Not Newnham either...!

[compilerbitch]

Hmm...

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.

Comments

[ixwin.livejournal.com]

I don't think you're being overpanicky at all I'd be feeling exactly the same in that situation.