amam

sharing  this masterpiece from Facebook:
 
”Reply to rejection: Thanks for your interest in rejecting me. After careful consideration, I regret to inform you that I am unable to accept your rejection. Please note that I have received a record-breaking number of competitive rejections this year and your unsuccessful rejection does not mean your rejection is not good. In light of this, I will still attend your school this fall and I am looking forward to see you on campus soon.”

5????? That is cruel. : ( 

I'm sorry to hear that! This app cycle is just the worst. With only 4 spots available for the whole department, it almost feels like no one should have bothered applying at all...

An email from the director of graduate studies at UVA somehow went directly to my spam folder today. I'm waitlisted! Here's an excerpt:
"As you may have heard, the department is only admitting four students this year, so that we can allocate more funding to advanced graduate students who are facing a very difficult job market. With 120 applicants, and only four spots this year, the competition is unusually tough, and unfortunately, it is unlikely, though not impossible, that a spot will open up for you in the PhD program. Please let us know if you have any interest in being admitted into the MA program. We would be delighted to welcome you as an MA student, but you indicated that you would not consider an offer of admission to the MA program."
That last part is kind of funny, considering I am already getting a MA degree...
 

I feel all of that, plus obsessively checking the GradCafe results page. ?

Five spots for 150 applicants at BU-STH. Harvard only take 4 music PHDs. Holy crap. What is going on this year- obviously, we all kind of know, but I'm still dwelling on the possibility that:
 
1. there are MORE applicants (bc ppl are unemployed? Bc GRE is waived? Why else?) 
2. there are less spots (because of covid effects on funding, faculty time/energy?)
3. I also know a significant number of final year masters students at both my alma mater Masters programs that decided not to apply this cycle bc “pandemic academics is hard enough with an application cycle to deal with”. 
 
Premises 1 and 3 seem to go together weirdly. Maybe more undergrads are trying to jump the MA stage and flooding places like BU? 
 
I'm just puzzling through it all. My need to diagnose and understand complex systems is what makes me a systematic/constructive scholar... And why I secretly love Whitehead I suppose.

Thank you for sharing this. I completely agree that rejections are just a part of the process, and this is extremely true even for some of my own experiences in the past. However, it is *so* hard to come to terms with that in the moment! Hoping we can all gain the courage to see the brighter side in the next days and weeks.

So sorry to hear about folks who didn't get in to their top choices, or, for some, any choices. Remember that a rejection doesn't reflect your potential or intellect. A couple of notes for encouragement:

I did my first masters at a TT school in the US; the Ph.D. program there is notoriously difficult to get into. A sort of true legend floated around there when I was attending. One student who graduated not long before I started was rejected outright from their PhD program in NT. He waited another year and applied again. He was accepted without funding and turned it down. He applied the third year and was accepted. 

Turns out, he was incredible in the program. He finished quickly, wrote an outstanding diss. and was immediately hired by one of the best schools in the world. He was one of the most successful students in recent years and yet he was rejected.
 
Many of the great scholars that have shared their application stories with me have told me about the many rejections they received. These same scholars have won awards, edited prestigious volumes, written groundbreaking monographs, etc. So, whatever you do, don't allow rejection to knock the air out of you for too long. If you care enough to anguish on grad cafe about this, you probably care enough to be good at this. Take heart fellow sojourners. 

Sorry to hear of your BU rejections guys. It's been a sad year for applications. I don't even know what to say. I got in touch with my POI to inform him of my being wait-listed. He was empathetic, noting that they had over 150 applications this year and only had a slot for 5 students. I think that number is cruel to be honest. It's just a sad year to be applying. I'm honestly tired.

Sorry to hear of your BU rejections guys. It's been a sad year for applications. I don't even know what to say. I got in touch with my POI to inform him of my being wait-listed. He was empathetic, noting that they had over 150 applications this year and only had a slot for 5 students. I think that number is cruel to be honest. It's just a sad year to be applying. I'm honestly tired.

Sorry to hear of your BU rejections guys. It's been a sad year for applications. I don't even know what to say. I got in touch with my POI to inform him of my being wait-listed. He was empathetic, noting that they had over 150 applications this year and only had a slot for 5 students. I think that number is cruel to be honest. It's just a sad year to be applying. I'm honestly tired.

I do hope you get off the waitlist! Good luck.

Ugh. I hear you. I would hate being wait-listed because there is not clear answer. At least with all the rejections letters I can have some peace. I hope you get off the wait-list though. ❤️ 

Just read a wholesome thread on a Facebook group called “grad school memes with relatable themes”:
 
https://www.facebook.com/groups/GradSchoolMemesWithRelatableThemes/permalink/716233179258090/
 
The comment section is similar to our thread here. A lot of reassurance and solidarity. The only thing that sucks more than the waiting period is applying in a COVID year, and as passionate and hardworking students and academics, we deserve better than to wait for months only to open rejection letters and question our self worth and scholarship. Critical thinking, especially within the field of religion, is never easy in a world where assimilation is the norm. I know for me personally, this academic journey has subjected me to a lot of ostracism. So we should all take a moment to remember that we are resilient,  badass, and deserve better. That is all.
❤️

Meh. That's life. I just wish they'd sens out a physical rejection letter so I can mentally move on. 

