VMcJ

Use the same cryptic language that they use in rejection letters to us.
"I am Springwheel and i am afraid that i am approaching you with not a bad news. I had an unusually large number of great admissions this year and in my choice to decide another school i took into consideration a large number of factors. Those factors included, but were not limited to, school reputation, placement record, prized faculty, graduate assistantship, weather, proximity to home, nightlife, price of booze and mary jane, number of POPO's per thousand residents in the city (the lesser the better) and strip bars. I wish your school good luck for your educational aspirations and producing tenure-track research maniac professors for a long time to come. I must tell you that i gave your school a thorough review before reaching any conclusion."
Best 
Springwheel
Dont forget to sign the letter.

Yale is over. I liked that they apparently sent all responses at once. Nice.
Now I am just waiting for the last confirmations for rejections from Columbia, Harvard and Georgetown. It is only a matter of time, really.
I'll be here next cycle, ladies and gentlemen. I expect and will work towards a happier ending for me. Never give up!
I am very happy for everyone who got admitted and extend my sympathies to those that have got an outcome like mine.
I think I will not post in this thread anymore, nor read it. If any of you need me for some reason, feel free to PM me.
Thanks a lot, everybody.

Yale is over. I liked that they apparently sent all responses at once. Nice.
Now I am just waiting for the last confirmations for rejections from Columbia, Harvard and Georgetown. It is only a matter of time, really.
I'll be here next cycle, ladies and gentlemen. I expect and will work towards a happier ending for me. Never give up!
I am very happy for everyone who got admitted and extend my sympathies to those that have got an outcome like mine.
I think I will not post in this thread anymore, nor read it. If any of you need me for some reason, feel free to PM me.
Thanks a lot, everybody.

Yale is over. I liked that they apparently sent all responses at once. Nice.
Now I am just waiting for the last confirmations for rejections from Columbia, Harvard and Georgetown. It is only a matter of time, really.
I'll be here next cycle, ladies and gentlemen. I expect and will work towards a happier ending for me. Never give up!
I am very happy for everyone who got admitted and extend my sympathies to those that have got an outcome like mine.
I think I will not post in this thread anymore, nor read it. If any of you need me for some reason, feel free to PM me.
Thanks a lot, everybody.

Yale is over. I liked that they apparently sent all responses at once. Nice.
Now I am just waiting for the last confirmations for rejections from Columbia, Harvard and Georgetown. It is only a matter of time, really.
I'll be here next cycle, ladies and gentlemen. I expect and will work towards a happier ending for me. Never give up!
I am very happy for everyone who got admitted and extend my sympathies to those that have got an outcome like mine.
I think I will not post in this thread anymore, nor read it. If any of you need me for some reason, feel free to PM me.
Thanks a lot, everybody.

I am only waiting to get all my expected rejections so I can give much heeded advice of how you don't build applications.
Seriously, most of us still need to hear from several programs. I wanted to answer right now, but I think I should wait.

I had almost given up my hope from this cycle, and today I received an e-mail from Indiana University informing me of my admission with financial package. So excited  Anyone else here considering to enroll in Indiana's program?

I just want it to be over.

I would love to receive this letter:

"Hey, twerp.
We are somewhat sadistic and every ten years we accept the utmost loser. Congratulations, you are the loser of this decade. We will fund you only if you keep scoring A's in every discipline -- one B and you are out. You are the worst piece of junk we ever admitted, so consider yourself lucky.
We plan to keep insulting you like that -- and worse, until the end of your Ph.D. That is, if a dumb person as you can complete it.
Yours sincerely,
Ivy League School"



Seriously now, it appears that only a minority of schools do not place great care in how they address their admitted students. That is nice, but I wonder how much it really increases likelihood of attracting students -- I'd take a better financial offer or a better school over kindness almost always.

I would love to receive this letter:

"Hey, twerp.
We are somewhat sadistic and every ten years we accept the utmost loser. Congratulations, you are the loser of this decade. We will fund you only if you keep scoring A's in every discipline -- one B and you are out. You are the worst piece of junk we ever admitted, so consider yourself lucky.
We plan to keep insulting you like that -- and worse, until the end of your Ph.D. That is, if a dumb person as you can complete it.
Yours sincerely,
Ivy League School"



Seriously now, it appears that only a minority of schools do not place great care in how they address their admitted students. That is nice, but I wonder how much it really increases likelihood of attracting students -- I'd take a better financial offer or a better school over kindness almost always.

