squankabonk

Please pull a Costanza on Yale. You'll be my hero forever.

This isn't mentioned often when those rankings come up around this forum, but the NRC rankings floating around are over five years old at this point. Please keep that in mind when referring to them. Many professors have since retired/ moved on to greener/warmer pastures. 

Haven't made it in off the waitlist at UMD, but their DGS said he'd have a pretty good sense by the middle of March or so (before their open house). In my acceptance letter from UConn, they asked that if I'm no longer seriously considering them, that I decline their offer by March 16th, as they'd want to extend their GTA line to someone on the waitlist not much long after that. So I'd be willing to guess that mid-March is standard for many places. Slightly different for most top tier programs, which, as the results board shows, often don't get back to waitlisters until the first or second week of April. 

Just wait till you get the singing telegram...

You were saying? 

Just wait until the official NYU rejections come out!

Looking at the results boards, I'm proud that I haven't seen the brattiness in posts of English rejections that I see in some of the other fields.
 
Sheeesh! Entitlement!

Also denied by Rutgers, thanks to you folks here for the heads up to check. At least Columbia is in a consortium with them, so I can still take a course with my POI if I want! 

Honestly, I've been avoiding this thread like the plague because of the title ("I'm getting rejections and complaining to my friends, why would I want to go and read a thread where people are complaining and feeling equally bad?" I stupidly asked myself). Of course I should have given GC more credit, as everyone on here is being really supportive and awesome. I guess I have two things to add:
 
First, on the "getting into grad school is a major crap-shoot" side of things. I am in the second year of an MA. This means that I've seen three app cycles at my school (my cohort, this year's,  and next fall's). My school has a couple of prominent faculty who are contemporary Americanists, and we always get a ton of apps in that field. Now, the cohort before mine, through the vagaries of the wait list, ended up with like 6 people from that field. A couple of more got in my year. That meant that last year, people applying in that field had little to no chance of getting in -- the faculty advisers in those fields were just swamped. We admitted a bunch of medieval people to sort of balance out the department. OF COURSE these new students are awesome and deserved to get in, but equally deserving contemporaryists probably got snubbed. But how could you possibly account for this if you're a comtemporaryist applicant? Answer: you couldn't, and it's unlikely that your letter of rejection would explain the situation. You'd feel equally bad, even though you may have been considered a shoo-in if you'd have just applied a year earlier or later. 
 
Second, on the "doing an MA and feeling like you're treading water" side of things. I applied to a school's PhD out of undergrad and got waitlisted. Applied again this year in the final semester of an MA (even with a shiny new publication in a big-kid journal!) -- same result. It's tempting to look at those facts side-by-side and feel like I haven't made any real progress, but of course that isn't true. My research interests are so much more specific than they were before, and having excelled in my program for two years I am 100% confident in my ability to complete a PhD. I've taught my own comp class and written a syllabus. I'm not terrified of students any more. I simply couldn't have said these things two years ago. I guess this is getting a little sappy, but I guess I wanted to say that you can end up in a situation that wasn't your top choice, kill it, and end up with something worthwhile to show for it. That's always on the table, if you work for it.

Honestly, I've been avoiding this thread like the plague because of the title ("I'm getting rejections and complaining to my friends, why would I want to go and read a thread where people are complaining and feeling equally bad?" I stupidly asked myself). Of course I should have given GC more credit, as everyone on here is being really supportive and awesome. I guess I have two things to add:
 
First, on the "getting into grad school is a major crap-shoot" side of things. I am in the second year of an MA. This means that I've seen three app cycles at my school (my cohort, this year's,  and next fall's). My school has a couple of prominent faculty who are contemporary Americanists, and we always get a ton of apps in that field. Now, the cohort before mine, through the vagaries of the wait list, ended up with like 6 people from that field. A couple of more got in my year. That meant that last year, people applying in that field had little to no chance of getting in -- the faculty advisers in those fields were just swamped. We admitted a bunch of medieval people to sort of balance out the department. OF COURSE these new students are awesome and deserved to get in, but equally deserving contemporaryists probably got snubbed. But how could you possibly account for this if you're a comtemporaryist applicant? Answer: you couldn't, and it's unlikely that your letter of rejection would explain the situation. You'd feel equally bad, even though you may have been considered a shoo-in if you'd have just applied a year earlier or later. 
 
Second, on the "doing an MA and feeling like you're treading water" side of things. I applied to a school's PhD out of undergrad and got waitlisted. Applied again this year in the final semester of an MA (even with a shiny new publication in a big-kid journal!) -- same result. It's tempting to look at those facts side-by-side and feel like I haven't made any real progress, but of course that isn't true. My research interests are so much more specific than they were before, and having excelled in my program for two years I am 100% confident in my ability to complete a PhD. I've taught my own comp class and written a syllabus. I'm not terrified of students any more. I simply couldn't have said these things two years ago. I guess this is getting a little sappy, but I guess I wanted to say that you can end up in a situation that wasn't your top choice, kill it, and end up with something worthwhile to show for it. That's always on the table, if you work for it.

This ^^ seems just right to me: useful to hear what others' experiences have been, useless to extrapolate generally.  It's easy to forget, because the process is often so faceless (for legal reasons, I would assume), that the people on admissions committees are people, with the virtues and foibles that people usually have.  Group dynamics are probably a factor: what decision will make everybody in the room reasonably comfortable, and allow Professor Bob and Professor Susie to get along next semester.  Maybe Program A already has a second-career student, while Program B already has a higher proportion of straight-outta-undergrad than it has historically.  
 
The above comment made me remember instances in which I've hired people for work: some people just stand out, and it can be hard to say why.  They're not always the people with the most relevant experience, or the shiniest, most polished cover letter, or the greatest enthusiasm.  They just seem to fit, and you feel they'll ease in and do well in the context you know well (but they don't), and get the job done and be reasonably pleasant to work with.  It's probably profoundly unfair to make choices like that essentially by guessing, but it happens in hiring, and I bet it happens a lot in admissions committee meetings, too.  

Knowing ETS, they probably only give you store credit.

1) I have been lurking forums for weeks (mostly the acceptances thread), but the wizard people reference forced my hand and so now I have an account.
 
2) I'm apparently #2 on BC's waitlist. Wanna help a friend out, Lycidas?
 
3) Glad to be among homies, and newly converted homies.

SAME this is amazing, the first time I have found some fellow wizard people...

No, but I love your URL. SO much. Just needed to tell you. 

Willikers! Thanks, dear reader 

Well, bless my nippers, bless them all day long! Same to you, I love me some Marge