practical cat

Congratulations!

Yeah.

I'd be willing to check out some things for you (for free) if you'd like.

Clear liquor is for rich women on diets.

I'd say it's been a wash for me but I like some people (you included!) enough to keep coming back. And I'll probably be here in the fall even if the wait lists do pane out because I love this awful place and am now invested in the 2014ers. My advice on the liquor is probably timeless though...

If 2014 is anything like the 2013 cycle, hold onto that gif, you'll need it. (As well as lots of whiskey.)

Oh. My. God.

Bahahahahahaah. This is one of my favorites ever, datatape. This is what I tell my students about fractions in algebra: when in doubt, cross-multiply.

Fwiw, I looked at a TON of places way south of Nashville (in part because my interests could really grow and develop with the influence of some southern studies). The only other place I found that was half the fit as some of the programs I applied to was UT-Austin and even then I'm still conflicted about that one for next year for reasons that have nothing to do with location. I'm not missing out on any programs because of it, promise. I just haven't found that many that are good fits and well-ranked period. Ann Arbor never got enough snow for my tastes. I don't think the lower peninsula is quite the winter waste land that it's given credit for. MADISON, however, is way appealing for their brutal winters. I know this makes me weird and I hope the admitted students at Wisconsin feel differently and got really spectacular offers in, say, California. :-) Eta to future UM students: Ann Arbor gets enough snow and doesn't plow/salt well enough that on those yearly 6" dumps, you will definitely be walking to class in snow up to your knees. I don't want to misrepresent. The poor snow management makes it seem like there is way more.

Not sure we're on the same page here AT ALL. But I do want to say I wasn't being sarcastic. The U of M PoliSci dept has a ton of purple maps. Because of the unevenness of various districts. It's just that most people who actually talk about elections are really over red state/blue state discourse and even red/blue discourse at all. It's not productive, meaningful, or interesting. Which I think is what you also mean? And like I have been saying, I am not talking about that AT ALL, I am talking about laws that are actually on the books at the state level that may or may not offer me protection. I'm not painting places with a broad brush, which is why I AM feeling defensive here -- I'm being consistently portrayed by you as saying something quite different than what I actually said. I'm not a person who has said anything against the south writ large and I'm not sure why you think I am. I'm really over this discussion, as it seems most other people are too. But, ONCE AGAIN, I have nothing against the south. Or anywhere.

Quick! Say something I disagree with!

Let's just pretend I up voted this one instead, yeah?

It's a tone that suggests that, as the reluctantmidwesterner put it, we're incapable of coming to these conclusions on our own. It's totally snide and condescending to pretend like we can't understand law and politics without the help of someone on the Internet. And it's not about voting patterns, trust me, my entire undergrad department is speckled with these really cute hippie maps of the US that are totally purple and it's lovely and everyone is happy. Like, I get it. There are some people everywhere who are great and some who are not so great. And that is independent of red and blue too. But there are entire states that have laws that mean I can't even count on any sort of response/protection if I am attacked again. That's a factor, it just is. I'm NOT making decisions based on stereotypes, I'm basing them on well-researched understandings of law and law enforcement (which, again, I DO actually know some stuff about) and accusing me of being biased isn't really productive. We're all being selective in different ways, like I have already said. I don't have anything against the south or ANYWHERE (and I'm not offended by people who don't want to live in the Midwest either!) but location is a factor for me and, because I hate warm climates, the south has been largely crossed out for me even before I started thinking about laws. (Though, like I said above, there are some schools that I applied to in spite of location and there will likely be a couple of those next year too. Nashville seems great even if it doesn't really snow.) Also, all of the well-thought-out stuff that reluctantmidwesterner said. I think some of you are responding to things that we just aren't saying and I think rm has a great response to that. Eta, didn't really mean to up vote pepper or whatever their username is now (especially since they're clearly not actually responding to what I'm saying but rather the arguments they want me to be making) but bygones. I need to stop reading these boards on my phone.

Lol, wow. Ok, first of all, there is no need for rudeness. I am willing to accept that there are plenty of good qualities about everywhere and that there are plenty of people happy to live everywhere. I have also, somewhat clearly given the list of schools I applied to, found some schools that I am willing to move to certain places for. But, frankly, grad school is one of the few times in my career where I will have some say in location so to deny that my feelings of safety had some say in determining where I applied would be just a lie. (I also recognize, as someone who has been a victim of a hate crime in a super liberal pocket of a blue state, that this is not necessarily logical but, having experienced what I did, feeling safe matters to me a lot more when I know I can't actually control being safe.) Yes, as a political science major, I have a fairly extensive understanding of state/federal law. Enough to know, too, that federal anti-hate crime legislation is virtually non-existent and poorly enforced at the state level when it does exist. Don't be snide. We are all weighing different things in different ways. For some of us, location matters a great deal. I'm not judging or attacking anyone for NOT caring about location, please extend the same courtesy.

