Now it's time to wait...

I sent off the last of my grad school app stuff today! I had two letters of recommendation I needed to send off to American University (in Washington DC) today. With that sent off...I have nothing left to do except wait for my letters of acceptance/rejection! I should know about UCSB and U of Washington at the beginning of March. American and Rhode Island might be mid-end of March since their apps were both due by the 30th of Jan and the others were due by the 10th and 15th of Jan.

I've been looking at scholarships while I wait. I can't actually apply to anything till I know what school I am going to because, if I win, I have to let them know which school to send the check to. I'm going to apply to the Borders Scholarship one for employees. That's one of the reasons why I've stayed at Borders this year. I want that scholarship! There are two different prize amounts - $2,500 and $10,000. I'll accept either, but the $10,000 one would pay for about a third of the estimated costs for a grad student at UCSB for an entire year. It's kind of funny because I've applied to this scholarship through Borders 2 times now. Everytime I apply, it changes slightly. Thankfully, this year it is only ONE essay and it's just your career/educational objectives and so forth. The last time I applied there was also that "what unusual circumstances have shaped you/educational goals" one. I really dislike answering one of those. So...I'll apply for it as soon as I figure out where I'm going. Deadline is April 20th. We'll see if I get it or not!

I found out UCSB for the Fall 2008 Quarter opened some new grad student apartments on the outskirts of the campus. They're VERY similiar to the North Quad housing that CSUMB has. They have 2-room apartments and 4-room apartments. Their set-ups even look the same as CSUMB's. They also have single-occuptant apartments (only 10 of them, I think), but they have no information about those at all. If I got into UCSB and I went for those apartments, it's almost the farthest away from Bren School (the department my Masters program is in) as I can be. LoL As a grad student, though, I REALLY don't want to be in a dorm...I simply don't need that experience to make myself feel like my life is complete. LoL

I think this semester I'm going to brush up on my calculus and statistics. UCSB does a two-week no credit refresher workshop before the quarter starts and a 5-week no credit workshop for statistics during the quarter. I might take both (for sure, statistics), but I might as well refresh now!

With that...I better be off to sleep. I have work at the sinking ship called Borders. They keep cutting hours (I think we lost another 100 hours) and we get no merit raises this year...What a shame. I won't get my $0.25 raise this year! To say the least, I am NOT going to miss the job when I leave Borders. I will miss the people, but the company is making it really difficult for me to want to stay. I hope to never work in retail again too...LoL

Cal Academy of Sciences

Chris and I went to the Cal Academy of Sciences yesterday. We had another disappointing trip where I didn't get to see the planetarium, but at least I saw the rainforest exhibit (after about a 45 minute wait in line...)! You can find photos here. We also went to the botanical gardens for a bit.

I'm almost all finish with grad school applications. I need to mail my MPC transcripts, which I am doing tomorrow morning, send one more CSUMB transcript, and mail my American University recommendation letters and my UCSB statement of purpose and resume and I'm FINISHED.

Now...to hope my CSUMB transcripts will arrive on time...I submitted them on the 23rd of December, but, with the holidays, my transcipts may not get sent out as promptly. I'm checking Tuesday to see if they've been sent out. If they haven't, I'm 2-day rushing them and hoping they'll be sent out by the 10th still.

I got A's in both micro- and macroeconomics too. :)

First Name: Bethany

I'm so TIRED of filling out college applications.

I finished University of Rhode Island and UC Santa Barbara's today. I'm finishing up University of Washington's now. I need to finish one more question in their extra application and finish my statement of purpose and that one will be ready to pay the fee for. UCSB's I have to still write my statement of purposes, but at least the fee has been paid. Friday, after I get paid, I'll send my GRE scores off. URI's fee was $50 and UCSB's was $70. Each GRE costs me $20! I still need to send my MPC transcripts too. I can't believe I forgot about the holidays and how campuses are closes between Christmas and New Year. *sigh* That was just shortsighted of me and has really thrown me off.

