bibliomancer

Didn't want to post until I've made my mind about my top 2, but over the last three weeks, I've declined Illinois-Urbana, Washington-Seattle, and Wisconsin-Madison. Hopefully, if there are any waitlists, it would work out for somebody.

Based off the responses in the forums, there seems to be two camps regarding getting into debt for an MA. I did MAPSS last year, and have gotten into four of the five history programs I applied to; likewise several friends I had in the program also got into pretty fantastic history programs (Princeton, Michigan, Columbia, Cornell). An MA from Chicago is nothing to scoff at is the general consensus. Granted, in my case I got a pretty substantial tuition-remission, and have no debt from undergrad, so I decided to eat the cost in the hopes of getting into a pretty well-funded PhD (which paid off pretty well for me). So I guess it really depends on your situation. Most people were worried (and rightly so) about the gap year. It also depends on the amount of language-training you already have (East Asian history, perhaps of all of the fields, seems to want an absurd amount of prior language-training)--which you will not get from Chicago since it's a one-year program. I'm sure you've also been informed of the great PhD acceptance rates of MAPSS grads--something over 93% yearly. It's good to take this with a grain of salt--how the program works is that it dissuades people who are not fully committed to doing a PhD (and I know a lot of people who changed their minds about going on to the PhD). There were about 25 people doing history in MAPSS my year, and about eight of us ended up applying this cycle. Some people, of course, wanted a break from school since they came straight from undergrad, and they wait a couple of years before applying.

@RamyaS: Haha, sorry, Cornell History.

Yeah, I've been told by my POI that Cornell only made (makes?) 10 offers, and that the DGS is waiting for the respective POIs to contact the admitted students before sending out the official decisions, and that there is a wait-list.

@anxietygirl Thank you! I'm keeping my fingers crossed too.

I've been wondering mainly because my partner hasn't heard back from them yet, and it's getting worrisome. I've already heard back a couple of weeks ago from UW's DGS. We tried to plan out our applications so there's some overlap, though thus far we've been accepted into different places and Seattle's the last chance we have of being in the same city (and the same department). And for both of us, Seattle's the best place to pursue the kind of research that we want to do. Ugh, I don't know. Does anybody have any input about what to do with long-term relationships in cases such as this?

Has anybody else heard from the University of Washington?

Thank you! I'm probably not going to accept, though. Oh well.

Hi! That was me. I got an email yesterday from the graduate diversity office, which was confusing since I haven't heard about admissions. So I called the graduate secretary, and it seems that the DGS (or somebody at the office) didn't type my email address correctly, so I didn't get the email. Apparently, they sent out all the admissions letters last week.

I got a strange email from Illinois around 5pm CT. It's from their Community of Scholars, which seems to be part of their diversity program. It was congratulatory, and invited me to their visiting weekend, making several references to my already having been offered admission. Which they have not. The office manager of graduate studies of the history department is cc'd in the email, so maybe she'll respond. Who knows. Maybe they've already decided and haven't yet sent out results? Maybe it's one of those massive mistakes that they make. Eh. I'm also waiting for Vanderbilt--and yes, total silence.

Hi! I'm one of the two UW admits. It came as a surprise--the DGS called early afternoon on Feb. 1, but I missed it, then she sent an email saying that she had "some questions about [my] application," and I was thinking--oh great, an interview, I suck at interviews, goodbye UW hopes and dreams and future and everything else. The next day, the only actual question was "you still interested?" Then the offer was made. I'm surprised nobody else has heard back, though.