angel_kaye13

Chin up, friend; it's early, and (this goes for everyone) your worth isn't decided by whatever decisions are made in the coming months. 'Twil be alright, one way or the other.

Four Horsemen

Thanks...and you as well! A GC cohort would be amazing.
I'm rather surprised that I didn't do this earlier myself! I mean, committees change from year to year, so it's hard to say how predictive such endeavors can be...but they're oddly comforting (and simultaneously nerve-wracking, if that's possible)...

While most of me wants just one -- ANY one -- acceptance...OSU is one of my top choices, and has at least two hand-in-glove POI fits for me. I have a slightly ominous feeling that how OSU goes for me might telegraph how the rest will go. My rational mind tells me that feeling is almost certainly nonsense...and yet...

Not to get all forensic, but January 24th was a Wednesday in 2013, while January 20th (the main acceptance day) was a Wednesday last year...and January 20th was a Tuesday in 2015. So if past results are any guide, then it's probably more likely that we'll hear from OSU mid-week.

But a science, this ain't. Reading tea leaves or animal bones might be just as fruitful.

Two Pack

Boiler Maker

Longtime lurker, first time posting...
Accepted to University of Louisville (English--Rhetoric and Composition)! I was absolutely not expecting to hear from them so early, so the email took me completely by surprise.  I'm very pleased though!  Now back to being on pins and needles until OSU starts sending offers...

Shopping spree!!!! *^^*

Shopping spree!!!! *^^*

I, too, am a longtime lurker, but I'd like to step out of the shadows to claim this one! I was stunned to hear back so early, and with a university-wide fellowship nomination to boot! 
Congrats to those who've heard positive things already...and best of luck to those still waiting! I have 8 more programs to hear from yet, so fingers are still crossed here for more good news.

Big News? You're alive.
-There are currently seven billion people alive today and the Population Reference Bureau estimates that about 107 billion people have ever lived. -Having just a few coins makes you richer than most people on Earth.
-The opportunity to attend school is something many people don’t have. (Which makes having a college degree even greater!)
-Most people lack a bed of their own to sleep in
-Many people on earth lack access to clean water.
-Cell phones make talking to loved ones easy. -The Internet, n'uff said?   But in all seriousness, try not to compare yourself to others. We have a tendency to look at how great the lives of other people are going without realizing the stresses they're hiding. There may even be people looking at you and saying, isn't it great that Shaun or Rachel is taking chances to pursue what they want no matter the cost? They don't realize that you're refreshing your e-mail every minute waiting for news.
 

Now I'm thinking I should have used a picture on my CV, so the ad comm couldn't possibly resist my inviting and fun smile. 

Keep your head up. Emory and UMD are extremely competitive. In the past, Emory only has taken 12 applicants out of the 161 that have applied. That's roughly a 7 percent acceptance rate.

The good news is that most schools haven't notified yet and there are plenty of results to come. Don't despair. Also, so much is about 'fit' that it may not be any indication of how good your application is.

For reals, yo. ;-)
But seriously: ETS. I'm not worried, and I haven't received any email to this effect {yet}, but two of my top choices still show not having received scores. I've checked the ETS website an OBSESSIVE number of times, before I realized this is just ETS, and my schools know this, too. Hopefully. *^^*

The feeling when the graduate coordinator at one of your schools tells you a month after the deadline that they didn't get your GRE scores. But also secretly hoping they're telling you (instead of just ignoring the application) because they want to admit you...

Lots of students (most students!) finish their Masters without publishing anything. You have to have realistic expectations. Frankly nothing you've described your advisor doing so far sounds outside the ordinary to me. She wants you to come up with a research question first, then you can work together to shape it into a feasible project that has the right kind of scope for a Masters project. It sounds like you haven't done that yet and instead you keep coming back to her with nothing to show, and she keeps sending you out to do the work. Do the work. 

It's your job to find a topic. Finding interesting research topics is one of the most difficult parts of being an academic; no one will do that for you. Your advisor can help you talk through why you think something is interesting or what direction is worth pursuing once you have a topic, or suggest readings and potential things to try. She can help you tackle difficult aspects of your readings, help you out when you get stuck, ask you difficult questions about why you made X assumption or what about Y prediction, make sure the project remains a reasonable size so you don't bite off more than you can chew, and help you with your writing and presentation skills. It's your job to get started on this process, and identify the research question (or at least, area and vague problem) you want to pursue. You don't need to immediately have all the answers, but at the very least you need to be able to articulate something about what vaguely you want to work on, and why it's important and interesting. Bonus points if you have already identified the relevant literature and know where the holes are. 

I was thinking of reading that soon! It's a little late for me, but I've been doing a lot of work recently on dismemberment and man-eating in Old and Middle English lit, so I feel like it might be an interesting follow-up. Glad to hear it's good!

Right now I'm taking a break to read some fiction, so I'm doing The Watchmaker of Filligree Street by Natasha Pulley. So far it's a quietly hilarious and emotionally gentle magical realist novel just shy of steampunk. I'm enjoying it so much I'm kind of drawing it out.

As a student I want to share my experience having "bad behavior" with a teacher. I never went over his head or anything, but this guy is a bit condescending at times. In my first class with him no one really knew him and he's a bit introverted so he has a hard time connecting with students. So, with that combo, we all just thought he was mean and scary. One day he did something, though, where I still feel like he was in the wrong (essentially putting everyone's mistakes on a homework problem on a projector and bashing everything all of the mistakes). I walked out of his class in a huff (I was sitting in the front row of a small class). I took some time to let off some steam, but after the class ended I went to his office to talk to him. Nicest guy in the world. Opinionated and direct, but he cares about what he does and his students.
Most students from that class still don't like him- but most of them have never talked to him outside of the classroom. Me on the other hand? He's my favorite professor. When my senior project came around I didn't care what I worked on abouts long as it was under him. I no longer have classes with him but we're still working on projects together. I look up to this guy and he's probably my closest friend at my college.
So, a bad experience with a student can become a good one- and not all of us students all are all bad. And not all bad professors are that bad either. Unfortunately, most students don't quite see professors as people. People think it's weird that I'm close with my professor (partly because many people some still choose not to like him). But to be fair, I didn't realize how human my teachers are until my last year. I had them all on unattainable pedestals where they were all perfect people. Others just see them as people to give grades and nothing more, which is rather unfortunate because I've learned that my teachers are way cooler than any of the students.
 
 
On a seperate note, there was a student I had that class with (where I walked out) and had my senior projects class with him. We didn't recognize each other but eventually realized we had shared that class with each other. He only could remember me as the girl who walked out of the class and though it was hilarious that im now the student who likes this professor the most.

ALL BETS ARE OFF, PEOPLE!

Ooh! Yes! @JessicaLange -- it looks like you're the first acceptance on the board this cycle, so by GradCafe tradition, you get to start the 2017 Acceptances Thread! Go for it!
 

Hi, so I received an Acceptance email on Tuesday. I actually didn't want to open it, because the email just said Admission Decision. Very ominous. But I figured I would open it and then go to whateber online portal later and, to my surprise, it said Congratulations!
 
It's DePaul University. It's the only MA program I applied to so it's kind of Plan B, but I really like the program, so as far as backup plans go, it's definitely one I'm happy about. And it's so much pressure off of me to know that I can get 8 rejections and still be going somewhere in the fall.
 
Feel free to post your acceptances here. And maybe Rejections and Waitlists as well if you feel comfortable with that (unless you want to start a separate thread).

Note that MSU notifies R/C in December, and English in late January. We share a recruitment weekend, but that's the only overlap between the two programs.

meteor garden
(also a reference)

Meteor shower
(I've missed all references since reading rainbow :()