Applying from Abroad

[American in Beijing]

I'm so addicted to checking my e-mail/this site, that I feel I should start this out with a good: "Hi, my name is Larissa and I'm applying to grad school."

So basically I'm the American idiot who decided to apply to grad schools while living China. Let me tell you, what seems like a fun and great gap year/opportunity to show grad schools I'm a "go-getter" who can handle living in a 3rd world country, is actually an applicant's nightmare. There's this fun 13-hour time difference that is driving me insane. Basically, most of the time I'm awake, the professors who decide my fate are sound asleep. Every time I sleep . . . people are deciding my fate.

This should be good news, right? I mean, all I have to do is fall asleep and then I wake up and Gmail gives me a nice, neat account of what has happened while I was slumbering (i.e. nothing). All in all, I should be spending less time worrying, right?

Last night I went to bed, exhausted from a day at my new internship, my first real experience in the real world. What do I dream about? Harvard, of course! I dreamed that I was in a room with a whole bunch of other applicants waiting to hear our results. The dean came in (why the dean, I don't know . . . my dreams are rarely logical) and handed us envelopes with our admissions results inside. Mine was dangerously thin . . . but low and behold, it was an acceptance (I guess Harvard doesn't need to put a lot of promotional material in its acceptance letters, lol). I jumped for joy and performed flawlessly the "Harvard acceptance dance" that I have been so carefully planning for months, as the dean beamed admiringly. The other students, though not as fortunate as I, nevertheless applauded graciously as I clasped the acceptance letter to my chest in a state of pure euphoria (I guess I needed to add some schadenfreude in there to make the dream perfect).

I woke up from this lovely fantasy at 4:30 am my time, only to realize that it was all a dream. There's still no word from Harvard, still no word from Columbia, still no word from Berkeley, and even still no word from UCSD (even though a professor directly told me that they were going to make their final decisions last week). I then realized . . . it's 3:30 pm on the East Coast . . . I wonder if anyone has made a decision yet? I should just check really quickly so I can calm my nerves and go back to bed. I have been on Gmail and this site ever since. It is now 7 am.

So now I'm about to start getting ready for work. At least that should give me a little break from worrying, right? When I signed on for this internship, I was under the impression that I would be doing translation work/helping design speech recognition software. Guess what my boss has turned my job into? I'm now the Resource Coordination Assistant. What does that mean? It means I find translators/native speakers of obscure languages. Guess what my job essentially entails? . . . Checking my e-mail . . . FML.

[Jota]

My hysteria hasn't been quite so intense, but I know the feeling. I'm applying to programs this year from Mexico and, while the time difference doesn't have much of an impact, the thought that schools will choose to send notifications via mail for some odd reason terrifies me. US-Mexico mail times range from 3-5 weeks, and that's if it arrives at all. Indeed, agh, March can't come quickly enough.

[gazelle]

I'm assuming youre going for MPP programs, OP?

I'm applying from Japan, and the only thing that I find disappointing about the time difference is that when I wake up and see nothing in my email, like now, I know there is next to no point in checking it at all for the rest of the day. I would rather be awake while the adcoms are, so I can check my email everyday, all day. It gets a little boring seeing nothing day in day out in the morning and knowing it will be like that for the next 24 hours, my time.

[The_Hanged_Man]

I feel your pain OP. I'm an American in China as well who applied to grad schools in the States. To top that off I am an international school teacher whose previous school was in Kuwait. So...I'm in China, two of my recommendation letter writers are in Kuwait, and my grad schools who demand physical letters (internet forms would be way too easy I guess )are in the US. I hope you can appreciate what a massive PITA it was to coordinate that mess.

I was successful in getting admittance to my program of choice at Iowa with funding, however, so I am thrilled about that. However, my advisor to be apparently doesn't answer e-mails unless prodded by the dept head so I have more fun in store for me when I have to try to call him to get advice. The time difference conveniently makes 9am-5pm for him into 11pm-7am for me which is another big PITA. I'll be back in the States in late June, but until then I will just have to suck it up and deal. Hang in there OP!

Edited February 9, 2010 by The_Hanged_Man

[luar de ouro]

I'm so addicted to checking my e-mail/this site, that I feel I should start this out with a good: "Hi, my name is Larissa and I'm applying to grad school."

