bamboomba- my dad is an engineer and he is doing ok, but he always envied architects during his college days at VT

rationalist- thanks for the input, i'm just a little scared it won't be crystal clear after the trip and a have to decide on Monday..
what are your final schools, are you still thinking Pratt?

b.d.f., do you mind posting a summary of your trip? once you get back, that is. i'm also deciding between penn and michigan but don't have the means to visit michigan so whatever insight you can share will be great. good luck on your trip! i hope it clears things up for you.

There's very little chance that Pratt will come through for me. Unless my aid offer magically pops up with a 20k scholarship or grant, it's UW.

9 >

Will do, I'll be back next Sunday..

Sorry to hear about your situation baboomba. I hope things start to get better.

bdf or to whomever it concerns:

yeah yeah, penn open house. i just got back from phila. i couldn't make the open house and im die'en to know how they pitch it. what i gathered from the students i talked to, the program is very much tied to the hard sciences and especially engineering(arup). not just rhetoric. also, I stoped by room 207(the main admin office, 207 i think) and picked up a list of course offerings. fascinating. please let me know if faculty show(very few did at columbias open house, but most did at ucla). i should have stuck around. damn. i really enjoyed center city as well. just make sure you dont forget your vest.

fucking retarted "architecture in college who needs it thread" is getting pushed out... here's my effort

So I filled out my acceptance to UW today and will mail it tomorrow. There's so little chance that Pratt will come through for me, and even if they did, I couldn't make a visit before I needed to accept or decline my scholarship at UW, so I figured I'll just accept knowing there's only about a 2% chance that I'll want to renig on that. Also filled out my rejection to CCA, but discovered that SCAD doesn't have a rejection card in the packet, and I can't find my packet from RIT.

good deal rationalist. I'm going to be doing the same later on this week.

baboomba, I'm rooting for you. I don't know if there's anything I could do but if there is, please let me know.

b.d.f., I think it's excellent that you are visiting these schools. My visits completely changed my outlook on the schools that i thought I wanted to go to, and frankly I think they upped my chances of acceptance too. Good luck in your travels.

Good news: I'm getting excited about moving.

Bad news: the move is still 5 1/2 months away!!! I can't wait that long!!!

I know that some others here were accepted to UW, is anyone else planning on going there?

still can't decide. Yale. Berkeley. what does one do??

that view of the bay is really nice.

can.not.decide.

upenn? sci-arc? pratt?

what does one do indeed.

alright, i'm trying to not get depressed by this, but it's april 9th and i have yet to hear from 2 out of my 3 schools. something seems terribly wrong with this.

you should def. call

hey laurilan

haf u try email the schools?? you may request an email admission decision first coz the 15th deadline are coming!!

oh, i've tried calling and emailing. it's actually incredibly ridiculous. i've mentioned i've got deadlines, yet haven't heard anything.

UF is close by right? you should just go to their admin office and chain yourself to a desk and refuse to go until you get an answer

haha - that would be entertaining - somehow i don't think it'd produce the results i'm hoping for.


"well, we were going to accept you, but now that we know you're crazy..."

yeah, but if you don't do something soon, you're going to miss out anyways...

well, i technically don't have any april 15th dates. the one school i've gotten an acceptance from was pratt and they don't need to know until may 1st.

uf sent me an email that states they weren't sending anything out until "the month of april." so, i haven't been bugging them quite as much.

and i'm at a loss with cincinnati. i guess i'm going to be making some more calls today. i don't understand how they can ignore so many calls and emails.

i'm wondering if wonderk has heard anything yet.

laurilan, I'd try what most of us ended up doing for Pratt. Look at the online directory for the school, find someone higher up the food chain than your average admissions officer you usually reach on the phone, and call or email them explaining that you think your response must have gotten lost in the mail, but nobody at admissions has been able to tell you anything, and beg for help.

laurilan, I have not heard anything. I'm sorry. I do have a suggestion for you though: go to the DAAP web site, not SAID's site. Look up the Assistant Dean for Student Affairs, and give her a call. It is not necessarily her job to deal with situations like this specifically, but she does deal with students' problems and she could definitely get the ball rolling. Tell her your problem, and stress that you cannot get an answer out of SAID. And if you want you can mention that you have a good friend who is a UC alumna and that she suggested that you call the college office (that's DAAP).

thanks wonderk - i will give that a try.

I finally got through to Pratt financial aid. They expect me to take out $40,338 per year in loans. No scholarships, no grants, no work study.

Pratt is WACK.

laurilan, what'd you hear?

rationalist, that is crazy.


I'm bored. My firm is close to chaos. A lot of people don't have work to do, and although I do, it's not going well because our email system is down for about the 3rd time in 2 months. It's messy. I wish I could pick up and go earlier, but alas.....a paycheck is a paycheck.....

that is so crazy. the state of the higher education system is corrupt and defunct. how can they possibly expect that?
maybe that is the point.
they see if they can screw you over with that because they really didn't want to accept you anyways, and if you fall for it then you're the retard and they win because they didnt have to offer you REAL financial aid, but in actuality they expect you not to fall for it and decline their offer

I doubt that's the case (that they didn't really want to accept me), since (a) they accepted me without any prerequisites at all (they resuerve the right to require up to four), and (b) I've been accepted to much more competitive schools than Pratt (both CCA and esp. UW have lower acceptance rates). Pratt is the only school I've been accepted to that hasn't offered me any scholarship money at all. Even CCA gave me something in that department, plus a little workstudy.

