Get This Man a Doctor

Yeah a post titled still waiting… I know. No word yet from schools, and I’m getting pretty apprehensive. Some of my peers told me that they got their acceptance/rejection letters right around this time, so I should brace myself. Also, one particular school promised me a decision in “mid-Feburary” and I believe that it has reached late-mid—nay even early-late-February. Grumble.

I’ve been debating whether I’ll post where I am accepted on this site. I decided against it—that’s not something I want to broadcast. Instead, I’m providing the official Get This Man a Doctor Grad School Accept-o-Meter (at right) that gives you all the information you need to know. It is currently set to straight face… expect it to reach frowny sometime soon.

By popular demand, I’ve decided to go through and calculate just how much I spent on applying to graduate school. Well, actually, no one really seems to ask me how much I spent, but every time I think about it I can’t believe how much money I blew on a bunch of forms.

So to review: I applied to ten schools around the country. The one with the least fees was Carnegie Mellon, which charged $0.00 to read my application. The one with the greatest fees was the City University of New York, Graduate Center, which charged me $125.00 to read my application. The mean was $58.50.

The ETS charges $15.00 to report your (required) GRE scores. Per school. Plus a service fee per request. Since I had to submit one school twice, the total amount I paid the ETS was $216.00.

The total amount I spent on shipping is a bit skewed, since I FedExed everything. Most of my applications didn’t come down to the deadline, but I wanted to get everything in as quickly as possible. Total shipping costs: $199.73.

Finally, I spent $148.25 on transcripts, office supplies, books, and miscellany.

So, the grand total I have spent applying to grad schools since October comes to $1148.98. I wonder if I can get a tax write-off…