Port Lake

Does anyone know what's happening with Escondido Village? I'd be coming to Stanford with my husband, and those apartments seem to be the most affordable. I've seen this, though, and would much rather not live by a construction site. Does anyone know if they're going through with this, and what sort of impact it'll have on EV more generally? My other top choices are in the midwest, so, have to say, bit of a sticker shock compared to those places when I saw Palo Alto prices.

Thank you! I've heard the things like "don't go south of the Midway", but there do seem to be plenty of UChicago buildings and grad housing there. Even the university's apartments there seem a bit more spacious (and cheaper!) than those toward Hyde Park Boulevard. The housing allocation system seems a bit strange. There's a box on the application for "special requests" but I'm not really sure what would be a reasonable special request. Anyone have any further insight into the university's grad housing?

I'm curious too! Is grad housing heavily oversubscribed, or is there a good chance of getting it (in first year, at least)?

I've just declined my BU offer (I was one of the acceptances on the results page). I hope this opens up a spot for someone else! I haven't heard of anyone being waitlisted, so perhaps they send acceptances in waves?

I started out by just checking where the scholars that I found myself citing the most in my own work were based. This was very fruitful - these places often had a research cluster in the areas I am interested in and I found more people I could see myself working with. Then, I just went through all the top 20 unis in the US News rankings to see if I could identify 2-3 people I liked in each department. I found some great departments this way, where I just hadn't come across someone's work before but it was actually very well aligned with mine. I took this list of departments to a couple of professors, and discarded most of the ones they advised against. My partner has also applied to grad schools, which meant I had to make some compromises to maximize our chances of landing a spot in the same city. I applied to a handful of universities that weren't a great fit (though I tried to shoehorn my interests to fit each) and that my advisers weren't keen on. Surprise, surprise: I didn't get into those. Your current professors/advisers will be best at judging what tier of university you should be looking at. You can look at departments' websites and the gradcafe results search to get an idea of what sort of GPA and GRE scores are expected in top 10, top 30 unis etc, but your advisers will have a better idea of how strong your application would be otherwise.

Thank you! I found that info on their website, actually. My LOR writers also said that some universities strongly dislike it while others expect you to do it. So, it really depends (and the difficulty in finding out about which university falls into which camp just adds to the opaqueness of the whole process...)

I'm claiming a Chicago admit! Pertaining to the earlier discussion, I didn't contact any POIs before I applied. Some programmes (like Stanford) advised against. I would've maybe emailed if I had something meaningful to ask, but my research fits were pretty obvious to me so I didn't feel the need.

Mine came just under an hour ago.

Same!! I was feeling grumpy about imminent Harvard rejection, then, woaah, Michigan acceptance! Congrats to other Michigan admits too!

Quiet?? Two Harvard acceptances are up

There could still be acceptances coming, I think. Given that at least some of them have been done by phone, it might take them longer than just emailing acceptances. And the Berkeley cohort is quite sizable, so I would expect more than three gradcafe posts. Or this could just be wishful thinking. I'm almost certain I'd take Stanford over Berkeley anyway, but I'm still so anxious to hear!

Congratulations! That is indeed an excellent sign! My heart did jump a bit when you posted about an interview (I wasn't at all prepared to worry about Yale interviews!), so this is reassuring to know it's a more informal thing.

I, too, made the DiMaggio mistake. There are other faculty I'm interested in at Princeton (and the program, in itself). I just hope the admissions committee look past my DiMaggio paragraph.

Okay, so seems it varies a lot by department! Some of the programs I checked out had a rough figure hidden away somewhere, but none seemed forthright on their websites. I hope the stipend database hazenyc linked grows, though - would be a great resource!

Most department don't have specific amounts on their websites. I've heard 23k (+3k for summer) for Chicago's sociology grant, but I can't remember who told me that so it may not be reliable or up-to-date information. I hope someone more knowledgeable than me chimes in!