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Archive for April, 2006
Well, it’s official. our car will not be joining us in Ann Arbor 
Thursday night after watching Survivor with the Faulkners and Wilkes, Dave and I were driving home in the biggest storm ever!! Just running from the house to the car we were both soaked. Anyway, as we were driving down the “highway” our headlights went out leaving us to drive using our four-way flashers as well as driving from lightning flash to lightning flash as our guide. On Saturday, Dave took the car to Firestone and later in the day, they called with the horrible news. ‘It will cost $400 to fix the headlights.’ We bought the car for $1, so, obviously, it’s not worth the money to fix the lights.
Dave said he wanted to tow the car with us to Michigan, but I didn’t really want to. So, this turn of events is good because now we can’t bring it with us. Now we’ll just drop it off at a scrapyard on our way out of town. (The car couldn’t even pass inspection now, so it’s not worth passing on to someone else.) The good news is that we can still drive it during the day.
Now that we know where we’re going, we’ve started to put things in motion to prepare for the transition. We’ve started to talk to people about housing, health insurance, immigration documents, etc. We’ve already booked our moving truck for the middle of May. We can’t believe our time here is coming to an end so quickly! Although we’re excited about the new adventures ahead, we can’t help be feel sad about our adventures in College Station coming to an end
I have only one more paper to write this term and it’s practically finished. The rest of my time is spent thinking about the move. Our plan (as of now) is this: we’ll pack up our apartment here and drive our stuff to Ann Arbor. Once there, we’ll put it in storage, look around town for a few days, at least get an idea of the different neighbourhoods for apartment hunting purposes, and then head home to St. Catharines for the summer. Since Ann Arbor is only a 5-6 hour drive away from St. Catharines, there’s no pressue to find housing in May; we could easily head back for another weekend in June sometime.
Once in St. Catharines, the plan is to relax and recharge. These two years have been intense and the next 5-6 will be even more so, so the summer will be a perfect time to decompress, spend some time with family, and get geared up for September.
Some of you may know that I had a paper accepted at a conference in Uganda and that we were trying to plan a trip to Africa for some part of the summer. I recently turned down the invitation (very torn about this!); we just couldn’t see how we would be able to make everything work time- and money-wise. The trip would have added far too much stress to our already busy summer. So, for the sake of our sanity, we’ve decided to postpone our Africa trip until a later time (but hopefully not too far off!). We will, however, try to plan a trip to the UK to see Barb’s brother Dave and his wife Pauline (living in London at the moment) for a few days in June or July. (We couldn’t have a whole summer free and not do some travelling!) But nothing firm yet.
By the way, thanks to the many of you who have been following this grad school saga the last few weeks. The number of visits to this site during last week nearly doubled our previous weekly high! So thanks for your support.
… MICHIGAN!! Just got the call an hour ago and we accepted! So, we’ll pack up our apartment here and drive north sometime from mid- to late-May! Anyway, I need to tie up a few loose ends with Arizona and UNC, so can’t write much now. Just thought we’d let you all the news. More to follow.
… MICHIGAN!! Just got the call an hour ago and we accepted! So, we’ll pack up our apartment here and drive north sometime from mid- to late-May! Anyway, I need to tie up a few loose ends with Arizona and UNC, so can’t write much now. Just thought we’d let you all the news. More to follow.
I’ve called Richard Healey (Arizona Grad Admissions) and notified him that I am waiting on offers from Michigan and UNC. Saturday (the 15th) is the deadline for decisions and Richard has agreed to give me until 11.59 pm on the 15th to accept Arizona’s offer.
The latest updates from Michigan and UNC are ’stay with us until the end’. Both think it is likely they’ll be able to extend me an offer, but can’t say when. So, don’t try phoning us Friday or Saturday–our line will be tied up trying to figure out what’s going on. We’ll let you know as soon as we know.
Wish us luck!
Now that I’ve made all my visits and we’ve gathered all the information we can, Barb and I have made our deliberations and come up with a school ranking to handle all the ‘what if’ scenarios. A recap of our situation: I’ve declined all my offers except Arizona’s. I’m still on the waitlists at Michigan and UNC. If nothing changes in the next week, we’ll be moving to Tucson. But what if offers come through at Michigan and/or UNC? Here’s the all-things-considered ranking:
Michigan
UNC
Arizona
How did we arrive at this ranking? Well, first we figured out the list of considerations we thought needed to be taken into account:
Faculty fit: how well the faculty members’ research meshed with my own interests.
