HGSE 2017

[hopefulPhD2017]

@Kilos, oh, I so understand. I feel a little sick now thinking about both the incredible process of relocating if accepted, the devastation I'll feel if I don't get accepted, and the agony I'm in thinking about how we will now soon know one way or the other. I went to grad school before and I don't remember feeling this worked up about it--it feels so different this time.

[Kilos]

7 minutes ago, hopefulPhD2017 said:

@Kilos, oh, I so understand. I feel a little sick now thinking about both the incredible process of relocating if accepted, the devastation I'll feel if I don't get accepted, and the agony I'm in thinking about how we will now soon know one way or the other. I went to grad school before and I don't remember feeling this worked up about it--it feels so different this time.

Yes, yes, and yes some more. I'm applying straight out of undergrad, so I don't have the graduate experience you do, but I am a nontraditional student so I've got the same kinds of concerns. I own a house, I have a career, I have an amazing, supportive wife, and I've got a cat... It's upsetting to think about relocating, especially from somewhere cheap like Ohio to one of the most expensive places in the country--but we've had dozens of conversations and we're all ready to pull the trigger and make it work. I was talking to my wife the other night and I said "I don't know what I'm dreading more, packing up everything and moving to Boston, or getting rejected outright." She didn't miss a beat and said "getting rejected, obviously." ha. She keeps telling me it's completely out of my hands now (has been since 12/1) and I shouldn't worry about it... but I can't help it.

[jmaroon]

@Kilos and @hopefulPhD2017 best of luck to both of you! My friend thought I applied for the PhD program and told me because he has access to an admissions doc with a lot of info on it and was going to look me up, haha. But yes, he said they had almost 700 apps and the faculty narrowed it down to under 300, then picked a "top 100" from those. If you're interested in more info PM me, I'm having lunch with him on Friday again and I'll see if I can squeeze any secret info out.

[JankyGuitar]

On 1/4/2017 at 8:32 PM, mr_r said:

Anyone else applying for the EdLD? I am beyond frustrated with my SOP. The first 3/4 is great but I saved final revisions and a couple of paragraphs for day-of and literally squeezed out my conclusion in the last 20 minutes before midnight. Hoping that the additional short essay will compensate as it was quite good. That said, I am also lacking experience relative to most in the EdLD applicant pool and have a low-ish undergrad GPA. Here's to hope! 

Undergrad: Top 50 Uni, 3.0 GPA with steep upward trend which I discussed in answering the "do your grades reflect your potential" question. 

Graduate: Top 10 Ed School, Masters in Ed Policy ~3.8 GPA

GRE: 170V, 164Q, 4.5AWA

Work Experience: Pre-Masters: worked as a substitute teacher and tutor during college and in the year afterward, including a few long-term gigs. During Masters: some light, mostly data-collection, research assistant stuff. Post-Masters: felt a tug back to the classroom. Four years teaching math to 6-12th graders. Department head at my school and active within district. Consistently strong student growth. 

Extra info: I'm Hispanic. One LOR from nationally-renowned education expert  

Anyway, the EdLD program is just incredible. Unmatched. I'd love to chat with anyone else applying. I honestly think that with a couple more years of experience under my belt I could present a more compelling application, but I am currently untethered and ready for change, so I need to get started on this ASAP  

Good luck, all!

 

 

Hi everyone, I am also applying to the HGSE for the EdLD program. This will be the only program I am applying to. I've been keeping an eye on this program for a few years, but finally decided, spur of the moment, on November 9th, to apply. I took the GRE Sunday the 13th. The result of this year's election motivated me to do even more for public education, and I think getting the EdLD would allow me to help protect public ed over the next 4 years in ways that I just can't in the classroom. That's my primary motivation for coming back to school. The short window for studying resulted in scores that I wish were a bit higher, but I'm overall happy with my GRE and my essays. I thought the short-essay question was an excellent question to ask.

GRE: 162V, 153Q, 5.0 AWA

Undergrad: Well-regarded regional university, ~3.5 g.p.a.

Grad: Top-25 GSE, M.Ed., ~3.7 g.p.a.

Law: Top 100, No.1 legal writing program, National Moot Court Team, 2 years legal internship with General Counsel's Office for state teacher's union, ~3.3 g.p.a. (cum laude)

Professional: 2 years practicing law; 7 years teaching in high-poverty public schools; last 3 years at nationally recognized middle school teaching SS; teacher-leadership opportunities within my district, my union, and several national teacher organizations; published in EdWeek Teacher and Impatient Optimists blogs (Gates Foundation Blog) ; Participant and top 350 finisher for the XQ Superschool Project 

I'm definitely looking forward to hearing back from the HGSE, though like most I'm nervous. I think the depth and breadth of my experiences and education will help, at least to get an interview, but I'm not one to take things for granted. I've never applied to a program quite this competitive, and with so many talented applicants, I don't envy the admissions representatives. So, without getting my hopes up, I'm optimistic. My kiddos are very supportive and optimistic, too. My three littles live in a different state from me and they tell me every time we talk about it that they're rooting for me. They want to see daddy get into Harvard. I think they'd like to visit Boston, too, since this is the city I did my graduate work in (and met their mom). Fingers crossed.

