VMcJ

This from the results page made me laugh, I love spirituous comments: "Very curious how long this "very short" wait list is. If you've been accepted, don't go. Harvard's going downhill."

I'd say yes, for the size of their program. If you think a third might not accept their offer and go elsewhere due to fit or whatever...

Congratulations to those accepted or waitlisted! And I hope my last 4 rejections come soon. I'd love to get closure.

Well, Harvard shenanigans, apparently.

Sorry for my misunderstanding and thanks for correcting me.

The point is they probably decided everything already, as they issued a number of acceptances and waitlists a long while ago. Now they are probably just waiting to be sure their waitlist will be enough for the number of enrolls they want. A lot of "probablys", I know, but that's what I make of all of this.

I emailed their Graduate Coordinator last week and she said all applicants would know their final decision in the next weeks. If so, a little bit better than last cycle when they accepted people out of the waitlist after April 15, as someone told us here several days ago.

That is the case here in Brazil. Almost everybody gets a Master's degree before going to a Ph.D. program, mostly because it is often mandatory, such as you having to finish high school before going to college. An unintended consequence is that Master's degrees eventually seem pointless to many, just an annoyance you have to do before the Ph.D.

This is a fair point, but not applicable to first-year drop-outs, which was my point before. Screening should be good there -- two or three years after applications is too far into the future to know precisely if someone might drop out or not. The whole problem of a high drop-out rate is this is a bad way for spending resources. If you spend half of your department's resources for students with people that will not finish their Ph.Ds, that means less resources for everybody: other students, faculty, departmental projects, etc.

It should be, but apparently a significant number of mistakes happen every cycle. First-year drop-outs at 40%, as mentioned above, is very worrying.

Honestly, I'd like to see one day a screening process that can really separate those with higher chances of not dropping out from those that probably will. I understand people drop out for several reasons and not all of them are predictable, but still seems to be that many people go into graduate studies without really understanding what is it like.

Two schools that accepted me mentioned it (the other three did not comment on that, and I didn't ask). Apparently demand was higher than expected last cycle across the board.

Thanks for warning us about that, didn't get any email from them informing that decisions were issued. Nice letter of rejection. Now only four remain for me.

I'm also waiting to hear from 5 schools, but as I don't expect any acceptances anymore I don't care that much. I'd like some closure, of course, but probably won't get all my responses until mid-March...

UNC probably will wrap things up during the next two weeks, according to their DGS. Hopefully someone will get late good news from them.

Just got my Rochester rejection.

I can't help myself to wonder: should I contact UNC-CH to ask about my status? Some people got their acceptances in late January, then some were rejected, and then some more got waitlisted last week, as per the results page. I think it will be a rejection, of course, but I think it's taking way longer than expected. My other schools issued acceptances recently, so I am not as worried to know those.

Thanks. But no info on early, mid or late March?

Speaking of that, when the new US News Rankings are supposed to be released? From what I saw comparing their rankings for the last two decades, there are just a couple of dramatic changes, most schools are stable, and I don't expect this time will be different. But curious nonetheless...

Nothing at all.

Mine still says "Under Departmental/Program Review".

Well, UPenn acceptances settle this cycle for me. Now I'm just waiting for emails informing of rejections, or maybe late waitlists. And a difficult choice lies ahead of me... Congratulations to those accepted!

Adding to that, placement usually is harder for theorists. There are fewer spots compared to other subfields.

I think the major reason I failed on every Top 10 school is my GPA. And it's a shame, because I cannot improve that anymore, and it is not easy to convey how International GPAs (or their equivalents) do not really translate to the American system. You hope LORs may help with that, but I think it is usually a long shot. What I think I really improved from last cycle were basically three things: 1) research interests; 2) SOPs; 3) much more strategy in choosing programs to apply. On 1, last cycle I aimed for Political Theory, and it is extra hard to get something in this subfield. Comparative suited me better AND is more attractive. On 2, I focused much more on my strenghts and pointing to them, trying to convey open research possibilities and listing my major accomplishments. Last cycle I tried to explain why I was changing from Literary Theory to Political Science; this cycle I tried to show all the reasons why this should not be a concern to the programs, hardly discussing it at all. On 3, I definitely aimed too high last cycle, trying almost only Top 10 programs. This year I did a balanced strategy and it paid off better than I expected. Still didn't get Michigan or Duke, but got very good options and probably some of the best in my subfield area (Latin American politics). If you ask me if I'd trade all my options for a Duke acceptance, the answer would probably be yes, but it is very unlikely to get accepted by a Top 10 without getting into a couple of Top 30 as well. As the process is somewhat decided by luck, everybody should get the best strategy possible, although I would not recommend anyone to apply to a low ranked school only as safety. It has to be a program you clearly want to go if it is your only offer in the cycle, and where you think your learning and your research will be highly developed. Fortunately, there are many highly qualified programs out there.

I did not do that, and I regret it. I don't think most programs would answer, but if you don't try how can you know? Perhaps the Faculty Perspectives topic may be of help in that regard, although I don't remember seeing a question about that.