silencio1982

i totally feel your pain. hang in there! hopefully we will both be somewhere next year... maybe classmates at MAPSS haha.

baaaah. well, i guess it is pretty unrealistic that i would be accepted there anyway. fingers crossed for MAPSS...

for those who posted northwestern rejections- did you get an email saying your website status had changed? i just logged into the website and i still don't have a "view decision" link...

haha. best of luck to you! one of my schools is getting all my rainbows and cupcakes as well. i won't even say which one for fear of jinxing it. so i know how you feel

PS. on the MAPSS website it says: "MAPSS graduates have received and presently pursue doctorates in all of the University of Chicago's social science departments and committees" take it for what it is worth i guess.

ha, interesting and simultaneously depressing. my gut says that that can't possibly be true, but who knows... at any rate, it still seems like MAPSS would help one to get in elsewhere/fix deficiencies in one's application.... i hope :|

As far as I can the dept hasn't made its decisions yet. Or, maybe they have, but I haven't heard anything yet...

Wow, congratulations! That is awesome

hey ya'll. i was wondering if you could provide me with an opinion on something- i am going to try to make this situation as clear as possible without giving too much personal info away. last month i had some contact with a grad student in one of the depts i applied to. she provided me with new information about this dept that made me think it would be a great fit for me. i knew it was a good fit, but this new information about work going on within the dept makes me think it's a great fit. in the fall i had contacted a faculty member at this school, but he/she did not respond. turns out, as my grad student contact informed me, this faculty member had some personal matters that limited their availability- this is probably why he/she did not respond. the grad student told me to email that prof again, and a few others, and use her name, but i was squeamish about contacting faculty so close to decision time. well, i know they will be making decisions soon but i am weighing whether or not i should email faculty. would this be tacky? unprofessional? too desperate? what do you all think?

haha, yep. i know how you feel. my husband is applying for jobs in 3 regions of the country right now... he's a saint.

This made me laugh out loud. Thanks for that Boooooo to U-W! Ah well.

hilariously put. and AWESOME for you. i took the GRE five years ago... i probably should have re-taken them but i got married last fall so my life was kind of consumed by that for a while interestingly enough all of my percentiles went up- verbal by 3 percentage points, math by 1, and writing by 4. so that worked in my favor! hehe.

We sound a lot alike, haha. Well, I am not ready to give up yet. I am hoping to get into MAPSS at U Chicago with some funding as a plan B. I can do a lot to strengthen my app, re-take the GRE, take some methods classes, get a new writing sample. Luckily I can mooch off my husband for a year if I get into MAPSS, but I would really, really not want to take on student loans. An alternative possibility is trying to work for a university. I'm in development/fundraising right now so I could try to get a job in a university development dept and take a class or 2 to fill in gaps in my application. Anyways I am finding it really hard to deal with the thought of being rejected from everywhere, but I am definitely prepared for it to happen as it seems I have set my sights too high. It's actually not that depressing though, since I've formulated a plan to try again.

Rejected from UW via mail. One down, 5 to go. Agggggggggh.

Hey Ammar, I am in a very similar situation to you- except your GRE Q score is higher than mine, and I did take 1 semester of calc in college (got a . I am really concerned about this hurting my app now that I haven't had any good news. Right now I am praying for just one school to let me in. Aggh. I'm not opposed to blending quant and qual at all, I just have no background in quant. I guess I reached too high in my choice of schools... should have applied to some safeties. Eek!

Oh, i guess that wasn't an official NW rejection. I misread.

exactly! i hate having lingering false hopes. i'd rather just know, one way or the other. oh well. soon enough. someone did post a NW rejection, i guess i was wondering if they did them all at once or in waves. but i guess they probably all update their websites in waves.

Haven't tried it, but a friend of a friend who is a current grad student at U. Minn says that all acceptances will be sent by e-mail. Also... anyone else heard from Wisc or Northwestern? My status online for Wisc is still pending and Northwestern is unchanged... I am wondering if that means I could be on a de facto waiting list or something?

yep- waiting is even worse when you haven't heard any news yet at all!

i wish! it seems like most of the UW admits so far have been international students. i wonder if they are notified first... or maybe they just make up a large % of the admitted cohort this year... anyways, all my mail gets delivered to my husband at work. so if i get a letter today, i should get a call from him relatively soon...

haha. you guessed it. i have totally lost interest in my actual work now that notifications might be coming in. oops.

cool - i applied there for IR, with a theory lime twist :crosses fingers:

congrats! can i ask what subfield you applied to?

Absolutely. First of all, it shows your enduring interest in political science and your ability to do graduate level work. I think this definitely depends on your undergraduate experience-- It certainly held true for me-- my undergrad GPA is .2 lower than grad school; but my husband (in a different field) had an entirely different experience. While his GPA for undergrad and his master's was about the same, he worked his butt off for those grades in grad school and didn't have to try as hard in undergrad. I think any poli sci course work that you have done very well in would help rather than hurt. While it may have been "easier" to get As, remember not everyone does get all As, I think that definitely shows something about your aptitude for the subject and your ability to be a successful graduate student. Now is the time where we're all second-guessing ourselves (me, too!), but in reality most of us are probably pretty strong applicants. At any rate I can't see any scenario where getting As in graduate level poli sci classes wouldn't be a huge boost to your application. Good luck!

Oh, you just summed up my entire train of thinking right now. I feel like 100% rejection is coming my way... Ahhhhh! I should have applied to that Jethro school...