Category Archives: grad school

Almost Time

So there is this website (which I briefly mentioned before), GradCafe. There is a section on it where students post which grad schools accept or reject them. It is anonymous, minimizing any need to lie. My friend and I are obsessed with it, and while I can’t speak for her, I refresh the page every five minutes. Aside from seeing U. of Wisconsin reject every single person who applied, it gives us a sense of which schools are posting their decisions, and getting a general idea of what kinds of students each are accepting (the students posting have the option of releasing their stats like GPA, GRE scores, and such… again, totally anonymous). We have decided it is like American Idol for academics.

You can narrow it down by campus or field. So far the schools I have applied to have only released their decisions in the maths and sciences. The humanities are just now starting to pop up, and English hasn’t come up, until today. One of the schools I applied to sent a rejection to someone. That means they are posting their decisions. I log into my account with them, and my application went from “submitted” to “check your mail.” They do not release their decision via email or phone, but in an actual letter. A bit later I realized I had not checked my mail today. Nevermind that I had just stepped out of the shower… Nope… sopping wet, barefoot and in only a towel I run to my mailbox. As I am rifling through the box I am praying I didn’t just lock myself out.

Mind you, this is a very small box, meaning nothing gets lost in it. I had some junk mail, but that could have been from a previous day… so either my mail man hasn’t come yet, or I didn’t get any actual mail today. Both of these things are possible. I will check again later, but this time I will have some decency and at least put on some sock.

On an unrelated note, I am very excited about this thing I have been working on. Should I finish it up tonight, I will post it.

Ok… back to writing and page refreshing.

Well Then

It is official. The worst part about doctoral applications is the transcripts submission process. I just got another email this morning from a different school that cannot locate my transcripts. And this time it is worse. The first school that did this was terribly cryptic about the whole thing more or less telling me “there is something wrong with your application, but we can’t tell you what. Contact us immediately.” And then after a bit of back and forth it was resolved. The school this morning told me “there is something wrong with your application. We can’t find your undergraduate transcripts.Do not contact us. Resolve the issue immediately.” Well then.

And they have this attachment they need included with the transcript, meaning I have to reprint it, fill it out, personally take it to my undergraduate school, and have them resend it.

However, because I am terrible at following directions, I did contact their English department directly in regards to this. And got a prompt response back basically stating “what did we say about contacting us?”

Well then. I guess I know what I will be doing on Friday.

Update: They found my transcripts. Can you guess where they were? Under my maiden name. Which defeats the whole purpose of having a cover sheet attached to them stating my account number, current information, and/or any name changes.

 

Seriously?

Ok, so this isn’t really a post, I am just frustrated.

One of the grad schools I am applying to happens to be my undergrad school as well. They are also the ones I really want to go to, so of course I spent extra time on that application, and submitted it first as well (almost a month before application deadlines). A couple of days after the deadline I receive an email from them stating that my application cannot be processed, but they did not mention why. They simply said to contact them as soon as possible, which of course I did.

A week later they reply stating that it was all a misunderstanding. Since my records are split between my maiden and married names they did not realize that it was the same person and didn’t know what to do. Because I am apparently the only person to have gotten married at some point during my academic career.

I was relieved that that was resolved, and today I received another email because they have not gotten my transcripts from my graduate institution (which I had mailed out almost two months ago), or my undergraduate institution (which is them!!). Not to mention about one and a half months ago they actually had me physically come there in order to order transcripts from them, to them, because they apparently can’t access their own transcripts.

So I have now politely replied asking if it would be possible for me to just hand deliver sealed copies of both transcripts, preferably directly to the English department.

I really hope this is not the reason I end up not being accepted to my top choice….

Update: They emailed me back today. The maiden name/married name business is terribly confusing, so they didn’t realize they actually *did* have my grad school transcripts (which are under my current name, by the way). And then it also dawned on them that they can in fact access their own transcripts from before. So now my application is complete and ready to go.

I do have to say that I hope their Admissions department is not indicative of the entire institution’s state of deduction skills.