what the fuck am i getting myself into with this grad school stuff

Four to go though right??

Seven! Omg.

:(

Oh no what I meant was I have seven to hear from still. Cause I applied to thirteen programs like a crazy person. No weekend rejections thankfully.

oh haha good

doing frantic financial calculations

Marry a rich guy IMO

fwiw i am doing my phd in toronto and have had mostly good xps with the university. it is v dept. dependent tho

could I webmail you, Lamp?

sure!

Getting ready to finish grad school, possibly starting with preliminary courses this fall, so I can work on my portfolio.

I didn't finish before because grad work requires teaching and dealing with a lot of students, and being illness prone myself with two sick family members, I found it physically demanding.

admitted to a place! I get to go to grad school!

congrats dude

thanks!

nice

Fantastic, well done!

the trick is to get in to more than one so I have the opportunity to *choose* a place. Time will tell I guess.

And thx nakh and ljubljana

I just got one of those fancy U of T PhDs offers too.

Perhaps more striking was that the actually-really-relevant-to-my-interests-professor I was going to email emailed me!

At the same time I'm still really ambivalent since I spent my entire life (up until last September) in Toronto, did my BA at U of T, and am really very happy where I am now (University College London). I can't help feeling that I would be selling myself short by not reapplying to Columbia or continuing at UCL or something of that sort, so I dunno.

I have a change of plans, life is tough and you know, good thing I'm not a whiner. House has to be fixed up, so no grad school this year.

That's too bad, I got a perfect 800 verbal when I took the GRE.

I think I'll stay home and take lighting courses to bide my time until I can go to preservation school.

Yay EDB! To get first contact from a professor, proactively, is impressive. I had a positive experience re communication with my potential supervisor at U of T - she emailed me, scheduled a Skype chat, and emailed me again yesterday to warn me the official letter was delayed. Mind you, I love London and totally understand not wanting to leave.

Mount Cleaners, I'm sorry to hear this :-(

I'll be okay. Dad wanted me to finish grad school and I think I should respect his wish. I don't want to talk to mom anymore, she wants to sell our house right from under us, and I'm the one paying for it. I think she is mentally ill, always has been, but she has an enormous amount of power. I have to spend every dime on something else.

I can take a lighting course downtown though, which I can probably use as a credit.

I'm conflicted again anyway, between a studio MA or an MA in theory / criticism. I could "cop out" and get an MA in design criticism, but the idea of being stuck in another career where I'm sitting in a chair all of the time depresses me. It would be cheaper at the moment, though.

I feel like taking a hard line with my mom and doing more studio courses. She doesn't like this because it makes me less available to her at any given time (she is retired and disabled).

Guess I'm doing PhD at UofT...

Great! I'm still waiting for the official letter from them. What will you be doing? (if you don't mind saying on here - no problem if you'd rather not).

Art History

Though it'll be weird returning to U of T, having left in summer 2011 as an undergrad, and returning in autumn 2012 as a doctoral student.

how can you even think of applying for things well done man

so y'all! i have been avoiding this thread b/c the whole application process is so stressful I don't want to even be reminded of it - - BUT now i am in this weird thing - - - applying for phd programs, I'm on the waitlist at my top-choice school, and meanwhile accepted to a school that I'd be totally happy with going to but just not halfway as excited about. So the latter is actually a huge relief cause it means I have *a* plan, I am definitely going to school and moving on and so on. Anyway the thing is, I have til the 15th to make a decision at School That I'm Into, and School That I'm Waitlisted at has until the 15th to tell me yes or no. How much do these waitlist things move around? Are there people out there getting accepted to all the other good schools (who rejected me outright) and thus having to flip a coin and drop their slot at this one, leaving me.... in?

The inside gossip from one of my professors, who got a phone call a few weeks back from someone on the top-choice school admissions committee, is that, at that time, they had it down to six people and they were accepting three. So...if I were #6 in line I'd need THREE people to not go. Or run into mysterious "accidents" I guess. Is it worth waiting around to find out? Is it gauche to take forever to formally accept the other school? Augh!

Meanwhile though, how DO I handle things with the school I'm accepted to? One professor that I met at their open house has sent me emails periodically hyping up the school, or going "oh and I forgot this other faculty member you'd love to work with..." and I'm not sure how to respond, I mean I don't want to say "Oh, well, I'm waiting to hear from the school I'd ~RATHER~ go to" y'know? Plus it's sort of not even down to the one being a better school, just a better location/lifestyle/whatever. Blah blah blah, I am probably thinking about this too much. They're both great schools. I would just like to KNOW, dammit! Stupid waitlist business, I'd rather be rejected outright and have it settled...

