jazzyd

Uh.... what?

Uh.... what?

Uh.... what?

My guess is that applicants who are "next in line" so to speak, aren't given rejections until much later in the event that one or several (or more than they expect) offers do not accept, they can still have options.
 
Or maybe sending out rejections is such a hassle that schools don't find it crucial to do until last minute. Hence why my mentor told me sometime last semester that if I don't hear from anyone by March I can assume rejection :/

I know we should move this, but alas, your post is good, and I want to respond.
 
Your post is very interesting. As with you, some of what I know about AA is observational, while some of it has been the product of research. For instance, I have observed my college classes being disproportionately represented with whites of privilege (and seeing as I've always gone to state schools...), which probably informs at least some of my more visceral feelings about AA. I have a clarifying question: did you find that white people in Hawaii were privy to being on the short end of structural inequity? I do not at all doubt the validity of your observations, but would be interested to know more, or if you've ever encountered research on the topic. Knowing nothing, I had just assumed that the indigenous/colonized peoples would be at a disadvantage, as with most cases.
 
I would disagree that achievement is "as" challenging for a white-kid from Detroit (hey, that's actually me! And yeah, it was REALLY challenging, but maybe not for the reasons you think...). All other things being equal, white-kids from Detroit have white privilege, which carries from birth to death, pre-school to grad school, your first job to your last, etc. They didn't ask for this, but it exists, and it is well supported that it exists. I'm not trying to downgrade any white person's accomplishments, but I think it's worth noting that academia and other institutions of whiteness (congress, etc.) are disproportional in representation to US demographics for a reason. So while I understand that AA is imperfect in that it perhaps gives some people a very rare "unfair advantage," there is already a competing unfair advantage called structural bias of favoritism toward whites. (Then you get into the aporia of whether unfair advantages rectify other unfair advantages and this debate gets into being a total mess...)

This whole protracted debate is obnoxious and rife with cliché. Generally, I agree with asleepawake -- DontHate's original post implied that Keely got into schools because of affirmative action. It was apparently not a personal slight, but since we have no access to the ad-comms or the applications, we truly have no way of knowing, so it's a moot point. Diversity fellowships are not necessarily funded by state or federal sponsored AA programs, either, so unless I knew more, I'd have no way of making a judgment, and I'm not sure why it would be relevant to a more general debate about AA.
 
Having a dialogue about affirmative action and diversity in higher education is obviously important, but rather than starting with offhand assumptions, we should have it earnestly.
 
((For anyone who's interested, I'm for AA programs. Slavery was only abolished 150 years ago; the south was de jure desegregated about 60 years ago. There are only a few generations between today's minorities and oppressed peoples, and in the case of some groups, there are zero generations. There has been no time for many groups, such as African-Americans, to accrue and pass down wealth from generation to generation, provoking perpetual, snowballing uneven development based on bias. Economically speaking, structural inequity has made achievement institutionally more challenging for some than others. What's worse, certain people have an attitude that we live in a post-racial society just because Barack Obama is president and, thus, they are redacting their support and efforts toward resolving structural inequity. Like with gun control, AA is a band-aid on a more pervasive problem, but since no one is interested in fixing the pervasive problem (it would require an enormous political overhaul), the band-aid will have to do what it can))

Affirmative action is, indeed, a thing, at least in some places for for some positions. It is a tiny, tiny band-aid on centuries of racial (and other kinds of) oppression. That doesn't make it cool to assume that any person of color who is successful is a recipient of affirmative action, nor is it any of your business if they are. Where it exists, affirmative action only helps when a candidate is already good enough. Lots of people of color apply and get rejected. Your comment was completely disrespectful to Keely's successes.

This is why, in my unimportant opinion of course, it's much less productive to go by straight rank (which varies across sub-fields and subsubetc-fields) than by placement record. Obviously these records can change over the course of time it takes for one to finish their doctorate, but it's a bad sign if hardly anyone from a department is finding work even if there's a "big name" attached to the program. Correct me if I'm wrong, but ranking is determined by the research a school puts out, and it's not a guarantee that the driving forces behind a department's impact are willing to work with or work closely with incoming graduate students.

Got a e-mail from UCLA this afternoon! I've never been to California before, but I've been in love with UCLA since sophomore year. Also got a really nice e-mail from a POI at Chicago whose work I am a huuge fan of.
 
Feeling very blessed right now

The forum gets randomly angry at people sometimes -- it's a strange mob mentality, and it's best to just ignore them.

Congratulations! I know someone who just got accepted today as well. I've heard so many good things about UVA.

Congrats!

Congratscongratscongrats!

He received a phone call and then a follow up e-mail (the latter presumably from DGS?).
 
 
That sounds like a really good attitude. I don't think any of us need to be told how abysmal the market is as a whole. If you can find a fit that allows your scholarship to flourish, I say by all means look further into it.

Congratulations!
 
I hope we get lots more good news this week for everyone. It ain't over till it's over!

He received a phone call and then a follow up e-mail (the latter presumably from DGS?).
 
 
That sounds like a really good attitude. I don't think any of us need to be told how abysmal the market is as a whole. If you can find a fit that allows your scholarship to flourish, I say by all means look further into it.

Definitely personalized. It sent from a member of faculty's e-mail address with a graduate studies coordinator CC'd.
 
Nobody should be counting themselves out yet.

Thank you! I was not expecting anything from Chicago for quite some time (as I think I mentioned in an earlier post) and then I wake up to an e-mail. I can't even contain myself right now. Not sure how I'm supposed to function at work and in classes the rest of the day!