{"id":821,"date":"2004-04-23T11:33:00","date_gmt":"2004-04-23T16:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/?p=821"},"modified":"2004-04-23T11:33:00","modified_gmt":"2004-04-23T16:33:00","slug":"grad-school-status","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/?p=821","title":{"rendered":"Grad school status"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, I confirmed with UMN that they can expect me in their incoming class.  Today, I sent out a little form letter to all the other schools where I was accepted.  <\/p>\n<p><!--more form letter contents-->Dear &lt;insert name of grad student handler&gt;<\/p>\n<p>I would like to thank the &lt;School name&gt; for its offer of admission.  The &lt;school name&gt; is one of several fine institutions I had to choose among, and it has been a difficult choice.  I have decided to attend another school.  I wish you the best of luck with your incoming class.<\/p>\n<p>Sincerely,<\/p>\n<p>-Stephen C. Ulrich jr.<\/p>\n<p>Was that snarky?  I feel like I could have made a better transition between the first two sentences and the last two, but so it goes.  <\/p>\n<p>I suppose there is a certain analogy that could be drawn between a certain individual I&#8217;ve sorta slept with and the university of chicago.  I&#8217;ve applied to the university of chicago twice, been accepted twice, and turned them down twice.  The, uh, gentleman in question and I started getting it on on two different occasions, and at some point in the middle of things, I got fed up, stopped what I was doing, got dressed and left.  I did this twice.  You&#8217;d think I would have learned the first time.  (I have much warmer feelings towards the university of chicago than towards the guy, for the record).  <\/p>\n<p>In terms of the one where I most enjoyed the classes I sat in on: uchicago.  Liked the administration the most: uwisconsin.  Had the best experience with a faculty member on a personal level: uchicago.  Felt most comfortable: uchicago.  Had the best academic\/research related talk with a faculty member: uminnesota.  Felt like the best research opportunities were available: uminnesota.  Felt I&#8217;d enjoy living in the area most: uwisconsin.  Thought I&#8217;d have the coolest roommate option pre-lined-up: tough call between <lj user=zathyron> at umn and ellen, simon&#8217;s friend, at uchicago (for totally different reasons).  <\/p>\n<p>Ultimately, I chose umn because they have a program in regional economic development.  Uchicago doesn&#8217;t, really.  Uwisconsin has it in their (much less well thought of) urban and regional planning department.  Ironically, cmu apparently has a pretty spanky program.  I didn&#8217;t really know what I wanted to focus on when applying to grad schools.  I think I would have done things differently, had I really been looking at that sort of thing from the beginning of the process.  But, many lessons were learned.  And even if it&#8217;s too late for me to learn from them, perhaps I can offer some insight to others doing it later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, I confirmed with UMN that they can expect me in their incoming class. Today, I sent out a little form letter to all the other schools where I was accepted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}