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GwenWoods

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Everything posted by GwenWoods

  1. I was wait-listed last year. I don't think they let me know about my status until the end of July, or beginning of August. By that point I had already accepted another school. So be prepared to potentially wait till the last possible minute. Kind of a crappy way to do things really. You pretty much have to turn down your other schools on the off-chance you get off the waitlist.
  2. I've been accepted to both UBC and CU-Boulder's program with full-funding for each. Can't believe it! I'm so excited!
  3. Yup, they do. It's becoming a new faculty/school of information, I believe. Just got accepted to UBC journalism with a full-ride scholarship ($10,000)!!
  4. While we're all waiting for acceptances, I'll start. GPA: 3.7 Undergrad: University of Western Ontario. Honors BA in media, information and technoculture, minor in geography, certificate in writing Awards: Graduated with Distinction, Dean's Honour List, Writing Program's Student Award for Non-Fiction Writing, three awards from my campus newspaper (News Staff Writer of the Year, Most Influential Story of the Year, Excellence in Hard News Writing), and Undergraduate Student Leadership Award from my faculty. Work & Internships: - Four years working full-time at a daily student newspaper, currently act as Editor-in-Chief - Internship at CTV National News in the Toronto bureau - Summer job at Ministry of Natural Resources Applied to: Columbia University of British Columbia University of Colorado-Boulder
  5. I applied to: Columbia UBC University of Colorado-Boulder
  6. Hi Graham, I'm willing to exchange with you Going for my MA in Journalism. PM me if you're willing.
  7. Applying for an MA in Journalism. Let me know if you're interested!
  8. I have a rough draft of a SOP for journalism I'd be willing to exchange with someone. PM me.
  9. I'm not sure if it's because I'm Canadian or because I'm applying to professional school (journalism) that I'm a little thrown by all the research experience/professor you wish to research with discussions I just finished my undergraduate degree at a Canadian university in media studies, and there was never any research done with professors in undergrad. We did our coursework—essays, presentations and analyses—but never worked on any big study. In terms of graduate school, I intend to study journalism which isn't a research-oriented field, so what should I say for my future plans at graduate school? Simply the type of journalism I'm interested in pursuing and my background in that area? If anyone has any recommendations on the structure of SOPs for professional schools, it would be greatly appreciated.
  10. I was hoping to visit Columbia before applying for the 2013 school year, but money is a bit tight right now and I'm not sure flying to NYC and back would be the best use of funds if there's a good chance I might not even get in there. Does anyone think that visiting this fall would be advantageous to the admissions process, or does it hold no weight? Has anyone heard of the admissions department reviewing who visited the school before? Ideally, I'd like to wait until after I was accepted and then check out the school immediately so I can make a decision.
  11. I was hoping to apply to Colorado at Boulder and Northwestern for Journalism, but I feel like I did pretty poorly on the GRE. I have four years of work experience in journalism and currently act the EIC of Canada's largest and only daily student newspaper, overseeing a $400,000 budget and 23 full-time editors. I have a GPA of 3.7, and have received a number of awards from my university. However, I'm prone to bad episodes of anxiety and ended up with a Q: 150 and V: 158. I would have liked my verbal to be higher, but accept that I generally suck at math so the low score wasn't a surprise. On the ETS practice tests I was getting around 166 verbal. Do you think this is good enough for acceptance/assistanships at Boulder? And I kind of assumed this would put me out of the running for Northwestern, but does anyone think I should still bother applying? It seems like they put a lot of emphasis on the GRE.
  12. I'm not as happy with my scores as I had hoped, but I really only need them for one school that I'm applying to now. I'm looking to do Journalism at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and while they have a verbal minimum of 60%, (mine is 79%) there's no quantitative minimum. I have a pretty extensive resume in journalism, especially for master's degree that requires no previous experience, and a GPA of 3.7, along with numerous awards from undergrad institution. Ultimately, I'm concerned that this could put me out of the race for a TA or RA position. Any advice or experience?
  13. I'm looking to apply for 2013 as well and have been extensively looking into all the American J-schools. You mentioned your lack of experience, but you didn't mention your GPA. Obviously that will play a huge part in dictating what will be safety schools or ambitious schools for you. In terms of SOP, yes, you should absolutely write it yourself. While it's not unethical to have friends and family look over your SOP for mistakes, having an agency draft your SOP I would assume is considered plagiarism and if discovered would lead to and instant rejection. Not to mention, if you're intending to go into print journalism, you should be able to write your own 500-word statement—if not, I'd recommend rethinking your career path. In terms of rankings, I've listed my observations on the following. 1. Missouri School of Journalism (Medium—this is considered to be a relatively good school) 2. Columbia - MS in Journalism (Ambitious—honest opinion, unless you have something over-the-top that makes you special, Columbia seems to want a lot of journalism experience, as well as near-perfect grades) 3. Indiana, Bloomington (Safety) 4. NYU - Arthur J Institute (Medium to ambitious—they also seem to want journalism experience) 5. Wisconsin Madison (Medium—one of the top ten schools in the country, but not unattainable) 6. Michigan State Uni (Safety) 7. UT Austin (Not sure) 8. UNC Chapel Hill (Medium to Ambitious) 9. Northwestern (Ambitious—you'll need to write two essays, not an SOP, as well as write the GREs. I've also heard not the best things for international funding) 10. Uni of Maryland. College Park (Not sure) 11. Uni of Florida (Safety) 12. CUNY (Ambitious)
  14. I'm a little confused on the whole ScoreSelect deal. So, with this new system, if I choose to send my scores for free on test day, before seeing them, can I later decide to "unsend" them and replace them with new test scores (assuming I retook the test and did better the second time), or will the institution forever have copies of both test scores?