UCSB's I have to mail everything too - statement of purpose, resume, and letters of rec. American University I have to mail the letters of rec together. I did my resume and statement of purpose on-line, but I might include them in hardcopy anyway.

It's gotten so complicated remembering what I've done for which college that I have a spreadsheet to keep me organized. LoL

Anyway, with that...I should get back to my applications!

College Apps...

I've been lazy about the rest of the schools and applying, but tonight I got myself into gear since I have less than a month to get all my materials submitted for all the schools! I have changed the schools I'm applying for, though. It seems like it's a never ending changing process.

I've already applied to Columbia and got in, but I'm applying now to University of Washington, University of Rhode Island, UC Santa Barbara, and American University. They all changed (except Washington) for various reasons.

I just finished my application to American University tonight. So that's all finished. I just need to get my Letters of Rec and send my college transcripts off. The application fee was $50 ($30 less than what the website says...). My GRE scores are going to kill me since they're $20 each. Oh well.

Next I'm going to do Rhode Island. All I need to do for that is my Statement of Purpose. I'm basically adapting my Statement from Columbia for each school. Hey...I figure I got into Columbia with it, it was okay for them!

After that, it's a toss up between Santa Barbara and Washington. They both have very tedious application processses. Washington's I have to do a whole separate application thing along with my resume/statement/college application. Santa Barbara I have to write an entirely new statement of purpose that goes along the lines of any difficulties/challenges I've had in my life to get to where I am today and/or whether I want to go into a career that helps the underserved. Now, really? Why would a college specifically want to know that?! I feel like my acceptance rides on how I answer that question more than all my other materials! I'm definitely applying to a California school... :P

I want to send all my college transcripts off at once next week because the campus is closed the 25-30th and Santa Barbara's transcript needs to be postmarked by the 10th of January. So I'll probably just mail Washington's and Santa Barbara's college transcripts and hope they understand a student is applying. :P

With that...I must be off!

I got into Columbia!!

I did Columbia's Early Application Deadline and I got my e-mail today saying I got accepted into the program!!!!! I'm SO excited!

I'm still applying to the other schools on my list because I can't afford Columbia's tuition without financial help, but it is a nice confidence boost for getting accepted into a program I believed to be one of the hardest for me to get into. :)

I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving, if you celebrate, on Thursday!

Pretty scheduled life now...

There hasn't been a lot of updates in the past month because, well, I haven't done much! I'm on a pretty set schedule now, which is pretty nice. I work at Borders 9am-5pm M and F and from 1pm-6pm Tues-Thurs. I have class on Tues and Thurs from 9:30am-12:30pm. I have the aquarium every other Sunday from 1am-6pm. I can actually have a WEEKEND now! It's kind of nice since I haven't had weekends where I don't work at least one day in years, it seems.

The only interesting thing going on right now is that I'm actually applying to grad schools now. I'm filling out applications, getting transcripts, etc. Columbia's process is about half finished. I've sent out 2 of my 3 letters of recommendations to get filled out. I've already sent in the application on-line and paid my $85 application fee. I've sent them my GRE scores already too (that cost $20). I still have to send my college transcripts, though. That'll be about another $10 since I'm sending my MPC and CSUMB one. I still have to write my resume they want and write my statement of purpose. I think I'm just plain procrastinating on the statement of purpose because they want it somewhere around 850 words and it's like your essay to get into college! I have another 4 weeks to write it, though. I'm trying to get my application all finished by October 31st so I can hit Columbia's early application deadline, which means I'll get a yay or nay letter by December 1st.

The rest of the school's I'm figuring out how I'm applying. I've got an on-line account all set-up for Washington and Edinburgh, but I ran into an issue with Edinburgh. The Masters program I'm applying to says paper applications, but Edinburgh has on-line applications too (and I found the program through the application site). So I e-mailed them and asked which way they'd like the application. I'm pretty sure as soon as I get that application in, I'd hear pretty fast. They don't have application deadlines (how weird is that?). So, those are probably next two I'll work on. After that I'll plug away at Delaware (I STILL don't know how to apply or what program I'm applying to, their webpage is SO confusing!) and Maine. I'm pretty sure they're all due mid-January, so I've got time.

