radioalfredio

Well, I'm kind of sort of in your position, Michigan girl. I have a master's degree, and after applying to too few schools, which in retrospect weren't a good fit, I'm now applying for Fall 2012 admission. I learned a lot during last year's application season and I feel confident about my chances this year, but it's still disappointing. My MA program was also pretty time consuming (I taught three sections, wrote a thesis, and had to take comprehensive exams), so I didn't finish until August, and I didn't really have a back up plan. I moved back home, and I spent three months looking for work. I applied for tons of different types of jobs, but I ended up in retail. In the end, I don't think that being "overqualified" necessarily hurt me, but the retail job that I got is very similar to the retail job that I had during my BA (so I already had relevant experience in that area). The thing that everyone needs to realize is that the economy is really really bad right now, and I lot of people are out of work. While we were getting our MAs, someone was working in some entry level job for 2+ years before they got laid off. Even though we have graduate degrees, there are people out there with more on the job experience in these retail/temp jobs than us. Or at least that's my take on the situation. My constructive advice is this: what kind of jobs have you held outside of academia? In looking for short-term job opportunities, draw upon that experience. Employers are looking for people with years of experience, even in entry level retail jobs. I know that it can be discouraging...

Also, don't be discouraged by friends or family telling you that you're "above" some job or another. One of my friends keeps telling me "I can't believe that you're working in retail, you have a master's degree," and yeah, it's kind of upsetting, but her opinion is not constructive. I'm happy to have something to do, and at least I'm making money and paying off some of my debts. In the end, I just let my situation motivate me to seek better opportunities, and to make my applications strong.

I hope that my experience has been somewhat helpful for you. I kind of needed to vent a little bit too! Good luck, and remember that you have your program to look forward to in the fall!

Remember that you don't need to write everything in a linear order. If you're having trouble with your introduction, write that later. I find that the introduction can't really be written until I'm done with everything else, but I always get bogged down by it in the beginning. Also, I find it helpful to set goals. Say that you want to finish your discussion one week from today. Hold firm to that deadline like your adviser is expecting it then. You can either work on it in little pieces or pull an all nighter. Just remember that you have a deadline to meet.

After last week of 3 rejections(Stanford, Berkeley, and UMich) and 1 waitlist (USC), I got an interview from CMU (SLA) just now.

OP, I agree with you. It does seem slightly negative to me, but it doesn't bother me if other people choose to do it. I chose not to do it, but I didn't really think about it until now. I guess... maybe something doesn't exist until it actually happens. So, I didn't add my acceptance until it happened. And, I suppose I will do the same once I get the actual rejection or wait list.

I don't know why I'm replying to this discussion but I feel compelled to state the obvious. Why worry about the cost of food? I mean, when contemplating what school to go to the cost of housing will certainly be the biggest factor. If one selects a school in NYC or Los Angeles or San Francisco it's going to be quite expensive as opposed to going to school in Nebraska or Ohio. Food expenses are a sunk cost. You have to eat no matter where you are. But you don't have to pay more than $1000 a month in rent in many cities. I'm just saying...

wow. quite an outburst over some innocent questions. I also don't think it's neccessary to reply to responses to your own question, though it might help with getting a better response sometimes.

Honestly, no one can answer this question for you in a specific way without knowing which cities you're looking at, making a list of grocery items you're likely to buy, and comparing their prices at major grocery stores in each location. But, this is something you could do yourself when you go on visits.

In essence, this is a basic cost of living question. Find a cost of living calculator that includes groceries and use it to compare the various cities you're looking at. You can also look at CSA prices and reviews for all of the cities you're considering. In all honesty, you're not likely to find much variation due to the fact that most groceries in the US are supplied by a few major providers and sold at nationwide chains.

@bythesea, I can understand msafiri's frustration because InquilineKea posts many topics daily, doesn't really connect them to grad school, and many have the same answer which is "It depends". I've posted a variation of "It depends" multiple times to InquilineKea and never gotten a reply or even any indication that s/he has read my comments. I think that's why his/her posts tend to get fewer comments now than they did a month or two ago.

Seriously? WTF kind of question is this and how is anyone qualified to answer this for you? Seriously, if you're going to make 20+ new posts in one day, you could at least bother to reply to people's questions and comments, rather than just steamrolling on to the next overly broad question that no one hear can answer.

