Rivka

I am in my first year in the day MSW program at the University of Washington. I know that a lot of schools have you start practicum right from the beginning but at UW you don't start practicum until the second quarter of your first year. So the schedule was very different starting out--I had classes 3 days of the week (class scheduling wasn't flexible, we only had one time option for all of our classes). The reading and paper writing was tremendously time-consuming that first quarter--classes and out-of-class work easily took up a combined 40 hours a week. Now in the second quarter I spend about that much time on work but two full days of the week are spent in practicum. I'm honestly not really sure how someone would be able to hold a part-time or full-time job and get all of their work done. Only one of my classmates I've spoken to has a part-time job and she only seems to get a few hours of sleep a night. Not sure how other schools would be, but I wouldn't recommend working while doing this program. That said, there are ways you can minimize your hours spent reading. Most weeks we are assigned about 400 to 500 pages of reading and it really helps to team up and form reading groups. 4 to 5 people each reading about 100 pages and then providing notes on it helps prepare you for class. The paper writing is still pretty extensive though. Sorry if that was a bit of a downer! I do really love the program and the work we do in practicum and in class is incredibly interesting.

It really seems like they heavily accepted CA residents. And I read somewhere that the school tries to maintain only a 5% out-of-state population, which seems insanely low. I'm sure there were probably other factors though.

Well I just got my rejection letter from Berkeley. Apparently I should have established residency in California before applying Looks like it's off to either UT Austin or Columbia. Good luck to everyone still waiting!

Have there been absolutely no out-of-state admits so far? Getting pretty nervous that all of the acceptances will go to in-staters (congrats to all of you though!)

I still somehow have a feeling that some of us will still be waiting after the end of this week. Maybe I'm just being horribly pessimistic after NYU told me they'd notify me 9 days ago and then never did. Anyway, Berkeley is my top choice, like it is so many of yours. Good luck everyone!

Oooh I guess that is the same page I'd been looking at. Thanks!

Where's the link to your application? When obsessively checking my status I've been going to the application and clicking "continue application." I haven't seen any other way to check it. Just curious (and, of course, nervous that there's something messed up about my application) why mine is different.

I had a phone interview with NYU on February 14th and they said they would get back to me by the 28th. But I still haven't heard anything. They said they were pretty overwhelmed with a huge number of applications so it would take them a really long time to get back to people.

I'm going insane waiting for Berkeley too! Sounds like we'll probably hear around the first or second week of March.

Wow sweet deal! Congrats Kristi!

DearLouise, I'm not really sure if they still consider you for scholarships if you decline financial aid. Maybe send them an e-mail notifying them that you would like to be considered for scholarships? As for the username and password, I was wondering about that myself. I haven't gotten anything. Arjayz, I imagine that Penn scholarships are based on a combination of academics and experience. I'm sure if someone had a huge amount of experience and low GPA or a really high GPA and little experience that they could get a scholarship. They give them out in varying amounts, I'm sure based on the total awesomeness of your combined GPA and experience. Speaking for myself, I was given a small to mid-size Dean's Merit Award and have a 3.78 GPA and 2.5 years of full-time inner city teaching experience and a 4-month social work internship.

Finally got my acceptance letter from Columbia! Apparently reviewing my application was delayed partly because my statistics course was taken 6 years ago instead of 5... I had thought this wouldn't be much of a problem since it's not that long. They said I could take a course over the summer to make up the requirement.

When I contacted Columbia they told me that my application was reviewed on February 1st and that I should receive my decision very soon.

They actually didn't confirm that my application was complete until 1/9 and they finished reviewing it last week. It's possible they only release them on Fridays--which will mean that we will both probably hear this Friday or next. At least that's what I'm going to tell myself

Were all of your supporting materials confirmed to be complete on the 3rd? It seems to take them a little while to organize all that stuff and maybe your school's transcripts took a little longer? You never know with this process. Don't worry!