AND THE WINNER IS.................

April 15th has finally arrived (and passed) and we have finally made the final decision about which school to attend!  It was a looooooong, miserable decision process, but the rejection & acceptance emails have been sent and it's official.

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WINNER

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THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNYSLVANIA!!!!!

WOOHOO!!!

Is anyone surprised?  I don't think it was the obvious choice.  It sure wasn't obvious to us!  In fact, if you had asked me at the beginning, I would have put UCLA & Vanderbilt as both being more likely choices, but it the end, Penn it is.  Here's how it went down.

Basically, we had decided on UCLA pretty strongly at first.  It was going to be the cheapest, by quite a bit, I love the program, it has a great campus, I was SUPER excited about living in LA, the weather is obviously a plus, I was excited about being close to family and friends, it was a one year program, and the list goes on and on and on.  

However, things quickly fell apart. It's quite a long story, so I'll spare you the details.  Though, if you're curious, feel free to ask.  Basically, they handled my application atrociously and pretty much left us no choice but to reject them.  We haven't looked back.   

As for Vandy, we had the opposite experience.  They were so warm and helpful and an absolute pleasure to correspond with.  I LOVE their program & feel like I'm missing out on something big by saying no to their offer.  I can tell that they're a school that really cares about their students and really gives their all to get them where they want to go.  The campus is also fantastic (which I'm a big sucker for) and the Ed. building is particularly so.  In the end though, we're quite worried about Tom's job prospects in Nashville.  He's looked around quite a bit and it just doesn't look good.  Maybe one day I can get a PHD there.

That leaves us with Penn!  After reading about UCLA and Vandy, it might seem as if we don't want to go to Penn.  That's not true at all.  What made this decision so tough (especially after UCLA was out) is that our options seemed so good it was hard to say no to any of them.  Penn's major disadvantage is that it will be more expensive, all things considered.  Well, that and the cold.  It's advantages, however, are many.  

My cohort will be small (only about 20 or so).  There are already lots of classes I'm very excited to take.  I'm getting pretty excited about the city itself.  The area around the campus, where we plan to live, is mostly tree lined streets with quaint Victorian houses.  The campus is quite beautiful, though more compact & with less grand grassy fields that the other two.  Tom's brother & brother's family are moving to Philly in July, because he is doing a postdoc at Penn.  It's an ivy - which, honestly, is just a bizarre thought.  But that will help with my career in the future, hopefully.  In the end, though, possibly the aspect I am most excited about is the internship component.  Here's how the program is set up, you do one academic year at Penn, then you do an internship (generally in a developing country) for 6 to 10 weeks during the summer.  Then, you graduate!  More info on the internship is here.  But, I've been really wanting to do something like that for a while.

Anyway, this post is already a lot longer than I intended for it to be.  Unfortunately, I have a lot more to say, so it is to be continued, tomorrow.  Sorry for being so longwinded.  Thanks for reading!