Somebody claiming that MIT admission on the results page?

There's really no "perfect fit" regardless of how you present yourself. And besides, at many top departments, faculty are large enough and diverse enough that they can cover lots of interests. Here's my take more generally:
1. Fit can lead to rejection if the department doesn't think it can help you in your career goals. "Poor fit" typically means one of three things: 
(a) Nobody here does work in your field;  (b) Your interests are so specific that nobody here can help you; or  (c) Your interests don't fit in the discipline or evince inflexibility At most top departments, (a) is fairly unlikely. Problem (b) can happen if you choose departments poorly or define yourself too narrowly. If you apply to my department talking about studying the politics of Chinese environmentalism, you might be declined because nobody here does work related to that. The solution is to (i) pitch yourself more broadly as a comparativist with interests in environmental politics, and/or (ii) be more selective in where you apply.
Of the three, problem (c) is most common. If your interests aren't really in political science ("I want to study the gap between protestant ethic and Catholic social teaching..." or "the history of race relations in the U.S." or "organization theory in the U.S. military"), committees may conclude that you might fit better in another field. If you seem dogmatic and inflexible, like only wanting to use Bayesian statistics or only the realist perspective in IR or only the Straussian approach, a committee might justifiably conclude that you're not open-minded enough to make it in academia. 
Avoiding fit problems is more important than proving good fit. Committees want to know that you have genuine interests in political science, but also that you're flexible and willing to engage in many methods and theoretical approaches. Your research focus should evolve as you develop as a scholar. (That doesn't mean you want to be scattershot, e.g., "I want to study American public opinion and post-Soviet political culture and the definition of progress in Francis Bacon's canon and..." Some specificity is necessary.)
2. You can help a lot by guarding against common problems in applications. Make sure you have three good letters; make sure your writing sample is good, well-written, organized and addresses an interesting question. Be sure that your SOP doesn't have errors---common errors or more serious ones, like misidentifying the research interests of a POI you list.  A good GPA and GRE profile helps, obviously.
So, tl;dr: Avoid fit problems by relating your research to the broader discipline, and by not coming off as a dogmatist. But focus most of your energy on strengthening the rest of the application, since most rejections don't stem from 'fit' problems anyway.

I contacted a very limited amount of my POI's beforehand, and I have had positive results from it. However, I've also gotten into programs and have been rejected from programs where I said nothing to anyone there. A lot of it likely depends on timing. If you contact them over the summer towards when the fall semester starts, you're likely to have better results when contacting them than when it gets close to winter break. Overall though, the effect, I agree with @ultraultra, is likely marginal at best. However, if you feel it may help you, go for it. I would suggest simply briefly introducing yourself, saying you're interested in applying, you feel you're a good fit because of one short reason, and asking them if they're taking advisees at that time. It gets them to know you a little but without making any presumptions or requests on your POI.
The best thing to do in between now and next cycle is to take a bit of time, take a deep breath, regroup, think about whether you want to apply again, and go from there. Retake the GRE if you're not satisfied with your scores (I don't know your scores, so if they're really good no need to retake it) and strengthen every possible weakness in your file. Send as many positive signals as you can in the low-signal high-noise environment that is graduate admissions. That will likely have much more of an effect, and that is much more in your control than how a POI perceives interactions with you.

Agreed with @Determinedandnervous that it will be a bit weird to write POIs at this point. For what its worth, I don't think that cold-emailing POIs has much effect in general. If you're writing to ask about the program before deciding to apply, that's one thing. But its highly unlikely that a professor will be willing to go to bat for you with the ad comm after just a few e-mails. A lot of the faculty I've talked to just ignore these e-mails, including ones who I know (firsthand) to be very good mentors to their students. I think its a good idea to e-mail POIs if you already have a relationship with them from earlier, or if your recommenders know them and can e-introduce you. But otherwise it just seems to have a neutral-to-negative effect (from what my advisors have said).

As awful as it is and how much one wishes to have agency over the remaining outcomes, you'll be shooting yourself in the foot if you talk to POI's while they are making the decisions. It'll just seem like opportunism and may actually cost you in the end. 

