The Story So Far

So in case anybody is wondering, here is the annotated grad school list.

Berkeley--Accepted, still waiting on the financial aid package. Amazing school. Berkeley was the dream school before I came to NYU.

Brown--Accepted. Best financial package so far. 5 years funding plus 3 summers. Good program, not terribly exciting.

New York University--Won't know till next week at the earliest. Signs point to yes. This is where the decision gets difficult. I know the people, I know the program, and they've really put together a crack team of Americanists. But I'm ambivalent about staying in New York for five years. This year has been hard for a number of reasons, and I think I'm projecting alot of that onto the city. Living in Berkeley would also be just as expensive with the advantage of more temperate climate.

Stanford--No word. They started making phone calls yesterday. Sigh. At this point it would be greedy to whine about not getting in, especially since Berkeley is better for what I do.

University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana--No word, low on the list. The lure of Urbana is first and foremost living 2 hours away from my parents. That's me, the big baby.

UCLA--Accepted. Fully funded for 1 year, plus 3 year teaching stipend. Good school, not crazy about the idea of living in LA.

University of Maryland--No word, although doesn't matter on this point. Pretty low on the list.

Yale--No word, but they have started making phone calls, so it's probably a no. Yale was an application that I probably should have abandoned. They have a few really good professors but all of them are on the job market.

So that's where I am so far. It's a good place to be. Two weeks ago I'd get queasy every time someone would ask me if I'd started hearing from schools. It's also kicked my senioritis into overdrive, which is a very bad thing. Working on my thesis begins in earnest today.

Fama turned me on to a livejournal community which she has very aptly termed grad school crack. I am very glad I didn't know about this site two weeks ago because even without the stress of rejections it's very addictive.