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Hey, congrats dnanthro, and thanks for the info regarding financial aid! I really wish we could start applying for assistantships now; there's one in particular that I am very, very interested in.

I emailed last night. I received an automated message right away, then a guy from FA emailed five minutes later. He wrote the following: We started downloading 13-14 FAFSA records about 2 weeks ago. There are thousands of them to download in our queue, and we download them every few days in an effort to make our packaging process more manageable for our counselors. We will be downloading more 13-14 FAFSA records today. Since you submitted your FAFSA to Teachers College (not Columbia), we will receive it soon and the requirement will update to Satisfied status. We appreciate your patience in this respect. Regarding award letters, our first round of letters will go out on the evening of March 15. Please refer to this page to learn more.

Huh. I guess financial aid info is supposed to start being sent out Friday evening. $1268/credit is going to hurt!

Hey, for those of you who received scholarship offers along with your acceptance, was that included with your decision letter? Or were you referred somewhere else for that? I see people in the results database who have been turned away from the EdD, yet they were offered acceptance into the master's program and offered $12,000. I'm not sure how that happens, but someone who is admitted straight in to the EdD gets to pay full tuition.

If I go, it will be in the fall. I don't finish out my contract until the end of June, then I have to wait for my employer to purchase airfare back to the US. It also depends on any aid that might be coming. I didn't hear anything about this with the admission letter. Many masters students seem to know right away, so I wonder if this means there will be absolutely none. If that's the case, I'm not sure I could do it, but I haven't made any decisions either way.

Hey, thanks C_Chattra. I know the feeling--I think I lost my sanity sometime over the weekend, when I started obsessively checking the application every three minutes. Hang in there! I'm just glad I didn't single-handedly break Apply Now.

I'm in!!! Just got the letter 15 minutes ago via Apply Now. No word on financial aid yet.

Congrats lothloriensage! Glad to hear it!

McPsychy: I'm not sure if you've found out more about this in the last two weeks, but I thought I'd pitch in. I was a graduate assistant at a small state school, and I made $7700 the first year, and $8200 the second. This was in New Mexico, where there's something in the law that prevents schools from giving a tuition waiver. In other words, my tuition came out of that money, and my housing ended up coming out of it as well since I lived on campus both years. I actually received a paycheck every two weeks for $11.71, after deductions. This is at a really small (4,000 students) state school. Afterwards, I was a student at the University of New Mexico, which isn't IU big but it's much bigger than the situation I described above (~28,000). I didn't have a TA or GA there, but I looked into it pretty hard, as I was really hoping to make something happen. A TA or GA, studying at the doctoral level, made anywhere from $3000 to $22000 per year, depending on the percentage FTE of the TA/GA; most assistantships were 1/4, 1/2, or 3/4. The only opportunity I received while there was for a 10 hour per week assistantship. I never found out the stipend, as I was working full-time at that point and unwilling to give up a salary to make a few hundred or thousand dollars and get a small tuition waiver. I don't know if that helps you at all, but perhaps it gives a little perspective. I can't speak for big big big schools, as I've never attended one (unless you consider 28,000 the biggest of the big...!). You can find the TA/GA salaries for UNM at http://ogs.unm.edu/funding/assistantships.html. Oh, and I don't think health insurance was included in these, but I don't remember. It's been a while! I don't think it was--this was five years ago.

Yes, absolutely. It's the Super Bowl of education conferences--minus the commercials, halftime shows, and wardrobe malfunctions (I think).

You really do not need this kind of university in order to pursue your stated goal. It's like using a bomb to kill an ant, knowing full well that your foot would suffice. TESOL may not be as "high need" as math and science, but it is a burgeoning teaching field, to say the very least. You do not need to accrue $60,000 of debt to win a job in this area, regardless of what your other certification may be. The people who are going to schools like this either have the money to offset, or to make irrelevant, the cost, or they have ambitions beyond the classroom, be they administration, academia, etc. If your intention is to get or to stay in the classroom, NYU is overkill.

