TulipOHare

I did do this yesterday. I walked across the hall and told my boss, and then sent e-mails to the other two. My e-mails were substantially less formal than what you suggested, but then my relationships with these people toe the lines between friend/colleague/authority figure. (I have seen all three of my recommenders drunk. )

Yeah, that's not the case in SLP at the master's level. However, the degree is also a professional credential -- once you pass your boards and graduate, you can go to any hospital or school district and get a well-paying job. The vast majority of people with MAs in SLP never intend to go on to PhDs, and the job placement rate for MA grads is 100% at any school that's worth a damn.

Thanks! It's a good program that's very active in the specialty I'm going for (bilingual), but it is so... friggin... expensive. I could get a Teach NYC scholarship that pays full tuition in return for a service commitment. No word yet from fin aid on whether other scholarships and etc. have gone out. Just outta curiousity, where did you apply, speechpathos09?

God, that's horrible. I would be tempted to say "Why would I do that? I'll just move back in with you!"

I take it back. I had one prof who only wore baggy turtleneck sweaters and long, straight, black skirts. If it was really hot outside she'd wear a baggy t-shirt instead of the sweater.

I feel like a jerk now. All I did was write (sincere!) e-mail thank-yous. However... One of my rec writers is my boss. So if I got her a present, I'd just be taking her grant money and giving it back to her, sort of. Another (former coworker who's now faculty in the field) insisted on writing a rec for me -- exact words "You let me know when you apply, because I want to write you a letter of recommendation" and when I laughed and jokingly said I'd make it worth his time he said seriously "Absolutely not, I'm doing it for free." The third is a former prof I've stayed in touch with because she pays me to edit her papers (she's not a native English speaker). So, again, her own money going back to her, sorta. Ah, I'm rationalizing. I'm a jerk and should've at least sent a card. So would it be weird to send one now, or later in the process? Now that I'm starting to get responses, I feel like it'd be saying "thanks for getting me into school!" rather than "thanks for putting forth the time and effort to write me a rec!" Maybe the least weird thing would be to not do anything and accept that I was kinda rude.

At present, this is hypothetical... but I'm thinking silly thoughts. Suppose you only got into one school: a top-flight, really expensive one, with no aid. What would you do -- drown yourself in the debt and go, or hold out till next year?

My boyfriend suggested thinking of it as starting a business. Hardly anyone has the money to just start one, so you have to either borrow money and promise to pay it back, or convince investors to give you money and promise you'll turn it into awesomeness. It takes massive and obsessive effort to make a business work, and it might take a long, long time before the business is stable or turns a profit. You might fail even if you do everything right (in certain industries, the odds of failing are significantly higher than the odds of succeeding). But people still start businesses. ... but then, he's not going to grad school and doesn't have any student debt. And isn't starting a business either.

My signature changed. :mrgreen:

Hey there, Inspekt. I went to Penn for undergrad, worked in a lab there for two years after graduation, and still live in the Philly area. Hit me with all the Philly questions you want. "GA" = same as being an RA (as in resident assistant/resident advisor in a dorm), just that you're a grad student. So you live on a floor in a dorm and have to do normal RA kind of stuff. The exact duties vary between dorms (they're all run a little differently). Some dorms hire only grad students, others hire both undergrads as RAs and grad students as GAs. In return for doing the job, you get free housing (again varies by dorm but it'll generally be a large studio or small one-bedroom) and a meal plan (the cafeterias were shit when I was there, but I guess there's always a chance they've improved -- ask current students). GAs in small dorms seemed to enjoy their jobs more than the GAs in big dorms, but it also seemed like the GAs in big dorms weren't expected to do as much. Sizes of apartments vary a ton throughout West Philly. Studios range from $600-$1000 depending on how far they are from campus and how big they are. One-bedrooms usually start at $750 and go up to $1100. Note also that rents can vary in an extremely arbitrary fashion -- if you see two similar apartments on the same block and they have a $200 price difference, there may not actually be any reason for it. In any case, expect slumlord treatment from your landlord or management company. They're not all bad, but a great many of them are. Grocery stores... there's not a ton of them close by, but there's a Freshgrocer at 40th & Walnut, an Aldi at 44th & Walnut, and a co-op at 47th & Baltimore. There is also a farmer's market at Clark Park, I forget which days of the week it's there though. The Trader Joe's in Center City is easy to get to by subway.