Does anyone know whether the interview invitees get their travel expenses paid? I'd be coming from the west coast. 

Good luck to everyone. 

[Vulpix]

13 hours ago, Kilos said:

My thoughts exactly. ha. This HDLT program has been my top choice since I first found out about it. No other program/school/environment/faculty seems to so perfectly align with my interests and passions. I've built this up into an enormous, life-changing event in my head, even knowing how unbelievably competitive the process is, and now, after years of waiting and preparing, I'm trying to brace myself for the rejection letter. haha. I just keep telling myself it'll all be over soon.

The people I know in the HDLT PhD program are incredible human beings. I know they are exhausted (because PhDs are just crazy haha) but boy are they fascinating, and fascinated by what they do.

[Kilos]

8 hours ago, jmaroon said:

@Kilos and @hopefulPhD2017 best of luck to both of you! My friend thought I applied for the PhD program and told me because he has access to an admissions doc with a lot of info on it and was going to look me up, haha. But yes, he said they had almost 700 apps and the faculty narrowed it down to under 300, then picked a "top 100" from those. If you're interested in more info PM me, I'm having lunch with him on Friday again and I'll see if I can squeeze any secret info out.

Wow, that's so hard to fathom--700 applicants whittled down to 100. I guess, if anything, that makes the looming threat of rejection a bit easier to swallow. Sometimes there are simply not enough spots. I'd love to squeeze some secret info out of you, but I think it'd probably just make me more of a nervous wreck, so I'll just keep wallowing in my blissful ignorance. 

Oh and thanks for the well-wishes! Considering what you just told us, we're going to need all the luck we can get. 

[Kilos]

2 hours ago, Vulpix said:

The people I know in the HDLT PhD program are incredible human beings. I know they are exhausted (because PhDs are just crazy haha) but boy are they fascinating, and fascinated by what they do.

That's definitely the vibe I got during some brief conversations with faculty (seminars) and students. They all seemed so interesting, and I felt so stimulated by even the tiniest bit of interaction I had with them. It was really exciting. I had a hard time picking a major in my undergraduate studies because I felt torn between the humanities (my skill-set in English/rhet/comp) and STEM subjects (my passions for technology, science, and numerous subfields). In fact, my proposed research within the HDLT program involved exploring the (ever-diverging) social/educational/political gap between humanities studies and science studies--specifically whether or not the mythic cognitive disconnect between the two ("oh I'm terrible at math/english/science!") actually exists, or whether it's a byproduct of uninterested/unmotivated students/teaching, or something else entirely. It would be such an incredible privilege to work in an intensely multidisciplinary environment, surrounded by people who are just as excited about this stuff as I am. 

[hopefulPhD2017]

@jmaroon Great to have those numbers to keep it in perspective.

To save ya'll the trouble of pulling out the calculators (unless you got a 170Q, in which case I'm sure you did this in your head already), those of us who applied to the PhD have the following chances, by my estimations:

• 4% chance of acceptance overall
• 14% chance of landing an interview
• 100% chance of being awesomely audacious for even applying to such a competitive program

Does that jive with your math?

@JankyGuitar glad you found us over here. Your nervous optimism is most welcome.

[JankyGuitar]

Thanks @hopefulPhD2017! Happy to find a group of people going through the process as well. Good luck to all you PhD candidates! Does anyone know how many EdLD applicants there are typically? I know they accept 25. Was thinking I read somewhere that there were around 400+ applying to this program annually?

[hopefulPhD2017]

@JankyGuitar I thought the EdLd was more competitive but I really don't know. I heard a HGSE admissions person say they usually get "hundreds" of applications for each program. I took that to mean closer to 200. My mistake! @Vulpix or @jmaroon do you know if 700 is typical? More curious than anything. 

[Quickmick]

8 hours ago, hopefulPhD2017 said:

@jmaroon Great to have those numbers to keep it in perspective.

To save ya'll the trouble of pulling out the calculators (unless you got a 170Q, in which case I'm sure you did this in your head already), those of us who applied to the PhD have the following chances, by my estimations:

• 4% chance of acceptance overall
• 14% chance of landing an interview
• 100% chance of being awesomely audacious for even applying to such a competitive program

Does that jive with your math?

