brain fever

[tla]

I am in the grad school waiting game. And since I'm unemployed, I have nothing to distract me, or take my mind off dreams like the one where I got into Oxford, albeit with no money offered and into my fourth choice college. The dream mainly served to drive home how much I don't believe I'll be in grad school next year. I just can't seriously conceive of not being rejected.

And then what Buffy episode should I watch but the one that mentions Willow getting accepted to Oxford. Argh.

Comments

[dolohov.livejournal.com]

I don't know how history grad programs are, but with engineering grad programs, there's no reason to just wait. You can do things like email professors about their research and publications and mention that you have an application in. That's a lot of what got me into Dartmouth -- I made sure that the people I wanted to work with knew that I was interested in their research and their program, especially at a time when any of them could pick up my application and flip through it.

[tla]

OK, so this touches on a thing I'm really abominably bad at (and I think the subject has even come up before in this journal.) I could email these people, but what would I say? "Hi, I'm really interested in the research you're doing in ___, sincerely, Tara" sounds pretty worthless, and I really don't have anything worthwhile to fill it in. I don't have any intelligent comments to make. So what am I supposed to say to make myself stand out in a good way? Why should these people waste their time reading my email? What am I supposed to put in it?

[dolohov.livejournal.com]

Well, the thing is that you first need to know what their research or area of interest is, and then learn a little about it. If you're -not- interested, then stop there. If you are interested, though, you'll probably think of something you'd like to hear more about, and maybe you can ask whether they offer courses on that topic, or whatever they do at Oxford.