I’m currently a first-year doctoral student in the Higher Education Administration Ed.D. program at the George Washington University. While GWU offers a traditional doctoral program experience at their Foggy Bottom campus in the District of Columbia, I attend classes at the Virginia Campus near Dulles Airport. I have chosen the cohort program model that GWU offers. In this program, a number of students are admitted each fall. This cohort of students takes all of their courses together for the first two and a half years of the program, seven credits each semester during the fall, spring and summer.
Decisions Decisions! (or Part Four of "How I Found Myself to be a Doctoral Student")
After what seemed like years of waiting (but was actually more like 6-8 weeks) I started to hear back from the institutions to which I had applied. Something that was surprising was the lack of real information that admissions decisions included. I imagined the “fat envelope” that I remember from my undergraduate acceptances, but in reality what I was getting in the mail was usually a single page letter.
The Waiting is the Hardest Part (or Part Three of "How I Found Myself to be a Doctoral Student")
Tom Petty was right: the waiting is the hardest part. Once all of my doctoral stuff was submitted (approximately January 1, 2009), I got a pretty severe case of the “itching to find out what happens next.” Here are some “do’s” and “don’ts” based on my experience managing the purgatory that was January, February, and March of my doctoral admissions process.
