hreaðemus

ME I AM SCARED. *hides* Berkeley is my tippy tippy top choice you guys - I REALLY want to stay. And also I know "will be down for maintenance" doesn't mean "will be uploading decisions" but does anyone else feel like 9 AM tomorrow is going to be the moment of truth??! Edit: oh, maintenance is on Saturday, not Friday... Never mind. but still, eeep!

I'm embarrassed to admit this, but I barely looked at the question of "fit" at ALL when applying to my schools. Instead, I asked my favorite professor for her recommendations - I figured that whatever she held in high esteem would be beneficial to me. Of course, if I stay at my alma mater I'll be working directly under her, so I know the fit HERE would be amazing. But otherwise I just put together the best application I could, and figured the schools would either want me or they wouldn't. My personal opinion - and this is not to undermine the hard work you've all put into this aspect of applications, clearly it's working for y'all - is that "fit" is difficult to determine from far away; it's an ephemeral concoction of personalities, location, luck, and skill, and all of that is hard to assess in advance of experiencing the university and department first-hand. So I figure, if I get in anywhere, I'll just go visit!

Oh - also, about the GDoc! There is this awesome feature called the "filter" function, which allows you to sort entries by column - so I think comp lit or American studies people should feel free to enter themselves if they like. I went ahead and turned it on, and added an extra "Department" category. If you only want to view one category of entry (say, Comp Lit), you just sort by that keyword to get the results you're interested in.

Thanks for the congratulations on my prize, everyone! You're all so sweet. Oh - on the contrary, US schools remain my top choice because UK schools don't offer pedagogy training and teaching experience. My mentor, who got her Ph.D. in the UK, specifically told me that it's harder to get a US TT job with a UK degree due to the UK emphasis on research without pedagogy. While it's possible to apply for and acquire such training at a place like Cambridge, the process is much more difficult. I don't consider it drudgery, at least not at the (admittedly well-funded, and thus less teaching-intensive) programs I applied to... and at my undergrad alma mater, my top choice, I would be more than happy to give back to the department by teaching! That said, I have also not heard about funding from Cambridge. I was not awarded the Gates, so my only options would be Cambridge Trust or Trinity (the college I was assigned to) scholarships, which aren't announced until quite late - maybe April? At which point I hope I will already have been accepted at a US school.

Was that really necessary? We all have anxieties, whether or not we're accepted - I think, since the title of the thread is "Let's Overanalyze Together," that the OP has as much right as anyone to make fun of themselves and the application process. I, for example, pretty much feel like this every time I check my (empty) inbox:

Thank you! I'm excited to explore the city - AND there will be "excursions," apparently, to Iona and to see the Ruthwell Cross, which just makes my Anglo-Saxonist heart beat faster!

This is not related to acceptances and rejections, but I won a prize at my school today! For "exceptional academic excellence in the English department." And a friend of mine says his faculty mentor told him that this particular prize can really be a leg up during admissions to my department's graduate program, which is my first choice, so... fingers crossed?! I hope I hope. I would withdraw all my other apps if I got in and got funded, I don't even CARE that it's less fancy to stay at the same institution for undergrad and grad school. I think I'm going to use the money to fund my trip to Glasgow for the conference I got accepted to. I have to say, I wish I'd won all these things BEFORE I submitted my applications!

Yay that's so awesome!! I really hope you get bumped up to full acceptance! Congrats.

OMG that's amazing! Thank you, thepriorwalter!!

Well, gosh - my post sparked a super interesting area of conversation here! That makes me happy. I think you all have raised some excellent points. My perspective on "hard stats," as it were, is that individual scores are only marginally useful on their own - obviously each school selects a range of applicants, and we all know the GRE provides only a very limited prediction of success, often based more on socioeconomic stratification than on ability. However, they can be extremely useful in bulk/over time. For example, I know Berkeley will likely notify acceptances in the next two weeks - and I know this because, over the past six years, GradCafe folks have consistently reported acceptances between Jan. 31st and Feb. 22nd (my birthday, augh!). However, I DON'T know how many of Berkeley's admits, on average, have been published; I don't know how many get in with a GRE Quant score of >50%, I don't know how many have conducted independent research, and I don't know how many contacted their POIs before applying. But IF accepted applicants reported this information as consistently as they report the date, I would - and I'd be much better equipped to situate myself within the applicant pool. In this sense, posting said scores is a gift to future applicants more than anything else. But with enough data, it would over time reduce the sense that adcomms are totally arbitrary, and give us a way to more efficiently self-assess. If, for example, 70% of Notre Dame acceptances report having been published prior to admission, but 65% report a GRE Verbal of 162<, then we know Notre Dame prioritizes publications over a high Verbal score - and future applicants know that there is a specific, concrete way for them to improve their chances at that school. While the "soft" areas of applications are both more important and less straight-forward, there are still ways to vet and compare. For example - did your paper win a prize? Was it published? Did three professors read you draft and give you the OK? Did you write it the night before your applications were due, or agonize 6 months in advance? These are not cut-and-dry factors, but they still give a sense of performance and preparation - and for that reason I think they're useful! I totally understand the hesitance to boast or emphasize high scores in a competitive environment - and for what it's worth, unræd, I think that shows you're an awfully nice person (in addition to being astoundingly fancy). But I would be 100% behind a collaborative Google doc! I think that it's important to remember that the end goal of scholarship is, in actuality, the production of new knowledge - not competition or personal success. And we can produce new knowledge right here, right now, just by pooling our resources! So why not?

