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

Trying 'hi I'm ljubljana, I'm coming here in September, oh I see you're at the university of X, what do you work on...' is worse than useless,

There's nothing wrong with saying that, and you shouldn't be discouraged by the behaviour of a few dickheads. But Euler is right, these people usually have a million people they need to see and might not have time for small talk. Unless you know the person, it's usually better to approach a student or postdoc from the same group if you want to have a non-serious chat about the work they're doing.

Did anyone else do their MA part-time? I'm halfway through mine and have pretty much zero enthusiasm about it.

I did this and it worked out pretty well. I think my secrets were having a fairly rigid schedule (work for money in the morning, work for uni in the afternoon) and being part of a nice graduate community, where we'd see each other in both working and social environments all the time, discuss and read each others work, do reading groups etc etc. You're at Goldsmiths iirc? It's the kind of thing that I've found much more difficult while studying in London, and I've heard that at Goldsmiths especially (at PhD level at least) there doesn't tend to be much of a community vibe between the disparate peoples. But if there's any way to make your studies more like being a part of something bigger rather than just a solo thing where you have work to get done, then that's the way to go.

I was kinda forced into part-timing during my MA because my mother got ill half way through the year and needed close to full-time care and there was no way I was going to get a dissertation written over that summer - so I had to go back a year later after she died, take one course and do the thesis.

Thing is, to follow up Merdeyeux's point, the first year, living in *smallish town with uni* I was immediately immersed in a research community, made friends, hung out and work was easy. Second year, i lived in London and commuted one or two days a week and got to know no one in my class, and the isolation and the WTF-ness made it much harder.

I did a PhD here in Dublin, and, again, in a reasonably big city, people had other stuff and lives outside the dept. and the 'community vibe' was minimal. But since it's my native city, I didn't need the social life either, which probably struck non-natives as un-helpful.

ugh. thinking about making some money instead.

just take free courses at coursera

coursera looks rad

increasingly think I might need to do a masters to get back into law ~sigh~. anyone know any UK resources similar to coursera with law courses on? (pref scots law)

does anyone know a good resource for numbers on what american schools are funding europeans? or is the answer to this 'use common sense, filter through every page on their grad school site, and email the admissions secretary'?

also is anyone here who took the GRE outside of america?

I did the GRE in London, pretty straight forward. Pay your money, go to the test centre, take test.

As for funding, I think e-mailing the admissions secretary same like the only course. My school was very keen on funding foreign students, I got a partial tuition scholarship for my masters and there were a lot of foreign Phd students in my department. However, I'm not sure there's any other way than selecting the programmes you like the look of and talking with the departments.

yeah i figured /: oh well, time to start working on it i guess

In my department we don't consider nationality in judging admissions. The only question is whether we can judge the accomplishments of students from outside the USA. For the UK this is trivial.

I mean for students from the uk.

Thomp, no idea if this will help/are schools you would consider but in psychology these schools (and probably more) operate as Euler describes: H@rvard, N0rthwestern, Br0wn, St@nford, M1chigan, W1sconsin-Madis0n, (no idea whether all that googleproofing was really necessary). I'm about to go to U of T in Canada on that basis too - I couldn't get myself up to the right quantitative GRE score in time to get into a US school! - though very happy with where I have ended up. This does freak me out a bit wrt surviving the statistics, though as long as I can take it at my pace and work hard behind the scenes I think I should be ok.

Carnegie Mellon and Chicago are also very open and encouraging of foreign students

Thomp, what do you want to study?

i missed responses, oops. ed -- english lit. specifically american lit with a modern focus and a theory bent. w/r/t what i just did in my masters thesis uc b3rkeley would be the absolute best place, due in part to presence of professors x and y, but b3rkeley (and other U of C places that would be a good match: 1rvine, maybe LA) seems to have a worse fee situation for foreign nationals . i am thinking u.p3nn, NYU, st4nford are my top three choices at the moment. i am glad of reassuring voices on the idea of going to the states in general.

i am reviving this because additional panic: the subject specific GRE in ldn is sold out so i am probably going to have to go to paris to take it

hi I'm an nyu professor who just found this site via a google search

|\|y|_|

mainly i did that bcz it amused me, if i'd committed probably i would have had to have gone with 'l4'

$ situation is def pretty bleak for uc humanities grad students these days, even outside of the foreign national thing

my one friend who's been yelling at me to get off my arse, sit gre, apply for things etc, just got accepted at UCL4 with a $30k stipend? he lives kind of a charmed life though so:

for humanities?

y! h8 him

getting funding in the humanities is such lols, i feel like i'm cheating at life.

30K!!

i'm not getting that much tbf, f that guy.

level of funding is obv important, but how many years you are *guaranteed* funding also critical. my program for this first time this year couldn't fund students in their sixth year or beyond; they are guaranteed five though. I'm at a massive public uni but this is happening everywhere; I'd be especially worried about UC schools here on out

Uhhhhh, got a kind of disconcerting email from the dept. secretary of my program about "whether everything's ok?" and if "there's been a horrible mix up" because it turns out I'm not registered for courses and am otherwise nowhere to be seen. While the latter part can be explained by me being in a different country, I have a sneaking suspicion (having gone through it time and time again) that crossed wires have kept me out of vital communication (the fact that I haven't received any email from the dept in months may possibly confirm this).

