johnnycomelately

As it stands, you have a few options. Attend the program you have committed to, probably not your first choice, but time might change that. Contact the MA program you declined, tell them you made a mistake and see if they can still take/fund you. Take a year off and apply next year. 
Most decisions you will make in life will leave you with some sense of "what if", but that's just part of the decision making process in general. Try not to be too hard on yourself and do what is best for you. 

As it stands, you have a few options. Attend the program you have committed to, probably not your first choice, but time might change that. Contact the MA program you declined, tell them you made a mistake and see if they can still take/fund you. Take a year off and apply next year. 
Most decisions you will make in life will leave you with some sense of "what if", but that's just part of the decision making process in general. Try not to be too hard on yourself and do what is best for you. 

As it stands, you have a few options. Attend the program you have committed to, probably not your first choice, but time might change that. Contact the MA program you declined, tell them you made a mistake and see if they can still take/fund you. Take a year off and apply next year. 
Most decisions you will make in life will leave you with some sense of "what if", but that's just part of the decision making process in general. Try not to be too hard on yourself and do what is best for you. 

Committed to Michigan State...great environment and I was offered a great fellowship!!!

Committed to Vanderbilt last Friday!  It was a difficult decision, but I knew after visiting that it was without question the best program/place for me.

I will be attending Penn State! Just committed this morning. It feels good to have definite direction in my life again  

Attending Boston College =D

Thank you so much for all your input. I decided to accept! And it is fully funded. I had to get over the "grass is greener syndrome" and I am so excited to make the most of my PhD studies. 

From what I was told by advisors, so nothing is 100% certain....
April 15th is the deadline for accepted students (those accepting in the first round(s) of acceptances) to accept/decline offers. Many programs will *likely* start looking at admitting more from waitlists now that they know for sure who has/has not accepted those offers. There may still be some waiting, but hopefully you get some good news soon!

From what I was told by advisors, so nothing is 100% certain....
April 15th is the deadline for accepted students (those accepting in the first round(s) of acceptances) to accept/decline offers. Many programs will *likely* start looking at admitting more from waitlists now that they know for sure who has/has not accepted those offers. There may still be some waiting, but hopefully you get some good news soon!

If you don't have any other offers you are needing to respond to, give them some time. Admissions committees/program admins know this is important info for prospective students, and they will get back to you when it's all figured out. Should you have other offers requiring a response soon, however, give them a call, or contact the other program's DGS asking for an extension.  

Hello all! I just sent a PM to someone with this info, but figured for the common good--and to correct some of the statements on GradCafe from memories of my own thinking about whether to attend--I should add to this forum. I am a MAPSS alum who had a 1/2 tuition scholarship and who had to take out student loans to pay for the rest. Attending was the best decision I ever made.
When I applied to PhD programs the first time, I received no PhD offers (there are several reasons for this), but I was really considering not going to MAPSS since everyone denigrates the program on GradCafe and calls it a "cash cow." I felt like it might be some joke going to the program. But, if you work extremely hard, it can pay off immeasurably. This round, with the MAPSS degree, the story changed completely: I received 5 funded PhD offers, including 3 at ivy league schools (one of which is #1 in my field). Since PhD offers are fully-funded these days, I feel like the investment literally pays back with funded offers, not to mention that I did get a job and have been able to pay off a good amount of loans just this year. 
Most people, I will admit, decide in that MAPSS year that they don't want to do a PhD though, so you'd have to be comfortable with the idea of taking out loans if you decide the PhD is not for you. Also, not every PhD application story is the same as my own--everyone has different experiences so nothing is a guarantee. BUT, every year MAPSS gets people who didn't get many (if any) great PhD offers and then every year they churn out students who get accepted into the top programs their next time around. And I cannot stress enough that it is completely how much you put into it: MAPSS gives you the access/chance to be seen by the top scholars in your field, but then the ball is in your court after that. But if you're a really serious student then you shouldn't listen to those on GradCafe who usually don't even go to the school, or who are undergrads with tangential experience. MAPSS has a wonderful placement rate that you can be a part of if you work for it! And I am happy to meet with anyone visiting the campus for more information if you're interested.

