Not Newnham either...!
Jun. 17th, 2003 07:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
compilerbitchHmm...
I just got back from a gruelling trip to Mallorca and back (I'll probably post about that separately later), so I phoned the Board of Graduate Studies again to check on progress with my college application. It seems that my papers are with St. John's now. It's therefore the case that Newnham must have rejected my application.
Extended rant follows. Apologies in advance...
This is a bit of a shock, after what I'd been led to believe. I've not had anything back from Newnham to this end, I just discovered it by phoning the BOGS graduate admissions people and asking them to check the status of my application. I don't know why I was turned down.
I'm getting a bit nervous about this trend. Trinity said no, but that was not terribly unusual since they are so oversubscribed anyway. From what I've heard, St. John's are pretty similar to Trinity in the kind of people they take, so it seems very unlikely that they will say yes either. As for Corpus, my 4th choice, I probably have to assume a no also, since as a slightly richer college that can offer 3 years of accommodation they are also doubtless very popular.
The prospectus says that BOGS will keep circulating my papers until they find a college that will take me. But, what happens if none of them do? The rules say that I have to have a college. The prospectus says that BOGS guarantees to find me one. But, again, what if they don't? What if all the colleges say no? Do BOGS force one to take me?
And in any case, if it takes Johns another month, then Corpus another month after that, it only leaves six weeks before the beginning of October. Not much time, and probably zero chance that I'd get accommodation. My funding is bare-bones minimum -- I'm going to find it really quite hard financially if I have to live out.
Waaah. What the hell is so wrong with me??? I know I have a nonstandard background, but I was good enough that the department offered me three separate PhD places! So why is my experience with the colleges so different? I mean, Newnham are supposedly desperate to recruit compsci graduates to cover their supervision needs, and I was told they normally only turn someone down if there is doubt about the provenance of the evidence of their past academic career, or if there are funding problems. Neither of those things could possibly have been a problem (although Teesside, in their infinite lack of wisdom, did manage to lose my M.Sc transcript, but that should have been more than adequately covered by written statements I got from my lecturers at the time).
I do remember that in rare cases Oxford graduate students did end up collegeless, in which case their default membership of Halifax House (a pseudo-college somewhat analogous to Cambridge's Grad Pad) did suffice as regards University admission rules, although they were undoubtedly seriously disadvantaged in comparison with someone with a 'real' college place. From what I've read of the Cambridge rules though, this doesn't seem to be an option at Cam.
I think what I'm probably going to do is just start to look for private rented accommodation in Cam and then figure out how I'm going to manage to pay for it. Any improvement on that will be a bonus, but I'm not expecting much now.
I just got back from a gruelling trip to Mallorca and back (I'll probably post about that separately later), so I phoned the Board of Graduate Studies again to check on progress with my college application. It seems that my papers are with St. John's now. It's therefore the case that Newnham must have rejected my application.
Extended rant follows. Apologies in advance...
This is a bit of a shock, after what I'd been led to believe. I've not had anything back from Newnham to this end, I just discovered it by phoning the BOGS graduate admissions people and asking them to check the status of my application. I don't know why I was turned down.
I'm getting a bit nervous about this trend. Trinity said no, but that was not terribly unusual since they are so oversubscribed anyway. From what I've heard, St. John's are pretty similar to Trinity in the kind of people they take, so it seems very unlikely that they will say yes either. As for Corpus, my 4th choice, I probably have to assume a no also, since as a slightly richer college that can offer 3 years of accommodation they are also doubtless very popular.
The prospectus says that BOGS will keep circulating my papers until they find a college that will take me. But, what happens if none of them do? The rules say that I have to have a college. The prospectus says that BOGS guarantees to find me one. But, again, what if they don't? What if all the colleges say no? Do BOGS force one to take me?
And in any case, if it takes Johns another month, then Corpus another month after that, it only leaves six weeks before the beginning of October. Not much time, and probably zero chance that I'd get accommodation. My funding is bare-bones minimum -- I'm going to find it really quite hard financially if I have to live out.
Waaah. What the hell is so wrong with me??? I know I have a nonstandard background, but I was good enough that the department offered me three separate PhD places! So why is my experience with the colleges so different? I mean, Newnham are supposedly desperate to recruit compsci graduates to cover their supervision needs, and I was told they normally only turn someone down if there is doubt about the provenance of the evidence of their past academic career, or if there are funding problems. Neither of those things could possibly have been a problem (although Teesside, in their infinite lack of wisdom, did manage to lose my M.Sc transcript, but that should have been more than adequately covered by written statements I got from my lecturers at the time).
I do remember that in rare cases Oxford graduate students did end up collegeless, in which case their default membership of Halifax House (a pseudo-college somewhat analogous to Cambridge's Grad Pad) did suffice as regards University admission rules, although they were undoubtedly seriously disadvantaged in comparison with someone with a 'real' college place. From what I've read of the Cambridge rules though, this doesn't seem to be an option at Cam.
I think what I'm probably going to do is just start to look for private rented accommodation in Cam and then figure out how I'm going to manage to pay for it. Any improvement on that will be a bonus, but I'm not expecting much now.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-06-17 01:25 am (UTC)Deeply unhelpful of Newnham not to inform you they'd rejected you though. I should think they wouldn't bother passing your papers on to Johns if the latter had already filled all their places?
St. John's are pretty similar to Trinity in the kind of people they take
Don't say that in the hearing of anyone from either college! They're similar in that they're both big and rich and can afford to be picky, but beyond that they tend to be picky in different ways, I think. In my completely uninformed opinion, Johns is much more your sort of place than any of the other three you mentioned.
Anyway, the best of luck. May I join the ranks of people waiting expectantly for you to hear some better news soon?
Re:
Date: 2003-06-17 02:45 am (UTC)As I see it, there are two major problems with my background. One is obvious, so I'll not mention it further here. The other is that I didn't go the A-levels or undergraduate degree route, so I can't say (for example) that I have 5 grade A A-levels and a first. I can say that I have an advanced M.Sc, and that I effectively founded the research area of my PhD during my M.Sc thesis research, though. However, it would take a compsci to understand that stuff (and probably only a small percentage thereof would *really* understand, since compsci is such a large subject area these days). I don't think Newnham have any compsci fellows at all, so my application would probably be completely incomprehensible to whoever happened to read it. As a consequence, their not being able to fall back on counting A grades could well have been what did for me.
But, this is all supposition.
Being realistic, I need to find out from BOGS what the worst case outcomes are, and do whatever I can to make contingency plans for these eventualities.
As regards my papers going to Johns, I don't know if they would have gone there if they were full or not. Undoubtedly though, I think I probably have less chance now than if my papers had got there a couple of months ago. On reading the Johns web site, it does seem that they like applications to be in early (I'm already well past the cutoff date for studentships, although that isn't a problem now anyway after I arranged my own finance).
It's funny, really, in an ironic way. While I've been seen to be incredibly paranoid over every last detail of my application, and been seen to go to very extreme lengths to arrange my own funding (several people thought I was nuts in doing this, because -- surely -- my department should be able to sort all this out for me), it does look like my fears have been well founded. For whatever reason, I've found that people *don't* give me the benefit of the doubt. I *don't* normally get the breaks that other people take for granted. Almost certainly this is related to prejudice of some kind or other, it's certainly not just paranoia on my part. I'm used to having to fight for everything, usually tooth and nail, and I fully intend to continue to do so.
I'm not that easily beaten!