infinite stream of grad apps

[bubblingbeebles]

augh grad apps

Comments

[aleffert]

Talk about how you are oppressed as a ginger!

[bubblingbeebles]

Throughout my education, both in undergraduate and in more primary institutions, I feel that I have constantly struggled with the notion that many chefs of the western cuisine seem to hold that a ginger is not a useful ingredient in all but the most clichéd recipes. While more well-established spices, such as cinnamon and nutmeg, enjoy free admission in many diverse recipes, sweet and savory alike, it is difficult for a ginger to find use in any form factors more prestigious than the lowly breads or snaps. During my study abroad year in the Orient, I found more ready acceptance among the chefs there than I ever did in American or European kitchens. This experience reformed my perceptions of the usefulness of a ginger in recipes of all sorts, and since then I have been striving to establish more respectable reputations, not just for myself, but for all of my friends who are also a ginger. With the recent advent of "fusion" cuisine, I feel that a ginger has gained higher standing in the western culinary world, and I have high hopes for

[aleffert]

Your people are oppressed. e.g. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1270379/Anti-ginger-bullies-forced-daughter-school.html

[bubblingbeebles]

that is a much sadder story than my one :

[joyful_vydra]

I thought Berkeley's was two pages? I may have just assumed because that was the length for the others, though. Mine was ~one page, fwiw.

[bubblingbeebles]

i think i would have immense trouble making myself take it seriously. though, I think I could say something productive about TAing for new-to-the-US students. (right, I had forgotten that I have this as a solid story I could tell, that might put me a step above whatever average BS I imagine most other students would say.)

All it says, besides "pdf and 10MB or smaller", is:

Please describe how your personal background informs your decision to pursue a graduate degree. Please include information on how you have overcome barriers to access higher education, evidence of how you have come to understand the barriers faced by others, evidence of your academic service to advance equitable access to higher education for women, racial minorities, and individuals from other groups that have been historically underrepresented in higher education, evidence of your research focusing on underserved populations or related issues of inequality, or evidence of your leadership among such groups

[gregh1983]

Gack, what an awful prompt! If it were me, I feel like none of my middle-of-the-road suburban-Cleveland experiences are really representative of the grand struggle for equality they seem to have in mind for the first bit here. For the other part, it really seems like they're just asking for a bunch of false-sounding essays like "Guys of course I care about diversity all the time!!"

At the risk of sounding right-wing and insensitive, I'm not really on board with this pointed topic in an applications essay. Less formally, it might as well have said "Everyone should notice and care about minorities non-stop, and you do too, right? Hint hint."

[bubblingbeebles]

i mean, maybe it is just some way of discouraging people who can't answer it from applying at all?

[invlwhen]

Is MIT's application still a web form from 1995?

[bubblingbeebles]

Yeah. I enjoy it rather more than any of the other ones. (though, it would be nice if it said which sections were complete or not, like berkeley's does.)

also, stanford's is hilariously bad, in that it doesn't have a navigation menu, so to traverse the 15 pages of the application to get to anything that's at the end takes 14 page loads.