(no subject)
Good evening, everyone. I'm also dealing with the take-a-year-off-or-not (and the I'm-so-overwhelmed-please-shoot-me-now, and the what-if-I-get-in-nowhere? and everything else that nearly all future grad students deal with).
But that's not my question tonight. How do you tell an interested professor/past supervisor/potential mentor that you're not really interested in applying to his school?
For some background, this summer I worked with two professors at a public health school (not in the top 10, but pretty well-renowned) for a summer internship that was really interesting to me. I expressed some interest in possibly working with one or both of them for graduate school, but their school doesn't have a direct entry into a Ph.D program -- you need a master's first. One of them told me he was going to try to convince the dean to let me in straight through and to e-mail him my GRE scores when I received them.
Well, I took the GRE yesterday and sent him my scores by e-mail. He e-mailed me back excitedly (I did pretty well on the GRE) and said that he would start pushing for what he said he would, but asked me if I was still interested in applying. I feel kind of bad saying no, but honestly I can't see myself living in the city in which this university is located for 5+ years -- I'd be relatively miserable. Also, there aren't too many people in the department who are doing interesting work, besides him and my other supervisor, who already knows I'm not applying to his school and doesn't care. He says he just wants me to be happy wherever I go.
Also -- did anyone's official score report differ from the unofficial scores they got on Test Day? I'm kind of afraid ETS made a mistake :/ even though my scores do coincide with my practice test scores and the fact that I did a lot of practice after that initial diagnostic.
But that's not my question tonight. How do you tell an interested professor/past supervisor/potential mentor that you're not really interested in applying to his school?
For some background, this summer I worked with two professors at a public health school (not in the top 10, but pretty well-renowned) for a summer internship that was really interesting to me. I expressed some interest in possibly working with one or both of them for graduate school, but their school doesn't have a direct entry into a Ph.D program -- you need a master's first. One of them told me he was going to try to convince the dean to let me in straight through and to e-mail him my GRE scores when I received them.
Well, I took the GRE yesterday and sent him my scores by e-mail. He e-mailed me back excitedly (I did pretty well on the GRE) and said that he would start pushing for what he said he would, but asked me if I was still interested in applying. I feel kind of bad saying no, but honestly I can't see myself living in the city in which this university is located for 5+ years -- I'd be relatively miserable. Also, there aren't too many people in the department who are doing interesting work, besides him and my other supervisor, who already knows I'm not applying to his school and doesn't care. He says he just wants me to be happy wherever I go.
Also -- did anyone's official score report differ from the unofficial scores they got on Test Day? I'm kind of afraid ETS made a mistake :/ even though my scores do coincide with my practice test scores and the fact that I did a lot of practice after that initial diagnostic.