Contingency Plans

I am very sorry that this has taken so long to update. I got seriously sidetracked and I never got around to updating this. I do have a post about Claremont in the works but this post is more important and it is important that I update you all on this before I tell you about my impressions of Claremont.

So plan A has been what you have been reading about up until now. Just a refresher, Plan A is take GRE, apply to schools, get into schools, go to school. Unfortunately Plan A did not work out. You will hear more about it later but the short version of the story is that Claremont is really expensive and I can't afford to go right now. The good news is that I can defer my acceptance until the fall of 2013, which is good and it plays into Plans B, and C.

So, Plan B is what comes next. Plan B consists of taking more math, which I currently am doing (differential equations at UW(again you will hear more about this)), retaking the GRE for a third time (oh joy), reapplying to some graduate schools, maybe not as reaching so high this time, and getting accepted with more funding than what I received at Claremont.

That may still not work out so I have also come up with a Plan C just in case. Plan C is for if I do not get accepted with better funding somewhere else. Plan C is to attend Claremont for a year and then transfer somewhere else in order to receive better funding, or stay at Claremont if they are able to make it more affordable.

So that is where I am at. I will give you more updates and start doing this more regularly again. Once again I apologize for the hiatus. It's good being back

Running in place,

Kit

To Do List:

1. Pass Diff EQs
2. Study for GRE
3. Do better on GRE 

Your Reward:

Missed Connections

Disclaimer: While most of you know that I have been accepted, this is not going to be that blog post. That would be going out of order. So for those of you who want to read about that, you will have to wait until the next blog post. Sorry, but if you want to read that one, you're going to have to wait and you can leave now. Without any further ado: "Missed Connections."

Amid all of the madness that I wrote about last week, I received another email which only added to the madness. I was staying up late and watching television, usually that means "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report." While I was watching I got an email from the University of Washington. My heart started thumping, again, and then I opened it and it only started going faster.
The email was asking if I was still interested in the University of Washington or if I had other offers that dominated the potential offer from them when they make the decision. The only problem was that the email was addressed to somebody named Ibrahim...

I was still optimistic though. I thought that maybe I was in the right list and that they sent me Ibrahim's email and he got mine. So, I wrote back saying that I was still interested and I signed my name.

A couple of days later I got a response notifying me that there was an email mix up, but I was invited to meet the graduate program director (the author of these emails). I figured that I should take advantage of this and schedule a meeting with him. I sent a reply saying as much and got one back the same day asking if the following day at 3 pm was okay. I then told him that it was. This meant that I would have top find someone to cove both of my practices that day. Fortunately, I was able to.

The next day drove to Seattle to the UW campus. I found the building and his office no problem, and I was there with plenty of time for our 3 pm meeting. I went into the main office so that I could have them take me to his office though so that I could be officially announced instead of bargain in on the professor.

I shook his hand and sat down, and then the meeting started.Things started off well. He asked me why I wanted to pursue a PhD. And then things went downhill...

After that he told me that UW this year will probably only admit a class of 11-15 people and that I was behind on my math, and if I were admitted I would have a really hard time catching up with the rest of the students who had more math. I tried telling him that if I were given the chance that I wouldn't disappoint at which point I was told that everybody else was just as hardworking as me but that to get into a program like UW I would have needed to take more math while I was in school. At this point I was able to read the writing on the wall... I wasn't going to get in. I was then told to explore other other options besides a PhD in economics; that maybe I could find what I wanted in a policy school or health services, so I could use some economic tools and thinking but not need all of the math that I am apparently lacking.

I asked what I would need to do to get accepted into a PhD program and he said more math and when I asked what type of math he said just more math. We then discussed other avenues which would help me get accepted into a PhD. He mentioned again more math. Or maybe finding a good MA program like at the one at the University of Denver. But he warned me that I needed to be careful about master's programs because they may not be serious. Another option was to attend a not so good PhD program and then do really well there and look to transfer to a school where I would want to get my degree.

This meeting was not at all what I had wanted. The professor was very nice though, in fact, this was the nicest rejection I had ever received for anything. He also offered some advice and he said that I could email him if I needed more advice or help with anything in the future for my educational journey.

I was really disappointed. I had not gotten any good news yet and while it hasn't been made official yet this was another school that I didn't get into. At  my record for getting into schools is only getting worse. I'm 0-7. I was thinking that I wasn't going to get in anywhere.

Stay tuned for another blog which includes the good news.

Kit

To Do List:

1. Figure stuff out
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