sansao

Well, it's either laugh at my situation or completely flip out and go become a hermit in the desert. I like showers too much for the latter, so laughter (which is becoming slightly maniacal at this point) is what it's going to be.

Well, the biomedical field does seem to be pretty competitive this year. Hopefully your interview at Penn State got you in. In the meantime, I don't think you did yourself a disservice by casting a wide net, at least you have a lot of possibilities. If I had three rejections (out of four schools) right now, I'd be completely and thoroughly panicked. Yeah, I did my apps over the Fall semester, and I might as well have been taking an extra course, complete with homework and term papers, for as much time as I put into it. Funny enough, the waiting this semester is far more distracting than the application process was. On the upside, my applications were all done in November (minus lors, which didn't arrive until Dec/Jan).

Hey, at least it's not Spring Break everywhere. Could you imagine if we all just had to wait 9 days with almost guaranteed silence from everywhere? Yikes.

Does tomorrow (or this coming week in general) make anybody else particularly nervous? It seems like decisions have really started rolling out in a good mix of fields over the last week. I know tomorrow's President's Day, but I also know that a lot of the schools (my UI included) are not taking a holiday. Idk, maybe the stress is starting to get to me.

Exactly. I forgot it was President's day on Monday... no mail until Tuesday. At least email doesn't shut down too.

Actually, teaching at the high school level might not be a bad idea. It could be part-time, and I could strengthen my application by teaching and taking a few more classes. That's something to think about. Thanks for posting this.

Yeah, I only needed 9, but I foresaw the tension of the waiting process, and decided to address a possible mathematical deficiency (I hadn't taken differential equations). So I added that class, and I was going to add two more geoscience classes as well, but decided that 2 math classes a capstone and a field course would probably keep me occupied. Almost, but I still have several hours a day to refresh my email. It is so strange to hate weekends and long for Monday to arrive.

Hey, that sounds great! I can't see any reason that there would be a button that says, "accept offer" if there were not an offer to accept. I didn't apply to USC, but the one rejection I've received changed my application page to just a statement of rejection, no buttons, no links, just a "thanks but no thanks" message. However, I would wait until the letter arrives to see the details of the offer (funding, etc.) before formally accepting. It's entirely possible that they made the decision quickly due to rolling review periods, or they were just determining funding and didn't want to send the offer without that information. Congratulations, relax, and good luck with your other applications too.

That would upset me quite a bit. I'd hate to have a bunch of people knowing where I applied and then asking me about it when I might be processing some very intense emotions. At least s/he wrote you a letter though, that probably means it was a very enthusiastic letter (or they're extremely sadistic). Agreed though, good luck.

Try to stay positive. If you get one admit and all the rest are rejections, that pretty much solves the problem, right? But I hear ya, if I get another rejection next, my positive attitude may evaporate. I have a lot more invested in the remaining three schools, so until I'm in one, disengaging from any of them because I got rejected is going to be a lot more difficult than the first rejection.

21 does seem like a lot. I can just imagine trying to get all those lors. I'd need a database just to keep track of everything. I applied to 4, and spent almost as much as you did. I don't have thousands of dollars to throw around on application fees and transcripts (I had to scrounge for the $400+ I've spent so far).

Tell me about it. It's become very draining, and hard to get out of my head while I'm working. I say this a lot, but at least you have one admission. It's yet another weekend, which just seems surreal at this point. I took 12 credits, which is a light load for me. I don't know very many people locally that are in the same boat. A couple of people at my undergrad school are waiting to hear back from that school with me, but that's about it. I think I'd be even more distracted if everyone I knew were going off to interviews and collecting admissions, so at least there's that.

Just out of curiosity, am I the only one who feels like these last 2.5 weeks have been the longest in my life? I remember creating a topic on February 2nd, and thinking to myself that at the current pace, I'd blink and it would be March. It's still barely the 17th. It's still leap year too. For all the studying, exams, and life stuff that I've had going on, it feels like it should be May. No fair, haha.

It does help to know that they're really still making decisions. That may be why my attitude hasn't cracked yet. Give me another two weeks, I'll probably be wandering the streets with bloodshot eyes, missing chunks of hair, and asking random strangers to pretend to be someone from a POI offering me admission.

I keep dreaming that I wake up in the night to check my status on my phone. The status on one of my schools pages has changed color (to green). I can never read what it says, but it's always implied in the dream that it's an admission. I've finally stopped checking my phone again the instant I wake up. I already have the thing on silent so I don't jump out of bed at an email notification, only to find out it's about the new privacy policy somewhere. I can never get back to sleep once that happens.

Working on plan B is definitely not wasted time. It's good to be prepared, and keeps you grounded. But chin up (at least off the floor - you don't need mites crawling in your mouth ). It's not a rejection until you see it in print. Lots of schools this semester are running late, dealing with huge numbers of applicants, the new GRE, funding issues, etc. If you haven't got any rejections yet, consider that you may have made it through the first cut, and wait and see what happens.

I would feel a lot better if I were already in a master's program, too. My advisors at my undergrad school told me not to apply for those in my field because a lot of faculty don't want to use funding on someone who'll only be there for a couple years. If they offered me admission to one instead of a PhD, though, that would at least be a step towards my goals. As long as I could find a way to pay for it, I'd probably jump on the opportunity.

You could consider finishing your Physics PhD and then applying for a masters in AE. I can see how an adcom might think that since you're already in a PhD program and looking to transfer into a masters, that maybe you're choking on the PhD reqs. In the meantime, see what happens with your current apps. You'll have more of a gauge on how realistic you're being after you see the outcome.

Isn't it? I'm glad it's here, but I really hope I don't have to refer back to it for the Summer.

Well, you have a PhD program to which you're already admitted. So you're not necessarily being unrealistic. Clearly someone believes you have the capacity to do doctoral level research work.

I asked the faculty I corresponded with if they thought I should retake the GRE based on my scores - and that I know it was mostly nerves blowing up in my face (that happens when my future is on the line, like now, haha). Most of them said that I shouldn't need to retake it, and that they consider a lot of other things. Still, they also noted that it basically comes down to your overall application package and how well you fit the program. If you're up against someone who fits equally well, and also has a good app package, but has better GREs, then that could easily be the deciding factor.

At least you have an offer. At this point knowing that I have any option at all would allow me to focus on other things, which would in turn allow me to relax considerably.

This is true. It seems like the first round might be over, and I only got rejected from one program. Let's hope this turns out to be a positive turn of events.

Ireland sounds nice, I kinda wish that were an option. For me, it's take another 4 or 5 classes, strengthen application. Try again, and write better sops, apply to more schools, and thoroughly communicate with faculty at all schools starting early in the Summer. Then repeat months of neurotic waiting. Failing that, plan C is to look for a full-time job in the field. All plans (except possibly plan A), involve leaving Arizona ASAP. This state is making me crazy (weather, politics, urban sprawl), and it's definitely time to go.

Yeah, rude.