Get into the master's program of my choice

I’m in! I received my letter of acceptance at the beginning of June and have already applied for student housing. I will be spending the next two years in Leipzig and Vienna, consecutively. Time to start looking one-way tickets to Europe again.

Today I learned that one of the MA programs I applied for is admitting only 30 applicants, of which only 18 will receive scholarships.

I’m up against 1908 people.

I sent out third MA application in late December. Selected applicants won’t be informed of their acceptance into the program until some time in April, which feels like it’s ages down the road. It’s still a lot sooner than June though, which is when the other two programs will be sending out their acceptance letters.

More than anything, I’m terribly worried that I’ll be accepted into the program, but without a scholarship, which will be just as bad as not getting accepted at all (seeing as I don’t have money to pay for school).

Got a confirmation e-mail from Copenhagen this morning. Shmeh…

Had my first application Fedexed on Wednesday afternoon, and the second one sent out on Thursday. Application #1 should reach its destination around Monday morning.

I’m feeling quite nervous now. Mainly because I have no idea what kind of competition I’m up against.

One God damn day to write a statement of purpose. One whole fucking day trying to think of an original way to say I want to get into grad school.

I got caught up in something I read on one particular website about how, in order to stand out among thousands of other applicants, a strong statement of purpose should always start with the retelling of some personal experience or memory – something specifically related to you that explains how you first became interested in your field of study. The example provided was this:

When I was eleven, my great-aunt Gretchen passed away and left me something that changed my life: a library of about five thousand books. Some of my best days were spent arranging and reading her books. Since then, I have wanted to be a librarian.

I don’t know why it is that after reading this I became so determined to follow its example, but in any case, it took me all day to make up my own bullshit great-aunt Gretchen story. Even sadder is the fact that I’ve written 10-page research papers faster than this.

Recently learned that my MA applications are due far sooner than I was first informed. As in, less than two weeks from now. The program’s website has apparently not been updated any time recently, so the old December 15th deadline from a few years back is still up.

Now I’m scrambling to put together the applications as soon as possible and will have to have them shipped as priority mail. I’m so stressed that I’ve almost stopped taking it seriously – I’m applying to get into grad school, and yet it’s starting to feel more like a magazine photo contest.