How should anyone know about the veg*n cost of living somewhere? Why do you care? Why would it cost more for veg*ns to live somewhere than it would carnivores?

InquilineKea, have you even thought about how ridiculous some of your questions are? Why do you waste people's time with these inane questions and ridiculous numbers of posts in a day?

Moderators: Is it possible to put someone on a posting freeze, wherein they can't create new topics for X hours/days? Maybe that's what's needed to stop InquilineKea's binge-purge cycle of posting...

Yes, I'm completely in favour of using the forum for discussing pertinent issues or just talking about stuff to release stress. However, by using the same analogy, I can say that this post did the exact opposite. It irked me and induced stress, so to speak. It comes across as trollish and rhetorical. Even a bot can do a better job than this. And this isn't the first time the OP has posted a random four word question which is limited in its scope of getting meaningful responses, and which (s)he wouldn't care to elaborate upon him/herself. C'mon, are a lot of people really going to say that they love sobbing and posting about rejections on Facebook?

You should try to figure out if they plan on retiring/moving/quitting within the next few years (this needs to be phrased delicately).

I asked a few people "What are the qualities that enable grad students to do well in this department/as your students?" The answers can be very telling.

After dealing with candidates (n=15) these past two weeks here are some helpful hints of things not to say or do:

1. Do not ask me where you can buy drugs. I'm am not shitting you. I am here to get you from point A to point B and take you dinner, not here to help you find your next weed supplier.
2. Slag off on PI's that you have not yet met. Especially when their trainees are sitting across the table from you. As their trainee was fuming about your lack of brain to mouth filter, I will egg you on to say more and more dumb stuff that is going to bite you in the butt later.
3. Tell a graduate student that there research is boring and contributes nothing to field of science. This pisses the student off especially when she has a fellowship, multiple papers in C/N/S (the top dog journals), and some crazy groundbreaking research going on.
4. Get drunk at dinner. It sucks to have to make a pit stop and drop the lush off at the hotel when taking the rest of the candidates out on the town.
5. Lie to us about your GPA/accomplishments. Some of us do sit on the admissions committee and do actually look at you apps.
6. Oversleep on interview day. I will/did leave you at the hotel after waiting an extra half hour.
7. Update your Twitter while a professor is talking to you.
8. #7 also commits the heinous act of telling professor his hypothesis is wrong and that someone from her institution is doing it the right way. The professors that she speaks of works on a completely different project and have nowhere near similar research interests and do completely different things. Candidate then look strangely when the professor tells her to sit outside the door and wait for the next person to fetch her for the following interview after only interviewing with them for fifteen minutes of the hour.

Just some helpful hints folks. Watch your actions and more importantly your words.

Though I am Canadian, if I were you I wouldn't count on Obama's health care plan standing up in the courts. As much as I think it's a great step forward for your country, I know those mouth-breathing Republicans will stop at nothing to see it struck down.

I pulled an all-nighter trying to get my NYU SOP done in time for their "recommended deadline." I had to leave for the airport at 5:30 am, and didn't spend a whole lot of time thinking about packing or sorting through my handbag.

I cleared security at two international airports -- Hamburg and Newark -- and worked like crazy on my SOP. During the Newark flight I finished and rifled through my handbag to get some chapstick. While searching, I found something I had forgotten to remove from my bag ..... pepper spray. Made it through two major airports with mace in my bag. Good job, TSA.

You'll make yourself crazy thinking like this! You can't take much away statistically from the results board - they're partial numbers at best. I've just looked up last year's results for the program I am in and they paint a much more positive picture than the actual numbers would give you: 15 applications, 2 acceptances and 13 rejections. Those numbers suggest an acceptance rate of 13% when I know the actual acceptance rate was around 5% ( was in that 5% and yet rejected from schools who accept 20%...). Departments' own statistic are, of course, more reliable but they don't really mean anything as a way of measuring your own chances -- your acceptances and rejections rest so much more on things that cannot be measured (i.e. the quality of your SOP in comparison to those of this year's application cohort) that it is almost pointless trying to predict your results.

