lemming's Journal: Three down, fourteen to go

Rejection doesn't hurt nearly as much as one might think, though I expect that'll change when I start closing in on 0-for-17.

hmmm...platitudes and such

[tepid451]

If you want to discuss any of this offline (specifics and whatnot), let me know. (Online is ok, but I mean off-blog.) Maybe I'll start with a platitude: When you are selective in the schools to which you apply, the acceptance rate takes a major hit. I only got into 4/7 grad schools (+ waitlisted at 1) and my ratio for postdoc was much, much lower than that (3 acceptances, a couple honorable mentions, and a metric fuck-ton of rejections). It becomes the nature of the business. I suppose this can be cons

Re:hmmm...platitudes and such

[lemming]

I'll probably take you up on that offer at some point.

For what it's worth, I'm not really bothered much, even if things go way South, and the reason I made the post was to quickly blow off what little steam was building up.

And yeah, Stanford was no loss. I wouldn't go there, and I knew they wouldn't accept me. The reason I applied? Complicated, but basically I drew a very hard line policy with myself along the lines of, "no excuses, no backing out, no bullshit."

Re:hmmm...platitudes and such

[tepid451]

The other comment worth making is that even in the worst case scenario of 0/17 (which I find highly unlikely, by the way), you can still work for Oscar another year and build up your case, which should at least involve stronger rec letters even if there's no publication. Also, it occurs to me that if you have one of the winners or honorable mentions in that political party voting thing that that might be a nice feather in the cap.