@JankyGuitar glad you found us over here. Your nervous optimism is most welcome.

ummm not sure I agree with this one, how did you calculate 4%? You applied to a few programs, I imagine, and you only need to get into one--so I would think you would use Bayes Theorem. Part of this would involve not using the published admission stats, but what you honestly believe your chances are per program. In any case, I would think the odds are significantly higher than 4%.

if odds are at say 15%/per and you apply to 10 for one success you are *I think* looking at:

pbinom(1, size=10, prob=0.15)
[1] 0.5442998

1-54= 46% @7.5% admission rate it goes to about 16% (below) but--in reality--long reach schools will be closer to nil odds and will get better from there so it isn't so clean...but I do think 4% is too low of a guess.

pbinom(1, size=10, prob=0.075)
[1] 0.8304059

Edited January 11, 2017 by Quickmick

[jmaroon]

@Quickmick I think @hopefulPhD2017 calculated a 4% chance of acceptance into only HGSE's PhD program. There are a bit under 700 applicants for 25 spots, which would be about 4%

[Quickmick]

Doh!

 

Edited January 11, 2017 by Quickmick

[Espeon]

36 minutes ago, Quickmick said:

ummm not sure I agree with this one, how did you calculate 4%? You applied to a few programs, I imagine, and you only need to get into one--so I would think you would use Bayes Theorem. Part of this would involve not using the published admission stats, but what you honestly believe your chances are per program. In any case, I would think the odds are significantly higher than 4%.

if odds are at say 15%/per and you apply to 10 for one success you are *I think* looking at:

pbinom(1, size=10, prob=0.15)
[1] 0.5442998

1-54= 46% @7.5% admission rate it goes to about 16% (below) but--in reality--long reach schools will be closer to nil odds and will get better from there so it isn't so clean...but I do think 4% is too low of a guess.

 

pbinom(1, size=10, prob=0.075)
[1] 0.8304059

 

I can definitely speak to @hopefulPhD2017's methods (I was doing the same calculations over breakfast haha). Nuances aside, with an entering class of 25 PhD students (per the HGSE website), we know for certain that 25 people are accepted--25/700=4%. We also know that 50 people are interviewed (50/700). That doesn't take into account the likelihood among a group, just random odds, but it's still a daunting number--it's much nicer to think that the odds would be more like you describe. ?

[Vulpix]

11 hours ago, hopefulPhD2017 said:

@JankyGuitar I thought the EdLd was more competitive but I really don't know. I heard a HGSE admissions person say they usually get "hundreds" of applications for each program. I took that to mean closer to 200. My mistake! @Vulpix or @jmaroon do you know if 700 is typical? More curious than anything. 

I really have no idea about 700. I do think more than 25 would be offered, considering more are offered than actually attend. Plenty of people reject Harvard for very valid reasons, as has been discussed.

Also, I feel like I heard at some point this semester that there are currently 120 doctoral students at HGSE. I'm not sure if that includes those who have completed all but their dissertations, or what. I have met doc students who are in their 7th year of working on the PhD. So I'm not sure how many generations that encompasses.

Edited January 11, 2017 by Vulpix

[easteregg]

@Vulpix I currently work at the university, the PhD program at HGSE enrolled their first cohort in 2014, the "older" doctoral students are actually from the Ed.D. program

[hopefulPhD2017]

@easteregg Fair point.

Did you drop in to share extra special intel with us, as an insider employee? Kidding.

Sort of.

[easteregg]

@hopefulPhD2017haha I would if I could, but my purpose here is to endure the wait for HGSE admissions decisions like everyone else Might be a slightly harder wait for me because I am literally on the outside looking in, but it's a fortunate position to be in.

[Vulpix]

6 hours ago, easteregg said:

@Vulpix I currently work at the university, the PhD program at HGSE enrolled their first cohort in 2014, the "older" doctoral students are actually from the Ed.D. program

Ah yes, they were sort of incorporated or the last cohorts being phased out as it were.

[hopefulPhD2017]

@easteregg I figured you were one of us, waiting as well.  

[AppalachianAspirer]

Good luck all!

Applying to: Ed.L.D. 

Undergrad: Clemson University, 3.2 GPA

Masters: Furman University, 4.0

GRE: 163 Verbal, 150 Quant, 5.0 Writing.

[easteregg]

Random rant: I downloaded my EdM application proof. I'm reading over parts of it as I decide whether or not to apply to other programs and I'm seeing some of my own typos and things I could've done better (ugh) and some weird formatting that probably occurred when the system uploaded and compiled all the different files.

Currently kicking myself for those small errors.

[Espeon]

@jmaroon did you learn anything exciting at lunch today? I saw earlier in the thread you were having lunch today with your friend at Harvard and wanted to check in!  

[jmaroon]

@EspeonI messaged you!

[Kilos]

@jmaroon and @Espeon: *earmuffs*