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Is it just me, or is the results board being flooded by spammers? 

@nesasp, congrats on your coming move! I lived in Boston for awhile and rented several apartments there. Finding an apartment is tough, but not as bad as somewhere like NYC. You are unlikely to find anything along the T that's affordable, unfortunately. You could probably find a studio or maybe a small 1-br for under $2000 in Somerville, just not in the area right by Tufts. My tip would be to look along Broadway, in the Winter Hill or East Somerville neighborhoods, which are further east on the other side of town but will be cheaper.
For something more spacious, look in Medford (South or West Medford neighborhoods) or Arlington (ideally near Broadway/the 87 bus so you can easily get into town).
If it's at all possible for you, my #1 piece of advice is to visit here beforehand and stay in an AirBNB or with a friend and spend each day of your visit searching, or have someone in Boston complete the search for you. It is very difficult to rent an apartment here without physically being ready to go see something or sign a lease. Also, use the for rent by owner section of Craigslist, because you can sometimes find below-market rentals without the non-refundable broker fees. Also, always call, never email.  

Just a note about grad life at Berkeley. It's striking to me how many students on Grad Cafe express their unwavering desire to attend Berkeley for doctoral work. And when so many don't get in, how disappointed they seem on the results page & forums. As someone who has spent the past two years in the department (was rejected for PhD in 2016, but offered a funded MA degree, which I accepted), I just want to say that, your rejection to study at this institution is not actually a loss on your end. Support from faculty is minimal, more students seem to be unhappy than happy with the program overall, funding is not good - especially when weighed with cost of living in the Bay Area, teaching jobs can mean you are responsible for 80+ students per semester (the school loves to have you as a laborer - not a researcher), average graduation time is 8+ years (again, due to lack of support, terrible funding and other factors). Once you get to know it, Berkeley is not the thriving, energetic place of your academic dreams! In fact, the hallways of the anthro department are stagnant & silent with every professor's office door shut. This is all coming from someone who is, on the whole, optimistic; I haven't had a bad time at Berkeley, but this is my honest reflection as I leave here for another program. I think we should all realize that the status of Berkeley's name does not reflect the actual experience of being a grad student here. So don't be hard on yourself for not getting in, and know that there are other programs out there that are less 'famous' but far more supportive. 

So, I've seen threads in other groups where people share their funding packages for MA/PhD as a useful resource for people who want to apply for schools, but aren't sure what the funding may be like. Or you know, just for sheer curiosity too. Anyways, the google sheet is editable by anyone, so feel free to add your school. Cheers!
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qoEVD2hIshffv07L00z0pDS0M25cKCB7PcjXpk-v5X0/edit?usp=sharing

I would email back and say you're still very excited in the program, and for them to let you know if there's anything additional you could send over to help push you up. Maybe also send something similar to the dept's director of graduate studies!

So, I was asked to do a general statement not mentioning departments, professors or even the university's name... And that was sent out by Fulbright to the different universities. I didn't do the applications myself.
I did write to a couple of professors in every uni before applying, but some of them didn't reply. And I also emailed the admissions contact person to let them know I couldn't customise my application. About half of them replied saying they'd let the admissions committee know.
I have two years' full funding with Fulbright, so I'm hoping they will like that almost half price haha
Fingers crossed!

Admitted to UCSD for Med/Psych! Has anyone else heard anything from them?

Omg.....I got the Enhanced Graduate Scholar Award for Penn State...my funding offer just jumped...a lot...holy shit  (Follow your dreams, kids, and you too may someday be crying in your office unable to believe that people think you're smart and capable)   

I feel like it's almost impossible to have an interview and not leave with a "well...I blew that" feeling. I bet it went better than you think! 

Just had a kinda super awkward interview...that was fun. 

Sorry to hear that  Rejections are never nice. But you have 3 more chances, so don't get too down yet! I'm still waiting on all 3 of mine as well.... the phys anth committees are giving me terrible anxiety. 

Omg I just got accepted to Cornell with full funding + summers !! So excited! 

I GOT INTO BERKELEY!!! No funding info

I GOT ACCEPTED AT PENN STATE!!! I LOVE THEM AND IT WAS GREAT AND I'M DEFINITELY GOING TO GRAD SCHOOL THIS FALL 

I've been repeating the same thing over and over in my head ALL MORNING: It's a new week. It's a new week. It's a new week. Fingers crossed for (good) results to start flooding in!

@sideeye_emoji thank you for the detailed insight, I really appreciate it! Now, to comb through research...
@waltzforzizi oh goodness, I completely misread your post! Haha, well good luck, hopefully positive news will head your way!

@phyanth, congrats! I would just say be as thoroughgoing as you can about anticipating how the interview might go given the info you have. Write down questions you might expect to be asked given your interviewers' backgrounds and practice answering them. Have a short list on hand of people you've read/consider yourself in conversation with in case you blank. And have at least one thoughtful question ready to ask them about the program/departmental culture. (All of this advice comes from my rumination on my failings in my own interviews, lol.) But I'm sociocultural, so YMMV. Good luck, though!!
@lylark, so true-- it's so hard to know how it went! I bet you did fine, though.

Same! I've had two interviews as well. The second one felt better because I knew more of what to expect, and both were friendly discussions about my project/interests/goals, but it's hard not to ramble on or freeze up. In hindsight I'm realizing I have noooo idea how it went. Still, felt good to at least get this far. 

How are people feeling post-interview? I've had two so far, so I feel lucky, but I don't feel that either of them went well... at all. I feel like if anything I hurt my chances. It'll feel so rough if I come so close only to sabotage myself interview-wise...