You know what else the taxpayers are funding? The military (nearly 50% of every tax dollar, btw). The interest on federal debt. Courthouses and the salaries of everyone that works in them. The infamous parks and rec. Road maintenance. Green energy subsidies. Farming subsidies, for that matter. Development aid to poorer countries. Politicians' airfare to international congresses. Etc etc etc. Which of those have anything to do with first amendment rights? Is good asphalt a right? Are solar panels a right? Is taking photos with African orphans to pad your Facebook page a right? The government doesn't just spend money on rights. If it did, it would be a lot smaller, and the smooth trajectory of your civilian life which you now take for granted would be a lot less smooth. The government also doesn't spend money on things you think it should spend money on. What you pay in taxes is money you give away to be spent at the discretion of the wider community, and sometimes it is spent in ways you don't agree with. Too bad, so sad.
OP, your line of argument is so incredibly stupid, and judging by how passive aggressive and rude you're being to the other commenters, I no longer believe that you're arguing for the sake of argument, playing devil's advocate, or even trolling. I think that your failure at getting accepted into whatever grad school inspired this rant is due to the fact that you spend too little time studying and too much time ranting on internet forums, rather than to some imagined miscarriage of justice.

They are asking applicants to express their thoughts, feelings, opinions etc and are then accepting/accepting students based on that. So if an interviewer disagrees with or was offended by what an applicant said and rejected the applicant because of it then it is a free speech violation. Maybe this is too basic for highly educated people to understand lol

Except that it isn't the mission of public universities to "educate all students… regardless of how ignorant an applicant is," and no one is "entitled to an education at a public university" in the United States. San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez established that there is no fundamental right to even a primary education, much less a college one, under the US constitution. Many state constitutions guarantee education to children (usually through the twelfth grade) as a right, and the Supreme Court has recognized since Meyer that students have a right to that (again, primary and secondary, not college) education unimpeded by certain state actions. State institutions of higher education are still bound by the fourteenth amendment, in that if a state is going to offer public college education it must do so equally among those students it educates (this is why, for example the use of affirmative action in college admissions is a matter of constitutional law).  But that jurisprudence has never held that public universities must accept all applicants, which is the only schema under which a process that admits some applicants but not others on the basis of merit (i.e. by rejecting "ignorant" applicants, to use your language) would be a constitutional issue. That there isn't any sort of "right" to postsecondary (i.e. university education) can be most clearly seen in the fact that students at state schools, even land-grant ones, still need to pay tuition.
Again: no one is entitled to an education at a public university, which means that in admitting students those universities are free to use academic merit and the fit of a prospective student's proposed research within the department--which is what a writing sample or interview is intended to measure--as a discrimen in admissions. It is true that they may not consider status as certain protected classes in their decisions (they can't, for example, categorically deny admission to an applicant solely because she's a woman), but that's an equal protection issue, not a first amendment one.

In any graduate program, resources are limited. The question for admissions to any graduate program, then, is what students will make best use of that program's resources?
Interviews—no less than essays, to which none of you have objected—are a way for universities to judge which students will gain the most from their program. Any student who claims, without proof, that the moon is made of cheese, and denies all proof to the contrary, will not gain the most from any astronomy program.
I am not a lawyer; perhaps you would have an argument if interviews were required for any state-run, "open-enrollment" graduate degree that actually rejected students based on the interviews. However, since no graduate programs are open-enrollment, and all are choosing how to educate a body of students given scarce resources, this is not only a legal non-starter, but should be a legal non-starter. As far as I can tell, the logical conclusion of your argument is that any time a state-funded educational program required a one-sentence essay—or perhaps even filling out one line of one form?—for admission, that violates the applicant's right to free speech. After all, what if the applicant reveals through her speech (whether written or spoken) that she is simply less qualified for admission than other applicants? If you choose not to admit her because of the lack of qualifications she revealed, that's discrimination!
Would you also argue that any grade in any class in a state-sponsored universities is a violation of free speech? After all, if a student submits a final paper responding to a prompt that asks students to write about archaeological evidence of early hominid evolution, drawing on at least three peer-reviewed articles from the journals X, Y, and/or Z, with an essay that argues for creationism based only on Biblical quotes, that should be illegal! It's a violation of the student's free speech! The student didn't follow the assignment at all, but no non-dangerous speech should ever have any consequence of any kind.
This is both a standard that is completely unworkable and one that goes against any interpretation of the first amendment that has, to my knowledge, ever held sway in legal circles. As mbfox said, the first amendment protects people from legal (especially criminal) consequences for their speech. It does not protect a single person from SOCIAL, PROFESSIONAL, OR ACADEMIC CONSEQUENCES OF THAT SPEECH.

