my official statement, like i'm a politician or something:
after a long and excruciating nervous breakdown, i have decided to forego applying to graduate schools for fall 2007.
applying to graduate schools is a full-time job. you need to take the gre, PAY to have the scores sent to your schools, request transcripts and have them sent to your schools, three letters of recommendation and extremely specific instructions on how the profs should send them to the schools, a personal statement, a portfolio of at least 20 pages (which is a lot of fucking work), not to mention filling out the application and paying at least $50 just for them to guarantee that they'll look it over for 20 seconds when it gets there.
someone who is seriously looking at going to graduate school should be applying to 6-8 'serious' schools and 1-2 'fallback' schools. applying to 8 schools would cost, at the very least, $400, not to mention the gre exam cost of $130.
asking for letters of recommendation and getting the directions for them sorted out, requesting transcripts, and filling out the application itself all take a fraction of the time getting a portfolio together would take. doing all this, plus classes and planning graduation festivities, a possible employment other than chee peng for next semester, and running around having doctor's appointments all over the place before my insurance runs out...there is no way i could do it all within 4 weeks time and still be happy.
in a few years.
applying to graduate schools is a full-time job. you need to take the gre, PAY to have the scores sent to your schools, request transcripts and have them sent to your schools, three letters of recommendation and extremely specific instructions on how the profs should send them to the schools, a personal statement, a portfolio of at least 20 pages (which is a lot of fucking work), not to mention filling out the application and paying at least $50 just for them to guarantee that they'll look it over for 20 seconds when it gets there.
someone who is seriously looking at going to graduate school should be applying to 6-8 'serious' schools and 1-2 'fallback' schools. applying to 8 schools would cost, at the very least, $400, not to mention the gre exam cost of $130.
asking for letters of recommendation and getting the directions for them sorted out, requesting transcripts, and filling out the application itself all take a fraction of the time getting a portfolio together would take. doing all this, plus classes and planning graduation festivities, a possible employment other than chee peng for next semester, and running around having doctor's appointments all over the place before my insurance runs out...there is no way i could do it all within 4 weeks time and still be happy.
in a few years.