Sonic

Mine did the exact same thing and I was admitted (my status changed to admitted 1 day after "awaiting final grad review"), so I'm crossing my fingers for you!

Yes, please.

I just got the acceptance email from the University of Maryland! It completely caught me off guard, since I didn't expect anything on a Sunday morning. This was the last school I had to hear from so it looks like this crazy ride is over for me! Good luck to everyone who is waiting for those late notifiers!

Congrats, rustonite!

You were just too awesome for Binghamton! Just like I was too awesome for many, many schools... You are still waiting on several schools that are bound to be better fits. I had received a rejection and several de-facto rejections, including one from the school I'm doing my Masters at. I dealt with it by doing one really fun thing every day, to make sure I had some me-time (away from the forum!) and was laughing and having a good time. Looks like you're on the right path with the cocoa! Good luck!

Uh oh, my town called a Snow Day. No class, but I'm also positive this will mean no mail. I'm probably the only person around with conflicting feelings about a Snow Day!

Nothing here, and I haven't noticed any posts on the results page. I assumed they would notify late, and I have to wonder what their funding situation is...

Last year Anese and I both heard good news from NYU American Studies on April 14th or 15th. So seriously, do not give up hope!

Still waiting on USC and I haven't had news from them since the email confirming my username and password to the website. I had hoped we'd hear from them early, since they've had our apps since Dec. 1. Congrats to the person who's heard and good luck to the rest of us!

For serious. Anyone interested in a kick-bum homemade Ding Dong recipe should feel free to PM me. I'm working hard to get those suckers considered "brain food". Plus, making them is a procrastination tool.

Agreed, though the size of the bottle should reflect the application fee and involve compensatory damages. The $110 I paid to receive a rude rejection addressed to Mr. X when I am a) a woman, and holding a degree from a well-known women's college, AND a phone call ("Hello, Mr. X?") stating the same should earn me quite a few mint juleps.

I got my first acceptance, from the University of New Hampshire, a few hours before my Masters thesis defense. There's nothing like the promise of money to support your reading habit to start the weekend right!

I agree with this wholeheartedly. I am also an Early Americanist, and my professors tell me that they see a lot of otherwise qualified applicants who, because they study the Anglophone world, are way behind what the department would like. This makes me think that the baseline language skills for acceptance and what the departments prefer are worlds apart. Any intensive language training would look great on an app and, of the three factors the previous poster mentioned, it is the only thing you can do something about immediately.

I don't live in the "GradPlex", as it is known, but I have been inside a few of the apartments and I stayed there when I was a prospective student. Apartments come in doubles, triples or quads, and the quads have two bathrooms. The kitchen is insanely small, especially for 3 or 4 people. Many of the units have been recently renovated and are much nicer and cleaner now. The GradPlex is right next to the law school, but is within walking distance of the history building (but by no means very close). You will have to pay to park at the GradPlex, but that decal is the same as the general day-student parking pass (though pricey, around $300, and most off-campus students find away around paying it). The complex is located on a residential street so it is nice and quiet and you aren't bogged down by Colonial Williamsburg tourists. The units have air conditioning but you can't control it, I think the school runs it from May to September/October. The GradPlex is unusually attractive for campus housing and has a nice courtyard and I believe a barbeque area and a volleyball setup. Internet and cable get rolled into the monthly bill, and you can prorate through the summer if you're staying around. All the apartments come equipped with couches, coffee table, and a table and 4 chairs, and the bedrooms have twin beds, dresser, desk with hutch, and pretty big closets (I think the furniture is pretty good for institutional stuff). The only complaint I've heard is that it can be unclear who is responsible for maintenance concerns. So far, my friends are pretty content with it, and they didn't have the hassle of dealing with buying/moving furniture or finding an apartment or roommate on their own. In my opinion, the pictures of the inside of the apartments posted on the website make the apartments look very bad. The bedrooms are actually a decent size and the dining/living areas are spacious, and whatever crummy furniture you see in the photos is long gone. I hope this was somewhat helpful!

