comp12

You wear flip tops to discussion?

Everybody, take a look at anon1's previous threads. Troll.

Hi elementarie, It's excellent that you are already in the midst of grad school planning with still a few more years of college to go. If you continue to do well in your major-related classes, you will be a fairly competitive applicant when it comes time. That said, for the large part, EC's matter very little and carry next to zero weight in MA/PHD dossiers. This isn't college, where the committee cares about how well-rounded an individual you are, and how you can "contribute" to the "community." Grad schools only care about your potential to make significant contributions to the field, and typically (with the exception of interdisciplinary programs), it is best to for applicants to be as focused and cohesive as they can rather than be wide-casting. You may go ahead and list them in your CV if you'd like, but not at the cost of directly field-related activities. Considering that your field is English, your best preparation for applications would be to take (and do well in) as many upper div. advanced courses in English/Writing/Comp Lit as you can, and aiming to write at least one or two good papers related to your possible research interests in these classes. I would also study hard for the verbal section of the GREs, and develop relationships with English professors at your college that will write you a solid recommendation letter next year. In your case, your clubs do seem relevant to your field, so it can't hurt to put them in your CV. I would consider mentioning them in your statement if you can draw things out of them that correlate to potential grad school activities. For example, as MA funding is not a given, the fact that you participated in a teaching writing club might be mentioned as a way of presenting yourself as a candidate for TA positions.

I've been on the GradCafe all summer.... How in the world have I been missing out on margarets' fabulous activities here this whole time? Perhaps it's because I might have been paying too much attention to my formerly favorite troll anon1's entertaining threads, but boy, after checking out maragarets' previous threads, she blows anon1 out the water! Keep it up, lovin' it!

Good recommendations, everyone!

You might get more responses by posting in the music forum: http://forum.thegradcafe.com/forum/81-music/ They have a thread going each year in which musicologists, ethnomusicologists, theorists, composers, and even--on occasion--performers contribute.

How do you format submissions for paper presentations/conferences? This is more a question for the humanities. Obviously, peer-reviewed journal publification submissions require specifics, but how do you package a document for a spoken presentation? Would you treat it as if a seminar paper with a bibliography in standardized font and citation styles, or do you go ahead with title, acknowledgement, and copyright pages as if a published paper?

I'm concluded that, facing the daunting task of locating, compiling, and organizing diverse sources (not just print but also audio, etc) for research projects lasting multiple years, I'd probably be wise to come up with better systems of retaining my information than simply pasting my citations into a word doc. I know that there are software that do this, but I haven't tried any, and I'm wondering if others have. I also know that people of decades past even did pretty well with good old cabinet filing systems. What do people here at GC do?

The STEM fields generally pay 25-30k on top of tuition, although the money usually comes from Research Assistantships rather than Teaching. TAs are more prevalent sources of funding in social sciences, humanities, and arts. They pay from <15k to 25k, although the higher figure is rare for some disciplines at all but the highest/most selective tier of schools. Also, as funding for the arts are perpetually dwindling, often a 12-15k assistantship amount is all available at many public research U's. Most of this is department and location dependent. Schools in NYC will have to offer more money to be competitive with schools in the Southeast, e.g.

I hope anon1 decides to apply again. I've been so entertained by his threads I want to read another round of them next year! The down side is that said threads make me reach my quote of daily down-votes really fast. Oh well, you cut your losses

People have been trying to "rationalize" your "thought-process" because your whole story is very curious and probably not believable. You have made numerous threads asking for advice on picking schools that you have been accepted to over many months, and your rationale for picking them have been due to very minor, mundane factor--so much that posters don't exactly take it seriously. And now, even after all these months have passed, you are back on this board yet still without having made a decision, leading me to believe that this entire story has been a troll story. Decisions to enroll are typically made in mid April for Fall quarter. Rarely do graduate programs accept applications for Spring. In fact, UCLA and UCSD's computer science programs only admit for fall quarter. It is the middle of August; how can you possibly still have an uncommitted offer open? Did you already accept UCSD over UCLA? Are you now considering redacting your committal to reapply this coming year?