I think, actually, that Pratt prefers international students, to whom they do not have to give any aid. By my rejecting their offer, they can get some rich foriegn kid in there that's fascinated by the Pratt name and doesn't know that the career they will attain cannot possibly pay for the $80k in loans acquired in two years there.

Now I can order transcripts and send a deposit to UW with a clear heart and mind.

good for you, rationalist- you have a decision!

(btw, that wasn't a personal attack, and i can see how many of these schools prefer foreign students to some extent- although it seems to prove itself that a school wants you when they provide you with scholarships/grants/work study rather than nothing at all, especially when the cost is so great)

i myself also feel that if my preferred choice really wants me they will make a good offer... if they dont, i will go to a school who does.

i called SAID one last time to see if i could get any information from them or might be put in contact with someone that answers. the receptionist said about the same thing that catcow got.

basically, if i haven't heard anything, i've been waitlisted. the "first round" responses were due last friday. so that means.... sometime in the future i will be notified something maybe. she was pretty snappy with me - which really pissed me off. oh soooo sorry to be bothering you with my questions about my future.

i haven't gotten to do anything more yet. but i did find the asst. dean of student affairs and i'm going to try and contact her. it's looking like i'm in for a longer wait before i find out anything else.

i'm with you on pratt, rationalist. i am not throwing that much money into school. i'll wait a year and apply somewhere else.

does anyone know offhand what the typical acceptance date is? april 13th?

you mean like, accepting your acceptance? april 15, maybe?

yeah, that's what i meant.

apr 15th is a sunday- so i doubt it's apr 15th.

UVA is apr 16th- same day as tax day (monday)...
in an effort to avoid that, CMU is april 20th (friday)

There seems to be two standard dates- schools in the organization that +i and I discussed above require you to accept a TA position and/or scholarship offer by April 15th. This is a set date every year, so I expect that this year the schools choose whether that means by April 13th or by April 16th. Many other schools seem to have May 1 deadlines. I wish they'd all get it together on a single deadline, would be much easier for us...

What's the social life like at Yale? Do they feel isolated, or do they all hang out and have a good time, and get to know people from other departments too?

Just out of curiosity, what's the percentage of people who were offered some kind of scholarship or partial tuition? Was anyone offered full tuition w/stipend anywhere?

Like I said, just curious. You don't have to get specific if you don't want to...

I was offered some amount of scholarship at 4/5 of the schools I was admitted to. I was awarded full tuition with stipend from one school.... for one quarter out of three per year. ; ) They made it clear that while they would love to fund me more, their policy as a school was to spread the TAships around to each student they felt was worthy, instead of letting one or two hog them all. So each of the six of us in the program TAs one quarter a year, instead of two people TAing the whole time and the other four being screwed.

+ full tuition paid @ VT

+ work-study @ UVA

+ not sure about CMU

I called Pratt this morning to see if they've put together a financial aid package together for me (so I can decide if it's worth going there). They told me that I should be receiving an email from them 'sometime next week.' Come oooooon people!

Wow. At this rate you'll be halfway through Columbia's summer program before you get all your required info from Pratt.

Ha ha, no kidding! i feel that it's so irresponsible of them to make people wait this long, especially when most schools make you decide by April 15. Btw LIG, are you going to mail your portfolio back to Columbia?

I might, although I'd have to create a new cover for it. I wonder if it would really make a difference for the summer program?

That's what I'm thinking. I mean, for starters, it's optional. And secondly, I think it would probably apply more to people who have never applied to an MArch program and/or those who are coming from a non-art/design background.

I got a half-ish scholarship from one school, nothing (that I know of) from two others, still waiting on the Brits to see if they have anything for me even though I know my chances of that are zero to negative.

I almost had a panic attack at midnight last night when I was looking at my USC scholarship offer and I couldn't find the "accept by" date, which I thought I had seen before. I immediately composed a 3 paragraph email accepting their acceptance and scholarship, and asking a bunch of questions....but then I found the date on another sheet of paper and the email is sitting in my Drafts folder. If I don't get the packet from the Brits today, that email is getting sent as soon as I get home from work....and then the fun begins! :-O

They're another one of the April 15th coalition, aren't they?

Pratt read me off my financial aid package over the phone. Then I came home to a message yesterday that claimed my package online, and that I just must not be doing the right thing to access it. Durr.... I log in, then I go to "My Awards". It says "You have no awards to view at this time. If you have any questions about this, please contact the financial aid office at Pratt." Sounds like I'm doing it right to me, or the link names on that site are completely retarded.

Actually it's May 1. But the others are April 15, thus pushing the issue....

send them a copy of your screen that says that.

i sent my UVA acceptance letter + deposit in today.
Done and done.