So basically I'm the American idiot who decided to apply to grad schools while living China. Let me tell you, what seems like a fun and great gap year/opportunity to show grad schools I'm a "go-getter" who can handle living in a 3rd world country, is actually an applicant's nightmare. There's this fun 13-hour time difference that is driving me insane. Basically, most of the time I'm awake, the professors who decide my fate are sound asleep. Every time I sleep . . . people are deciding my fate.

This should be good news, right? I mean, all I have to do is fall asleep and then I wake up and Gmail gives me a nice, neat account of what has happened while I was slumbering (i.e. nothing). All in all, I should be spending less time worrying, right?

Last night I went to bed, exhausted from a day at my new internship, my first real experience in the real world. What do I dream about? Harvard, of course! I dreamed that I was in a room with a whole bunch of other applicants waiting to hear our results. The dean came in (why the dean, I don't know . . . my dreams are rarely logical) and handed us envelopes with our admissions results inside. Mine was dangerously thin . . . but low and behold, it was an acceptance (I guess Harvard doesn't need to put a lot of promotional material in its acceptance letters, lol). I jumped for joy and performed flawlessly the "Harvard acceptance dance" that I have been so carefully planning for months, as the dean beamed admiringly. The other students, though not as fortunate as I, nevertheless applauded graciously as I clasped the acceptance letter to my chest in a state of pure euphoria (I guess I needed to add some schadenfreude in there to make the dream perfect).

I woke up from this lovely fantasy at 4:30 am my time, only to realize that it was all a dream. There's still no word from Harvard, still no word from Columbia, still no word from Berkeley, and even still no word from UCSD (even though a professor directly told me that they were going to make their final decisions last week). I then realized . . . it's 3:30 pm on the East Coast . . . I wonder if anyone has made a decision yet? I should just check really quickly so I can calm my nerves and go back to bed. I have been on Gmail and this site ever since. It is now 7 am.

So now I'm about to start getting ready for work. At least that should give me a little break from worrying, right? When I signed on for this internship, I was under the impression that I would be doing translation work/helping design speech recognition software. Guess what my boss has turned my job into? I'm now the Resource Coordination Assistant. What does that mean? It means I find translators/native speakers of obscure languages. Guess what my job essentially entails? . . . Checking my e-mail . . . FML.

We're in pretty similar situations, it seems. I'm also applying out of Beijing, and nearly died from the process. My internship doesn't have me checking my email a lot, but I am chained to the computer doing research and translations, so it's not a lot better.

Are you working here only, or also going to school?

[Beck]

I'm applying from Japan, and the only thing that I find disappointing about the time difference is that when I wake up and see nothing in my email, like now, I know there is next to no point in checking it at all for the rest of the day. I would rather be awake while the adcoms are, so I can check my email everyday, all day. It gets a little boring seeing nothing day in day out in the morning and knowing it will be like that for the next 24 hours, my time.

YES. I'm in Australia and it's exactly like that. I had today off work, so I stayed up late in the hope that something might arrive before I went to bed (1am my time = 9am at the school I'm hoping to hear back from soon). At least the fact that 9am my time is 5pm their time means that I can check my email when I get to work in the hope that something might have arrived while I was on the bus.

Really my iPhone rationale is dead in the water when you consider the time differences. "I need an iPhone so I can, um, check my email all the time to find out if I got into grad school! That's really important!" Of course, I didn't do the maths on timezones before I got the thing ... just as well I like it anyhow.

[artschoolhopeful]

Oh, wow, other people like me. So the most stressful thing so far about applying abroad is getting all your stuff snail mailed. This just shows how extremely neurotic this process has made me.

I'm fortunate in that my family back in the States is willing to help me mail applications and writing samples that need to be snail mailed. Unfortunately, not doing these things myself makes me RIDICULOUSLY paranoid. Every time anything needs to be snail mailed, I send an extremely detailed email to my sister with a large PDF of everything that needs to go to that school telling her that an emergency email will come shortly after. I title that email "READ THIS ONE FIRST." Then I write another email with the emergency instructions with individual word documents as oppose to one large PDF. I give her the order in which these documents are to be arranged. I title this email "EMERGENCY WORD DOCUMENTS." Then she mails it, gives me the tracking number, and I check it over and over again. Then I stay up until the middle of the night when the school offices are open just to call and MAKE SURE they have my things because sometimes tracking doesn't show up if the package is delivered too quickly.