Hi, I'm currently at W&M for my History MA. I'm obviously best acquainted with the HIST department but I'll try to answer any questions you come up with! Congrats on your acceptances!

I think they're being harsher more generally. I'm out of undergrad and in a Masters program and have not had any luck -- no word from lots of programs that have notified, a couple unofficial emails conveying "waitlist", and a "waitlist but likely rejection" from my current program (not the best fit, but still upsetting). All of my communication has indicated that there are tons of applicants and very few spots. I'm sure there are also internal department issues, like hiring freezes and delayed promotions, that we're not always aware of. What I really wonder is how the departments are adapting their review process. A few schools seem to just have really bumped up GPA and GRE standards, which may have held me out of the review pile altogether, and a couple of schools have been open about the fact that they are going to take a lot more time to review materials this year. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that most of my schools picked the latter option for this process.

I won't predict, but rather will observe: This is not looking good...

My parents and co-workers have stumbled onto GradCafe. My secrecy plan is foiled!

Take a look at the schedule of events. If there is some kind of grad student social event, you might not miss out on info. In my opinion, you really need to talk to graduate students when you're not surrounded by profs. The grad students I was able to speak to outside of the official events had a lot of important things to tell me that they never would have said in front of faculty, and I had questions I would not have wanted to ask in front of profs either. But boy, does a hotel sound nice!

Is the person who received the admit letter from Brown around? I have so much fear that my ridiculously unreliable postal worker is going to mess up my mail, any info would be great. Looks like I'm going to have to pull out my lawn chair and camp out at the mailbox...

I stayed with a grad student last year when I was prospective student for my current MA program. It was great! She took me around town, and stopped by a few of her classmates' apartments, so I ended up getting to hang out with a bunch of students (and I got to see where they lived, and subsequently avoided the Grad Apartments). The students were friendly and honest; I had the opportunity to listen to them give a little talk at the Visit Day and I definitely felt I had a more complete picture of the ups and downs of the program having interacted with them socially. I am now good friends with a few of the people I met and knowing people in the area made the first few weeks here so much better. That said, bring a sleeping bag! And ask if it is possible to get your host's email ahead of time. I ended up getting switched from one host to another at the last minute because one was too busy, but my visit would have been really different if the person I stayed with didn't have the time to show me around, chit-chat, etc.

As someone who has yet to hear a single word from 10 programs and leaves in a constant state of freak-out, I am so happy to hear this! Congrats!

At this point I would welcome an acceptance from Papa John U.

I'm on my second application cycle, and so far, no word from any of the 10 schools I applied to (though other people have heard from five of them). I definitely think my application is stronger this time around. I graduated in 08 and my senior grades improved my overall GPA considerably, I entered a competitive 1-year MA program and am doing well, and I was able to submit a much, much better writing sample than the junior-seminar paper available to me in Nov. 2007. My graduate school professors were incredibly helpful in the entire process, much more so than my wonderful but slightly out-of-touch undergrad adviser. I applied to schools that were a better fit than the first-round schools, and I was very happy with my application instead of the prior year's "oh well, better send this thing off and hope for the best" attitude. The flip side of the coin is, I don't think I could make my application any stronger. So a third round of applications doesn't make sense for me. Hence the constant panic! Here's hoping we all get good news soon so we don't have to flirt with our options in "the real world".

That quotation sounds like a high school student! "But the teacher told me to do this, so I did it. Why did the teacher give me a C???". Total lack of responsibility. My professors (who would have killed me if I called them 'teachers' in the press) really tried to set the burden of the work on us. They were very much "I've given you the tools, go use them". Still, I think a lot of students expected what the professors called "The Magic B". Students would flip if they got lower than a B, some worked just enough to achieve the B, and I think many expected that borderline satisfactory work would earn them the B (like magic!). Magic B seekers be warned: sign up for a different section.