All this is much easier said than done, of course... but yeah... just try your hardest not to think about it

Well, I'm kind of sort of in your position, Michigan girl. I have a master's degree, and after applying to too few schools, which in retrospect weren't a good fit, I'm now applying for Fall 2012 admission. I learned a lot during last year's application season and I feel confident about my chances this year, but it's still disappointing. My MA program was also pretty time consuming (I taught three sections, wrote a thesis, and had to take comprehensive exams), so I didn't finish until August, and I didn't really have a back up plan. I moved back home, and I spent three months looking for work. I applied for tons of different types of jobs, but I ended up in retail. In the end, I don't think that being "overqualified" necessarily hurt me, but the retail job that I got is very similar to the retail job that I had during my BA (so I already had relevant experience in that area). The thing that everyone needs to realize is that the economy is really really bad right now, and I lot of people are out of work. While we were getting our MAs, someone was working in some entry level job for 2+ years before they got laid off. Even though we have graduate degrees, there are people out there with more on the job experience in these retail/temp jobs than us. Or at least that's my take on the situation. My constructive advice is this: what kind of jobs have you held outside of academia? In looking for short-term job opportunities, draw upon that experience. Employers are looking for people with years of experience, even in entry level retail jobs. I know that it can be discouraging...

Also, don't be discouraged by friends or family telling you that you're "above" some job or another. One of my friends keeps telling me "I can't believe that you're working in retail, you have a master's degree," and yeah, it's kind of upsetting, but her opinion is not constructive. I'm happy to have something to do, and at least I'm making money and paying off some of my debts. In the end, I just let my situation motivate me to seek better opportunities, and to make my applications strong.

I hope that my experience has been somewhat helpful for you. I kind of needed to vent a little bit too! Good luck, and remember that you have your program to look forward to in the fall!

Variance is definitely more the rule, than the exeption. From what I can understand, the composition of admissions committees differs widely, not just from school to school, but program to program. Some will give you hints on their "Admissions" webpages, but by and large the number/identity of readers will be obscured.

I've mentioned elsewhere that I've been ON an admissions committee, as a student rep for my MA program. Speaking from that experience, there were about 6 profs, myself and a PhD student on the actual committee. Before we sat down with the apps, the Graduate Director and the Graduate Secretary went through all of them and removed the ones from the pool that were incomplete and/or didn't meet minimum admission requirements (and had no "good" - i.e., substantiated and appropriate - explanation of mitigating circumstances). So that's two sets of eyes looking at everyone, I think around 30 applicants (of 200-ish) were bounced at that stage. We split the committee into two, each side took half of the apps. We read the ENTIRE contents of these apps and (with the aid of department admin guidelines) each came up with a top ten (we were aiming to fill around 10 spots; ultimately, we made 15 offers and took 12 students). We came together, each with our top ten, and compared notes. We ranked, discussed, justified our choices and cut; then we repeated this process until we had an acceptance and wait list that we (mostly) agreed upon.
Again, this experience is context-specific, but if you were to break it down for MY program:
Sets of eyes looking at your app: between 2 and 10, depending on how far you get.
WHO is looking: Department and/or Graduate Head(s) and Secretary, profs (all from the department, though not all were on the faculty for the program), current student(s) from program

All that being said...



...I think that your anxiety is beyond the how-many-and-what-kind-of-people-am-I-prospectively-exposing-my-inadeqaute-asshattery-to?! nerves. I hope that knowing some of the details that I provided above puts you at ease, but I have a feeling that it won't; partly because everything is context-specific - accordingly, I would advise you to take my experience with a grain of salt - and partly because your question doesn't get to the heart of your doubt.

Everyone gets cold feet about their SOPs (although, for sanity's sake, I couldn't say whether or not it is better to be struck down by this doubt before or after app submission...). I'd caution against directing this concern to a excessive preoccupation with WHO will be reading your app, because you can't really find out nor can you control this element.

Focus instead, on what you can control and generally take care of. That is: create an SOP that displays competency without resorting to jargon (remember when I said that adcomm profs were in my department but NOT neccessarily faculty members in my program? keep that in mind, don't alienate anyone). As well, you would do well to convey FIT, ability to FINISH and capacity to CONTRIBUTE and to do this in a way that appeals to those who might not only work OVER you, but also alongside you.

Finally, you should have some more people read it before you submit it. And I mean different kinds of people. Those with an academic backround and otherwise. Not everyone is going to totally "get" it, but they should be able to tell you things like whether or not you are being clear, compelling and if your passion is shining through (the latter of these being a possible issue for you, I think, based on your post).

Good luck!

