letstalkshop

They've since emailed and offered to reimburse up to $500.

Yeah, what's the deal with Stanford...Did the people who got accepted today also get the email yesterday saying that their application was received and under review?

I got the same. 2 weeks is so long...

They sent an attachment with a formal letter with funding info.

Stanford is definitely behind this year. I'll call them a little later when I'm not at work. I promise it's not that scary.

Hi Maxine! I got it too. Congrats. What are you confused about?

I'm pretty sure all departments technically "recommend" you for admission and the grad school approves it. I've never heard of someone being recommended and subsequently rejected.

I have the same! I'm not a great fit for that program and will almost certainly decline, for anyone who gets waitlisted...

Funding info for UCLA should be coming in early Feb. I got funding info from Duke, but only for 2015-2016. Anyone know what the deal is there?

Yes, that's why they called me asking me about the probability that I would go there.

So it looks like Duke is sending out rejections first -- this is pretty unusual, right??

You of course have to consider how many people over 30 are actually applying relative to people in their 20s. If you don't mind me asking, what did the POI say that got you thinking about this?

PM'd you!

They definitely do not interview every finalist and it wasn't really an interview. He just wanted to know the probability that I would go there and said I was the only person they were calling. Good luck

Got an "unofficial" offer from Duke...

Duke POI emailed me asking if we could talk on the phone about my application. Anyone else get an email like this from them? Not sure what to expect...

Neither of those schools interviews. Columbia notifies late, in March I think. You can check the results search (eg search NYU sociology) to see when schools have notified in the past.

Also, very often the department sends notification of acceptance to the student before the official graduate school is notified (e.g. the graduate school of arts and sciences). Often the department leaves it to the GSAS to notify of rejection, because it's more work for them to individually notify of every rejection (which is often hundreds of applicants and would take hours and hours). For example, I heard from the UCLA sociology department long before I'll hear from the grad school of arts and sciences about my formal acceptance.

I mean, if you think of schools that send out acceptances in batches, meaning that they don't know who all the accepted students are when they send out their first or second or third batch, it makes perfect sense that rejected students would find out last. I know it tends to feel like a kind of unnecessary torture, but assuming it takes extra work to notify more students, of course they are going to notify the accepted students first, and of course they are going to wait until they are absolutely sure who they are rejecting to notify students that they've been rejected. No program is intentionally trying to torture you! They take extra care to consider who they are going to admit, and send those out first for competitive purposes (and otherwise) and also take extra care to consider who they are going to reject. But in the end, it's much more important from the school's perspective to make sure the accepted students have notification first.

No funding package, the email I got said funding info would come early February. I got a phone call from my POI and an email from another faculty member.

Thanks. Since they mentioned the visiting students weekend in the acceptance email but didn't explicitly offer to pay I wasn't sure. I'll wait for another email.

Um I had a so-so GPA in undergrad (3.59) and a 165/162/5.5 GRE (V/Q/AW). No pubs, one article under review (which has since been rejected), no presentations. Good research experience and LORs, and an MA in soc. I also exchanged several emails with my POI before applying. Good luck to everyone. Strange for a discipline such as ours to make such significant decisions based on such poor metrics of talent and/or merit.

I got into the PhD program at UCLA today and a POI contacted me to ask if I'll be visiting... Is it customary for soc PhD programs to pay to fly you out after you've been admitted? I feel somewhat awkward asking them to fly me out, especially since I work full time and might need the funds less than others who are current students, but I also don't think I'm willing to pay for the visit myself. Any experience here?

Just got a UCLA acceptance. Almost throwing up with excitement at work but I can't tell anyone because work people don't know I applied. Feel free to PM me with questions.

For me, it was being encouraged to apply to top programs by my MA advisors, and being told I had a really good chance (with the caveat that it may be a crapshoot anyway). I have pretty strong GREs (V165, Q162, AW 5.5), and at the time I had an under review publication (which has since been rejected). I have a just fine GPA from a good small liberal arts school (3.6), but a 4.0 from my MA in sociology (but I don't know whether they care about this much or not, since it's for some reason really easy to get great grades in soc grad classes). I have strong LORs, 2/3 from well known people, and pretty solid research experience with two well known profs. I also had some extra disposable income, which might sound ridiculous to say, but helps explain my willingness to apply to so many competitive schools despite the fact that I know they're so hard to get into. I was seriously considering applying to schools that aren't top 20 but was also STRONGLY discouraged from attending anything but a top school, since it allegedly wouldn't be worth spending 5 years at a not-so-great program given your eventual job market appeal. I do think it's likely that people who are really aggressive about applying to competitive schools are also more likely to aggressively post on a forum like this, but that could be too simplistic of an assessment. I also think, honestly, why not aim high?