WINE, WAIT, AND WHINE THREAD

[anthrostudentcyn]

I submitted mine all just at the deadlines, I'm obsessive and literally spent all my free time rewriting everything again and again. 

[raaawr]

4 minutes ago, Neist said:

Some people says it matters. I don't think it matters all that much. Like @haltheincandescent stated, rolling admissions are a different matter entirely. None of my programs do that, and I don't think their applicant pools are large enough that they wouldn't simply review them at one single point, beyond the application deadline.

Two of my applications were submitted fairly early, because they didn't require writing samples. However, the remainder of my applications were pretty close to the deadline because my writing sample was my capstone, and I just finished my capstone in December. I didn't really have it polished up to my standards until late December.

I'm not really concerned.

 

I'm actually not 100% sure if mine is rolling admissions because they did say and emphasized that the deadline is Jan. 1st but they also said they would still review applications submitted after that but their results would come in on later dates. Does that mean it's rolling?

[DrZoidberg]

10 hours ago, piglet33 said:

I'd love to know what my GPA would have been going through the american system. The way the UK is there is no direct comparison. We specialise at 16 and specialise further at university, and our grading system is all skewy! WES converted me to about a 3.2 but when I asked my American LOR (who taught at my UK school) he said that at his old university the poorest student in his class would have been on a 3.8. It's just so frustrating!! Oh well, at least my masters is a straight 4.0 (i'm assuming. I have distinctions in everything so it translates as the highest grades lol).

This whole process is such a mess!

A few of the programs I applied to asked for a GPA conversion from my European grade. Two of them recommended using vhttp://www.foreigncredits.com/Resources/Grade-Conversion/ , which I have used since then. Using WES, I have ~ 3.8 on my MSc, and with foreigncredits I have 4.0. This is fairly consistent with a lot of the scales I have seen, and WES is generally a lot harsher than most other official and unofficial conversions. So please don't let that get you down. 

[Need Coffee in an IV]

Today is the deadline for all my schools except Texas Tech. At least I'm going to the seahawks vs panthers game tomorrow! That will distract me for at least a couple of hours ha.

[sjoh197]

3 minutes ago, raaawr said:

I'm actually not 100% sure if mine is rolling admissions because they did say and emphasized that the deadline is Jan. 1st but they also said they would still review applications submitted after that but their results would come in on later dates. Does that mean it's rolling?

That's not really what rolling admissions is. Rollings is where say there's a deadline of Jan 1st and you submit Nov 1st... they start looking at your application on Nov 2nd and admit you 2 weeks later (i wish). Hard admissions is where there's a deadline of Jan 1st and you submit Nov 1st... and they don'e even start looking at your application until Jan 2nd and admit you 2 weeks later (yeah right lol) 

[raaawr]

Just now, anthrostudentcyn said:

I submitted mine all just at the deadlines, I'm obsessive and literally spent all my free time rewriting everything again and again. 

I get you! I spent so much time on my SOI just obsessively rereading and rewriting it that I actually memorized it already. lol. But because I spent so much time on that I had little time to really get everything I wanted to do done on my portfolio. It's driving me crazy knowing I could've done more. 

[artsy16]

@sjoh197 Many programs start reviewing applications before the hard deadline. They simply notify everyone at the same time instead of giving out decisions in a rolling manner. 

[raaawr]

2 minutes ago, sjoh197 said:

That's not really what rolling admissions is. Rollings is where say there's a deadline of Jan 1st and you submit Nov 1st... they start looking at your application on Nov 2nd and admit you 2 weeks later (i wish). Hard admissions is where there's a deadline of Jan 1st and you submit Nov 1st... and they don'e even start looking at your application until Jan 2nd and admit you 2 weeks later (yeah right lol) 

Ohhh!! I get it know! Thank you for the explanation  Now I kind of wished we had rolling admissions on my program so I can this waiting over and done with. lol

[anthrostudentcyn]

It's funny how we're all in such disparate fields! the anthropology thread is pretty dead haha...i'm kinda hoping this means less applicants this year, but that's wishful thinking.