I graduated HS in 1997, took some basics classes and fiddled around at a community college for a year after then stopped all together. In 2001 I started school again (community college basics). Basically from 1997 - 2004 I worked in various careers and even owned my own business. Then in 2005 I got into an amazing undergrad program at a very prestigious university. I graduated in 2008 with great credentials but could not find a high paying job in my field (not even a mediocre paying one). So instead I managed a boutique for a decent wage until I settled on a graduate program.

Bottom line - it is not how your life flows but how you ride your life. Only you can decide if YOU will go back to school once you leave.

Well, I'm kind of sort of in your position, Michigan girl. I have a master's degree, and after applying to too few schools, which in retrospect weren't a good fit, I'm now applying for Fall 2012 admission. I learned a lot during last year's application season and I feel confident about my chances this year, but it's still disappointing. My MA program was also pretty time consuming (I taught three sections, wrote a thesis, and had to take comprehensive exams), so I didn't finish until August, and I didn't really have a back up plan. I moved back home, and I spent three months looking for work. I applied for tons of different types of jobs, but I ended up in retail. In the end, I don't think that being "overqualified" necessarily hurt me, but the retail job that I got is very similar to the retail job that I had during my BA (so I already had relevant experience in that area). The thing that everyone needs to realize is that the economy is really really bad right now, and I lot of people are out of work. While we were getting our MAs, someone was working in some entry level job for 2+ years before they got laid off. Even though we have graduate degrees, there are people out there with more on the job experience in these retail/temp jobs than us. Or at least that's my take on the situation. My constructive advice is this: what kind of jobs have you held outside of academia? In looking for short-term job opportunities, draw upon that experience. Employers are looking for people with years of experience, even in entry level retail jobs. I know that it can be discouraging...

Also, don't be discouraged by friends or family telling you that you're "above" some job or another. One of my friends keeps telling me "I can't believe that you're working in retail, you have a master's degree," and yeah, it's kind of upsetting, but her opinion is not constructive. I'm happy to have something to do, and at least I'm making money and paying off some of my debts. In the end, I just let my situation motivate me to seek better opportunities, and to make my applications strong.

I hope that my experience has been somewhat helpful for you. I kind of needed to vent a little bit too! Good luck, and remember that you have your program to look forward to in the fall!

And thank you Psycholinguist!

I decided to email one prof. who I really want to work (of course, I want to work with all of the profs. that I've applied to work with, but I'm more familiar with this prof's work than some of the others, so it made my email easier). Within a day, I received a very nice email about the department and an invitation to talk on the phone. I'm very excited, and it has been a nice boost to my self esteem. Even if this has no bearing on my admissions to the program, it's still good "interview" practice for me.

And do they try to look at the Facebook profiles (which can be true gold mines) of applicants, if at all possible?

I would very much recommend it. One of my undergrad professors said that when he hears from prospective grad-students, the names stick in his mind because he knows that those applicants really want to work with him. Letters can be short - something along the lines of:

Dear Professor Z: I am a (student/alumnus) (at/of) (School X) looking into applying to graduate school in linguistics for next September. I am very interested in (subfield) and (topics) and have taken an interest in your work. Are you currently accepting new graduate students for then?

Well, I'm kind of sort of in your position, Michigan girl. I have a master's degree, and after applying to too few schools, which in retrospect weren't a good fit, I'm now applying for Fall 2012 admission. I learned a lot during last year's application season and I feel confident about my chances this year, but it's still disappointing. My MA program was also pretty time consuming (I taught three sections, wrote a thesis, and had to take comprehensive exams), so I didn't finish until August, and I didn't really have a back up plan. I moved back home, and I spent three months looking for work. I applied for tons of different types of jobs, but I ended up in retail. In the end, I don't think that being "overqualified" necessarily hurt me, but the retail job that I got is very similar to the retail job that I had during my BA (so I already had relevant experience in that area). The thing that everyone needs to realize is that the economy is really really bad right now, and I lot of people are out of work. While we were getting our MAs, someone was working in some entry level job for 2+ years before they got laid off. Even though we have graduate degrees, there are people out there with more on the job experience in these retail/temp jobs than us. Or at least that's my take on the situation. My constructive advice is this: what kind of jobs have you held outside of academia? In looking for short-term job opportunities, draw upon that experience. Employers are looking for people with years of experience, even in entry level retail jobs. I know that it can be discouraging...

