GenevaLing Posted February 27, 2009 Posted February 27, 2009 Anyone else out there thinking about attending Yale? I just got into the linguistics program and I'm leaning toward accepting.
cogneuroforfun Posted February 27, 2009 Posted February 27, 2009 I just accepted my offer today It took a good couple weeks of thought after my interviews, but I'm pretty sure its the best choice for me. New Haven actually seems pretty cool, too!
calvino88 Posted February 27, 2009 Posted February 27, 2009 I waiting to hear on aid packages, but I'm also leaning towards accepting.
ep2175 Posted February 28, 2009 Posted February 28, 2009 still deciding... but it is at the top of the list. am definitely going to the admit weekend to check it out. anyone else in poli sci going?
ep2175 Posted February 28, 2009 Posted February 28, 2009 and: is this not a total dream come true for any of you? i never thought i'd get in! ... never thought i'd get in either!!
cogneuroforfun Posted February 28, 2009 Posted February 28, 2009 We had an interview weekend for neuroscience, so I'm pretty sure there's no other admitted students weekend for me. It was great, though, so of course if you have the chance you should visit!
theresatwist Posted March 1, 2009 Posted March 1, 2009 same here, very psyched about having been accepted at Yale and about 99% sure i'll attend! i was wondering what everyone's experiences were re. visiting new haven. i'm not in the US at the moment and have heard from a few friends that places like yale usually offer students a bit of money to travel and visit the campus. i suppose it would probably depend on the department though? any ideas? so far the department has mentioned nothing, but because i'm on a foreign fulbright grant and am not allowed to directly contact the department (!!), i haven't asked. should i ask later on (once i'm allowed)? is there some kind of norm to this? thanks!
theresatwist Posted March 1, 2009 Posted March 1, 2009 well, fulbright tries to limit contact between prospective students and departments while the application process is underway. i think it's more for their own ability to control what's going on - what happens for us foreign fulbrighters is that fulbright/IIE does the applications for us so they are the ones who get contacted once a decision is made. fulbright works essentially as an exchange program, so they are actually 'placing' foreign students at american universities, and want to control the process. the problem with this is that it's done through their NYC offices, which probably deal with thousands of applications each session, which means sometimes they also take a bit of time in forwarding the info on to the students. but because fulbright (at least in europe) also offers a stipend of 25k in the first year and 12k in the second year, they are also interested in negotiating financial packages and insurance, etc. directly with universities. this means that not only am i not really allowed to contact the departments directly until more results come in and i make a final decision, but i don't even have the usernames and passwords to access my own applications! ugh. as for housing, yeah, i was looking at the grad apartments too - they looked okay actually. i did my undergrad and MA studies in the UK and am used to much lower standards of student housing! did you check out the yale properties? they looked gorgeous but far too pricey for me. when will you be visiting? if i end up going it'll probably be late march and i'll try and couchsurf to keep costs low and meet folks. oh, and on your previous comment: yes! getting into yale has felt pretty unreal. i honestly never thought i could do it (i've been developing plan B the past few weeks) and still read my acceptance letter daily to make sure i'm not crazy. but now, impostor syndrome is settling in, and i'm a little obsessed about reading as much as possible before september so i don't feel like a complete freak.
k314 Posted March 2, 2009 Posted March 2, 2009 still deciding... but it is at the top of the list. am definitely going to the admit weekend to check it out. anyone else in poli sci going? yup, definitely attending. looks like i'll be deciding between yale and columbia...
ep2175 Posted March 2, 2009 Posted March 2, 2009 great - will see you there i guess. speaking of columbia - they've notified all their admits by now, right? (haven't heard anything, and am assuming i should expect a rejection or waitlist notification?)
k314 Posted March 2, 2009 Posted March 2, 2009 great - will see you there i guess. speaking of columbia - they've notified all their admits by now, right? (haven't heard anything, and am assuming i should expect a rejection or waitlist notification?) i'm not sure whether they're totally done or what. there don't seem to have been any waitlist notifications so far. my acceptance email didn't say anything about the number of students admitted, just that they enroll about 20 people per year. sorry i don't have any better info...
ep2175 Posted March 2, 2009 Posted March 2, 2009 thanks for the info. i'm not too optimistic about getting in - and it doesn't really matter at this point, i suppose. i think i am just anxious to have the waiting process over.
theresatwist Posted March 2, 2009 Posted March 2, 2009 wow. it seems like a control freak's worst nightmare (not being able to directly contact departments, being at the mercy of a massive bureaucratic system). as a certified control freak, i feel for you, theresatwist! i have a FANTASTIC apartment where i live now, in portland, maine. that said, my partner and i paid two months double rent here because we knew we wouldn't be able to find similar housing in our neighborhood. i am okay with downgrading a bit, but as i've said elsewhere... i have a lot of books. who doesn't? but i cannot and will not part with them. growing up, we had jackie collins's lucky, a set of encyclopedias from 1968, and our bodies, ourselves in my house. my books are my life. part them from me if you dare!!!! where did you see the prices for the off-campus grad apts? i saw the listings, but didn't see prices anywhere. i'm a-ok with taking on campus housing, if it means i get a study! harvard's housing options are looking mighty grim in comparison. the admitted student weekend for amstuds is march 30-31st. maybe you should try to come then? if you are totally hard up for a place to stay, i am absolutely sure that my friend's father would accommodate you. he's an architect, and his favorite thing to do is give the Yale architecture tour, if you're interested i'm on couchsurf.com and have had some luck with that in my travels, too. as for plan B. i also have plan C and D. plan B was getting an MFA in creative writing. plan C was to work at a historical society until i could re-apply. plan D was to open a bar/popular culture museum/art studio space, HAR. thank god i don't even have to go for plan B at this point. yes! it's a bit of a mess with fulbright, though of course there are perks, so all in all they outweigh the negative bits as for the apartments, i looked at http://www.elmcampus.com/properties.htm. they're pricey, but seem really nice! if we do end up going (i'd be travelling with my partner, who must get a vote on which city we're moving to!), then march 30th actually sounds like a pretty good date. ha, and thanks for your offer re. friend's father. i'm sure we'll take up you on the architecture tour actually! my father is an architect as well, so i'm pretty used to (and always enjoy) the enthusiastic architecture tour i'll keep you posted and let you know once we decide what we're doing.