So one day my sister emails me back and tells me that one of my fellowship applications that was mailed out by my mother and gives me the tracking number--but she left off the last two letters because they were "u" and "s" and she thought it just meant US. I tracked it and USPS told me that they had no package with that number. I panicked, sent her a million emails asking if she was SURE that mom sent it out (my mother does NOT want me to go to graduate school for art history and for some reason I just maybe thought that she was secretly sabotaging me). I asked her if she had seen our mom's receipt. My sister told me she would scan and email the receipt to me.

Once I put in the right tracking number in, I saw that my package was received by the central mail center at the school--whew.

The most unfortunate thing is that I wasn't sure what my international phone number would be during the application process, so I listed my home phone and all of my letter rejections/acceptances will be mailed to my home which means I find out after my fam does .

ALSO, if I could have done it on my own, I could have been a lot more secretive about it. Now that my whole family has helped me with this process, they assume I'll just get in. They don't understand that for every 200-300 applicants or so, between 2-8 will get in from the programs I applied to.

[American in Beijing]

<br />We're in pretty similar situations, it seems. I'm also applying out of Beijing, and nearly died from the process. My internship doesn't have me checking my email a lot, but I am chained to the computer doing research and translations, so it's not a lot better. <br /><br />Are you working here only, or also going to school?<br />

<br /><br /><br />

I actually finished an intensive language program (yeah . . . not so smart to do the semester I'm applying for grad school, I learned . . . at least I have something to blame my impending failure on, lol) and I'm doing a short internship before I start up work teaching English. How about you?

[American in Beijing]

<br /><br /><br />Once I put in the right tracking number in, I saw that my package was received by the central mail center at the school--whew.<br /><br />The most unfortunate thing is that I wasn't sure what my international phone number would be during the application process, so I listed my home phone and all of my letter rejections/acceptances will be mailed to my home which means I find out after my fam does <img src='http://forum.thegradcafe.com/public/style_emoticons/default/sad.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='' />. <br /><br />ALSO, if I could have done it on my own, I could have been a lot more secretive about it. Now that my whole family has helped me with this process, they assume I'll just get in. They don't understand that for every 200-300 applicants or so, between 2-8 will get in from the programs I applied to.<br />

<br /><br /><br />

LOL, my family is the same way. It's really depressing, actually. Fortunately all of my schools had online applications (and I only had to send in a few supplemental things afterwards for one of them, all of which I could do myself), so I didn't have to worry about them "sabatoging" me. They've been coming around lately, though. Maybe yours will too!

But yeah . .. I'm totally feeling you on the wishing you had been less vocal about the whole process. I should have just done it secretly so at least the shame of rejection would be milder.

[subrosa]

I actually finished an intensive language program (yeah . . . not so smart to do the semester I'm applying for grad school, I learned . . . at least I have something to blame my impending failure on, lol)

So true! Same situation, only in Japan. The application process all but killed me. November-December was one long blur of sleep deprivation. It didn't help that my primary recommender has a tendency to be absent-minded and not respond to emails weeks at a time.

[monkeefugg]

I am applying from Paris, France

I had to get people back home in the USA to mail things for my application

I am hoping I will receive an e-mail before my snail mail decision letter, b/c I do not fully trust La Poste

[Venetia]

I'm applying from Dubai, and my referees are all in Ireland, so I feel your pain! All my wrangling with universities and credential conversion services took place after 6 pm at the earliest and sometimes went on until after midnight. The nine hour time difference means that I either stay up really late obsessively checking my email, or check it first thing in the morning. And like you all, I do hope that notifications come by email or phone- it takes a good couple of weeks for stuff to get here from the States, and there is no street postal system in Dubai so everything goes through my Dad's office (and he can be rather forgetful about bringing it home!).

Good luck to you all; I hope the strange locations make our applications more interesting to the adcomms!

