Hopephily

My pleasure!

Yeah, just around the corner.

You're welcome!

Welcome to the party and best of luck!

This is a nice idea. I, too, used a spreadsheet (excel). I think I would have been overwhelmed without it. Some of the columns included the application URL for each school, login/pw info, a box where I maintained the status of my letter writers (e.g., request sent vs. submitted), special notes for the quirky applications, the kinds of transcripts required, as well as a column for the status of GRE scores.

I started perusing the grad cafe results page from last year. Many of you might already have looked at this (multiple times), but I just thought it could be helpful to list some of the dates that people started hearing back. It's surprising how early some of them started last year. Note these are just some of the earliest dates that some applicants reported acceptances for. I only made it through Feb 20th. Jan 15: Cambridge (M.Phil) Jan 18: UC-Riverside, Edinburgh. Jan 21: Warwick Jan 23: Baylor Jan 24: ASU (HPS) Jan 25: Missouri-Columbia, Ohio State Jan 29: Illinois-Chicago Jan 30: Duke Feb 1: Northwestern, U Chicago Feb 4: UC Irvine, UCSD Feb 5: UC Berkeley Feb 6: Penn State, Indiana Feb 7: Rochester, U Connecticut (UConn) Feb 8: Washington University in St. Louis (WashU) Feb 9: Arizona, Carnegie-Mellon, Oregon, UC Irvine, Stony Brook, Kentucky Feb 10: UPenn, MiamiU (Ohio) Feb 11: Pittsburgh, Minnesota Feb 12: Western Ontario, (CU Boulder too, but...) Feb 13: Georgia State (M.A.) Feb 14: Stanford Feb 15: Emory, Georgetown, Michigan State, Northern Illinois, U of British Columbia, Wisconsin-Madison, Brown, Feb 18: Buffalo, Iowa, Notre Dame, Feb 19: Loyola Feb 20: Syracuse, U of South Carolina, UNC-Chapell Hill, MIT

I've made it a point not to look over my materials after submitting my apps for fear of losing my sanity. But it's nice that some programs are allowing for changes post-submission.

I actually never took Star Trek (the next generation) very seriously growing up because of the negative stigma surrounding it. But I happened on it on Netflix one day. Some of the episodes are pretty silly, but I found a lot of it quite interesting as a student of philosophy.

The Sopranos was such a great show.

I'd rather not say on here. But you can pm me.

Thanks. It's not an undergrad journal. It's a legit journal in my main area of interest. I'm apprehensive about naming it though.

This is good to know. I was naive enough to assume that most programs paid for visits.

This is what I had in mind. As for me, I feel fairly good about my writing sample--it was accepted for publication.

I think I remember reading your post about how this happened. That's got to be pretty reassuring. For the rest of us, it's a deep mystery what our recommenders actually wrote.

I'm too shy to disclose specifics like that.

Well mine was more conventional than yours. It consisted of an SOP, 3 letters of rec and a sample (but certainly no book).

I've never heard of a conditional acceptance. How common is this?

I almost didn't apply to NYU because it felt like playing the lottery. But then again, I don't know that I will not get in.

There was a thread sometime ago asking what each application took to be the "Achilles' heel" of their application. There was also a topic about how cautious everyone seemed to be about their chances in landing a gig. So what do you feel to be a particular strength (or strengths) of your application?

I think it makes a lot of sense to care about location and so if it works out that you get accepted into a number of programs that you can choose between, then that's great.

I didn't know this about Ann Arbor (or much of anything). Thanks for the info.

Yeah that's what I often hear about Tucson. Have you seen the weather in parts of AZ right now? high 60's-mid 70's -- killer.

Congrats

MattDest, Did you grow up in Tucson?

It's cool to see that, for some of you, location can play a significant factor. I agree that ideally, it would be an important consideration; as some of you have rightly cited, we will be spending a large portion of our lives where we end up (fingers crossed of course). As for me, I think USC would be great because I grew up in L.A. for part of my childhood and I like it there (or at least in some of the neighboring areas). I also hear that Rhode Island is quite beautiful and so Brown would be high on my list if location were a significant factor. Of course, it's also a great program for plenty of other reasons and so I don't mean to make it sound as if I think otherwise.