This is a bit random, but has anybody noticed that the majority of people who are accepted to Ph.D. programs post minimal information (GREs sometimes, comments rarely - and then somewhat vague, like "Second choice. Excited!") while people who have been rejected tend to offer a list of achievements (GREs + "Three pubs, 2 first author, three years research experience. Their loss.")? I have two thoughts on this. First, I totally understand. When you're admitted, the pressure is off - you're free! Woo! Your entry in the database is a celebration, and really you'll never need those stats again, so who cares? And when you're rejected, you feel defensive - you worked hard for this! You're awesome! This is so arbitrary. Those responses are totally natural and totally human. BUT. It would be so useful for me, and other prospective grad students, to know the specific qualifications of successful applicants. So this is really a very heartfelt request: when you get in (and I have so much faith!!) PLEASE include your stats. Pleasepleaseplease. And if you've got research experience, an MA, publications, etc, it would be awesome to know that too!! We all want to be successful applicants, after all - sharing your particular qualifications would be, in my opinion, very generous. Just a thought as I wait impatiently for Jan. 31st!

*crawls under a rock* I'm not sure I can stand it. What's going to hurt more, the waiting or the knowing??! I'm so scared...

Agreed! Chin up, Wyatt's Torch - don't give up before you have a reason to! Right now this is us (and the cupcakes are our schools): But I have no doubt that soon you'll start hearing back, and then you'll feel more like this guy:

Yay for the new UW-Madison admits!! Gosh, this month is getting exciting. Terrifying for me. But exciting for all of you!!!

Trying to distract myself from the waiting:

Oops, wrong thread!

Good for you!! Do you mind my asking where you've been accepted?

The three stages of checking my email/GradCafe results: 9 AM, with coffee: 3 PM, after coffee has worn off: 10 PM, when coffee is not an option:

I've never actually had the opportunity to date someone in the humanities (I went out with an astrophysicist a few times) and I'm not sure how representative my opinions are (this thread seems to be mainly male-identified queer folks who date other male-identified queer folks, and I am basically the opposite of that), but I tend to think other academics are really attractive. I LOVE hearing really smart, really engaged women talk about their research. It's awesome. Then again, I'm also not very competitive, so I guess that might make a difference too...

I just wish ALL the universities would follow their lead and tell us already so we can get on with our lives! It's like waiting for final grades x100,000.

OMG OF COURSE you are super-duper special!!! Congratulations!! I'm so glad you can relax now and wait for the other decisions to come in.

*pokes nose timidly into conversation* Um... so I love gifts... but this thread is making me nervous. Whether it is proper and professional or not, I absolutely adore my letter writers on a personal as well as professional level, and give them (small) gifts all the time. (I get gifts back, as well - does that make it less weird?) I have a background in visual arts, so I am painting something for each of them to show my appreciation for their help with grad apps in particular. I am especially geekily proud of my most favorite mentor's gift - I painted an imitation page from a medieval manuscript based on an old joke about sea turtles and bioluminescent algae (hard to explain). It has a border of silly animals, and the same short goofy poem written in Latin on one side and Old English on the other... I haven't given it to her yet, but it makes me laugh every time I look at it. I think gifts are awesome, and while I may be a person who errs on the side of over-thanking, I suspect we all like to feel special and appreciated, and I show my appreciation whenever I can. Hopefully they all understand and don't mind! I've never had anyone object, so I think it's ok...

It looks like someone got accepted there for Communications and Media too, so maybe their non-STEM decisions are just coming a bit early? Or maybe that applicant was super-duper special... at any rate, we'll see soon if it's a trend or an anomaly!

Yay!!! Congratulations! Are you the person who posted an acceptance by the University of Minnesota in the results search?

Mine is a toss-up -- "Anglo-Saxon England" introduced me to the professor who would become my mentor and basically changed my life, but "Theory of the Poet," co-taught a semester later by that professor and another who is now a dear friend and LOR writer, really kick-started my career in academia and got me the attention and support I needed to thrive. Both courses were, that said, amazing and really fun. I'm a major major fan of my undergrad institution and my department. I think ALL my professors do an amazing job; they're so supportive and intelligent. I'm basically a UC Berkeley fangirl, I fear.