I don't really do dresses, heels, or skirts either. I'm not gay, but most of my coworkers probably think I am. Heh heh. Anyway! I would think your good jeans, a sweater, and nice-ish shoes or boots would be just fine. If you're worried that it might be too casual, wear slightly dressier pants -- corduroys, or plain slacks. If you're in doubt, ask. Also, don't be scared because it's an Ivy. Only a few of my professors dressed up a lot. I did not have a single female professor or TA who wore skirts or dresses all the time, and definitely had some who never wore them.

Taking some time off will definitely clear your head about whether you really want to do all this grad school stuff. My attitude when I was a senior in college was "I kinda wanna do this, it sounds pretty good I guess." But now I'm REALLY excited for it and can't wait. You will hear people say "oh I always meant to go back to grad school, but I never got around to it, life gets in the way you know." Do not listen to these people. Life might cause you to wait a little longer than you expected before you go back, but if going to grad school is really what you want, you will eventually shove life out of your way and make it happen. I did! Or, ahem, I'm trying to, but these grad schools just haven't admitted my wonderful ass yet.

Thanks, y'all.

I know I've had dreams about it, but my dreams are usually very incoherent and hard to remember. I love it. You're a good person for not asking them "If I kill all three, do I get full funding?" :twisted:

This thread actually makes me feel a little better: look at all the different fields we're in, and we're all waiting on NYU... maybe NYU is just slow!

yivorecheco, do you happen to know if in-state students hear sooner than out-of-state students at Maryland? It would make sense if they had to give priority to in-staters. fwiw, speechpathos09, I'm in-state for Temple and have all kindsa other Temple connections, and I haven't heard either.

Some schools (Maryland, in my case) not only want you to prove that you've lived in the state for the last 12 months, but also to demonstrate that you don't intend to leave the state after you graduate. Insane.

Oh heck yes, particularly since people I trusted told me I was a shoo-in at half the schools I applied to and very likely to get into the other two. So now I'm mostly convinced that they were just coddling me.

Well, you're gonna get more from the visit than just a gut feeling -- you'll find out what the culture of the department is like and get a feel for how you'll get along with the faculty (at school 2, you'll probably be able to figure out from the visit why the communication is so poor -- are the faculty overworked? indifferent to students? e-mail fearing Luddites? simply absent-minded? or something else?). You'll also find out what the other students are like and what the campus and the general area are like, and those are really not to be underrated. Not all your time will be spent working, and your life in grad school will be a lot happier if you don't hate where you live or the people you run into every day. Someone also made a point in another thread about looking at your stipend vs. the cost of living in the two areas -- the same stipend could be enough for a modestly comfy life in one area, but barely pay for your cardboard box and ramen in the other.

My undergrad school doesn't have a department in my field. But supposing it did, I'd be tempted, as long as the department was decent and not filled with jerks. Unfortunately, no chance at in-state tuition at my alma mater, since it's a private school... so the main plus for me would be not having to move (I still live in the general area -- could commute from where I live now, and could easily move closer to campus).

Another way safeties don't make sense: if you're going to rack up the same giant heap of debt at a safety as you would at a reach. I could get my master's at BFE College... or I could pay the same amount of money to get a degree from a school that's worth a damn.

Nu shto? I haven't heard anything at all and Testudo says "Pending Decision." sigh. I'd actually be very happy to go to any of them -- TC is intense clinically (important to me because I've been a research assistant for 4 years and I'm f'n tired of research!) and has a bilingual program; NYU is a small program with a lot of cool young faculty; Maryland is a huge program with well-established and interesting clinical stuff going on; Temple has a bilingual program and is by far the most affordable of the four.

Still waiting on the MA in speech-language pathology...

If your work experience is in your desired field, it is always a plus. More is always better, but any work experience is good.

Well, no. As indicated in my sig. I'm hoping you're not asking that with a surprised intonation. :cry: