angel_kaye13

Yayyyyyyyyy!

I just received word that I've been accepted at the University of Indiana Bloomington's PhD program! This was my reach school--every other program that I applied to was just a MA.

I am shell-shocked. I need to sit down. I AM SITTING DOWN. What is happening!

 

Accepted to Chapel Hill! And on Saturday night, but the email went to my Spam folder! Anyone waiting on them, be sure to check yours.
 
Final response, thank god this is over and I can get to the decision-making. 9a/0w/8r

A few updates:
I was accepted into Marquette, interviewed for Stony Brook, and waitlisted for Iowa.
This is my first waitlist in the midst of 5 other acceptances, but I am pretty certain I've either been waitlisted or rejected at Oregon and Florida.
Difficult decisions lie ahead! *shakes with nerves*

Got into Old Dominion's PhD in English today. I have a family and 3 young kids and a full time instructor position where I live, so I was thrilled to get into this program because of their distance option. 

After waiting through a painful number of rejections, I woke up to an acceptance from the University of Toronto! Absolutely thrilled, and totally in shock since I was already steeling myself to apply again next year.
@ThePomoHipster Congrats to you! Will I see you at the visit day?

I got into the University of Toronto!!! It was my first choice Canadian school so I am sooo excited! 

I just got into my #1 choice--University of Oregon! Perfect fit & location for me/us! So so relieved right now.
 
2 acceptances & 3 still unknown (they send out decisions very late evidently). I AM FREAKING OUT. haha

I have this same fear of asking too many questions before the prospective students weekend. I got an email from a POI offering to answer any questions and the cool, calm part of my brain is like "yeah, girl, just tell her you'll see her next month." But then the other 95% is like "ASK EVERYTHING! WHAT IS CLASS LIKE? WHERE WILL I LIVE? DO YOU HAVE MY FAVORITE KIND OF OATMEAL?!"
The struggle is very real over here.

Let's be real, we'd all be the Anthony Michael Hall nerd character.

The standard goodbye for academics is, "I'll see you in another life/conference."

In all seriousness, it is a shame that we'll all be going our separate ways soon enough...like The Breakfast Club. 

I'd be the Judd Nelson character, because everyone else is going to move on, but you just know I'll remain here for years to come.


(Yes, yes, I know the comparison breaks down under scrutiny)

I got one, too! I actually laughed out loud at the reason for rejection. I didn't take it personally, but I also didn't particularly see the reason for including it. It wasn't nearly specific enough that if I had been shut out this season, I could have applied that information to improve my chances next go-around. Oh well. 

Sharing with all of you this little piece of tao from one of my favorite musicians, Joe Walsh. It's been helping me keep things in perspective for years:

"As you live your life, it appears to be anarchy and chaos, and random events, non-related events, smashing into each other and causing this situation or that situation, and then, this happens, and it’s overwhelming, and it just looks like what in the world is going on. And later, when you look back at it, it looks like a finely crafted novel. But at the time, it don’t."
For those of you who are having a tough season: keep writing your novel, even when it seems like Lemony Snicket is showing up every other day, intoning why things are not going to work out how you expected or hoped. You're gonna be okay.

Congratulations, I'm so excited for you! If you're thinking about them and have questions happy to answer any like I said  Their book studies stuff is definitely great—Hooks is super awesome, the Center for the Book is crazy, lot of great resources. 
I also already decided—off to Notre Dame! My other offer wasn't funded, and even if I got off the waitlists for my other schools I felt the faculty at ND were best for my interests, their funding was most generous, and they just have a lot of great resources. Really excited! 

And let's not forget...Vancouver is really beautiful!

For what it's worth, UBC is out of frame, but not far to the left of this image, basically on its own peninsula.

Yes, you could say they're...moving things along...keeping the momentum up in the thread...

Prunes are making the topic hot, though!

@Ashley828 ^ this sounds like pretty solid advice.
I've also heard that if you have other offers, it might be a good time to mention them. If you said to one program, "Your program, Program X, is my top choice, but school Y offered me $$$. What is the cost of living in X city? I am trying to weigh my offers to make the best decision," perhaps they would up your offer, or let you know whether or not stipends are fixed. Worst case scenario, you get some helpful information about the cost of living. 

I want to preface this with the acknowledgement that this may not be the correct place to post this, and I apologize in advance! Just wanted to post somewhere to let UMN Twin Cities applicants know that my advisor/letter writer attended UMN for her PhD and her advisor is still there and a part of the graduate admissions committee. I was rejected and she reached out to him and shared with me that because of the job market for the humanities they accepted fewer students than previous years, and almost all of them already had their MA degrees (he also said he was impressed by my application and many others that would have probably been accepted in years prior, but not in the current market). As an undergraduate dipping my feet into this process, it made me feel a lot better to know with some certainty that it's not always about you, sometimes schools just can't take you for logistical/economic reasons/etc. That being said, MAJOR congratulations to those who did get in at UMN because it sounds like it was ultra competitive this round. 
Also hoping for more good news this week for myself and others! Good luck everyone and congrats to those who have already been accepted!  
 

Here's hoping this thread is overflowing with good news this week! Best of luck to everyone!

Sometimes, programs don't have a ranked waiting list and instead divide it by subfield. If that's the case, they may be waiting for someone to reject before offering it to the next person in the subfield. They may do this in order to make their "prestige" higher by keeping the admits low. Others may do this due to funding concerns or to make sure that they don't have too many people in one specific subfield enroll or to make sure that too many people get the same adviser. Others may indeed leave it up to the graduate school to decide which often has their own schedule of things that must be done. There are lots of things going on behind the scenes that we may not be aware of.

GOT MY FIRST ACCEPTANCE from the MA program at UBC. I'm so happy, it's a great fit. I don't feel like I can accept immediately before I know if I've been admitted to any funded PhDs (since I'm American and a Canadian MA may be financially challenging) but this is such good news. It's such a load off to know that no matter what else happens I have at least one option for next year.

Ahhhh! I finally got accepted somewhere! I was starting to think I was going to receive a slew of rejections but NO, there is at least ONE acceptance!
I got into Texas A&M's PhD program!
Part of me was like: Maybe you should email them just to double check that they didn't get it wrong somehow.
But I am sooooo happy, I just finished running around my building screaming my head off.

YESSSSS just got my first acceptance from UMass Amherst!!!!!!!!! 
the email wasn't even the actual acceptance letter, but was from the writing program looking to set up interviews for teaching associateships. however, the first line of the email is: "I was recently informed you were admitted into your graduate program.  Congratulations!"
 
SO FREAKING EXCITED!!!!!

I finally got my first acceptance! UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA!!! After three rejections from US schools, this really feels like a dream! I'm so relieved!!!