[wednesdaybythesea]

I'm applying from Morocco. Amazingly, everything made it in on time, but I had a few snafus along the way. I found out in November that I had an outstanding library fine at my undergrad institution... still have my conspiracy theories about that as I graduated almost three years ago and am fairly certain that one cannot graduate/receive a diploma with outstanding fines. I had to clear that up (ie, my mom had to send a check on my behalf) in order to request transcripts. In late December, after receiving my October GRE scores, I noticed that they only reflected my most recent test date and not my first from Feb 2008 (which were actually better scores, arg). I spent about 20 minutes on a shaky Skype connection trying to convince ETS that I was the same person who took the test in Feb 2008. The annoying thing is that ALL of my personal information was the same (name, date of birth, SSN) except for my address. Since when is an address used as a primary identifier?! After they merged my accounts, I had to pay $20 for each updated score report so my schools would get the Feb scores as well. With my spotty internet connectivity, I spend way too much time trying to log in to my email to check for updates.

[American in Beijing]

I'm applying from Morocco. Amazingly, everything made it in on time, but I had a few snafus along the way. I found out in November that I had an outstanding library fine at my undergrad institution... still have my conspiracy theories about that as I graduated almost three years ago and am fairly certain that one cannot graduate/receive a diploma with outstanding fines. I had to clear that up (ie, my mom had to send a check on my behalf) in order to request transcripts. In late December, after receiving my October GRE scores, I noticed that they only reflected my most recent test date and not my first from Feb 2008 (which were actually better scores, arg). I spent about 20 minutes on a shaky Skype connection trying to convince ETS that I was the same person who took the test in Feb 2008. The annoying thing is that ALL of my personal information was the same (name, date of birth, SSN) except for my address. Since when is an address used as a primary identifier?! After they merged my accounts, I had to pay $20 for each updated score report so my schools would get the Feb scores as well. With my spotty internet connectivity, I spend way too much time trying to log in to my email to check for updates.

That happened to me too, actually! Fortunately, in my case, the ones that were mysteriously "missing" were the lower (and actually quite embarrassing) scores. It was like a get out of jail free card! Except that I had already self-reported to Berkeley before I realized the error . . .

[anxiousmike]

Got all my apps in before I came abroad. The time difference is frustrating though (Balkans).

Great original post OP!

[Branwen daughter of Llyr]

I'm applying from Israel... and to reach my alma mater on the phone to make sure they SENT TRANSCRIPTS was basically hell.

Between my working and sleeping hours, their working hours, and the time difference (7 hours), I managed to reach them only twice, then they lost my fax with my ID and transcript request (and they say you don't have to call. liars), so I had to call again, fax again, and UVA still lists my application as "INCOMPLETE" (they just do. I have to stop developing an ulcer about it).

Supplemental materials? Luckily I only had one, and was in the US over xmas - left if for my brother to take to the post office and send. He forgot. When I got back from Florida, envelope was STILL sitting on the kitchen table. My dad ended up sending it the day before the deadline.

Have promised myself that next year I will be much better prepared, make sure I talk to my Alma Mater months in advance, send GRE scores months in advance, send supplemental materials FROM HERE (also months in advance). Luckily, most grad schools i'm interested in are pretty much online, and my LOR writers are in the US (which, of course, will complicate sending stuff to UK for programs there...).

I cannot even imagine applying anywhere from China. Isn't the internet censored there? i.e. very difficult to get to sites outside of China??

[JerryLandis]

I'm applying to US programs from the UK. The time difference isn't quite as bad, but it can still be annoying. What drove me crazy was having to mail everything. Not only was it outrageously expensive to send my materials with a tracking label, but it also took at least 2 weeks for anything to arrive. Since I wanted my materials to arrive early, just to be safe, this meant sending everything in WAY before the deadline. I lost very valuable time that I could have spent improving my materials, especially my writing sample. I ended up finishing my thesis before my applications were due, but couldn't use it as a writing sample because it would not have arrived in the mail on time. For this reason, I'm very glad that most places are starting to use online systems. It definitely makes the application process much more fair for those not applying from the US.

Ultimately, the worst part about applying from abroad was not having anyone to go to for advice. My professors were not able to give me much advice at all because they know even less than I do about the American university system. I felt that this put me at a serious disadvantage, but thankfully I received lots of extremely useful advice from people on this website.