Nikos Evangelos

Yes! Several.

hei-le-lala-hei-le-lala-boobaboo!

Caffeinated

avoid

your

look

judiciously

smash

Viel Glück! (Bizarre: Won't post because my reply was too quick. Never saw a message like that before.)

They may not be required but they all say they do!

I get it too. As it says, all users will see this bizarroland message until the end of time. There is an additional page where you can use the ID they sent you after your application submission to log in and see a (confusing) statement on supplementary materials they received. Hope you got in. Still waiting for this one.

You should go ahead and use this opportunity to pose a legitimate question. They sent you the housing info, so why did they? Ask. My experience with writing to profs and programs and admissions dept. after applications have been 80+ percent good or neutral. Definitely helped get me into two places, and in other cases merely confirmed the inevitable. I do have the advantage of having applied to a lot of programs, which allows for experimentation. (No interventions in some cases, contacting gambits in others that paid off well for a couple.)

I hesitate to say which of my apps was easily the most annoying, hands-down, since it's still pending and this is my real face you see to the left. But DAMN, it was annoying. Half-meg limits on documents! Doesn't allow a CV (how am I supposed to describe 26 years of work experience without one, pray tell?) but expects individual fill-ins of each employer. Just picking the department was a 20-minute struggle (because rather than a standard drop-down it has a bizarre bug where the provided list keeps jumping before you can click your option). Also, a radio button I inadvertantly clicked could not be erased! This option was not offered. Instead it demanded that the rest of the entry be filled in, no matter what. Finally (on deadline day) I gave up and filled in a fake third undergraduate school called There Is No Third School. Berkeley featured the nicest application software. The rejection letter was also very polite.

If you've seen acceptances but no rejections from a given department on the results page, then it's probably only a matter of time before the axe falls. If you've seen acceptances and rejections, but you've received no notice after a couple of days, then you're probably in that painful, always hopeful limbo where you might be chosen as sloppy seconds, or thirds. But probably you will get screwed. Possibly right at the end when it will hurt the most. So it goes. This is killing me!!!

I already watched House of Cards. It's actually about as over the top, and humorless, as a Brazilian soap. Totally enjoyed. What now? ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGHHH!! OOOGA BOOGA OOGA!!!!!

Hogwarts vs. Battle School.

Sounds like you should just switch the letters so that A is B and B is A, and then you can take your top choice!

Yeah, plus it's $25 for activating an automatic e-mail system, involving little more code and no more resources expended than this post. Application fees, I don't mind, but what ETS gets away with - incredible.

Unfortunately, it's like the dream in the movies. You wake up from it, relieved, only soon to discover you're still in it.

Supply and demand is not an inherently capitalist dynamic. And "I'm no MBA" is an excellent qualification.

Who's doing the ranking and why does it matter? Seriously, are you telling me there's a standard that's measurable and valid and agreed on by consensus and permanent (or anyway: likely to be stable over time) for distinguishing "Top 5" from mere "Top 20"? Or that this will make a difference to prospective future employers or search committees when they're evaluating, say, 48 applications for 1 position? Or wait, are you perhaps telling me that some for-profit weekly publication on the brink of obsolescence that survives mainly because it's branded itself as an authority in judging academic programs has produced a list of "rankings" and you're worried about A being #4 whereas B is #16 out of XXX? Seriously? From your comments it's pretty obvious you like B better. You want B. Irregardless, go with what your heart and mind already tell you. On a separate question: Sure you should keep your research interests flexible. But don't let the market winds determine what interests you. Especially not in your dissertation! If no one's covered your passion by the time you're making your proposal, then that's what you should do. Or if you've got a major contribution brewing thanks to an idea that's yours and no one else's, then that's what you should do. You should think more in terms of great work that defines you (and might redefine a piece of your field) rather than twisting and turning to adapt yourself to uncertain vagaries of where the market might be in X years.

Something similar happened to me with UPenn, which I fixed the last couple of days. Scores weren't "official" due to a mistake in date of birth but had been seen. In any case, the claim is that the app went through the usual process and I'll be hearing from them soon (that department has not yet started issuing verdicts according to the results page on gradcafe). On the whole, if the committee has not yet met, all institutions tend to be very forgiving about delays in receipt of material from third parties such as GREs, transcripts, and recommendations. And long as you submitted all of your required materials with the app by deadline they tend (at least so I've been told) to consider what you have and to believe your "unofficial" claims until the official ones arrive

All that matters is that your app is complete and submitted by deadline. Recommenders can submit afterward, but do keep pestering them (nicely!) until they do. Admisssions committees generally convene starting in mid to late January.

Are you saying I haven't heard of Mackinder, Mahan, Haushofer, Clausewitz, Rumsfeld and Sun-Tzu? How dare you!

If the study of history is really fading from relevance, then that's a problem in the society and its culture, and not in the study of history per se. Or of the other humanities and social sciences being declared irrelevant under the neoliberal regime of market value ueber alles. That being said, who wouldn't want another degree?