I wanted to second RandiZ's first few lines in particular. The pedigree of your degree might provide an interview or two, or it might not--there's no certainty, other than loan debt from what you've described. It would be different if your intention was to pursue academia and college teaching, but if you want to stay in the classroom for an indefinite period of time I do not think a private school is worth it for this kind of degree.

That's how I felt, too. Admissions there is a bloodbath, though!

Anyone have experience applying at Teachers College? I applied early decision in the Curriculum and Teaching Department. I guess they don't send word until mid to late March--unless someone knows different!

I'm not sure where you're drawing this five year figure from. I started teaching in China with three full years of teaching experience, and an additional year as a paraprofessional while I was applying for teaching jobs after a move from New Mexico to Pennsylvania. I know several teachers who have no real experience, yet they have been hired on here or at other places. With regards to teaching overseas, I'll weigh in, at least enough to say these two things: 1. The school I work at now much prefers to hire teachers with actual teaching credentials from some reputable agency. My employer endlessly jerks around teachers they have who are lacking credentials, using this as an excuse to reassign them both within this division and throughout the school (I work at a school with both Chinese and international divisions). Whatever route you go, I wouldn't do it without a teaching license. 2. Schools here seem to look for native speakers of English (if it's an international school), then teachers with experience with the respective curriculum of the school. Experience is best, but if you're unable to get hooked in to a school, professional development could help your resume as well. For instance, if you're interested in an IB school, you can attend Category 1 workshops in your content area. It's not a year of teaching, but you'll at least be a little familiar with the IB way of doing things. Obviously, the same goes for schools using GCSE, AP, etc. I wish I had done this before heading abroad, as the process required more learning on the fly than it really had to. An MAT is a good option if you want to teach. I did an M.Ed, which was great for education foundations, writing literature reviews, etc, but I didn't learn much at all about actual teaching. If I had to do things over again, I would certainly have preferred an MAT, whether I intended to stay in the US, go abroad, or whatever.

Tough luck, Minnow! I'm in the same boat--I'm considering a master's application now as well. I already have an M.Ed, though, and was kind of ready to take the next step. I'm going to see how things turn out here with my other options.

Last week, the admissions blog indicated that EdD invitations would be coming out in "a week or two."

I crashed and burned as well, I think. I guess there's still a shot for the EdD, but my hopes are not too high. Penn was always going to be a long-shot, but I'm glad I applied.

I'm in the same boat here, regarding PhD at Penn. I'm hoping there's some word late this week or beginning of next week!

What keeps me going is all that free time I think I'm going to have when the worrying about graduate school is over. Oh, wait...I'll probably just do what I did before graduate school applications and use that time worrying about teaching instead...

The staying sane part is pretty tough. I grossly underestimated the effect of all this on my life. I can't wait until the decisions are made and things are known!

I'm from Pennsylvania, too. I went to Shippensburg as an undergraduate, and I'm in the midst of a graduate certificate from Millersville. Granted, neither of these are Indiana, but I wouldn't target those schools for a serious graduate course of study. They seem way too expensive considering what you're getting. I did Millersville only because they had a certificate in an area that few schools have (Gifted education)--my options were there, or something 100% online. But, Indiana--and the program you're interested--might be different. I guess I shouldn't generalize.

I'm in my sixth year of teaching.

Did you ever end up applying 2012gradstudent? I finally made good on my Teachers College promise last week and applied for Fall 2013. I'm not sure what to expect though, and I don't even know if I could go if I got in due to the costs. I was in contact with a professor there several months ago, who lamented the poor state of funding for graduate students.

I'm applying to the same one at University of New Mexico--they call it "Multicultural Teacher and Childhood Education," which is just the southwestern way of saying Curriculum and Instruction I guess. That was actually the only school I applied to five years ago, as I wasn't intending to leave New Mexico since I had a license there and I was hoping to continue teaching. This time around, I'm pursuing other programs, although they are obviously highly competitive. I may be applying elsewhere in 2014, depending on the outcome. It's hard to really look at schools seriously when you're like 7,000 miles away, though.