feyfatale

@Nika.T Only three (excluding the ones I assume reject based on gradcafe), but one of them is a waitlist, so I will be waiting forever

@Nika.T Absolutely, I just made my peace with the fact that I will be on hold for a while.

@IcedCapp Congrats on the offer! As an international student who came from a city very much like yours and never lived in a small town before moving to CU, I have to say I didn't really like living there. I found it quite boring, and the city didn't grow on me throughout the few years I spend there at all. To me, living in a place with a lot of cultural activities, which is nonexistent in CU, is very important. Also, I was in a social science department and CU is an extremely engineering oriented place, and there wasn't a lot of exciting activities for us. That being said, I did meet a lot of people who enjoyed CU for different reasons. Climate is very unpredictable in CU, and the winters are very rough. However, that really depends on the climate you are used to. In my city, below 0 C is rare, and it only snows 2-3 times in winters, so I found CU winters very hard to cope with. Other than the winters, summers are too hot, but the fall is very nice and it lasts long. Public transportation is really nice, if you choose your neighborhood wisely, you can actually rely on buses to go to class. I also really enjoyed the Amtrak rides to Chicago (which takes two and a half hours on average), and I went to the city for daily trips or for weekends frequently. Political atmosphere is an important criteria for me as well, and like climate, what you are already used to matters a lot. It is not nonexistent, but as someone who came from a university with an active political life, I found CU and the campus quite disappointing. Undergrad involvement in political activities is low, and that makes a difference. You hear about security a lot before going there, but I didn't experience anything bad. I lived in a few neighborhoods in Champaign, and I love the West Champaign area outside the campus best (south/west from Champaign Public Library, which is also a good study spot). It is a quiet area mostly occupied by grad students. Also, if you contact the tenant union, they send you a list of all the landlords with complaint records (https://tenantunion.illinois.edu/lookinghousing.asp) which I found very helpful. Overall, CU isn't an expensive place, but housing can be a problem. I recommend you to stay away on-campus apartments in Champaign, they tend to be small and overpriced. I will be happy to answer if you have more questions!

@LLL_ last year they started to send the offers on March 1st.

@chichilai I just called Northwestern to ask about Screen Cultures, they said they already sent out interview invitations, and you can assume rejection if you haven't received one.

@hnm1231 Thanks for letting me know, it is a relief! 6 one on one meetings actually sound better, none of them gets enough time to ask difficult questions. One very basic but useful interview advise I got from a professor is to be very specific on whose work you are responding to and your contribution to the field. Meaning that it is more important to focus on the stakes of your argument instead of the topics of your research.

@hnm1231 Congratulations on the interview! Which program are you interviewing for? I have been waiting to hear from Screen Cultures for a while.

@imamura12 I just got my rejection letter from Brown MCM.

@chichilai I have been waiting to hear from Screen Cultures as well. They seem to already sent out interview requests for some of the other PhD programs in the department, I don't know whether that means anything though..