AnthroPerson

I've gotten one rejection so far, and just found out through grad cafe that two of the other places I applied have already let their acceptances know. One of them was my top choice so right now I am really really far from feeling ok about this whole thing. I am losing my damn mind. I just got a call from an unknown number and nearly through it across the room out of sheer frustration when it was a telemarketer (not that I'm a violent person, just a very grumpy one). I just want February to be over! 27 days to go.

Anyone want to help me interpret this? I'm starting to freak out over rejections and now I'm going back over this whole experience and reanalyzing. So back in late November, I wrote an email to a POI who matches my interests really closely. Within hours of sending the email, I got a call from my undergraduate advisor letting me know that the POI had emailed him (they're friends/colleagues) asking about me. My advisor then told me, "I'll be seeing him this weekend, so I'll talk you up." Now, that's great, but I never heard back from the POI. I know he has a lot of grad students right now so I'm wondering if he's just not taking people, but he didn't respond to tell me that or anything. I haven't heard from my advisor either, and I don't want to bug him about it because I am ALSO applying to him (yes, my undergrad advisor is also one of my POIs. Academic incest, yes, but my field is very small and he's the best in the country.) So anyone want to try to read this bunch of tea leaves with me? I'm losing my mind.

There's now a Berkeley acceptance on the results board. Not good news. Blah.

Wait did Berkeley do official interviews? This is not good news.

I am so glad to see someone saying this is a good sign, same thing happened to me with a school I'd LOVE to go to. I figured it was just them trying to make sure everyone applied to funding. Basically, they wrote me and said "hey the deadline for FLAS is coming up, you can't used it for Spanish as a first year PhD but you could do Quechua" (which is a language I haven't studied before) Just when I thought this day was a wash, gradcafe comes through and makes me feel better! I LOVE you guys!

I think it's great that you want to thank him and you should definitely go for it. Just keep it simple, say even though they weren't ale to find a place for you in the department, you appreciate his help and his time. If he told you about current or upcoming projects, maybe you could wish him luck in those endeavors or something. Way to rise above the pain of not getting in, in any case!

Continue working at JCrew for the rest of my life, or at least until I get knocked up. (Don't mind me, just pouting under my little black rain cloud.)

From my mother, after my first rejection. "Are you supposed to be doing more? Should you have contacted them and asked them for an interview? You know, show your interest?" In her defense that flies with undergrad apps which is all she has experience with. But it doesn't help.

After logging on I clicked on my app so that I could see that my transcripts, recs etc were in, then at the bottom of that was a link that said "decision letter." If there is nothing there yet, it could be that archaeology is decided but sociocultural isn't, or maybe you're in a final pool while those of us with rejections are just out of the running? Although from what I've heard rejections usually go out last so that last guess of mine seems odd. More likely it's option A. Good luck!

Just got my first result, rejected from Brown. Not shocked, it wasn't a great fit but still bummed, it was my best shot at still working in bioanthropology even while I went in a more archaeology direction. Oh well. Still JEEZ did the first one have to be a rejection?

Congrats TungstenChef, your top choice! How exciting for you! Just spotted on results someone was invited for an interview for Brown "archaeology". Anyone know if that's Anthro or Classics? Details please!

Sorry to hear that! Looks like you still have a lot you're waiting on tho so hopefull some good news will come soon and wipe out the negative.

I don't know if I am just being terrible at dates (likely) or why I thought I could expect results in the next few days, but looking over the last few years' results from the programs I applied to, I have about a month to wait. WHHHYYY.

Oh god don't encourage me. Now I may just not sleep for the next month.

It's totally rational to think that decision emails will come in at 11 pm on a Sunday, right? RIGHT?

Gotta ask, how did it go? And for those of us waiting to hear from Berkeley, did you happen to get a sense if this was something just your POI does, or if interviews/contact is something all accepted applicants should expect? Hope you got a good feeling from the conversation and it works out for you! *panicpanicpanic*

My father, upon seeing that I once used the phrase "sh*t" on Facebook (context: "oh man there needs to be a Sh*t [Friend's Name] Says!" "Grad schools are going to see that and then they won't want you! That's very unladylike" Why thank you, as if I wasn't already stressed out enough, now I need to worry about the totally harmless and inoffensive things I say on a friends private, protected facebook wall. Excuse me while I go get my tinfoil hat.

