mr.potato

I wanted to accept to access the message boards to I can see if anyone still needs a roommate and to view the student job boards both of which are only available only to matriculated students.

How bad is it to accept two offers, especially this late? I already accepted one offer but I recently got a late acceptance to my top choice. I want withdrawal from the former and take the offer from the later. Before I do any of that, I need to figure some things out like if there is any grad housing left and if there are any grad student jobs still available which I cannot do this unless I accept the offer. They're both unfunded master's so I'm not taking money from anyone else and advisers won't be assigned for another few weeks. If this is something I absolutely should not do, then I'll stick with the school I already accepted.

Just as I was about to submit my letter of intent, I was suddenly overcome with a feeling of dread and uneasiness. I'm sure most of you heard that the job market in our field is pretty bad and forbes rated a MLIS as the worst master's degree. A quick search on job sites doesn't yield very promising results either. Most of the blogs and forums I come across further warm against the degree and I'm wondering if I am about to make a very big mistake. Anyone else feeling this anxiety as well or am I being overly pessimistic?

I am 90% sure I will be going to UCLA.

Reality set in today and I realized I cannot afford to go to my number one choice. $100k in loans is not an option either because my field in not particularly lucrative. Choice #2 is a whopping $60k cheaper. It's still an excellent program but not quite the perfect fit as school #1. I'm really bummed out now. Anyone else being forced to turn your first choice? How are you dealing with it?

After four weeks, UCLA finally confirmed admission! Yay! I'm torn now. Washington has been recruiting me pretty hard over the past week. If UCLA had informed me of their decision a week earlier, I would have accepted without a second thought :/ Only a week and a half to make a decision ....

Anyone else still waiting for the official decision from the UCLA grad division? I got accepted by my particular department in the beginning of March but the grad division have been awfully quiet. The deadline to accept is in two week and I'm getting a bit antsy!

I am not a MLIS graduate (yet) so you should probably take what I have to say with a gain of salt. If the museum job is a permanent position and it is what you are passionate about, then go for it. I've spent the last two years in the museum field and full time jobs are hard to come by. Not only are museums cutting positions but no one ever retires (kind of like the library field). On top of that, a lot of the lower level positions are filled with volunteers or university students who have their salaries covered by the government/their university. Obliviously you'll have your foot in the door so that should help you get other museum jobs but make sure you network like crazy. It's not a very big field so everyone knows each other. If you work in collections, there probably isn't much room for advancement unless you have a PhD or a masters in that specific field, though you might be able to get away with not having one if you work in a smaller, local museum. In the other departments like advancement, marketing, and education, you'll find people with all kinds of degrees so your MA in English won't stick out very much. There's also quite a few people there with MLIS degrees who are not librarians or archivist. From what I heard, the job market for MLIS graduates isn't that great either. Outside of libraries and archives, the only real use for the degree that I can think of is in the tech related industry where it would help to be tech-savvy. If you do not want to work with technology, I don't know how an MLIS will improve your job prospects. Before you do anything, you might want to talk to an adviser or at least look up something along the lines of 'non-traditional mlis careers'. One of the schools I applied to sent me this link, see if there's anything that might interest you. It would be a shame to throw away a year's work and all that tuition spent unless you are absolutely sure you want out.

In case anyone is wondering, I got lazy and didn't sumbit a video. I was still accepted.

To those applying to Syracuse, are you planning on uploading a 2 minute video? It's optional but I figure I might as well do it. I have no idea what I am going to say though. What are you folks going to say or what would you say if you had to do one?

Thanks you, that helps a lot. It occurred to me that I don't need to answer the questions in order which makes it a bit easier. Now I just have to figure out how to rearrange it to fit into a cohesive narrative.

They are: What are the critical issues in the field of information? What are your aspirations in the field of information? What is your understanding of the School of Information? How will a UMSI education help you reach your aspirations? What would you contribute to the UMSI community and to the field as a whole?

One of the programs I am applying for wants a statement of purpose and a personal statement. The statement of purpose prompt seems pretty straight forward with five questions they want you to answer. The five questions are related in that it should be easy to transition from one topic to the next but I'm racking my head over the introduction. My first instinct is to briefly write about how and why I got into the field but the personal statement pretty much covers that. Should I jump straight into the first question? Or should I still go for a condensed background introduction? Or is there a third (and maybe forth), much better option?

Two that I know of are Hack library school and library school live journal. The former is more of a blog but there are several post where current/former students share their experiences; just search for the school in the search bar. The later is more of a discussion form. It's not super active but if you make a post, you will get a fair about of responses and the people there are really helpful. There also the library journal and that's geared towards the profession as a whole.

I just found out she's not teaching any classes this quarter although she is the graduate dissertation adviser and undergrad honor thesis adviser for a few students. I have no idea how much time being a adviser takes but I would imagine less time than a regular class (eg she doesn't have to meet with a bunch of students, come up with and grade finals, etc). So would now be a good time to contact her? It's the last week before finals. Or should I still hold off until the start of summer?