grad_wannabe

it's not over yet!!! Hang in there!

Preach. My coworkers today got seriously disgusted with me. Coworker: "Hey, you must be pretty happy that all of your applications are in, right? What are you doing with all that energy?" Me: "Um, it's all condensed into a black hole of anxiety and compulsive email checking." Coworker: "... are you serious? What the hell? Why would you do that to yourself?" Edit: for what it's worth, I HIGHLY recommend the Chrome Page Monitor plug in. Now instead of manually entering all of my programs into the Results Search over and over, I hit one button to check for all of them.

AAH I'm the EXACT same way. I'll lay in bed staring at Work Project, berating myself for being unable to start it, wondering what the hell is wrong with me, sure I'm going to get fired any second. Then usually just before the deadline I'll get that final mental push of motivation, sit down and crank out work for 15 straight hours. Next project, rinse and repeat... I'm really started to wonder if I have some kind of problem. Everyone keeps saying "oh you're working too hard!" and I want to say "but you weren't there when I was laying in bed loathing myself for three straight days..."

Congrats Pedanticist! I have a few friends from college to who moved to Austin, they love the city.

Ah THANK YOU! I have to admit, my heart skipped a few beats when I saw that interview (or, at least the notification) took place a week ago. I was getting ready to cross 'SC off the list...

Looks like someone got an interview at USC!

I have a friend who applied to the same program three times. Third time was the charm: he got in.

I'm glad I'm not the only one whose heart filled with dread upon reading that post!

Can you walk us through how you do this?

http://www.thegradcafe.com/survey/index.php?q=Bowling+Green+Rhetoric+and+Writing Looks like you'll have to wait til mid-to-late February.

I had the same experience. First time around I gave full reign to my natural inclination towards verbosity. Got a 5.5 Second time around I tried to reflect the recent strides I've been trying to take in my own writing: wrote more clearly, more succinctly, more directly, more active voice. Got a 5.0.

Has anyone heard anything from USC Annenberg? Considering their crazy-early deadline I was hoping they'd have equally early notifications, but that looks like it's not the way things are going...

There was a guy in the anthropology forum who posted that part of the reason he wanted to do field work in far-off locations was to woo exotic women. I'd imagine a comment of that sort during a visit weekend would get one tossed right off.

I think people are sick of hearing me talk about it at this point. I'm a little embarrassed.

You've got this. They're bringing you in because they want you in their program. They're all rooting for you, and we are too!

School A: the graduate director (not the professor with whom I'd interviewed via phone) called my cell and told me over the phone that I'd been accepted, then in the same call told me I'd been awarded a full fellowship and TAship. The call came in the morning, because I remember talking to him from my car, in the parking garage at work. School B: the graduate director (the person with whom I'd Skyped) called my cell and told me I'd been admitted and that funding information would come later. After a week or so (fuzzy on the details now) a letter arrived in the mail (a single page, not a big package like you'd think) outlining the funding offer. School C: the email came Sunday evening. There'd been no interview. The graduate director emailed me a fairly short note, something like "Congratulations, I'm very happy to accept you into the program. The funding information will arrive soon." A few days later (again, fuzzy on how many) the letter arrived (again, single page) with the funding offer. School D: waitlisted via email. After I made my choice of C, I called the guys from A and B and let them know of my decision. Edit: and for what it's worth, choosing between my top 2 picks was very, VERY hard, even tougher than the applications themselves. They were very different programs, at opposite ends of the country. I felt like an entire possible life was dying for either choice, like a Sliding Doors scenario, I had to choose which life I wanted. That was a tough time, full of apprehension.

I keep checking my application status page. They all still say "Submitted."

My professor mentioned that yes, this is a thing (especially if you'd already visited the campus and/or corresponded with your PI). "You may not even get called for an interview. Sometimes that happens, when they're sure of someone." Take it as a compliment! CONGRATS!

Yeah I was worried about that. In an attempt to diversify my approach, for one of my programs I refrained from attempting any POI contact. Never emailed or wrote to them whatsoever, just submitted the app. All the POIs with whom I'd had some interaction (6 out of 7 apps), I sent the "app is officially in" email. Of course, remains to be seen which approach will yield results!

I did. All POIs responded with some variation on "Excellent, I look forward to reading it. Best of luck."

My acceptance email for my master's arrived on a Sunday evening.

TWO for TWO! NICE!

One of my profs actually has his signature set to "sent from a mobile device, please excuse typos" because they're so common.

Please do! That would be a great help, thank you and GOOD LUCK!

Oh man -- talk about the horns of a dilemma!