I think you ought to apply again. After all, since UCSD and UCLA (the two schools you are wavering between according to your numerous other threads) only admit computer science applicants to Fall Quarter, you can't possibly still have an open and uncommitted offer still in hand in August. What gives?

Ugh, anon1 again?

What the heck? When did being American come into play all of a sudden?

I enjoyed reading a book relevant to this issue recently: _Whistling Vivaldi_ by Claude Steele is about the performance of black Americans in college. It's aimed for more of the popular science sector, although Steele is an academic and the chapters are more or less summaries of scientific studies he had been involved in. Unsurprisingly, stereotype threat significantly effects academic performance in lots of ways, but it's surprising subtlies are often quite unexpected; a lot of has to do with the subect's self-perception of his or her own identity, and how sometimes the striving and the pushing in an effort to fight the stereotype threat and to overachieve actually backfires, resulting in perpetuating the original threat. It's quite interesting to read about, and not to mention just how even the tiniest amounts of self identity when associated with stereotype threats can have a very disproportionately large influence.

I agree to just simply check back with the graduate administrator at the department. It shouldn't be difficult to clear up. Also - yes, to partially reiterate what others have said: your stipend was not reduced from $5850 to $5002. The $5850 will be paid to you bi-weekly over the course of your engagement. (It is unclear from the wording whether the $5850 is per-quarter/semester or total.) The $5002 amount is the the tuition remission. kaguyahime's guestimates seem pretty good on how the numbers are stacking up. Again, your department should be the one to clear it up for you. As for why the $2728 is appearing in your account, yes many systems do post these bills onto the account first and then apply the credits, so most likely this is a paperwork processing time. But again, your department/school is the authorative source on this.

Seems tuition is waived for those employed at a .25 workload (meaning 25 percent of, usually full time meaning 40 hour work week)) or higher. The letter you pasted doesn't specify how much your workload is.

a good place to start:

A good place to start:

A good place to start is to peruse this thread:

I agree that your reasons are legit and that it would be an acceptable idea to try to transfer. If you wanted out just because "you don't like it" then you may potentially burn a bunch of bridges in the field, as they say. However, your circumstances seem valid and like the exact situation that faces people who switch programs.

I suggest looking into the visual culture and visual studies programs at Rochester, Buffalo, and UC Irvine.

Often tuition charges gets posted before the department allocates the credit. I wouldn't stress about it, as it is pretty normal. Check with your department if you are concerned.

mochabear, It is still rather early in the new admissions season for applicants to find their way here and to start contributing. Eventually, the thread will get going, promise. Last year saw the music forum's most active community yet, but even that didn't take off until well into the fall. I would be cautious of discouraging potential contributors with comments like those so early in the timeframe. Also, Just about all of the items you ask about were stuff that ample discussion has been focused on in past threads. A quick glance at some of them will illuminate what others have already posted re: the same issues you bring up, such as number of schools to apply to and opinions on the weight of GRe scores. Most of the 102 hits were probably not even from 2012/13 music applicants anyway, but from random GradCafe viewers. This part of the year is typically a relative dead time in the academic community. As for the actual topic at hand, I'd definitely apply to as much as I sanely can, and afford. PhD apps are getting more and more competitive each year; most schools offer no more than 2-3 spots in each field, and the top programs typically receive applications in thr hundreds. I applied to over 10 schools this past year, all to programs that I thought would be a super fit for me. Predictably, I was rejected from most of them, but luckily did receive a few options. Because I had done good research, like you, into the programs beforehand, all of my admits were tempting options, and I had the good problem of having to make a difficult decision. On funding, most PhD programs generally fully fund their students (most programs can only admit to the capacity that they can fund) but of course, this is changing as departments get strapped and more are not always able to fund each admit. However, I don't want to discourage somebody from not applying to what otherwise would be a perfect program just because they don't officially and explicitly state full funding. You never know what is available andwhere, and only a small portion of schools list a statement of some sort on their website promising guaranteed funding. The reality is, most PhD students are still fully funded today despite thr economy of hugher ed. It is best to give a department a email inquiring about funding prospects for the upcoming year rather than discounting them simply because one doesn't read an official statement of guarantee on their application site. Good luck. It is a tough and soul searching process that can be pretty fun and rewarding.