Yes. Thank you. When politics have an impact on your life on a daily basis, it is not narrow-minded to take something like that into consideration when applying. Superficially, though, there were very few schools great enough for me to even consider giving up snow. Warm weather is tough on me long term.

How is it even possible that I accidentally down voted THIS? Ugh, sorry. All I was trying to do was quote you so I could say that this is why you are great (and that you made me laugh-choke on my apple).

LOLing forever at "tonight"

I actually did my bachelor's in Political Science (theory, specifically!) and while I am obviously heading toward a more humanities-based discipline, I think this is an unfair caricature of Political Science (and of quant methodology which is, you know, actually valid and I don't think any more dominant in the field than it was 50 years ago). Well, what asleepawake said. The people I know in Literature who are actually currently doing this aren't working with it in the same way that an IR person is, they just aren't. That's what makes it interesting. We (as someone whose interests dovetail game theory) DO value the qualitative -- that's why I'm here -- and I think we're all capable of using math responsibly (because we actually also respect math! Which shouldn't be so outrageous!).

Thanks for this. Animal studies (and posthumanism, I guess?) is one area I'm not sure I even understand a little bit and it's one of those areas that I want to look at a little more closely over the summer/next year.

Yes.

You have a phenomenal wait list which means you SHOULD still feel good about your application. It is a numbers game, yes (and there's stuff going on in departments that we couldn't possibly know) -- sometimes qualified applicants get shut out from schools that are good fits. For all we talk about what we'd do differently, stuff on our end might not actually be the thing that makes a difference.

Oh, of course I will still do that (again, yikes) and (to swagato) I also am one of the first to say that the adcomms judge fit better (they're working with better information after all) but I do think I can take some cues based on whether or not there are even faculty working on similar types of texts, whether or not there's someone doing political theory in the department at all, and whether or not it's the kind of place that would be open to me working closely with, say, a Shakespeare scholar or whoever. I'm not disagreeing with either of you AT ALL and I have had full intentions at looking at all of the programs again but I'll be a lot bit more discriminating this time since I have a clearer idea of myself as an applicant. My mistake was NOT in applying to too few programs, but in applying to mostly the wrong ones with a sloppy writing sample. My original post, though, was in no means meant to be prescriptive (and neither is this one, my mistakes are almost certainly not everyone else's). ETA; thanks for the advice and good wishes

I know you keep harping on that but I STILL don't think it's the right strategy for me. I did well enough this cycle to have some sense of what kind of schools I'm more likely to appeal to -- and which schools are more appealing to me. I would've picked Brandeis over Harvard if I'd gotten into both but the fact is, I was never going to get into Harvard because my work just doesn't make sense there. So I won't be applying to Harvard next time (or Brown, Cornell, and Berkeley for similar reasons.) Honestly, I'd almost be satisfied just applying to Brandeis, WashU, Vanderbilt, and Rutgers (the only rejection that actually hurt) but there're a couple I didn't apply to that, when the results started coming in, I felt a little pang of jealousy. It's incredibly likely though that there'll be more schools coming off the list than going on it. I am. If something good happens, that's great! I'd go to any of the three! (I've also worked out an order of preference in the extremely unlikely event that I end up getting into more than one.) But I'm not getting my hopes up. I'm not taking reapplication seriously until at least the 15th but I have already started to strategize, yes, since we all seem to know what we would've done differently and, for me, that might just have real applications.

I'll be spending more time with my writing sample this year. There were a couple of really rough pages (a whole section of my paper was a new idea I started to develop in late November, NO GOOD) and I'll be glad to take the time to smooth them out. It also seems likely that I'll need to come up with a shorter sample for a couple of schools too. That should be fun. My SOP is going to take a slightly different turn but I don't think it will be a radically different document. I have a better sense now of how I think I fit into this whole thing and I should be able to say it better. I think that's the important piece that was missing in a lot of cases. I'm going to apply to some different schools, probably even actually fewer this time around. Of the ten, there are only four to which I am definitely reapplying. Given the amount of time I spent figuring out my List, I still don't feel like I quite nailed that aspect of it (and that's very much connected to the issues with my SOP).

This is not entirely good advice. Departments don't (necessarily) care, but if you do very poorly on the math, you can be a tough sell to the graduate school because they are looking for good numbers all around. This could mean: 1. That you're cut right off the bat by a cut-off that they don't publicize, 2. That the department is going to have to put up more of a fight (some schools give departments a limited amount of "waivers" to use for numbers-based issues) and it's tough to be in that position because you have to be outstanding to be the one they fight for, or 3. Absolutely nothing. But I wouldn't bet my applications on #3. Try. Don't let reviewing geometry get the best of your application season but this is, as noted, a very expensive/stressful/competitive process and you don't want to end up next spring feeling like you phoned something in. I mean, you are GOING to feel like your application could be better (because it can be, our writing can always be better) but.