To elaborate more, I want to say that schools usually release their results in two different ways 
1) First, and the most common one, is to send out offers (and WL decisions almost simultaneously) at first. These emails tend to be formulaic, simply letting an applicant know that he is accepted. However, funding details are usually not sent until future emails. These schools will accept people from the WL only if 1) there are people turning down the offer, 2) the # of people declining the offers has been so high that they have to take people from WL to meet the incoming class size. In this sense, to get off from the WL is already hard, not to mention if the school will "save" people from the rejection pile. However, it is still possible for you to be "re-admitted" even though you were in the rejection pile in the first place if (1) none of the people on the WL end up with a good fit in the department's eyes, and (2) the department desperately needs people to meet the incoming class size for a variety of reasons. That's why they do not send out the rejections right away with all the offers and WL decisions. Thus, people can definitely treat silence as hope, but we have to be admonished that the chance of acceptance is really, really low. Schools that fit this model are Duke, Chicago... (Top 20 prestigious departments).
Some schools sent out the rejections only a few days later than the acceptances and WL decisions, because they know that even people turn down the offers, the department will still do fine with the incoming class size. Top-10s like Berkeley and Princeton fit this sub-model. 
2) Second way is to send out formulaic rejections at first, so that they can spend time to individualize the offers and include detailed funding info in the letter. UCSD, Michigan (at least this year) fit this model. 
 
Either way, we tend not to see a case when a school sends out a lot of offers on the same day, waits for a month, and sends out another batch of offers. None of the top departments has done notifications in this way, and nor will they. Something that people have done in the past might not necessarily lead to what they will do this year. But even though they change the chair, the expectations of how admissions process is done are still flowing around in the department -- culture and process are not changed that easily. Observing a pattern and using this pattern strategically, although might let you feel sad at first when you think "oh I got rejected by Princeton because I hear nothing from them", is actually doing you good by helping you treat "failure" (in a positive way) in a calm manner. This is the rule of the game that is called grad school admissions; this will also be the rule of the game when we are on the job market.
 
That's what I want to say. And to certain fellows -- feel free to downvote me as always. But this is what I truly think, and my thoughts will probably not be changed easily with more downvotes.  To the people who agree with me -- Thank you.  From the pattern you have observed re: past admissions, you can understand your situation more keenly, and if, I'm saying if, the current cycle does not work for you, you will be at a much better place when you apply next year. I am lucky as I got into a good department in my first cycle, but the waiting period is really difficult. Hope that everyone can succeed this year.

...

Claiming a Princeton acceptance here. Received the email around 4PM EST. I can't believe this is real!

I'd hold out some hope - there's still a month or two to go before everything's finalized. You never know what can happen.

Princeton always was my longest shot, so I almost feel no disappointment.
Oh, wait. Of course I feel. I will have exactly zero offers this cycle, probably. I tried only very difficult programs; bad mistake. Life goes on, I guess.

Haha glad I could make you laugh  happy to claim it! Best friends- yes. Here's to hoping we both end up at a CHYMPS?
 
Sad that the mods don't believe my awesome stats though (jealous maybe?) and already yanked it. Glad you saved the memory!

attn: whoever wrote this, let's be best friends? I just barely stopped myself from bursting into laughter in seminar
 
San Diego State University/UCSD Department Of Political Science, PhD (F16) Accepted via E-mail on 8 Feb 2016 ♦ A 8 Feb 2016 Offered $121,343/year along with BMW lease for work and a Range Rover lease for personal use. Housing is condo on the beach to be provided by departmental funding. Three French trained butlers to be at my service. Regular foot runs from SH. Probably won't take it though. I'll just try to leverage it at a different school for some more cash. OSU offered me all of New Jersey to attend there, so yeah.

True hope is swift, and flies with swallow's wings;
Kings it makes gods, and meaner creatures kings.

True hope is swift, and flies with swallow's wings;
Kings it makes gods, and meaner creatures kings.

HOPE IS THE THING WITH FEATHERS
“Hope” is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I’ve heard it in the chillest land
And on the strangest sea,
Yet never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me."
- Emily Dickinson
Source: http://www.poemhunter.com/poems/hope/page-1/46140/
I am hoping for some acceptances this week for all.