Critical Language Scholarship 2018

[Mateng]

Applications are due in 10 days! How is everyone feeling?  

[Mateng]

Quick question:

So I've been writing my essay responses in a Word doc (i'm sure we all have lol) but do you guys have paragraphs? I'm wondering if when I paste it into the application and keep it sectioned into paragraphs, will it reach the reader as those same paragraphs or just one big lump?

[busybee]

I have paragraphs on word. So when I copy and paste onto the online application, I just separate the paragraphs with a line of space between them. It doesn't go toward your word count or anything.  

[Mateng]

Thanks!

What language are you applying to?

[emari5]

Just submitted my application for Indonesian! 

Edited November 15, 2017 by emari5

[dragon_seed]

Submitted mine for Advanced Chinese.

Is there anybody out there who went through Advanced Chinese? How 'advanced' does it get? To give you an idea of my own level, I've already taken the fourth year-level Chinese classes at my university and I made A's in them. I have already studied abroad before through a different program and was rated Advanced - Low in both speaking and writing. I'm wondering if that will disqualify me from consideration. But truthfully, my Chinese is VERY broken, and a summer of full immersion abroad will really help me, so I hope I get selected.  

Best of luck to everybody! 

[Mateng]

@dragon_seed I think I read somewhere (someone correct me if I'm wrong) that although  you are in a group, not everyone will be doing the exact same thing. So you would be among the advanced students BUT you're kind of in a class with yourself. I guess it can be described as an independent study?

IDK if I'm explaining it well sorry! But pretty much your're not being tested on a specific curriculum, they want you to get better regardless of where you are in comparison to the other students in your (advanced) group.

[dragon_seed]

Wow! Thank you. If that's the case, I'm even more excited about this program and I hope I get accepted. I made it pretty clear that I need my target language for my career and I'll be using it every day of my life, so hopefully that was a start. I found the short essays to be quite difficult and revised them multiple times after seeing an advisor.  It was difficult to skillfully write what I wanted to say about myself in just 350 words while trying to gauge whether or not that was what they wanted to hear.  I wish we could get scores back for our essays, because I'm dying to know how they are going to dissect mine.  

What language are you applying for? 

[Mateng]

Intermediate Korean.

Yeah I wish we could know what we did right or wrong :/ I revised so many times too. I was the opposite with my essays though. The short essays were easy but the SOP was where I struggled a lot.

[Mateng]

I probably should have emailed the program about this before whatever:

So I just started grad school this fall and the application asked for transcripts for every university attended. Of course I put my current and undergrad transcript, but in undergrad I transferred from school A to school B and I'm wondering if I needed to include the transcript from school A at all. My credits transferred and on my final school B transcript it says the name of school A and underneath the classes that transferred.

Anyone else deal with this?

[dragon_seed]

So, I think it said include all schools attended within the last 5 years. But I think if the transcript for School B has all your credits from School A, that should work. I was in the same situation as you and attached transcripts for both schools A and B just in case. But my School B transcript had everything from School A. 

[Mateng]

Ok yeah that's what I did just to be safe..... it was really irritating getting it from them though.

What program are you all studying? I'm doing Chemistry so it was a bit tough relating it to my career goals but I tried.

[dragon_seed]

I'm getting my Master's in Chinese and I want to be a Chinese teacher. So, I definitely made a case about how much I need more training to help me in my career. Hopefully they'll agree! 

[Mateng]

Wow yeah they have to agree! I hope you get it!

[vlad_poutine]

CS major here. I don't think I was very clear in terms of career goals on my essays (loooollll), but I'd love to use Russian in a research-related field. It's pretty cool actually, my other Russian language classmates are all from distinct disciplines, and I can easily see any one of them getting this award. 

[Mateng]

What year are you in school? I know that if you're in a lower class standing they're more lenient about not knowing specifics about your future goals. As you get into senior year and if your in grad school they hope to hear some more concrete plans.

[Jess2323]

Applied for Intermediate Urdu, fingers crossed!

[chupacabra]

Applied for Japanese and was excited, but am now currently low-key freaking out because I'm not actually sure if my professors submitted their letters of recommendation... I thought I was all set and had reminded them, but now I'm going through my application and the first referee's status only has "notification sent" as the most recent update.  The other says "opened." What the heeeeck.

[malubra]

I applied for Korean! I've studied aboard in Korea twice but I'm super nervous because my GPA isn't that great  

[Mateng]

23 hours ago, chupacabra said:

Applied for Japanese and was excited, but am now currently low-key freaking out because I'm not actually sure if my professors submitted their letters of recommendation... I thought I was all set and had reminded them, but now I'm going through my application and the first referee's status only has "notification sent" as the most recent update.  The other says "opened." What the heeeeck.

Are you saying that you recently checked?? It should say "submitted" plus the date and time if they submitted it....so I don't think they sent it in  I think you should get in touch with the recommenders and ask if they had sent it (it may be a glitch and they did send it but the site didn't show that it was submitted).

 

23 hours ago, malubra said:

I applied for Korean! I've studied aboard in Korea twice but I'm super nervous because my GPA isn't that great  

Good luck!

Don't be too worried about your GPA since there's no minimum. Of course higher grades are better but they also had you write all those essays so hopefully that will be considered strongly. Also It depends on which classes you are doing well in. So I'm a chem major and some internship/research programs I apply to ask for my science/math GPA not my overall GPA. I suck at writing so my history, english etc type classes are average. 

What study abroad program did you go to Korea with? 

[malubra]

32 minutes ago, Mateng said:

What study abroad program did you go to Korea with? 

1

I went through the Foundation for Korean Culture the first time then I went through exchange at Yonsei!

[Sunflora219]

I was secretly stalking this page after sending in my application. I applied for beginners Bangla. Good luck to everyone here!

[chupacabra]

13 hours ago, Mateng said:

Are you saying that you recently checked?? It should say "submitted" plus the date and time if they submitted it....so I don't think they sent it in  I think you should get in touch with the recommenders and ask if they had sent it (it may be a glitch and they did send it but the site didn't show that it was submitted).

Turns out it wasn't sent in. I'm incredibly baffled, defeated, and upset, because this professor encouraged me to apply in the first place and I'd been consistent in giving reminders. I got in contact with someone from CLS; they were very helpful and encouraged me to see to it that the LOR gets submitted, but said there are no guarantees the LOR will be read since it is late. CLS reads incomplete applications, which is ostensibly a small ray of hope for me... but I truly don't know what the future holds. We will see! In the meantime, I'm simply going to accept what has happened and try not to feel so down about it.

[Sunflora219]

19 hours ago, chupacabra said:

Turns out it wasn't sent in. I'm incredibly baffled, defeated, and upset, because this professor encouraged me to apply in the first place and I'd been consistent in giving reminders. I got in contact with someone from CLS; they were very helpful and encouraged me to see to it that the LOR gets submitted, but said there are no guarantees the LOR will be read since it is late. CLS reads incomplete applications, which is ostensibly a small ray of hope for me... but I truly don't know what the future holds. We will see! In the meantime, I'm simply going to accept what has happened and try not to feel so down about it.

Aw man. I’m sorry this happened to you. We’re all hoping that the program reads your application— my fingers are crossed for you. More importantly, you seem like you’ve worked really hard on your application, and that’s something to be proud of. So keep your head held high! Please do keep us posted.

[dragon_seed]

Fingers crossed for you, chupacabra. You did everything you were supposed to and I would like to think this sort of thing shouldn't be held against you.