Departmental Culture: How well people get along and work together.
Placement Record: How well graduates have done on the job market in the past.
Funding
Cost of Living
Proximity to home
City Culture: will we enjoy living in the city?
Weather: we’ve grown to like warm weather in the winter…
After doing this, I compared the schools with each other in three head to head comparisons. Both Michigan and UNC came out on top of Arizona. However, Michigan and UNC were too close to call with respect to each other.
To break the tie, we each (independently) selected the 3 factors that should be given the most weight. Barb picked Proximity to home, Faculty fit, and Placement Record; I picked Faculty fit, Departmental Culture, and Placement Record. Once this extra weight was factored in, Michigan came out on top.
So, if an offer comes through at Michigan, we’ll accept it over both Arizona and UNC. (I’ve told Eric L. as much.) If there’s no offer from Michigan but one from UNC, we’ll take UNC over Arizona. (I’ve also told this to Keith S.) If neither Michigan nor UNC are forthcoming with an offer, we’ll commit to Arizona.
One note: we don’t view Arizona as a consolation prize. We would be exceedingly happy about going to Arizona. The ranking, then, reflects our extremely high opinion of Michigan and UNC, rather than any weakness on Arizona’s part.
I’ve got a few minutes now, so here’s a quick snapshot of the rest of my tour.
The conference in New York was alright. I met some other good grad students and spent some time hanging out in Manhattan (which is always fun), but I didn’t really get the kind of feedback I hoped to get on my paper. My commentator prepared some good notes, but nobody else asked a single question. So the weekend turned out to be no good academically and, although hanging out in NYC is always fun, I didn’t really have the time for a side trip to do some partying. So, in retrospect, I probably should have skipped the conference.
My Chapel Hill visit was fantastic. Again, another excellent dept with top faculty working in my field. The grad student community seemed solid as well. The town was alright–not really much to do. Maybe this is a good thing (for me)–fewer distractions. Kieth Simmons–UNC’s grad admissions director–was a little less determinate about my chances of an offer than Eric L. at Michigan. But this could explained as Keith being cautious in his predictions and Eric being ambitious in his. In any case, both said not to accept an offer without talking to them first. I’ll be sure to do so.
…but maybe not for a few days. I know I still need to write about my trip to NYC and my visit at UNC. However, because the rest of the world doesn’t stop while I’m traveling, I have some fast-approaching deadlines and not much work prepared to meet those deadlines. So, I’ll see what kind of time is available over the next few days and write more when I get a chance. As a preview: both trips went well. Stay tuned for more!
[I tried posting this 5 days ago but had troubles. So, here it is. Sorry for the delay.]
So, the visit to Michigan went really well. The students and faculty were all really welcoming, the facilities were pretty good, Ann Arbor is a cool little town, etc. My itinerary was jammed quite full with meetings on Thursday. It was actually a little odd how everyone’s meetings with faculty were scheduled. It was a bit like speed-dating–you walked into their office, chatted with them for half an hour, and then, no matter where you were in the conversation, they were shuttling you off to the next faculty member. I understand why things were like this: they had 25 prospectives wanting to meet with multiple faculty members and they needed a way to make sure that everyone got to meet who they wanted to meet. But it did feel odd. I cracked the speed-dating joke to one of the faculty members as I was leaving our meeting and she thought it was true.
I had one main worry about Michigan coming into the weekend: would I be able to find faculty to advise me in the kind of research I want to do. At Arizona, this would be no problem; the political philosophy faculty there are all doing work that significantly overlaps with my interests. At Michigan, although there are certainly faculty who do political philosophy, it wasn’t clear to me just from looking on the web that those people’s research overlap with my own. But this fear was alleviated during my visit. There are certainly people I could work with who would be fantastic advisors. So, now our decision just got more difficult–if I get an offer, that is.
And this looks like a good possibility. I had a really good, candid chat with the director of grad admissions, Eric Lormand, during the weekend and he feels pretty confident that they will dip in to their waitlist sometime this week. If, in fact, this happens, I’m quite certain that I will get one of the first spots. I was able to meet with three members of the admissions committee and I think I made a good impression with all of the them, so I think my name will be placed near or at the top of the waitlist. We’ll see. Eric told me that he thought he would be sending out more offers in the next few days.
What will happen if I do get an offer? We’ll find out soon enough.
By the way, I turned down UIC last night. So, if no offers come through from Michigan or UNC, then I will certainly be going to Arizona (as it’s the only offer I still have).
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