trogdorburninator

hah! I love this. and agree with it. sometimes I convince myself if I change out of my house pants when I work on applications it will filter into the system that i am a SERIOUS APPLICANT, not someone who generally just mainlines gilmore girls and has an offensive amount of recycling piling up. 
 
also, smg, working on my writing sample reminds me of why I put if off for so long............. its going to be a tense week until dec1.

My writing sample makes me want to puke.  Its filled with tiny little turds I'm sick and tired of dealing with. How's the battle going folks?

If you have friends/colleagues whose writing you enjoy, don't be afraid to ask for friendly peer editing. 

pulling my hairs out. each of 'em. I'm actually looking forward to the day I have to stop and turn them in.

found this, thought you all might be interested in their guide to the personal statement..
http://stepbymiserablestep.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/applying-to-phd-programs-after-maps2012.pdf

Hello all!
 
I thought I would inject an element of humor into this awful process and start a thread about the logistical/technological blunders we encounter while applying to these programs. Other than being a place to vent, it could also end up being helpful to people who encounter the same issues. I'm pretty sure Ohio State is the earliest deadline (for fellowship consideration), so I'll just share what I've experienced. Good luck out there!
 
The Ohio State Blunders:
 
1. Scans of official transcripts must be uploaded!
          No problem! I'm well prepared, so I've already made PDF files of these guys. Except that they want scans of the front AND BACK of each page. And of course I don't have those, or the originals anymore, so it becomes a two-day errand of going to my old schools and buying a whole new set of transcripts.
 
2. List previous schools and upload transcripts!
          Ok, front and back pages scanned, transcripts uploaded....application won't save. Fine, I don't need you to save, I'll just submit...application won't submit. Error messages that reveal nothing about the actual source of error. Through a two hour process of trial and error I finally figure out that if you went to the same school for your MA and your BA, and you list them separately, you break The Ohio State. So you have to list your start date for undergrad and your end date for grad school, making it look like you've been in the same school continuously for the past decade or so. Not a good look, but that's cool, at least the application saves now.
 
3. Upload your statement of purpose!
          Don't look for the "Upload statement of purpose" button though, because you won't find it. What you'll find is a request for your "autobiography", that should be three pages long. What you'll need to keep in mind, however, is that buried deep within the Anthropology pages is zero mention of an autobiography, but a requirement that you upload a statement of purpose that is two pages long, max. You will default to the anthropology request, and take your chances. 
          So you upload your statement and then decide you want to make a few last minute changes, now that you've figured out that whole transcript debacle. Well good f&c%i#@ luck, because when you click on the trashcan icon to delete it, nothing will happen. You will click it again and nothing will happen. You will exclaim, violently, and then decide that you know what?, it's fine. I don't need to make any changes after all, it's fine. So you'll hit submit. Error message! You must attach an autobiography!
          A cold sense of dread will spread throughout your body. But....it's there! You will say, as you point to name of the attached file that you tried, unsuccessfully to delete. So you click on the icon of the paper with the glasses superimposed over it to take a look. File missing or deleted! It will tell you. Your statement will now be Schrodinger's SOP, as it both has and has not been deleted. There's nothing there, and yet because "something is there", you can't upload anything new.
          You will walk away for a little while, hoping that it's a temporary problem. You will come back to exactly the same problem. You will continue trying for an hour until you remember The IT Crowd, and metaphorically, "turn it off and turn it on again".
 
4. Create new user log in and do the whole damn application again!
          Drop one letter from your previous username, triple check every document before uploading, acknowledge that you have spent the past four and a half hours essentially doing two tasks, hit submit and then just WALK AWAY. 

This is most likely a diversity issue, in which case sexuality will not have an impact on your chances of admission or funding - I asked my mentor the same question for Berkeley's application, and she said that LGBTQ folks are no longer considered an underrepresented group in academia. However, a history of extreme financial hardship and/or non-white ethnicity/race both have the potential to qualify you for diversity scholarships -- people who grew up in working class/impoverished households and people of color ARE still underrepresented in university settings. So! Mention you're gay if it suits you, omit the information if it doesn't; your chances should remain approximately the same either way. But if you come from poverty or identify as anything other than white, it may benefit you to share that with admissions committees.

Gosh, so being straight would be a disadvantage? It should NOT matter.

Just like being white or male is a disadvantage with affirmative action, right? Please. 
 
I'll be honest: mentioning it did help my admissions decisions, partially because it helped explain some trouble I had in my first two years of undergrad (depression and other issues), but also because I'd been able to demonstrate an interest in working on LGBTQ issues professionally. For Geology, this second part might not be so important (are there gay rocks you'd want to study? ), but perhaps the first part could if you need it to.
 
Re: hreaðemus' point: I'm not sure this is a universal conclusion, and seems highly field-dependent. columbia09, you could get in contact with the people who did Queer in STEM (http://www.queerstem.org) to see if they have any advice.

Day kid- you must not think very highly of yourself or your research. You should only be funded by your department for a year or two max. By then your have to leave and do your research thus give up the funding and should be funded by outside sources. Maybe I just have more faith in myself than other have in themselves since funding was never a factor in my decission making and ill be graduating in may with my phd with a total of 20k student loans for undergrad, masters, and phd. Not to shabby and that 20k was while I was in undergrad

Anthrogeek, you are a bully. I don't know why you feel the need to take cheap shots at people you don't know anything about to try and make a point. You know nothing about me, my research or my self confidence. None of which is relevant to this conversation.
 
I wouldn't got to grad school without some type of funding offer. That is my decision and my opinion.

I don't think "requires revisions" == "bad." I don't know if you're already in grad school Loric but my experience is that everything you give anyone to read will come back with revision suggestions, and that includes journal submissions that you've already had 5 other people comment on. There's always more you can do. I am also not at all convinced that a 15 page excerpt from a paper that requires another 100 pages as context and which the OP says doesn't contain a lot of research is necessarily a good choice compared to a stand-alone 15-page paper. It depends on the content of the two papers, and the OP seems to think that the stand-alone paper is better. 

While I don't know what will/wont work for the adcomm or what advice to give you in that regard..
 
I can say that if you can't crank out a 15 page paper about Unicorn Mating Habits in 8 days that is well researched, written, and considered.. then you're going to struggle in grad school. Especially a program that's paper/analysis heavy (which is most of them.)
 
You have to write less than 2 pages a day to make the deadline.