It also looks like I might be able to go to Australia too. Airfares have come down quite a bit. They're about $2k right now (that's including taxes). $2k I can actually do. So we'll see. I still need to talk to Mads and everything. I actually, funnily enough, found a cruise line that is doing a blowout on their New Zealand/Australia cruises because it'll be their last year of doing them. $2600 (including airfare from San Fran) for a 14 day cruise! I mean, I basically pay $600 more and get to go on a cruise! LoL Anyway, we'll se if I end up in Australia at the end of January or not!

With that...I think that's all that's really going on in my life.

Grad Schools

Okay. I've finalized the five schools I'm picking. I still have to check one or two more schools on the east coast, but I'm pretty sure this is what I'm applying to.

• University of Washington, Seattle - I'm applying for their Masters of Marine Affairs. You can see the webpage here. Application is due Jan 15th, I think. I find UofWa really hard to navigate around to figure out how to apply. This is a two-year program.
  
• University of Edinburgh - I'm applying for their Environment, Protection and Management Masters. You can see the webpage here. The EPM is a one-year program. I also looked at their Ecological Economics program too, but I don't think I want to ingrain myself that much into economics. That program is here. I can't figure out an application due date, but it always says to apply ASAP. I think one place I found was May!
  
• Columbia University - I'm applying for their Masters of Public Administration in Environmental Science and Policy. Phew, what a mouth full! Their webpage is here. The MPA is a one-year program. This would be the most expensive program out of all the schools. Even with the exchange rate, Edinburgh ends up cheaper. I'm going to try and do their early application submission deadline on November 1st. That'll garauntee me a yes or no letter by December 1st. 
• University of Maine - I'm applying for their MS degree in Marine Policy. You can see the webpage on the programs here. In high school I talked with a UCSC graduate student and they said that Maine, UCSC, and Scripps (at that time) were the best marine biology schools in the nation. U of ME has the Marine Policy MS, but you can also do a duel MS in Marine Policy and Marine Science (I'd pick Marine Biology). It's a 3-year program for the dual degree program. Not sure how long for the normal MS. I'd assume 2-years since the 2nd semester the students figure out thesis papers. Applications are due Jan 15th.
  
• Univeresity of Delaware - I haven't figure out if I'm applying for their Masters in Marine Policy (MMP) or their MS in Marine Studies with a concentration in Marine Policy. Probably the latter. You can see their programs here.  The funny thing is the Interim Director of the Marine Policy program was a candidate for CSUMB for the Rote Professorship. So I saw him give a presentation. LoL Unfortunately, I wasn't too impressed with him, though he was doing some interesting work. For fall admission (they also accept for Spring, weird...), applications are due March 1st. 

Maine and Delaware I haven't looked at how much it'll cost to go. They're my recent decisions. LoL I also looked at University of Miami. They have a MS and MA in Marine Affairs. I requested information on both programs anyway. The MS deterred me because I'd have to take the General GRE AND the Subject GRE and I was just not going to do that. LoL The MA was interesting, but I think I've decided I'd rather try and stick with a MS than a MA. They did have an interesting looking program, though.

I'm still figuring out how I'm getting letters of rec to all these schools. Some want them via mail, some electronically, etc. It's all rather confusing. I think I'll probably do Columbia's application first and go from there. Columbia doesn't require the GRE either. I probably should take the test one more time since Maine and Washington seem to make a bigger deal about it than the other schools. I actually need to FIND my scores. I don't remember what I got...I basically need to get myself all aligned. LoL

Oh, October is when the NOAA Graduate Sciences Program "starts" too. The postings for positions and applications start. I'm pretty sure I'll need to go to one of the state schools to have a chance at the GSP since Columbia has a really strict program and I doubt the government would want to fly me back and forth over the Atlantic to do my job. :P

With that...I should head to bed.