pseudonym

I have not heard from Berkeley either. I'm guessing they either forgot we exist or we are on some kind of a soft wait list.

Just got an email about this. 1st-2nd April.

Claiming another of the Princeton admits. Seems they saw my post from ten minutes ago begging them to take me. Out of this world. No idea how I am not typing in caps right now.

Didn't someone post last week saying Princeton had promised to let people know by this Thursday? I really wanted to be done with this being in the limbo business tonight. Please take me Princeton; you will make my decision and probably the rest of my life much easier!

Has anybody else not heard from Berkeley? I just logged into the website to see if they had simply forgotten to tell me I had been rejected (like Cornell), but there's nothing there.

If your subfield is comparative, get a field RA job for a poli sci prof doing field survey or experimental research in different parts of the world. I'm working as a field RA at the moment, implementing a couple of RCT's, managing surveys, designing interventions. It's great fun and from my conversations with professors, it seems it bolsters your application significantly.

I'm in a similar situation and was wondering whether people had ideas on how to best bypass this handicap. In particular, how does one substitute what earlier posters have referred to as the feel of the department or the gut instinct one gets from meeting faculty and current students? I'm facing some tough choices at the moment, and am mostly clueless when I think about whether I would get along better with people at this department or another, and what the 'culture' of a department may be like. Thoughts?

I think we're underestimating the potential of Friday afternoon!

Comparative!

I don't understand. How could this Friday have been so quiet?

Yup. Haven't heard anything from Cornell.

Based on this and the fact that no one has yet claimed a CP admit, I am going to keep telling myself there is still some hope.

I have not received the email, but considering Columbia's class size is around 18 a year, I don't think they could have said they admit 18 a year. Are you sure that's what they said?

Are any of the Columbia admits comparativists?

That's great advice actually! I woke up to my NYU acceptance having no idea they would send out decisions that early. Best morning ever. As you can probably tell, I live on the other side of the world. Sleep it is. Seems to be working for me. On the other hand, I got the UCLA acceptance when I was in a drunken stupor way past midnight. Maybe I should... In any case, best of luck to everyone! Have a good weekend! I will do my best to stay away from the forum until Monday...

By post? Seriously? Even for internationals? That would actually take forever. Better listen to Lemeard, then.

Does anybody have any hope of hearing from Columbia, MIT, UC Berkeley or Stanford today? I'm deciding whether to go to sleep or not.

Yes, I am one of those accepted, and I am (hoping to be) a comparativist.

I had to do that too, but luckily the person I needed to remind was an MIT PhD. He was actually defensive about it.

So we've had two MIT admits so far? Any idea what the usual pattern for MIT is? Do they gradually let people know or is there a big push over a day or two? In other words, should I lose hope if I don't hear from them today?

Hey guys, the latest UCLA admit here. Apparently I'm only allowed to make one post today because I'm new here, so I'll try to give all the details. I got the email a few hours ago. A few hours before that, I had a 20 minute 'informational interview' with a Professor (which was scheduled a couple of days in advance). She said they were experimenting with the use of Skype in the admissions process. The chat was pretty cordial; most of the questions came from my side, and I had the feeling that they had already made up their mind before the 'interview'. A few hours later, I got a personalized email from her. Said the official letter will be sent out tomorrow.