My relationship with grad school? Definitely platonic.
As most of you know, I've been studying like mad for the GRE this week. I'm making a discouragingly small amount of progress, and there's one GRE question in particular that keeps giving me terrible trouble:
Question: Which schools would you like your scores sent to?
Um, yeah. About that.
(1) Obviously, I'd like to go to the best place for my proposed field, mass communication, that I can get into.
That turns out to be surprisingly difficult to determine. Comm is the red-haired child of academia. Nobody can quite figure out its parentage, and, thus, no one knows where it should be sent to live. Northwestern, which is a fine school, earns my mistrust for putting their department in the School of Theatre. Ditto Cornell, which sticks theirs in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (their web page, in enumerating the core concerns of the field -- i.e., "how do people exchange information" -- adds "...including about agriculture" the way that some people add "between the sheets" when reading a postprandial fortune). Wisconsin has both a comm and a mass comm department, and I might end up not applying simply because I'm embarrassed to say I can't get a clear bead on which does the stuff I like.
So: I want to go to the best department that's strong in the particular kind of (non-theatrical, non-agricultural) comm that I want to do. Which is the old-fashioned, stodgy, empirical kind; Critical Theory and other qualitative-methods contenders gives me the vapors. I do the quantitative stuff. In J-School, they called me a total quant. (At least, I think that's what they were saying.)
Unfortunately, one of the top schools for this subfield appears to be Michigan State. Which brings me to:
(2) Quality of life is important.
Hey: when time in school = x% (anticipated lifespan - middle age), quality of life weighs more heavily than when time in school = x% (anticipated lifespan - early 20's).
Hence, I'm not going to spend three years in East Lansing. It's the same sort of post-Mumbai rule I'd invoke for, say, weighing an assignment to Mauritania.
It also cuts both ways: I'm not, for instance, applying to Stanford, because I can't afford that kind of quality of life. And the quality of life that I could afford there -- dorm living -- fails the Nouakchott test. (Also, their program, though excellent, is heavy on the "computer-mediated-communication" stuff, which, meh.) UCSB also stumbles on this fence (and will probably have to be euthanized). The one good thing I'll say about Midwestern schools: they certainly have affordable off-campus housing.
On the other hand...oh, heck, let's just say it: This world traveler is scared of the Midwest, ok? I'm an unreconstructed Margaritaville sort of person at heart; it's cold and snowy and landlocked and Calvinist out there, and I'm told they are wholly innocent of irony. Plus, do they have Jews? Dunno. Perhaps I'm being a little unfair, but something about the landscape makes me flash on some kind of race-memory of pogroms. (NB for any Midwestern readers: the previous sentence is approximately 120 percent facetious. Next week: hyperbole.)
Speaking of quality of life, and of costs:
(3) The program will ideally guarantee full funding, or at least strongly hint that this is the norm. This peels off the otherwise competitive USC.
Also,
(4) The school must have an excellent psych department, as my interests fall very close to the communications/psychology border.
Most Midwestern schools continue to score strongly on that last one, making me feel like I should just suck it up and invest in a good parka. And really, with the price tag difference between Madison and Stanford, I can keep the thermostat set at 85 for three years (no scolding please, Italophile; I'll get a corn-pellet stove, or something) and fill the house with goddamn orchids.
So. Processing all this: I'm afraid that UPenn stochastically dominates. I say it like that, because I completely loathe Philly, for crime-related reasons that would require another post. But, emotional factors aside, there's no escaping the fact that it's got everything, save better weather, that I claim I want. It also has the advantage of belonging to the known universe.
Michigan is second, I guess - not Lansing, but Ann Arbor. The reputation decrement for the comm department at U-M versus MSU seems worth it to gain guaranteed funding, the livability of Ann Arbor, and a top-notch psych program.
Madison's on the list if I can figure out which comm I'm applying to, despite some reservations about non-guaranteed TA-ships.
And then it gets fuzzy. Ohio's good, for both comm and psych, and cheap enough, but it's Ohio. Pretty much exactly the same case for Urbana-Champaign (except, of course, for the Ohio part). But comparing Ohio and Illinois? My powers of imagination fail me. Is there a difference? They both look the same from the airplane window.
So there you have it: a classic approach-avoidance conundrum. I want to go to Grad School, yes; it's just the grad schools part that I'm not crazy about.
Question: Which schools would you like your scores sent to?
Um, yeah. About that.
(1) Obviously, I'd like to go to the best place for my proposed field, mass communication, that I can get into.
That turns out to be surprisingly difficult to determine. Comm is the red-haired child of academia. Nobody can quite figure out its parentage, and, thus, no one knows where it should be sent to live. Northwestern, which is a fine school, earns my mistrust for putting their department in the School of Theatre. Ditto Cornell, which sticks theirs in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (their web page, in enumerating the core concerns of the field -- i.e., "how do people exchange information" -- adds "...including about agriculture" the way that some people add "between the sheets" when reading a postprandial fortune). Wisconsin has both a comm and a mass comm department, and I might end up not applying simply because I'm embarrassed to say I can't get a clear bead on which does the stuff I like.
So: I want to go to the best department that's strong in the particular kind of (non-theatrical, non-agricultural) comm that I want to do. Which is the old-fashioned, stodgy, empirical kind; Critical Theory and other qualitative-methods contenders gives me the vapors. I do the quantitative stuff. In J-School, they called me a total quant. (At least, I think that's what they were saying.)