  15. I heard that the school is doing away with their "Magazine, Newspaper, Broadcast, Digital Media" specialization and replacing it with something else? Does anyone have more information on this?
  16. I probably wouldn't worry too much about where you did your undergrad, and studying abroad might help too. How many clips, overall, do you estimate you have from campus publications, and how many from Dayton Daily News? If it was easy to become an editor at your paper, it might hurt as you'll probably be competing against a lot of people who were editors for several years. Most of the people I know who were accepted to top schools were all full-time editors of a campus publication at some point. Additionally, I'd try to add a bit more diversity with this next internship since you have four years of the same thing.
  17. As it stands my resume currently fits onto two pages perfectly, but Columbia says they would prefer a one-page resume. Should I just list my relevant experience in a skeleton-like format, and then embellish on my skills and responsibilities in those jobs in my SOP (or what they call a professional essay). What do you think is best to include? Education, obviously, awards, work experience. What about volunteer work outside the field, or a condensed list of skills? EX. Professional Essay description Essay B: Professional essay (750-word limit) What led you to your interest in journalism? What experience, if any, do you have in journalism? What do you hope to gain through your work at the Graduate School of Journalism? In addition, this is an opportunity to explain any strengths or weaknesses in your application. Examples: career changes, great journalism or life experiences, low GPA, lack of experience and/or interruption in work or studies. Any other tips for grad school resumes?
  18. Okay, so using this site—http://www.foreigncredits.com/Resources/GPA-Calculator/—I'>http://www.foreigncredits.com/Resources/GPA-Calculator/—I have a 3.8, but using ktel's system I have a 3.53. Sigh. In terms of looking at upper-year courses, I find that doesn't compute that well in Canada, or at least at my school. Fourth year courses don't exist, with the exception of one 0.5 credit seminar class. Beyond that, you have first year courses, and then you have 2000 level and 3000 level classes which populate 2nd to 4th year transcripts. So perhaps they just look at everything, in which case my average of 81 is roughly the same as my final years. And then in terms of major courses, we have classes that are listed under another faculty but still considered to be part of our major, so that complicates things further. I guess I'll just wait and see, but did anyone else find this calculator (http://www.foreigncredits.com/Resources/GPA-Calculator/) to be accurate? Or did it boost your GPA? I'm just wondering for myself at this point and not for any official application.
  19. I've been trying to figure out how GPA works when applying from a Canadian undergraduate institution to an American grad school. I've been using this chart—http://studentsuccess.mcmaster.ca/resources/gpa-conversion-chart.html—and I was hoping to clear up a few things. Right now, with a cumulative average of 81, I fall into the 3.7 category. In my third year, I had a 79, and an 82 in my fourth year, giving me an average of about 80.5. But I have a few questions. In my final year I took a total of 4.5 credits instead of 5 because I did an upper-year internship in the summer that was graded on pass/fail. Will the school simply look at second year grades to assess the missing 0.5 credit percentile grade, or it just doesn't matter? Secondly, is an 81 truly a 3.7? I noticed that according to that chart GPA jumps from a 3.3 at a 79 to a 3.7 at 80. So am I more like a 3.5 or 3.6, or a true 3.7? And lastly, does anyone have any idea (other factors aside), if this GPA is enough to get me past the first look for an ivy league school? Thanks!
  20. Sorry, I didn't mean FAFSA, but an international scholarship form the school has. I realize loans have to come from the country of which you are a citizen, not where you study.
  21. Ah that makes sense. I'm definitely not saying I should get the full amount covered, I was just wondering if they'll try to do as much as then can to make it so you don't have to take on too much debt. As in, I was worried that if they saw you had 30K, they'd think 40K in debt would be acceptable, and give all the money to someone who had less saved. I'm just worried about taking on more than 20K in debt. And basing it off income earned is good. I'm unfamiliar with the FAFSA, but I'll have to fill one out in a few months. Thanks for all the help!
  22. Hi TakeruK, Seems like we're all Canadians! That's kind of how I understood it—Columbia says they have 4.1 million available in aid money, and that 65% of students get some form of aid, with the average amount being $15K. I noticed someone the other day said they had received a scholarship amounting to $37K from the J-School, and I was trying to figure out what criteria it would take to make that possible.
  23. Hi Nicole, Thanks! I've always wondered about that. Right now I'm trying to save as much money as possible, but I find that system isn't perfect. If I just frivolously spent my money instead of trying to save it, I'd get more aid because I'm more in need? Obviously not something I'd actually do, but it's a little discouraging that just because I've sacrificed a bunch of other things to be able to try and save as much as I can, I'm then going to get less financial assistance. Their website says this—The Graduate School of Journalism offers approximately $4.1 million annually in fellowships and scholarships to students who demonstrate high academic achievement, financial need, and exceptional promise for leading careers in journalism. In conjunction with the University’s Student Financial Planning Office, we work with each student to ease the cost of attendance through a combination of scholarships and need-based programs, including grants and federal and private loans. So hopefully they consider a number of things? Having to take out another $35K in loans would prevent me from going if I was accepted anyway. Thanks again!
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