When I was waitlisted at two schools last year, I went super intense on my AAR paper applications. Kept me busy and I think the AAR presentation that came out of it might have played a role in putting me over the top this time. I did 98% of the paper between February and March last year. 

There's a couple things to do depending on your situation. 
If you have an offer on the table from another program but are on the waitlist at your dream school, let that dream school know you have an offer. Email the head of the grad program, say you have another offer but your first choice would be their school so you want to know where you are on the waitlist. There's always a (small) chance that them knowing you have another offer may make you more desirable in their eyes. They're not magically going to find money for you, but they might rethink your position in the waitlist line. 
If you are only waitlisted, you can always inquire where in line you are. But this should probably be a one time email a month or two after initial acceptances have gone out (an initial inquiry is also fine; you want to know the outlook). Any more frequent and they will know that you haven't got in anywhere. Not a bad thing, but desperation is never a good look. 
Lastly, if you are only on waitlist(s), start developing your backup plan. If you are slated to graduate, you will need a source of income if these apps fall through. Start that process now. You can always back out of a job application/interview process later if you get accepted to a school. But waiting until all hopes are exhausted may put you way behind other spring graduates in the job market. 

Hey everybody.  on a friday night, here is to all of us! solidarity!
 

I've posted here before with my thoughts about choosing graduate school. Seeing how so many of you are in the middle of this supremely stressful time, agonizing over admissions and deciding where to go, I thought that I would let you all have some insight into what the process looks like from the perspective of an admissions committee member. I do this for three reasons. First, some of you could use the distraction. Second, many of you are facing the prospect of asking "why was I denied at school X" and should know how difficult this process is. Third, this is the first time that I've served on an admissions committee and I frankly was surprised at how hard this was, so now that it's all over I want to record my own thoughts.

Some background: I am an associate prof at a large department that is somewhere in the 20-40 range. We're good, not great, and we place our students fairly well. We admit an average sized class for schools at our rank. We have somewhere between 30 and 40 times as many complete applications as we have spots in our program. Another 50-75 every year are incomplete (missing GRE scores, something like that). We do not hold it against you if you are missing one of your letters of recommendation, but if you are missing more than one your files goes into the incomplete pile and is not reviewed.

From there, the process works like this. Every candidate who submits a complete application is given an anonymous number. We then do an initial pass through the applications to eliminate students who are simply unqualified based on test scores. The bar for this is very, very low, but if you cannot score at least a 100 on your TOEFL and a 500 on each of your GRE sections you are eliminated at the very beginning. This doesn't cut a lot of people, but it does have the benefit of eliminating students whose English or basic math skills are not up to snuff.

From there, the files are divided randomly into piles, which are divided up across the members of the admissions committee without regard to subfield or anything like that. Each file is read carefully by a committee member and assigned a numerical score from 1-10. Anyone who receives a "1" at this stage is automatically forwarded to the final round.

The remaining files that receive a 2-10 ranking are then given to another member of the search committee, who re-reads them and rescores them. Any file that receives a "1" in this second stage is automatically forwarded to the final round.

The remaining files from this stage (meaning that they received "2" or lower on both initial reviews) are then divided up based on subfield and given to the member of the admissions committee who represents that subfield. That committee member then ranks the files a final time. Any student that receives a "1" or a "2" at this penultimate stage makes it to the final round, regardless of the earlier scores from the first two reviews.

The point of doing it this way is to ensure that we give every student a fair shake. Each student receives a close read from three separate faculty members, each of whom can advance a student to the final round.

We end up with around four times as many files in final round as we have available spots. Each committee member then ranks these students, and we have a big meeting where we decide who to admit and to waitlist out of this group. We then bring our proposal to the subfield representatives who are *not* on the search committee, and they have the ability to lobby for different choices from the final round (although they tend not to do this). From there, the department votes on the proposed list of admits and waitlisters.


***********


So that is how the process works in terms of procedures. I suppose that all of you are probably wondering how we decide who gets one of the 1s. The answer is that it is supremely difficult to do this. We make mistakes, I am sure of it. Our goal is to find people--and this is important, so read carefully--who can successfully complete our program and secure a tenure-track job. That is the outcome that we are trying to achieve; we are not trying to admit the smartest, the most unique, or even the most interesting students (although we do want these people too!). It's possible that other departments that care less about placement are more interested in just admitting smart people, and I bet that for schools like Harvard and Princeton, that's probably true. But for us, we want students who will succeed.

The challenge is that it is really difficult for us to tell what kind of applicant will be able to do this. We know that you will have to be bright, you will have to be creative, and you will have to be highly motivated. But trust me, anyone who has gone through a PhD can tell you, it's not like anything you've ever done before. Unless you already have a PhD, there's nothing that you could write in your application that will convince us that without a doubt you've got the chops. We have to make a bet based on imperfect information (and in fact, we probably are facing a game of incomplete information too, at least about your own objectives). It takes a special kind of person to do this, and I'm not certain how much we learn from pedigree, letters, grades, and test scores, but that's what we have.