[sjoh197]

6 minutes ago, artsy16 said:

@sjoh197 Many programs start reviewing applications before the hard deadline. They simply notify everyone at the same time instead of giving out decisions in a rolling manner. 

Very true... I was just trying to simplify for simplicity's sake. 

[Neist]

19 minutes ago, anthrostudentcyn said:

I submitted mine all just at the deadlines, I'm obsessive and literally spent all my free time rewriting everything again and again. 

I do the same thing with assignments. I finish paper's quite early, but continually revise them. Forever. 

I never understood people who turn in assignments a few days early. That's crazy to me.

2 minutes ago, sjoh197 said:

Very true... I was just trying to simplify for simplicity's sake. 

It was a good simplification, though.

The major point about rolling admissions is that they give funding before any deadline (meaning before they've seen the rest of the pool). It's pretty much always better to apply as early as humanly possible in rolling admissions so there's better odds of funding.

[RCtheSS]

Oh boy, of course I would run into LOR submission issues with each of my recommenders across three separate applications leading up to today, my final applications' deadline.

I just can't seem to locate any more fucks to give...

 

[sjoh197]

4 minutes ago, RCtheSS said:

Oh boy, of course I would run into LOR submission issues with each of my recommenders across three separate applications leading up to today, my final applications' deadline.

I just can't seem to locate any more fucks to give...

 

lol

[lightballsdeep]

19 minutes ago, anthrostudentcyn said:

It's funny how we're all in such disparate fields! the anthropology thread is pretty dead haha...i'm kinda hoping this means less applicants this year, but that's wishful thinking.

Hahaha as a fellow anthropology applicant I was hoping the same thing!  I've been searching all of the other threads looking for active posters!

 

[raaawr]

19 minutes ago, anthrostudentcyn said:

It's funny how we're all in such disparate fields! the anthropology thread is pretty dead haha...i'm kinda hoping this means less applicants this year, but that's wishful thinking.

I can't find much on here about my program either so I'm also kind of hoping that means less applicants, less competition, and more chances to get a slot into the program. lol!

[Delirium]

Earlier this morning, I woke up, looked at my phone, and saw an email from the admissions committee. Of course, I had a little panic attack when I saw that I was assigned a temporary login username and password, so I immediately got out of bed and went on my laptop. After thoroughly reading the email, I realized that I had missed the part of the email that says, "Please note that this is a secure portal where you will also be receiving your decision letter...in late February/early March." SO FRUSTRATED. This is probably the third time this has happened, and I just feel so silly for thinking I will hear back sooner when I've been told numerous times that I will hear back in February/March.  

[katpillow]

I gotta give Rockefeller credit. They really are reliable about sending their invites and rejections on the same days of the same week of January every year. Sure, I'm disappointed at the rejection, but man do I love it when a school sticks to a schedule on these things.

[Neist]

1 hour ago, anthrostudentcyn said:

It's funny how we're all in such disparate fields! the anthropology thread is pretty dead haha...i'm kinda hoping this means less applicants this year, but that's wishful thinking.

One of the programs I applied to had pretty low numbers the last few years. I visited them a few months ago and they seemed to want to fill the ranks back out. So I'm hopeful.

History of Science and STS certainly aren't dying disciplines, but even selective schools still have acceptance rates in the 7-10% range. That's not too horrid.  

Cornell has some pretty fantastic field metrics. http://gradschool.cornell.edu/academics/field-metrics I love digging through them.

[anthrostudentcyn]

@Neist that's still pretty rough! May I ask which program had the low numbers? But yeah some anthropology programs i've seen take maybe five people out of hundreds of applications. It's like, how do you even know who will get in and who won't. So scary. 

[nevermind]

40 minutes ago, Neist said:

History of Science and STS certainly aren't dying disciplines, but even selective schools still have acceptance rates in the 7-10% range. That's not too horrid.  

Cornell has some pretty fantastic field metrics. http://gradschool.cornell.edu/academics/field-metrics I love digging through them.