Unfortunately, one of the top schools for this subfield appears to be Michigan State. Which brings me to:
(2) Quality of life is important.
Hey: when time in school = x% (anticipated lifespan - middle age), quality of life weighs more heavily than when time in school = x% (anticipated lifespan - early 20's).
Hence, I'm not going to spend three years in East Lansing. It's the same sort of post-Mumbai rule I'd invoke for, say, weighing an assignment to Mauritania.
It also cuts both ways: I'm not, for instance, applying to Stanford, because I can't afford that kind of quality of life. And the quality of life that I could afford there -- dorm living -- fails the Nouakchott test. (Also, their program, though excellent, is heavy on the "computer-mediated-communication" stuff, which, meh.) UCSB also stumbles on this fence (and will probably have to be euthanized). The one good thing I'll say about Midwestern schools: they certainly have affordable off-campus housing.
On the other hand...oh, heck, let's just say it: This world traveler is scared of the Midwest, ok? I'm an unreconstructed Margaritaville sort of person at heart; it's cold and snowy and landlocked and Calvinist out there, and I'm told they are wholly innocent of irony. Plus, do they have Jews? Dunno. Perhaps I'm being a little unfair, but something about the landscape makes me flash on some kind of race-memory of pogroms. (NB for any Midwestern readers: the previous sentence is approximately 120 percent facetious. Next week: hyperbole.)
Speaking of quality of life, and of costs:
(3) The program will ideally guarantee full funding, or at least strongly hint that this is the norm. This peels off the otherwise competitive USC.
Also,
(4) The school must have an excellent psych department, as my interests fall very close to the communications/psychology border.
Most Midwestern schools continue to score strongly on that last one, making me feel like I should just suck it up and invest in a good parka. And really, with the price tag difference between Madison and Stanford, I can keep the thermostat set at 85 for three years (no scolding please, Italophile; I'll get a corn-pellet stove, or something) and fill the house with goddamn orchids.
So. Processing all this: I'm afraid that UPenn stochastically dominates. I say it like that, because I completely loathe Philly, for crime-related reasons that would require another post. But, emotional factors aside, there's no escaping the fact that it's got everything, save better weather, that I claim I want. It also has the advantage of belonging to the known universe.
Michigan is second, I guess - not Lansing, but Ann Arbor. The reputation decrement for the comm department at U-M versus MSU seems worth it to gain guaranteed funding, the livability of Ann Arbor, and a top-notch psych program.
Madison's on the list if I can figure out which comm I'm applying to, despite some reservations about non-guaranteed TA-ships.
And then it gets fuzzy. Ohio's good, for both comm and psych, and cheap enough, but it's Ohio. Pretty much exactly the same case for Urbana-Champaign (except, of course, for the Ohio part). But comparing Ohio and Illinois? My powers of imagination fail me. Is there a difference? They both look the same from the airplane window.
So there you have it: a classic approach-avoidance conundrum. I want to go to Grad School, yes; it's just the grad schools part that I'm not crazy about.
8 Comments:
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esquiver said...
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David Schraub said...
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David Schraub said...
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Anonymous said...
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Post a Commentps The first person to ask "What about Hastings?" gets their IP blocked.
From the first paragraph, I was like, "Duh. Penn."
I hear Madison is bearable.
(J-school? By any chance, my J-school, the one with the World Room?)
I WAS NOT going to say Hastings. But I was going to suggest, maybe just for gigles, U. of Michigan or Boalt....I mean, everyone should know something about equal protection, the establishment clause, and the war powers act...
I remain:
Bill Abendroth
PS Please do not block my IP....
U. Minnesota? I'm a Jew currently residing in the state o' 10,000 lakes (though I originally hail from Maryland), and while there are no Jews in Northfield, the twin cities has a surprisingly large and vibrant Jewish community (in fact, that could describe Minneapolis/St. Paul in general: "surprisingly large and vibrant").
Plus, when you go to school in Minnesota, you get instead credibility as a weather BAMF. And it's even better in the Twin Cities, because the entire city is connected via a series of enclosed walkways, so you don't even have to step outside during those brisk -25 degree days.
Do be careful. U Penn is even closer to Pok than Arlington, VA.
Gotta weigh that factor as well.
Mom
And by "instead" I mean "instant." My GRE verbal scores, coincidentally, were sky high.
Don't underestimate Ohio (the university). Columbus is a nice place; my cool aunt and uncle lived there for almost 10 years after calling it quits in the New York metro area.
But it is probably best to call Columbus a great town, in the same way that, say, Ann Arbor is, fundamentally, a town. That is, the area around the university suggests cosmopolitanism, but it is a suggestion that probably doesn't extend beyond a one- or two-mile radius.
I say that because, although Columbus is Ohio's largest city, its size is likely a function of its being the state capital, which means a government workforce, which implies a town that rolls up the sidewalks at night. (But at least it has sidewalks!)
And think of the critical role you could play in the 2008 elections!
"Comm is the red-haired child of academia"--a fine thing to be in my opinion, but then it wouldn't occur to me to question the parentage. I'm amused that I never thought before about the phrase "red-haired child" or "redheaded step-child." I was always unclear why someone would want to beat such a delightful creature. You'd think that I would have wondered more about that, loving language as I do and, y'know, for other reasons. Thanks for clearing that up!
Good luck with the GRE today! -Shani
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