It's Official

I’m beginning a Ph.D. program in Ecology & Evolution at the University of Illinois at Chicago! I know that many of you have already celebrated our future move to Chicago, but you can celebrate again because it’s official now.

It sounds like I’ll have a student office (desk) at UIC and at the Field Museum. I’m super excited about working in the Field Museum again. It is such a cool place! I’d love to give all of you behind-the-scenes tours.

I didn’t received the NSF fellowship I applied for, although the comments I received from reviewers were ‘very good.’ I’m proud of myself since I only really decided to do it about 3 weeks before it was due and they recommend you spend several months on it. I also had extremely limited access to scientific literature since I applied from Tokoroa. I think I’ll be in a great position to apply again next year. Without the fellowship, I’ll be a TA and get a stipend for that. The UIC grad students I’ve queried said that it’s enough to get by “not even starving” but you can’t save much. At least I’m used to living frugally.

Somewhat unexpectedly, it turns out I wasn’t accepted anywhere except UIC. The Berkeley lab didn’t have enough space or funding, the UT lab isn’t taking any new students this year, the U of M lab could only take one and she had a 4.0 GPA and the fellowship I didn’t get, UConn is only taking 6 new students as TAs (i.e. without independent funding), and UMass is only admitted a few and I didn’t make it on the ‘must admit’ list. I was told I would’ve gotten into U of M no problem last year but this year they had tons of great applicants. So, grad school is kind of a crap shoot. I wish that someone had really emphasized to me that I might not be accepted to grad school the first year I apply even with a great record. It came pretty close to that!

I’m really excited to be going to UIC. I definitely had the most correspondence with people from UIC compared to the other schools and that was probably a factor in my admission there. It probably helped that Hank, my future co-advisor, also went to Earlham. Strangely enough, I met Bruce, my other co-advisor, in 2002 when he lectured about lions to my group in Kenya. I hadn’t the faintest idea at the time that he might co-advise my graduate education.

We plan to move to Chicago in August.

Carrie

No Berkeley

As I suspected, I am not accepted to UC Berkelely. It was kind of a long shot anyways and at least I didn't have to pay an application fee because I qualified for a fee waiver (although Berkeley was the only place where I was eligible).

I'm still waiting to hear from UConn, UMass, UT Austin, and U of Michigan, so don't get too excited about me going to Chicago yet.

We've been traveling the remote East Coast (past the Whale Rider setting) and are in Gisborne. Hopefully in a few days we'll be able to post more for less than $8 an hour.

Carrie

I WILL go to grad school!

I JUST received an email from the Ecology & Evolution Department at the University of Illinois- Chicago saying that I have been accepted to their program with financial support! WOO HOO! Sorry Seth, I don't think we'll be living in North Carolina next year.

So far this is my only good news about grad school. It looks like I won't be admitted to UMass unless hell freezes over and I don't know about U of M, UC Berkeley, UConn, or UT Austin.

Sorry about the lack of posts recently. We haven't had a reliable high speed connection for about 2 weeks. A LOT has happened in the past week (other than me being accepted to UIC) so we'll try to catch up on everything soon. Stay tuned!

Carrie

I hope I get accepted to grad school

I've now submitted applications to six schools and the National Science Foundation. I met my goal of finishing before Christmas.

-U of Michigan Ann Arbor
-U of Massachusetts Amherst
-U of Texas Austin
-U of California Berkeley
-U of Illinois Chicago
-U of Connecticut Storrs

I like to think of them as AAAABCC. Or AAAABCS if you want to stick with the pattern.

Carrie

Applying to Graduate School

I’ve submitted my first three applications to graduate school at:

University of Michigan (Ann Arbor)- Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
University of Massachusetts (Amherst)- Organismal & Evolutionary Biology
University of California (Berkeley)- Environmental Science, Policy, & Management

It feels good to have those out of the way. I had to spend over an hour on the phone with my mom in the U.S. to complete the U of M (Michigan) application online. I was having trouble getting it to work here in New Zealand and the U of M tech people told me that their system is not compatible with dial up so their solution was that I should go find a faster internet connection! Well, I would if I could without paying heaps more money. Do they really think I’d choose dial up if there were a faster option? So my mom filled in questions on their forms and uploaded the appropriate documents for me over their fast connection in Dayton (by the way, that’s my parents winning our unofficial blog viewing contest :-). U of M had other annoying features on their online application site, so if I had to grade them, they would get a D-. They should’ve asked my opinion on their site before putting it online. I’d give them an earful.

The UMass online application was much simpler. I only had trouble when it came to paying the application fee, so they get an A-. UC Berkeley’s site was actually fast to load over dial-up but it had a few quirks, so they also get an A-.

Carrie

P.S. Still no more bats.

NSF GRF: My self-imposed homework

For the past four days I’ve done little more than sleep, eat, and do homework. Yep, self-imposed homework. I’ve spent hours in front of the computer reading pdfs about fruit bats, figs, sampling techniques, germination trials, community structure, seed dispersal, statistical analyses, and African forest dynamics. I’ve labored over words to describe my motivation for pursuing graduate study and incredibly short page limits for describing my plan of research. I haven’t even been out tracking Bernie since Friday night. I passed up sparkler bombs and other flammable festivities on Guy Fawkes Day (remember remember the 5th of November). All that missed fun because I decided to apply for a Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation (NSF). These NSF fellowships are extremely competitive. They award about 1000 fellowships (across all scientific disciplines) annually to graduate students beginning their study. The fellowship provides a stipend of $30,000 for three years plus a $1000 travel award to be used for international research. This is a big deal for a graduate student because it means that you have more flexibility to pursue your own research.

I suppose at this point I should mention (in case I haven’t already) that I’m planning to begin graduate school in August 2007 for a Ph.D. in ecology. Don’t ask me where yet; I’m still applying.

A few weeks ago I realized that the NSF fellowship, financially at least, is an even bigger deal than the Watson Fellowship. Still, I’m not nearly as emotionally invested in this as I was in the Watson. I spent months developing my Watson proposal and I only had one shot. The advantage of this is that I can apply again next year. So if nothing else, this application process has been a valuable learning experience and I’ll be better prepared for next year’s application.

Many thanks to my mom, Matt, and Nicki for your diligent editing and helpful suggestions. Thank you also to Sarah, Coco, and Seth for emailing me pdfs of the articles I needed! And, if you’re reading the blog, thank you in advance to T’ai, Bill, and Cameron for writing my letters of recommendation.

So, now that that’s off my plate I can be fully stressed out about the election results…

Carrie