Really? I think 7-10% is pretty competitive! Granted, I wonder how many applicants apply for STS / HoS without sufficient preparation since it's kind of an emerging/niche field (and not offered a lot of places yet). Not a lot of people here seem to study it or be interested in it (or maybe they're lurking or too busy kicking ass at other things to be interested in internet forums)...so who knows definitively. Obviously, an unfunded Master's degree will be a little bit easier to swing (admissions rate wise) than a funded Ph.D, so hopefully your chances are a little bit better than 7-10% @Neist!

I think HoS / STS attracts competitive applicants because you're expected to be both left/right brained, to a degree. Thus, the expectation is that an applicant needs to excel in many different areas, rather than just one focused area (and the way to do that...is to get more experience/education/both). It's not enough just to be a good reader analyzing Latour or Kuhn, but research experience (in labs or fieldwork) is really valued  as well. In that way, I think there's a lot of diversity in the applicant pool (how many applicants are applying to history of medicine? technology? STS?) and it's really hard to gauge one's "competitiveness". 

I only took one class in STS at Cornell (3 years ago). The Ph.D. students in the department (that I knew of...but my sample size is only about 5-6 students) all had Master's degrees in-hand from Ivy-level institutions (usually their undergrad degrees as well) in related fields (if not Ivies, then Berkeley, Stanford, etc. etc.).I feel that Cornell is incredibly competitive for admissions to STS, just based on who I interacted with, their experience, and their level of knowledge (but then again, I could've been the dumb student where average people might've looked absolutely stellar!). Similarly, if you look at each student profile in Harvard's HoS class, in a class size of about 50, just a handful enter with only Bachelor's degree (and most of those admits receive their A.B.'s from Harvard College)...the rest have a Master's degree (again) with Ivy-like pedigree. (I also don't mean to imply that Ivy = exceptional educational experience and nowhere else can provide as good of opportunities/education...just some trends I've noticed in scouring the pages of potential programs/current graduate students.) It just seems to be a tough field to break into if you're looking for Ph.D. admittance without much previous exposure. 

 

[anthrostudentcyn]

@nevermind if that's the case with HoS, then I'm kinda screwed. I feel like Harvard's class was pretty diverse; I also looked at the profiles, many came from non-ivies or smaller colleges (though many were harvard undergrads). I have a BA from an Ivy, but no Master's, so I guess that places me in a weird liminal space of a prestigious undergrad but no master's. But I'd like to think that its probably the same 30-40 applicants applying to most HoS departments, so hopefully that spreads out the acceptances. 

[nevermind]

1 minute ago, anthrostudentcyn said:

@nevermind if that's the case with HoS, then I'm kinda screwed. I feel like Harvard's class was pretty diverse; I also looked at the profiles, many came from non-ivies or smaller colleges (though many were harvard undergrads). I have a BA from an Ivy, but no Master's, so I guess that places me in a weird liminal space of a prestigious undergrad but no master's. But I'd like to think that its probably the same 30-40 applicants applying to most HoS departments, so hopefully that spreads out the acceptances. 

We should probably take this discussion to the HoS page. I'll post there.

[Neist]

19 minutes ago, anthrostudentcyn said:

@Neist that's still pretty rough! May I ask which program had the low numbers? But yeah some anthropology programs i've seen take maybe five people out of hundreds of applications. It's like, how do you even know who will get in and who won't. So scary. 

Cornell. They take about 3-4 people a year. They average 7-9%, as per their field metrics.

I'm thinking specifically at some Anthropology or Psychology programs. Some have like 1% acceptance. That's... crazy. I'm in no way good enough of a student to perform better than 99% of my peers, but ~8%? I might have a chance there. Maybe.

[Pink Fuzzy Bunny]

You guys keep depressing me about Cornell - it's my top choice (but I don't fit in there, so I'm expecting a rejection).

Also... just got an offer from Seattle. Never even been in the area. I wonder if they fly prospective students out for a visit? 

[anthrostudentcyn]

@Pink Fuzzy Bunny you are on a roll!!!! congrats!!