samsarictraveler Posted March 8, 2009 Posted March 8, 2009 Hi all! Congrads on getting in to Yale. I'm going for Religious Studies. Anyone here happen to work on South Asia (in any way, shape, or form!)
theresatwist Posted March 9, 2009 Posted March 9, 2009 Hi all! Congrads on getting in to Yale. I'm going for Religious Studies. Anyone here happen to work on South Asia (in any way, shape, or form!) well, not quite south asia, but east asia and just out of curiosity, are you the bye bye wendy poster?
samsarictraveler Posted March 10, 2009 Posted March 10, 2009 Yes... but it sounded different in my head when I wrote it... I meant it in a tragi-comic vein, sort or as if it were said with a sigh. Reading it now it makes me look like a complete asshole... I just hope no one reading this blog figures out who Wendy is! (though I fear that's too much to ask)
artandrelig Posted March 10, 2009 Posted March 10, 2009 i'm likely yale-bound! when are you guys moving up/down/over there? are you planning to be on or off-campus? also, any ideas about cross-departmental socializing? like, is there a central hanging-out spot for the grad crowd?
theresatwist Posted March 10, 2009 Posted March 10, 2009 if i go to yale, i'm planning on trying to stay on campus. i have a 9 year old and my stipend will have to cover child support. i won't be moving until the end of the summer. as for the grad scene, i have absolutely no idea. curious to see what it is like and am excited for the admitted student days... m wow - i remember living on campus with my mother when she was studying back in 1989. being a student's kid was the coolest thing ever! i hope your kid enjoys it as much as i did! on housing: we applied for some of the university properties through the elm campus people but have only got an automated reply back. grad housing applications only begin april 1st, right? we'll be applying to those as well. i wanted some place less grad/faculty and perhaps a little more urban, possibly close to a source of late night falafels and/or kebabs. though i'm coming at this from a UK/european point of view, and i wonder about sources of food at 3am in a town like new haven, CT. friends in the US keep telling me 'urban' in the US almost always means 'rough', though i'm not entirely convinced this is true (or perhaps 'rough' in itself is a relative concept..)? on moving: late july/early august i think. we'll need to ship some stuff (ie. BOOKS!) from euroland to new haven, which i expect will be *extremely* expensive. on the grad scene: don't know either, but we should definitely organize a gradcafe meetup!
cogneuroforfun Posted March 11, 2009 Posted March 11, 2009 I'm going to try to come relatively early, like early July at the very latest. I'm definitely living off campus in non-Yale housing, hopefully in a nice East Rock duplex; I think my fiance and dog would appreciate living in as "house-like" a place as possible. I am not sure there's too much of a cross-department social scene, just because it seems like there are small social groups even within departments. I guess we'll all see when we get there!
ec86 Posted March 11, 2009 Posted March 11, 2009 Hey all you Yalies. What sorts of funding packages were you offered for PhD?
Aceflyer Posted March 11, 2009 Posted March 11, 2009 We had an interview weekend for neuroscience, so I'm pretty sure there's no other admitted students weekend for me. It was great, though, so of course if you have the chance you should visit! Agreed completely! It's the same thing for MCGD. I too highly recommend visiting Yale if you have the chance.
theresatwist Posted March 11, 2009 Posted March 11, 2009 Hey all you Yalies. What sorts of funding packages were you offered for PhD? same as mmpottiehill (i think it's the standard one, yeah?), plus an additional fellowship of 2.5k for the first two years. i'm particularly impressed by yale's policy on extending lots of student privileges (healthcare, etc.) to "spouses and same-sex partners". over here that's pretty much unheard of and it'll feel nice to be in a place where this sort of thing is decent for *all* students. in the end i think things like that really contribute to people feeling appreciated and happy with what they're doing, it probably makes them more productive as well.
cogneuroforfun Posted March 11, 2009 Posted March 11, 2009 It seems that Yale funds their humanities and science grad students similarly. In neuroscience/BBS, I'm getting a few thousand more, but not too much. I wonder if there's more of a discrepancy in funding at other places; I've always been under the impression that humanities grad students get a good chunk less. I'm minoring in history and know that its a lot of work to be a historian, so that always seemed a little sad to me.
theresatwist Posted March 11, 2009 Posted March 11, 2009 part of the reason harvard is NOT appealing to me right now is because i can't have my SO live with me in graduate student housing because she isn't a grad student at harvard. that really sucks. though i'm biased because i didn't get in harvard and now suspect them of every evil imaginable! out of interest though, how much does your on-campus grad housing arrangement come to? i wonder if i should look into this... as for the funding issue, i always thought humanities people got a lot less than the science people too, but isn't the discrepancy less pronounced at ivy schools? i have a friend at harvard in the humanities who gets around 27k as well i think, though i don't know how they fund their sciences people there. then again, i have another friend doing physics at berkeley who's getting around 35k+! so who knows.
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