Also, don't be discouraged by friends or family telling you that you're "above" some job or another. One of my friends keeps telling me "I can't believe that you're working in retail, you have a master's degree," and yeah, it's kind of upsetting, but her opinion is not constructive. I'm happy to have something to do, and at least I'm making money and paying off some of my debts. In the end, I just let my situation motivate me to seek better opportunities, and to make my applications strong.

I hope that my experience has been somewhat helpful for you. I kind of needed to vent a little bit too! Good luck, and remember that you have your program to look forward to in the fall!

This thread makes me really really happy. It's so nice to see that others feel the same way. I'm a first-generation (and lower income) student, so I have plenty of diversity/personal history statement worthy material, but still, it makes me so uncomfortable to reveal myself in such a way to people who I'm trying to impress with my academic accomplishments, not my personal struggles. It also makes me feel insecure (and like a bit of an impostor) to dwell on these issues. I guess if I do end up receiving a diversity fellowship, I'll feel like the playing field has been leveled. Until then, I kind of feel like these essays are less of a chance for me to address the different challenges I've faced in a safe space and just another barrier to higher education.

OK - end rant.

In the proof-of-existence department, I didn't contact any POIs before or after submitting my apps and still did pretty well in my application cycle.

More generally, it's crucial to contact POIs in fields where the student joins a lab or working group mentored by a certain PI, who in turn directly funds the student. In all the linguistics programs I know, students are funded collectively by the department and not from particular advisors' grants. As such, you don't need to have someone in particular to sponsor you before you even apply. Nonetheless students still have a particular set of POIs in mind who they would like to work with at each school. If you find that one or more are not accepting new students or are leaving, you might reconsider applying there in the first place. That's one main goal of contacting POIs, in my mind, though normally faculty won't tell you that they are leaving before it's already become public knowledge - so there may be other more efficient ways of learning about possible leaves or transfers. Another goal is to try and make a memorable (positive) impression on faculty who are hopefully on the adcom and can influence decisions. That would of course be a positive outcome, but I don't think it's necessary. In linguistics, to the best of my knowledge, the field is still small enough that every application that is submitted receives some level of attention. None are tossed without being given some considerations like in larger fields that get hundreds of apps per year and therefore have strict cutoffs. If you have a strong application, you can do very well without having contacted anyone.

My advice regarding contacting POIs after being admitted to a program changes considerably -- then I encourage as much communication as possible. But I believe that that is not what the question is about, so I won't elaborate.

I feel a similar unease--partly because..I feel as if the greatest hardships/most diverse identities I have/things I've experienced are precisely the ones that I'm hesitant to include in a professional application. Why? It's hard to explain. The strange thing about it is, basically, many of the things we "overcome" or the identities we carry around with us that can negatively impact our intellectual/academic careers are just the things we might not feel like emphasizing in our application presentations because of the potential negative associations with those identities. Even though obviously I understand that the last intention of the diversity statements is to discriminate, I feel like there end up being these grey areas. Take for instance, someone coming from an economically disadvantaged background. If this were a major aspect of my life/education, warranting me writing about it in a personal history statement...then how do I reconcile that with the other application I came across which said "If you do not require financial aid, this increases your chances of admission". Pair that with the infamous Chronicle article by Benton in which he suggests that choosing graduate school is (basically) a stupider choice for those who are NOT "independently wealthy." Or the reality that, if someone has to pay student loans back, money might be tighter during their PhD studies, which makes them less likely to finish in a shorter time, if at all.

I guess basically my point is that, the attitude of the personal history is "tell us everything; we understand and won't judge" but, *laugh* I've been through enough adversity to realize that certain people DO judge. It almost feels like there is a trick question to it, like in interviews when the interviewer intentionally acts unprofessional to test out how the interviewee reacts in that situation.

I think the main aspect of the original poster's feeling that I really agree with is the sense of privacy invaded...The reality is, one is an applicant--not an admitted student yet, so it feels invasive for them to ask about precisely the things that relate to one's sense of intellectual insecurity (not actual intellectual inferiority, but carrying an aspect of identity that is perceived that way by others). Ideally, diversity statements are something that will have a positive impact on admissions as a whole, but I part of me worries that certain adcoms don't personally have the same outlook on "diversity" as their institution does. I mean, I hope they do--but I worry. I'm paranoid. Obviously, there are going to be a decent number of applications in which the diversity statement will make a student stand out in a way that they rightly deserve. They should have the opportunity to make this part of their application--but perhaps it shouldn't be required for everyone.