jrockford27

The blue bar above the line that has "Status:" and "Acceptance Confirmed: NA"? That wasn't there before? ETA: By gum... it is new isn't it? So what can we read into this!? ha

Girl with glasses, I wasn't paying attention to your sig that much until now. No wonder we have fairly similar school lists, our subfields are very similar heh. Though I'm surprised you aren't applying to Pitt. Are you applying to MCM at Brown? Also, I accidentally left my cell phone at home today. Driving me up the wall.

Based on last year, we're well within the time frame that we could expect Chicago, Duke, and the remainder of the Buffalo acceptances this afternoon.

Also haven't heard a thing from Vanderbilt yet. Blah.

UC Davis acceptance posted. Not one of mine, but that's a big one for a lot of folks, is it not?

I lol'd. I wonder if Vanderbilt changes their method every year just to throw Gradcafe off, ha. Looking at this year so far, with the rejections going out (apparently) before any acceptances; then last year with the strange "secret waitlist" stuff; then the year before, where the rejections didn't go out (apparently) until March; it seems like they like to experiment heh. Speaking of which, last year the acceptance notifications last year apparently went out on the uh, 5th and 6th of February, which were, uh *cough*, the first Sunday and Monday of February 2012. But hey, we really shouldn't read into that, right?

I think the selectivity pct. is very much influenced by its high volume of applicants due to the whole "free application thing." You'll notice in past years, in the comments of rejections, things like "only applied because it was free." I wonder what the pct. would be if you winnowed out the "non-serious" and "only applied because it was free" crowd. I'm sure it would be in line with the normal acceptance rate of respected English programs. Certainly not a safety school though, unless, I suppose, you're absolutely stratospheric in your expectations for yourself! Though it was funny to see someone in an earlier post call one of my very favorite programs a safety school, ha.

So it's way after hours and I still haven't gotten anything from Vandy yet. I even checked my spam, my trash, and logged into my application to make sure I have my email address right. Have any of you other folks that didn't hear initially hear yet? I keep thinking, "there must be some kind of mistake."

There were some people with pretty respectable GRE scores and GPAs in the bloodbath, so this wasn't just them discarding low numbers or anything. But yeah, the most likely scenario is that if we don't hear, it's probably just initial cuts. I wouldn't feel too bad, asleepawake. I envy you, actually having at least one acceptance as you do! ha

Seems like there are too many of us here who haven't heard yet to assume that not hearing = in or waitlisted. Statistically speaking. Unless Vandy really loves grad cafe users! I mean, it's a free app, so I imagine they get a ton. Then again, we can put a man on the moon, I assume they can send out 580 rejections at once.

Ha. So we have established it's not alphabetical. How many other things can we rule out? lol

Heh, that was me last year. I was pretty naive to think I could get in, my materials being what they were. My app is a bit stronger this year and I decided to go for it again, since it's my dream program. It's 45 minutes until the close of business in Nashville. They've got to have sent out all the rejections by then, right, RIGHT?!

I just say this, because I'm a T. So near the end. Ugh ugh. I wear glasses too. We have so much in common. We'd make stellar colleagues! Also, yes. Almost crying from nervousness. I need to get out of work, go to the gym, and have a nice dinner with some good red wine.

Not to seem totally neurotic, but where in the alphabet are the people who have heard from Vandy so far? I'm trying to come up with any reason why I might not have gotten a rejection yet... other than, y'know, the good one. Last year they didn't send out rejections before acceptances. But it's weird that nobody has posted an acceptance yet if they've sent them out already. I feel like there's a hammer hanging over my head.

Vandy is the school with the advisor that I think would be the best fit in the country to advise me on my proposed project. This is torturous to wait for.

Oh man. I haven't gotten a Vanderbilt rejection yet... still waiting for the hammer to fall...

Well, I think it was established that occasionally departments will notify on the weekends. So you may not have to. I like the weekend because it seems so much easier to pass the time waiting.

Last night I sat reading Twelfth Night while sipping cabernet and listening to Brahms. Seriously.

Alright! So hey, it's February people. Let's brace ourselves! Yesterday was, surely, the calm before the storm. Edit: And right after I posted this, someone posted an acceptance from Missouri! See, I'm a prophet.

Eerily quiet today. . . still a few hours of daylight left though.

I get the feeling that I'm not going to see anything from my schools this week, but that next week all hell is going to break loose. February 1st, falling on a Friday as it does, doesn't seem like it really "counts" as February, ha.

The Room plays a couple of times a month at one of our local theaters. A few years ago they did a special midnight showing attended by Wiseau himself, as well as the guy who plays Mark, and they answered questions afterward. I went. It was ridiculous.

I'd say my biggest regret was the grammatical mistake that went out in four of my ten personal statements. My writing sample makes me nervous too. It's basically two sections of my honors thesis, but I edited the first chapter for length, and I'm really afraid that I might have gutted it and made it awful in the process. I mean, I reread it probably 15 times, but we often miss things when we're reading our own work. It's definitely not the paper I submitted and got an A on...

If it makes you feel better, I made an almost identical mistake in the final paragraph of my SOP. Luckily that version only went out to 4 of my 10 schools, but it definitely went out to my #1. It was infuriating, because it was a passage I'd decided to add after my recommenders had gone over my SOP and told me it looked great. Most people are telling me "I'm sure it wont be a big deal, don't worry about it." Doesn't stop me from worrying about it!

I'm in the humanities. I had coffee with two of my three recommenders, both of whom have sat on admissions committees, and I asked them "should I email professors in the programs I'm applying to?" Both of them told me, essentially, "don't do it unless you have a genuine question you want answered. It doesn't really matter, though, unless you're obnoxious, it can't hurt you." The way one of them said it (and he was a history prof, mind you) made it sound like it was a bit of a waste of time to do so, unless it was a really good question. With that advice in mind, during the process, I've emailed one prof in applying to 10 schools, and it was the director of graduate studies about a legitimate question about which sub-program I should apply to. Take that for what it's worth. I've heard it's a bit different in the sciences.