What I can say for sure is that even if we only based our decision on pedigree, letters, grades, and test scores, that wouldn't be enough to whittle down our choices to a manageable number. We are dealing with a massive oversupply of qualified candidates. In my first round alone, at least 20 students were Ivy League grads with 3.7+ GPAs, 700+/700+ GREs, and glowing letters. We could have populated an incoming class with these alone, yet each other admissions committee member probably had the same number of people with similar backgrounds. Then you dig deeper and you realize the number of people with incredible life experiences, great grades, great letters, and all the rest, but from other schools. Or they have great writing samples that make it clear that they know what a political science PhD is all about, even if they don't have the very best grades. Or you get a student who has worked two jobs to pay for an education at a regional state university, someone whose drive and motivation clearly signals his/her ability to bring a project to completion even if s/he does not have the best pedigree. Or someone who's at the top of her class at a top-rank Indian university. I could go on. There are simply too many of these people for us to admit all of them.

So what does it come down to? At the end of the day, it's seemingly minor things like "fit," or "interest," or "promise." Most of these are beyond your control as applicant. If you don't seem to have a good idea of what graduate school is all about--many applicants, unfortunately, do not--you don't make it. If you make a big deal about how you want to work with Professor X, and Professor X is considering a move to a different department, we don't accept you. If your writing sample doesn't show that you can express yourself clearly, there is little hope for your application. If your application emphasizes grade/scores/letters/pedigree, but doesn't convince us that you have what it takes to succeed in the PhD, you're not going to be admitted. If you've gone straight through from undergrad, without the sort of life experiences that convince us that you know why you want to go to get an advanced degree, the bar is a lot higher (but not insurmountable). And these are very fine distinctions, and again, we definitely make mistakes.

There are two things that you should take away from this. The first is that, at least this year, admission to my department (admittedly, not the best one) was fiercely competitive. Unbelievably so. I have never served on an admissions committee before (my department only allows tenured professors to be on this committee) but I get the impression that it's gotten much harder since I got my PhD. The second is that you should not sweat it if you don't make into the departments of your dreams. I'd say that at least 80% of the total applicants in our pool this year were plausible candidates for admission, meaning that I would have been happy to admit them. We end up making a lot of hard choices based on imperfect signals of future professional performance, and to reiterate once more, we definitely make mistakes. Nothing makes me more frustrated than when we admit a dud (it happens). I am always happy to see a student who didn't make it into our department succeed somewhere else.

Best of luck to you all.

after the petty  toxicity of my last academic program this forum helps me believe in humanity again. thank you all

Well, this just got quite exciting. I got a status update, went to check the portal, and the message began, "I regret to inform you that your application...was reviewed." I was baffled until Drew informed me that I was waitlisted. Now that was what I was not expecting.
Still, better than being turned down outright! Whew.

OMG!!! Yay!!! ^_^   

I think this year and last year, and probably the next couple of years are going to be very different from the ones that came before in terms of phd admissions and the job market.
My first choice fell through two(?) weeks ago. I cannot see myself anywhere else and it was a major blow, esp. because something glitched with them last year and I didn't hear back until July. (I think the department decided not to let my requested primary be a primary supervisor because he is not full faculty but anyway...) After rewriting the app and requesting a full faculty member with the other guy as secondary and getting bad news again this round I dropped everything and went hiking with a friend in Sedona for a week and I'm feeling a lot better. Opening now to the idea of taking a few years off and doing research and something that involves traveling.. It is a slow and painful opening, as I'm waiting now for three more programs..
In other news.. USC just emailed and I did not get in. I guess I am not surprised going by their current student bios and areas of specialization but yeah.. I am so glad my MA program covered application fees because man this whole rejection thing is rough.

That’s what my friend, formerly a graduate admissions person, suggested. Since acceptances and rejections were sent out...fingers crossed! 
I just checked the BC portal and I still didn’t see anything. It’s already a little past 10 PM Eastern so I’ll wait till tomorrow.

I feel that. This is my fourth application cycle, and I’ve learned a lot along the way, and added a second masters in the mean time too. I finally have my first fully funded (and stipend) acceptance this year.
 
I got an acceptance with only 25% funding in year 2 and balked. Two waitlists in year 3. I’ve been on grad cafe but mostly as a lurker, and I can confirm that this is a place of expectation and sorrow. Less triumph than relief. And so, where we could be competitive, it feels more honest to be in solidarity. Even in acceptance I feel a bit of grief that isn’t easily dismissed, a specter of fear and rejection haunting me, haunting us. 
 
So I suppose I want to say something like, learning and grieving on the grad cafe was essential to my journey. In year 1, I lurked because I viewed it as competition. But here after many years of tweaks, of rethinking my path, of fighting and pushing to find my voice beyond what I was capable of in year 1- it’s not about competition but slow growth and grinding through cycles of doubt in creative ways. Maybe I’m just becoming a constructive Whiteheadian. Though that might also be one of my mentor’s fault. 
 
oh, and yes, I got my BC THEO reject today...