So this post isn't really for me or for Heather... It's for anyone who is looking at these schools in the future. 
I ended up deciding on Stanford for the following reasons:
Coursework - Because my focus on the transition to college spanned both K-12 and Higher Ed, the POLS program offered me the greatest level of flexibility to study both. The cohort is focused on the whole continuum, and they end up working in a variety of sectors (charter, public, higher ed, nonprofit, etc.). Also, because Stanford operates on the quarter system, I have the opportunity to take a greater variety of coursework, essentially an extra semester's worth of classes. I felt like this was the best use of my time. Leadership - The focus on leadership through the POLS seminar was really attractive to me. During the Autumn quarter, the seminar is used to study different leadership theories, and in the Winter & Spring the seminar is used to put those theories into practice. All of that culminates in the POLS Project, which I think really demonstrates practical knowledge to a future employer. The director emphasized that the program was there for your personal development and growth, and his goal was to help you figure out what kind of leader you wanted to be in what kind of organization. General Atmosphere - The POLS program was just a great cultural fit for me. The director of the program, David Brazer, was very down to earth and eager to talk with us individually. Stanford definitely did not pull out the "bells and whistles" for prospective students. Some schools I visited were a little more flashy, and I appreciated that I didn't feel like I was being sold something. I just felt like I was in a community of helpful people. We had four different chances to interact with current students through a number of activities, and we had several reception/meals with current staff and faculty. Everyone was fantastic.  Funding - I had a slightly better financial aid package from Stanford, but the differences were pretty slight. Marriage & Travel - This will vary for everyone, but travel affected my decision. I am married, but my husband is going to remain at his current job in Texas and visit when he can. Flights to San Francisco were significantly cheaper, and weather conditions are not something we needed to worry about as much as Boston.  We also just loved the area - there was so much to do. I really enjoy hiking, and hiking up the coast was so beautiful. We're looking forward to enjoying nature when he comes up to visit Latino Issues - I am Mexican American, and the majority of students that I serve are Latino/a. While Stanford is still an elite and primarily white institution, the state of California, like my home base in Texas, is almost 40% hispanic. The flexible coursework gives me good opportunities to take a few courses specifically focused on latino student success, and the organization I choose to partner with on my POLS project has a good chance of being Latino focused. If anyone else in the future is really interested in studying latino success in education, I would also recommend UT Austin. It's a top 10 education program, has great latino research opportunities, and a really socially conscious and diverse faculty. It was really difficult to turn them down. I'm keeping them in mind for a Ph.D. I still think Harvard is an absolute dream - check out HGSE 2016's board if you want more information about the school. It really is an amazing option to have. There was no "wrong" choice. Many of the prospective students I met were thinking about both schools, and I presume we'll all fall in different places for different reasons. Ultimately, you just have to decide where you will be the most successful.

Whoa, okay, I didn't mention affirmative action at all. Maybe I could better generalize that across the south on the whole, based on your comment? Again, I don't know, I haven't lived there. Sure, racism and sexism and other challenges are certainly everyday issues for a lot of people. 
I worked through a budget between the two and yeah, Texas would have been a little cheaper overall, but not by any amount that makes the decision unrealistic. I think a one bedroom apartment is a little ostentatious for a PhD student. I've been looking at shared houses in both cities - fairly comparable actually, and utilities seem to be around the same, too. 
EDIT: But thanks again, always appreciate some different insights!

To each his own I guess. I'm not really in favor of affirmative action. I don't think ethnicity should be asked on applications at all. And regarding racism I HIGHLY doubt that you could generalize that at just Texas. Racism happens everywhere. Texas would have been cheaper for you lol. Seattle rent is outrageous my friend paying like $2100 for a one bedroom there. 

Or it means that they applied to both reach and safety schools, and got unlucky with the safeties. Or they're switching fields and applied to many options in hopes that one would smile upon their unique background. Super judgey bro 

Agreed! Congrats on pulling it up. It's just that a 4% is extra scary when you consider that there are plenty non-STEM majors who take the test as well. Since the GRE quant is effectively high school calculus, I would have questioned your abilities to understand basic analytical techniques in your field, e.g. carbon dating (had you not improved) 

Haha sorry, I just can't understand your research. Do you collect data and pass it off to someone else to analyze? Do you expect all your data to be fit with a nice, normal regression? How do you communicate with mathematical biologists/sociologists and computer scientists when you need fancier techniques (like machine learning, perhaps) without having a rudimentary knowledge of those things? 

Committed to the University of Oklahoma yesterday morning! So glad to have this process over with...

I have decided on The Ohio State University, although it was a very tough choice between two very different programs which both had strengths and weaknesses. However, OSU offered me a fellowship offer just yesterday and it was really the extra little bit I needed to make the decision I already wanted to make. No regrets baby!

Going to Northwestern! Amazing funding and great placement history but my field (East Asian history) is a relatively new program there with only a few placements. Hope I made the right decision...