No, I'm working full time right now and can't get away. Can't go to Honolulu either, tragically. I wonder if its just us on here? I haven't seen any other archaeology applicants floating around in the past few weeks. Swapping this over to pm now so I don't spam those who actually care about archaeology appslications.

Hellooooooo. Still waiting on all six programs. Nothing to update. Obviously from my username, I do Andean archaeology (didn't want to use my usual username and wasn't feeling creative. Lame I know). You?

Armadilla, I'd certainly stalk that thread! I'm applying for anthropological archaeology too. I know some anthropology ad coma will meet as one big anthropology party, but not all of them. And anyway, every time I see an anthropology update from someone I freak, only to see its social, etc. go for it! Even if its just the two of us, hahaha

I was contacted by a department I applied to and encouraged to apply for one of the school's FLAS fellowships. OK, no problem. But now I'm stressing/over thinking the essay. Can I tweak my SOP to fit their purpose, or will they see my SOP (even though it would be2 different groups of people deciding my admission and the fellowship) and know I used the same one? Does anyone who's applied/gotten a FLAS fellowship before have any advice?

Hey all... we're almost there! AHHHHH I felt like I was in a great place with my SOP, having had several people look over it. To calm his nerves, I gave my dad a copy of my SOP to look over, and he came back telling me that it was overrun with use of "I/Me/My". Now, not every sentence starts with "I" and there is a variety of sentence structures, but these words DO come up a lot - how could they not?. Now he's got me second-guessing my work. I'm trying to go through and take some out but I'm worried I'll start tearing apart the structure of the paper. A few sentences I've started playing with become too passive when I take these words out... ie, "as I began my senior thesis" becomes "as the thesis process began"...ew. Thoughts? How did you avoid the overuse of "I" phrases, or do you think it's not a huge issue?

OK thanks, glad to know I'm just over-thinking things!

Tried searching this but didn't find anything to answer my question, apologies if I'm just awful at forum searches. I don't have any official publications or presentations, unless you count my senior thesis which is in my school's library (I don't). How terrible is this in a field like archaeology, where there isn't a lot of teamwork on publications. Aside from fieldwork reports, which tend to list all the unit heads as coauthors after the site leader(s), it's usually just one or two names on a publication. I went to a top school undergrad but wasn't aware of any of my peers being published in my field... but that may just have been my department's culture? So rambling aside, Question One is: How bad is it (in this field especially) not to have publications? Questions Two is, do the following count at all as a pub/presentation? - A brief (6 page) summary of analysis conducted for a archaeological project, which is now included in the site's permanent archives (not published anywhere formally but available for anyone who would want to review it for their own research) - a presentation of my work to the entire department as a conclusion to a competitive internship Sorry for rambling, it's getting to the point of the application process where I may have lost my mind.

Hey folks, I'm a long time lurker who finally made a profile (I've been afraid of getting sucked into the place because I remember how badly CollegeConfidential scared me as a high schooler, but I've only found genuinely useful stuff on here so may as well, right?) So here's the question I joined specifically to ask: I'm applying to Anthropology PhD programs, but I'm behind the curve and haven't reached out to all potential advisors yet. There is one in particular I'm not sure I should email. She's an assistant professor in a top program, but I know she's only about 2 years out of grad school - I actually went to her defense. She went to school at my undergrad institution, and was my TA for a class I took freshman year, although I doubt she'd remember me. It was a big class and I didn't talk much as a lowly freshman. Anyway, I'm not sure if someone as new as her would even take grad students, and I don't want to ask a dumb question because, frankly, I don't want to make an ass of myself. We have a lot of mutual friends in our old department, she's worked at the sites where I have worked, etc., which makes her more of a "real" person in my mind. I know, I know, that makes no sense. BUT anyhow, tl;dr: should I even both to ask a newly minted PhD/assistant professor if she's taking grad students? Or is it too early in her career for that?