johndiligent

I have not offered to reimburse my LOR writers for courier expenses so I guess that makes me one of the evil people in this story, but my reasoning is that: a) I asked my writers in August, 2) I had all materials to them by the first week of September, 3) My earliest deadline was December 1, with the rest in January, which means that they had at least three months if not four to write and mail the letters, 4) I gave them stamped, addressed envelopes for every letter, 5) I never asked them to send anything by courier. When this happened, they themselves elected to do so (because they knew they'd procrastinated and the letters were late). It might make me a bad person not to offer, but honestly, I feel like they had plenty of opportunity not to have to send it by courier and they sort of chose to incur the expense by leaving it until the last minute. Had it been my fault that they needed to do it, I would have paid for it, of course. I sent formal thank you notes, and once I make my decision I will send a small gift plus a letter of thanks, informing them of where I ended up going. I worried about the quid pro quo-ness of that for a while but it was done more out of financial necessity (this time of year, I could barely afford the Thank You cards!) so hopefully they'll understand that.

Also accepted to the University of Calgary MA Religious Studies this afternoon.

For sure. I'm not even close to deciding, but I'll let you know when I do!

I suspected you did! I'm glad the "shortlisted" e-mail was a good omen, despite its weirdness...

dead wrong

Accepted to MA in Religion at the Univ of Toronto today. Good luck to everyone else!

There will be an "April is It!", I'm sure. I just hope I'm not still looking at the Waiting It Out board by then.

judgement day

I'd like an updated status bar on the website for every program that indicates where in the process they are... i.e. Applications Not Yet Reviewed, Initial Offers Sent: 6 Seats Still Available, Etc. Unrealistic, I suppose, but it would definitely make the whole thing a bit more transparent.

Or should publication standards go up? In the humanities, I'd like to think that it's never been enough for one to simply rehash research results. Sure, finding information has become a faster and more convenient process than ever before, but simply finding information isn't what we do. It's approaching information, contextualising it, ruminating over it, analysing it, synthesising it, etc. - that's what takes the bulk of time in research. Whether you google it or you're flipping through yellowed cards in an old filing cabinet, it isn't going to make the important parts any speedier or easier. If anything, having electronic access to a greater repository of information (or the very assumption that you have this access) should exact more rigor from the scholar, as far as I'm concerned.

muffin tin

Congrats to both of you!

application anxiety

bran muffin

I've similarly heard that that's a good one.

Yeah, by "you would probably already know it" I meant in the sense that the OP would likely have been told that he/she'd been accepted to one in the rejection letter. Way to go, Toronto, on the vague wording, though!

Love Actually

Another way to gather this information is via the Results Search (button up top). Search for discipline or a school you're curious about and scroll through the acceptances. One column will tell you the Method of Communication: via Phone, Post, E-mail (pretty popular way of getting an acceptance now)... That'll give you an idea of what methods are most common.

I think I'd wait on it a bit. When someone says "in a week's time" they don't necessarily mean "in exactly 168 hours". Personally, I'd give them this week to let you know and if you haven't heard by the first of next week, then e-mail or call.

I think you should absolutely be honest. I don't think they're trying to thwart you, they're just curious. If anything, you might get a better offer from the school, since they'll want to match or better the offers you already have.

I think, if you're not happy with the offer or the programme, you should absolutely turn it down. The whole intention to transfer thing might backfire on you anyway and besides, you'll need to do very well in the programme prior to transfering, which might be difficult if you already hate it.

trash heap

Unknown Soldier

Strongly concur. I'm very surprised at the number of people who feel contacting the professors is a waste of time. If anything, it helped me narrow down my programs of interest from the 21 to 6. I never found a professor who was unwilling to discuss the compatibility of their interests to mine or of the program to me, and it was so helpful in discussing fit in an informed way in the SOP.

I think it really does help them to get the word out quickly, since if they haven't made the final decisions yet then they'll know that they have an additional spot to work with. So, if you can bear to never know the final outcome - which I'm sure is easier said than done, I think you should do so as soon as possible.