: don't know either, but we should definitely organize a gradcafe meetup!

Interesting topic. I've been thinking about this actually,in my case my application results matched the enthusiasm shown by faculty members when I emailed back in November before my applications were even in. The faculty members who were really excited about my application and who emailed back and forth about it, their schools were the first to accept with very kind words and generous funding. The ones who seemed uninterested or didn't reply to my email sent their standard rejections much later.

hey there. though i applied for the PhD, i also got offered the MA with no funding at columbia. it's certainly a good program (i'm interested in literature as well), but with no funding, plus it being an MA and not the PhD program, it is a not an option for me. columbia is better known than WUSTL of course, though quickly looking through WUSTL's EAS website, the program there actually seemed pretty good. plus, if they offer you funding.. is the supervisor very important to you at this stage? do you prefer people you've contacted with at columbia/WUSTL? if you're not planning on working on something extremely specific that you can only work on with prof. x, then personally i'd just go where the money is, especially considering that WUSTL seems to have a pretty good MA program. grad school is tough enough already, let alone if you have to worry about being in debt.

sorry to hear about Harvard.. as for Stanford, i got no email, though that probably doesn't count too much in your case as i only hear things through the Fulbright office (i'm not allowed direct contact with the depts, etc. *sigh*). why don't you try calling the dept directly though? it's annoying that they don't update their online app notifications.