I've since officially registered for courses, but mostly I'm pissed that I think I missed TA applications, that and I haven't heard back from any of the lucrative library jobs I applied to (despite haveing hiring privilege from working for the library before/being in the union, etc.)

On the other hand, has there EVER been a year of university education where, right before classes start, some bureaucratic complication hasn't nearly left me unenrolled from classes altogether? I think this is at least the fourth year in a row something of this sort has happened.

I've been getting undecipherable emails from my department about the status of my funding, have no confirmed timetable for classes next week and still have no clue what my grad assistantship project is beyond a vague title, but I think that's par for the course. Your sitch sounds more worrying - very annoying to miss out on the TA and library jobs.

you should both be in touch with your DGSs then! by email but preferably by phone

EDB, I think we share a DGS. Wanna go up to his place together and beat him up?

Seriously though, it seems to be very much treated as normal in my dept that there's no info. I went into the dept and asked them about the timetable, and the secretary was very nice and friendly - she said they'd been having scheduling problems, and talked me through when my classes would probably be. But, lady, why not send an email to all students apologizing lightly for the delay and letting people know whether or not any classes are scheduled for *Monday*? Maybe everyone else just goes with the flow and I'm the only one stressing out.

Then I saw my advisor, who clearly didn't really want to see me till next week. Then got an email from the lab manager about a lab meeting that clashed with the non-confirmed time of a course I'm taking. Emailed about the clash. Got email from advisor to say 'don't trust the secretary! check everything she says! the course ends an hour earlier, I have the schedule'. Well, CIRCULATE IT THEN!

Sorry for moaning - this is not a good day. I'm panicking that I'm not ready for the work itself, if I'm honest with myself, and also wondering why in hell I didn't stay in the UK and at least do all this in a city where I know people (a city I believe EDB is just leaving!) (I know why not - structure of N American PhDs - but I feel like I had my priorities wrong. I'm too old to keep moving around the world like this and it's been too long since I could enjoy spending non-rushed time with people I love).

*Throws glass of water over self in attempt to snap out of it*

Seems the Registrar's Office may have had at least a draft timetable in hard copy for some time. Maybe most students would know that's where to go and get a timetable. As an international student, I didn't.

secretaries aren't your best source of info for things that count; call the DGS. you gotta take the initiative; faculty members are busy this time of year (don't I know it) & you're at a big uni i gather, so you'll have to be p aggro / direct to make sure #1 gets what she needs

Oh, well, I mean I'm actually registered and am registered in my classes. The disconcerting thing is I never heard about anything about this until yesterday.

Yeah, I'm totally on board with y'all - it's not that it's been impossible to get the information I've needed, it's just come indirectly and only by specific request for specific pieces of information, which doesn't work so well when you don't even know the piece of information you need to request. This past week has been like the classic "new student feeling forgotten by the system" week for me. I think I'm getting over the hump but it's sort of a demoralizing development when I'm already going through the more natural anxiety of "have I made a horrible mistake, is this the right program, etc etc"...

"have I made a horrible mistake, is this the right program, etc etc"...

^^^

Wow, I had a financial windfall and can finally prove myself on the big career stage.

I can't wait to be a successful interior designer or whatever so I can have a fascinating career other people can brag about.

I am so excited, I finally get to be an interesting person with a successful enviable career!

hi

Running very low on motivation for dissertation writing at the moment. It's nearly done and then needs some editing but I can't make myself interested enough to get through this last stretch. My thoughts are all disorganised and my attention span for pretty much everything, let alone this, is really poor right now. 10 days is too long to wait for it to all be over ;_;

Going on the insane and vicious job market again this year. Last year I got a few response letters from what I would consider middle of the road jobs and they said they had 400-500 applicants. so I figure I gotta be in the top .002 percent! Almost hilariously miserable.

Yikes! What field is this?

& what counts as a "middle of the road" job?

English. All I mean by middle of the road is not Ivy League basically. So yeah "middle of the road" isn't accurate because those are still very, very good jobs in the scheme of things. I just remember thinking "THIS gets 500 applicants?" it's rough out there!

After 8+ years I turned in my dissertation to my committee a couple of days ago. I can't wait to defend and get this shit over with. Pretty sure I've aged about 5 biological years in the last 6 months.

Job market stories like ryan's are scary!

yeah...you're gonna want to change your way of thinking, if top publics count as middle of the road. you'll be lucky to get a regional or community college visiting job, in an out of the way place.

I was on a search committee last year at my previous university, in a less than desirable locale (though still an R1, if only barely), & we got 400+ apps.

my new department, in a much better uni / locale, is advertising this year for a pretty specialized junior position, & I expect at least 400 apps for that.

in humanities btw

oh im under no illusions. i doubt id be a candidate for a top public even in a vastly better job market.

just enjoy regaling people with that 500 number! especially funny considering how specific a lot of those job descriptions are.

I heard 800+ last year for pretty decent jobs

on the other hand, if you saw some of these apps