ChurchHistoryNerd

Committed to Baylor! So excited to get started. Very difficult choice, but I am glad I made it.

First two official rejections received yesterday from Emory and Boston College. Afraid I'll be getting 0 acceptances again this year. Really hoping someone takes an offer somewhere else at Baylor so I get in off the wait list.

Got my acceptance e-mail from Baylor this afternoon! Beyond thrilled about this!
Good luck to everyone else!

You should do some spelunking to find out how big the waitlists are.  I can't pay you, so .... oh well.

I applied to the Theological Studies subfield and got waitlisted today.  So, to all who are being interviewed in theology this weekend, if Baylor isn't your top choice, please decline if they give you an offer! I'd love to be there.

Anybody interviewed by Baylor hear back from them yet? I thought we were supposed to hear something last week.

I would look at the results page to see if people posted about interviews. Not all departments interview and even then, each school has their own policy for interviews. For instance, I'm applying to one school that interviews everyone that makes it to the short list. In another school, they only interview international students. Then there is another school that I'm applying to that only seems to interview students who are interested in a certain specialization within the department. So not getting an interview is not an indication that you've been rejected. Added to that, some schools send out invites in "waves" meaning that they do not notify everyone at once.

Thanks for the encouragement! Let's hope my interactions do bode well. But time will tell.
 
Just to clarify: I do have a Masters, but it's just not from a Top Tier program. 
 
All the best to you again!

Having a Masters does feed into my original point of a professor's/committee's evaluation of preparedness for graduate school. There  might be a larger emphasis on GPA and GRE if one is coming straight from undergrad into a PhD program because there is less material to base one's evaluation on. Yale's admissions process for PhD is done through nomination by professor, then the committee evaluates it. In that sense, more weight is put on a potential adviser's opinion of you as a candidate. Not necessarily so at other universities I'm applying to.
 
My GPA and GRE would be considered par for the course of the typical applicant to these sorts of programs, but in the end, when it comes to the humanities at the ivies, it is your research proposal, your recommendations (and the notoriety of the professors recommending you or whether the committee knows them), and language preparation. In every email I sent out, I asked what qualities constitute a successful applicant to your program and I received relatively the same response from everyone, which I'm relaying here. Language preparation especially seemed to be a large factor (I have 6 languages under my belt, most more or less relevant to my area of study). They love it if you already have proficiency in a main language (in your case, Biblical Hebrew, maybe Aramaic and Modern Hebrew) and knowledge of French and/or German---it means you can get straight into the meat of things rather than having to spend years of your PhD gaining language acquisition to do your dissertation. 
 
As someone who would obsessively compare myself to others on this site especially when I was applying to A.M. programs, I just wanted to stress that GRE/GPA may be some of the things but not everything. It's important to have confidence in oneself/experiences and let that bleed into your SOP.  And to know that even if one is rejected, it's not necessarily because one bombed the writing section of the GRE or got a B- in Calculus one's freshman year, it could be that one's research and interests just didn't fit into the program---and if that is the case, you probably don't want to spend 3-7 years of your life in a place that won't make you happy. Which is why it's very important to write these programs and get a gist of it all so you don't waste money on an application that will probably be a 'no.' 
 
Good luck to you as well! I think that the fact that you're getting responses (even if it's not of the doing handstands variety) is an extremely positive point in your favor. I am friends with several professors and they tell me that when application season rolls around, they get hundreds of emails and ignore most of them (especially if they look like form letters). I'm sure you'll do just fine

What Poppycock. My GRE Math was pitiful, but I've always done well in language courses.

Let's talk about how stupid the writing portion of the test is.
 
"Here's a stupid issue that has two obvious sides. Pick one, argue it, and craft a bullshit empire for the next thirty minutes."