March Madness

Ahh March. Winter comes to an end, things start to look more springy, it stays lighter longer, and the NCAA Men's Basketball tournament is on TV. Oh yeah... and I start to get notifications from graduate schools.

At the beginning of March I started to receive emails letting me know that a decision has been made about my application, kinda like the last one that I told you guys about. An email to tell me to click the link and log in and read the letter they had posted there.
First came Penn. I didn't get into Pennsylvania but that was pretty much expected. I figured that since I didn't get into UCSB, that getting into sn Ivy League school was out of the question. It hurt but note as much as the first rejection did.

A week later things really started coming in fast. I received UCLA and Oregon on the same day.
UCLA didn't accept me either. Again I wasn't too shocked but I wanted to get in and prove some doubters wrong. They also notified me twice. Once in a regular email from the economics graduate studies director and another like the others.

I had been feeling optimistic about Oregon since it was the second lowest rank according to U.S. News and World Report. But I didn't get in there either. At this point I had 5 schools to go, but I was starting to feel discouraged and running worst case scenarios through my head.

A couple days later I heard back from Georgetown. Another rejection. And then a day after I heard from Northwestern; again a no go.

With there left, UW, Claremont, and UNC, I am starting to feel less confident about my chances. I was before, but now I am really tring to figure out what I am to do if I don't get in anywhere. I don't know the answer to that yet...

Hopefully something comes about with these last three schools and I get to write about something else. Until then I have some new schools to root against in the big dance.

Stressfully,
Kit

To Do List:

1. Get Accepted
2. Blog

Your Reward:

 

Applying Myself

This one has been a long time coming. Sorry that it has been so long but I got busy with everything like applications, holidays, family, etc.

     So, like the title of this post implies, I have been applying to the schools that are on my list.  The reason you haven't heard from me in so long is because the applications started needing to be turned in a little after my birthday on the first of December. I applied to two schools that day: UCLA and UCSB. I feel pretty good about UCSB and not so good about UCLA.

     I had a crap my pants moment as I was filling out the applications though. I realized that both schools wanted official transcripts sent to them and received at least by the due date if the application. This was a week less than a week before they were due, so I panicked. I got it all sorted out though. I had to drive up to PLU and visit student services and request transcripts, which isn't free. But Since it was so close to the due dates for those two I had to FedEx the transcripts which was $19.00 per school. They got there though, which is all that matters.

     Then I had UNC due on the 13th of December. Which I thought was strange because it is the only school that I had looked at that had an application due on that day. This application didn't go smoothly either because one of my recommendation writers had problems with the link to submit her recommendation, which I found out the day the application was due. I told her I would resend the link and that she should let me know if it worked or not. She didn't. I was in Seattle at this time and started freaking out. I had emailed a couple people in the morning. Then when I hadn't heard anything back I tried calling on the phone. The next day I finally hear back from someone and find out how to fix this problem. I let my professor know what to do and I hear back within 30 minutes that the link ended up working...

     Two days later I had three more applications due. I had Penn, Northwestern and UW all due on the 15th. Fortunately those went off without a hitch.

     Then my sister (all the way from Japan) and Christmas came, so I took a break from applying for a while (and from writing... sorry). But then after Christmas I had to get back to work. I had to apply to Georgetown which was due on the first of January. For that application I had to cut my personal statement down to 500 words when it was originally a 617.

     I decided not to apply to Harvard Business school since I wasn't feeling too confident about it and the due date was coming up shortly after I got the email from them. It was also going to be a lot of money to apply to another school and so to save money I didn't apply. I didn't feel like paying all of that money to be rejected by them.

     After getting all of those sent off I still have two applications left; Claremont and Oregon due on the 1st of February and on the 15th of February respectively. All in all, I am out a lot of money after all of this and my bank account is running really low. Since I am not as busy working applications I am looking for work during the day to supplement my soccer coaching. That's all for now. I will try to write again soon to let you know what is going on with the whole grad school process.

Officially a bachelor,
Kit

To Do List:

1.  Apply to Claremont
2. Apply to Oregon
3. Find a job

Your reward:

 Courtesy of Economists Do it with Models . I know this is late but since most of the content in this posts revolves around the holidays I think this fits. Plus, it's funny.

Good School Hunting

     I know I have been talking a long time now about how I need to do all of this research to find which schools I would like to attend and to which schools I would like to apply. This whole time that researching schools has been on my to do list I have been looking but with no real direction. Now I finally have something to report back on.
 
     Looking for a grad school is different than looking for an undergrad institution. With undergrad schools you have a good idea of what schools are good and where you want to go. But having a good undergrad program does not guarantee that that school is a good graduate school, let alone a good econ graduate program.  Then to make matters even more difficult, a good econ program may not have the concentration you want, or if they do may not be very good at that concentration. So this is why my search has been slow, drawn out, and not very obvious to all of you who read this regularly (all 4 of you).

   On my own I was able to find some schools that I am interested in and schools which have good labor economics programs (If I haven't mentioned it before, that's the area of concentration I intend of studying in grad school) and sometimes I was able to find some schools which were both. I accomplished this mainly by googling "econ grad school rankings." Through this I found that Northwestern, UC Santa Barbara, Georgetown, and Washington are all good schools. They even have good labor programs but that was more by coincidence when I first found these schools. But these schools might turn out to be too good.

     The next problem I had was that I didn't know (still don't really know) what schools I can get into. Grad schools don't have a set minimum requirement that you have to meet in order to be accepted to the program (well they do but they don't like to tell you what it is. instead they prefer to say here are our averages but it all depends on the person). When I was applying for undergraduate schools I had a better idea of what grades I needed in school and what scores I needed on the SAT and what types of extracurriculars I need in order to be accepted. There aren't really as many guidelines out there for getting into grad schools.

     Guidance is something that I have desperately been needing, so I made a trip back up to PLU during to talk to my capstone adviser. I asked him about what would be some schools that would be good for me. Specifically, what schools can I get into and find funding? We talked and said that the schools I was looking at were good and then he gave me a list of 8 schools to look at and which would be good for labor. He told me to look into Cornell, which apparently has a guy who anytime  media people want to know something about the labor market they talk to him. UNC and Duke are also good schools but I have reservations about them because I don't know if I could go there due to my basketball prejudices. I was also told to look into Penn, Mississippi State, Oregon, USC, and SUNY Stony Brook. I then went home to research them further.

     I can see myself at all of these schools. I have even come around to the idea of attending UNC despite how I feel about their athletics, and I might even set aside my prejudices and give Duke a serious look. What do you guys think? Let me know in the comments.

To Do List

1. Write personal statement
2. Write my CV
3. Apply to schools

Your Reward:
   A correlation VS causation comic