Hi all.
 
Tired of waiting for graduate committees’ decisions I estimated decision timelines myself based on gradcafe data. For each university and program in albums below you will find three graphs:
Decision timeline as a cumulative sum of decisions (accept, reject, interview, waitlist) as a function of time between Jan 1 and May 1 for the last five years combined. Boxplots of GRE Q and GRE V for people who reported both scores. Histogram of GPAs (from 2.5 to 4.0 with 0.1 step).    
Here is the list of programs I analyzed (some important notes below):
 
Computer science PhD https://imgur.com/a/cXaEs 
Computer Science MS https://imgur.com/a/u3joC 
Electrical Engineering PhD https://imgur.com/a/ra3Eh 
Electrical Engineering MS https://imgur.com/a/KUGrD 
Economics PhD https://imgur.com/a/NzlYm 
Economics MS https://imgur.com/a/JfgSk 
Statistics PhD https://imgur.com/a/mB5UC 
Statistics MS https://imgur.com/a/tXowL 
Mathematics (applied and pure) PhDhttps://imgur.com/a/d0821 
Chemistry PhD https://imgur.com/a/U5x91 
Physics (applied and pure) PhD https://imgur.com/a/35tTy 
Chemical Engineering PhD https://imgur.com/a/Tng2r 
Literature PhD https://imgur.com/a/LDKpT 
Anthropology PhD https://imgur.com/a/d5ub4 
Bioengineering PhD https://imgur.com/a/RpTSD 
Philosophy PhD https://imgur.com/a/ihoGS 
Biology PhD https://imgur.com/a/FWhoD 
 
How to use the graphs?
I used this data to decrease my own misery. Now that I know decision timelines of universities and programs I applied to, I can refresh gradcafe less and concentrate on more useful stuff more. Also, it is interesting to explore differences between different universities/programs. For example, some universities do gradual accepts rejects/accepts and others do it in waves. Some programs start early (chemistry) and some — later (CS). Keep in mind, that there may be errors in my analysis so use this data at your own risk.  
How reliable are timelines?
I personally trust them (but I am biased). In general, it depends on curve shapes and available data. If there are more than 100 observations overall — I would consider that data to be pretty reliable. If there are characteristic ‘steps’ — it is a good sign because may indicate internal deadlines for waves of accepts/rejects. But the number of admissions/rejections records in the data is definitely inflated by question records (i.e. ‘to poster below: what program?”). I filtered some, but definitely not all of them. Also, bear in mind that department policies can change.
How reliable are GRE/GPA?
Somewhat reliable. There is noise, mistakes (i.e. switched Q/V) and self-report bias. For example, salty people with good scores may more likely report rejections and lucky people with low GPAs may less likely report accepts. But for some universities which publish admission statistics (for example, Duke), calculated GRE/GPA medians are pretty close to reported averages (I didn’t calculate means, sorry). Also, we can’t affect GPA/GRE right now, so it is mostly for entertainment.
How did you do it?
Scraped and parsed all gradcafe results. Selected all records from Jan 1 2013 to May 1 2017 and combined data for all years together, so all data is based on five year period. For each university and program in question I built a cumulative sum of decisions as a function of days since beginning of the year. For analysis of GRE I only chose records which included both Q and V scores. For analysis of GPA I used only 4-point scale grades and didn’t convert other scales to it (i.e. 10-point). Selection of universities/programs was done by regular expressions so there can be some noise added by incorrect parsing. For example, “University of Washington” may both mean Seattle and St. Louis. I tried to avoid it the best I could but there can be mistakes nonetheless. How did you choose universities/programs?
Voluntarily, so there are a lot of omissions. Sorry, if your university/program is not there. Also, bear in mind that programs may overlap (for example ‘Computer Science’ and ‘Electrical Engineering’). Finally, I excluded uni/program from analysis if there were less than 30 observations.
Will you share your code/data?
I am thinking about it, but undecided yet.

Hope it helps and good luck with the admissions!


 

Just now getting onto Grad Cafe upon the recommendation of a first year Medical/Linguistic PhD candidate who I'm close with - hello! The waiting game sucks, but I just found out I've been admitted to the University of Iowa's MA program in Cultural Anthropology! I'm fourth on the waitlist for funding, but to have an admit at all is exciting! To those who have had interviews or admits, congrats!! To those still waiting, hang in there!

I'm also thinking of taking my social life off campus.
Being in a small school where everybody is significantly younger than me makes it difficult to find people near my age.
It has been one month since I started my PhD. Actually, making friends with younger students isn't as hard as I expected. I still remember my undergraduate years, and people haven't really changed. The undergraduates today face the same problems I did ten years ago. Many of them don't seem to notice that I'm very old, or they just don't care.
Just like other old men, I'm attracted to younger females but I don't think they find me attractive, lol.

Don't put so much pressure on yourself. Yale, Berkeley and Harvard are three of the most difficult schools to get into in the USA. Not getting in doesn't necessarily mean you are not good enough, it just means that this cycle they were looking for something different. Sometimes faculty alternate who gets a student, or funding is tight so they admit less than they wanted. If you don't end up with a successful application, I would recommend spending the next year getting a job or internship in your field as to get experience and possible publication credits. 
Crossing my fingers for your other applications. Good luck! Keep taking deep breaths and all will be okay

Got an email for an interview- MIT! I'm floored and SO excited!!

Just got an email for a skype interview at Brown with POI. Had basically written this application off since I saw other interviews go out last week. My subfield is linguistic anthro. They want to talk to me tomorrow! I am so scared...