zzzzzz

Hmmm my phone must be broken, no call from Berkeley has come in.

have officially lost my mind. had to make a brief stop into the bar to calm down.

have officially lost my mind. had to make a brief stop into the bar to calm down.

also can we take a moment to appreciate how silly and old the Massachusetts Institute of TECHNOLOGY's application site is?

also can we take a moment to appreciate how silly and old the Massachusetts Institute of TECHNOLOGY's application site is?

also can we take a moment to appreciate how silly and old the Massachusetts Institute of TECHNOLOGY's application site is?

also can we take a moment to appreciate how silly and old the Massachusetts Institute of TECHNOLOGY's application site is?

also can we take a moment to appreciate how silly and old the Massachusetts Institute of TECHNOLOGY's application site is?

I think there are a lot of people, myself included, that haven't heard anything official.
 
 
 
Yes. And in Chicago.
 
And apparently in San Diego a totally unexpected run of 75 degree sunny days has converted all the freeways into roving beach parties. Total gridlock. Those miserable SOBs.

also can we take a moment to appreciate how silly and old the Massachusetts Institute of TECHNOLOGY's application site is?

also can we take a moment to appreciate how silly and old the Massachusetts Institute of TECHNOLOGY's application site is?

also can we take a moment to appreciate how silly and old the Massachusetts Institute of TECHNOLOGY's application site is?

Food for thought if you are slowly becoming a shuddering, weeping ball of human with a serious fear of rejection and an "email checking" complex.
 
Last year at about 1:00am on a lonely tuesday in late February, I was sitting in my room checking law school entrance requirements and trying not to allow the feeling of depression over being rejected at every top 10 program get to me. Needless to say... my efforts were in vain.
 
At around 1:15am I noticed an email in my inbox saying "Information about ___" (enter name of amazing school that I had lost all hope of being accepted to...). Unable to face another spam email or another rejection, I opted to ignore the email (after all, decisions by admissions committees are not released at 1:15am PST). Instead I went on amazon and, predicting a soul sucking career as a corporate lawyer, bought a 40$ LSAT prep book. I then went back to my email, opened the one from "dream school" and immediately started crying. Turns out my potential PI was emailing me during a break in her fieldwork in S.E. Asia, and that I had indeed been accepted.
 
There are two morals to this story. First, do not overreact to rejections. I applied to PhD programmes twice and though I was admitted to an MA (which I completed and quite enjoyed) in the first round, it was otherwise a total bust. The second time I applied I was rejected at every other top program (though accepted to some pretty great second-tier schools) but accepted at my absolute dream school. I seriously overreacted to all of those rejections -- case and point: the LSAT book that arrived at my house a week after I started picking out "dream school" branded sweatshirts. Second, what goes for others in the admissions process may not go for you. Someone you know (or at least see on these boards) may get accepted to every program they apply to. They may go on visits to CHYMPS, they may be courted, they may even get better funding offers. You may not. This is not the end of the world! Trust me, you only need to get accepted to 1 good program - and "good" is loosely defined!
 
The bottom line... well, Douglas Adams said it best: DON'T PANIC!

This is especially true if your undergrad was not in political science and you are (unknowingly) framing your very interesting research question poorly for consumption by political scientists.
 
 
To my understanding, both fit and yield concerns will sometimes cause schools to reject obviously qualified candidates.
 
For example, I assume that Duke hasn't gotten a hold of me because they know I'm a lock for Stanford.  kidding

Hello fellow nerds. 
 
Because I kept neurotically going back and checking last year's results pages etc., I decided to make a spreadsheet of this info. I then went overboard (needed a distraction?) and also added schools' reported admissions statistics, and then went a step further into crazytown and imputed some of the missing stats based on GC-reported results. 
 
I've uploaded the file, which you can download here: http://wikisend.com/download/570440/Polisci%20PhD%20admit%20data.xlsx
 
For now it only has the schools I'm looking at, but if anyone wants to add others (or has real cohort stats from schools) feel free to add! Rows in green are schools that have already started appearing on GC, blue may be coming this week. 
 
Enjoy!

I officially hate travelzoo.

word. it would be cool if any of the ten schools i applied to made some moves.

I have worked at a soul-sucking and meaningless 9-5 for only seven months right now and I would trade it in a heartbeat to teach and research a topic I love, even at a community college.

I have worked at a soul-sucking and meaningless 9-5 for only seven months right now and I would trade it in a heartbeat to teach and research a topic I love, even at a community college.

I have worked at a soul-sucking and meaningless 9-5 for only seven months right now and I would trade it in a heartbeat to teach and research a topic I love, even at a community college.

Congrats! That's great news; it must be a giant relief.
 
I'm on my second go-around as well, although there hasn't been much action from any of my schools other than an e-mail asking me to apply for a fellowship. I suppose Emory has already sent out interview/visit requests, but I'm working under the assumption that I'm such a lock there that they don't feel the need to interview me  . 
 
All kidding aside, doing this once before was good preparation and gave me a better idea of how to approach the whole process. I'm also less stressed this time - after all, I'm living proof that one can survive getting rejected from grad school. This whole process is not very much fun, but it's worth remembering that the worst outcome is that you spend several hundred dollars in order to be told 'no' and have to apply again next year.

G

Yup. When I called the dude a few weeks ago, he said that they might never be matched on the website because they're using a new system and having trouble with it.