Oh and congrats to everyone upthread! It's kind of heartening watching a series of "rejected" posts followed suddenly by "I'm in!"

https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2684/5844390920_5cc9021c67_z.jpg

I'd straight up contact the first school, tell them you have other offers waiting, and ask what your prospects look like (maybe that would support your position too?)

The ambivalence and back and forth of it all is the worst! You'd think you'd get a mental break once things come through but no! On that note, I might as well the opportunity to vent my psychic ambivalence:

I've more or less decided to accept the only school I got into (which was my safety school, and which I never really intended to go to), but only because they wouldn't let me defer acceptance for a year. The thing is that my last round of applications almost didn't count: because I did them a month into starting my MA I had no MA transcripts, no recommendations from MA professors, and no mention of the multiple conferences and publications I've gotten this year that. Further, I used a writing sample I now kind of regret and I didn't bother to contact professors in advance. I'm pretty certain (especially after discussing this with family and one professor) that the best thing to do is take the offer, go (it's funded so I'm at no loss), and then just reapply elsewhere this fall. Certainly I would have an incomparably better shot at getting into a top school, and I'd be totally happy staying where I am, but feel like I owe it to myself to not be complacent. My mind is made, but should I just feel like such a heel being all underhanded like that?

Hmmmmmmm, that's a toughie - - I'd say it also depends on your field and how transferable the first year at School A will be. It sounds like your odds of getting into Schools B, C, D, etc., will be way higher in the next cycle, but of course it'd be a gamble to not go to School A and hope you get in other places. I wonder how that kind of thing looks to the schools you're applying to, also.

I was in your exact position when i applied to phd programs, but the financial considerations settled it for me (the "less desirable" school just offered a much bigger stipend than i knew i'd ever get at the first choice school).

Wouldn't school A ask you to pay the stipend back? Maybe not, I have no idea, I just assumed that's what happens in those scenarios - but I hardly know the north american system.

nah, you can take the money & run

my view on this is: look out for #1, but don't step in #2

http://chronicle.com/article/Graduate-School-Is-a-Means-to/131316/

good article

no NSF, still waiting on two programs…bastards stringing me along into April.

good article xp

yeah, that's a really good article

OK, rejected from all 4 of my US schools but accepted in Canada; pretty sure GRE quant score scuppered me in the US - but it would be nice to know what else factored in and how I did overall in the crazy competition... but I will never know... will I? If I've met a prof and then got rejected, any chance they'd provide feedback if I ask for it? I'd only do this with one school.

Luckily U of T was my favourite dept when I did a round of visits last year. I'm going for it! Aaaaaaa

Honestly - I've seen some admission committee back-of-the-house stuff and beyond a certain point it is basically luck of the draw/arbitrary insofar as you just do not know the mix of personalities on the committee and how the discussion unfolds. It can be as dopey as "I like the look of this person," answered with "Oh, you always like people with (such and such background/experience), we took two of them last year, it's my turn to pick something" or whatever.

Yeah. I should let it lie - I'll find out soon enough what I'm good at/not good at...

I wrote to the author of the Chronicle article and asked her to blog about career paths for older students, since she asks for blog ideas on her website.

^ would read that blog

looks like the last two programs I'm waiting on hearing from are dragging this out into next week. *headdesk*

Wait I basically posted the same sentiment yesterday. I've gotten really boring in my fretting.

Right there with you! I really wish people would stop asking me how it's going IRL because there's nothing to report but it's ALL I THINK ABOUT and actually I have nothing else to talk about anyway but it's realllly not fun!

Today got sort of inadvertently grilled by an old professor about it and my reasons for applying and so on and it started making me all queasy and really out of sorts. Really want this over with!

Had a similar experience the other day with a work contact who knew I was applying and who implied I was headed to the wrong place. It was pretty disconcerting, because he has phenomenal knowledge of a huge swathe of social and behavioral science. But not quite the bit I'm interested in. Still worried me a lot.

Got a reply from The Professor (who wrote the Chronicle article) - she says she's going to do a shoutout for a guest post on the 'older PhD' question - looks like she might do it from the perspective specifically of older women, though I didn't ask her to.

aaaaah i got into the first choice waitlist school aaaah!!!!

wow well done man!