TC3

Last year, it seems, UNC notified admits via email the last week of January, though there's also an outlier 11 Feb 2010 notification posted. Who knows. Maybe it wasn't as bureaucratically efficient (yes, I know, oxymoron) this year. Also noteworthy is that only 6 admits (counting those accepted off the wait list) posted results for the 2010 cycle.

Hah. That takes me out of the running at Iowa, then. My "fit" was explicitly based on working with two faculty members.

I second this. I wasn't accepted at UCLA, but I was accepted by a program that rejected me two cycles ago *and I sent the exact same writing sample* with only minor stylistic revisions. Sure, I've accumulated some more lines on my CV since then, but I'd say that the *major* difference was the SoP. The first time around, it made no sense of my academic history and my research narrative, and I pretty much sent the same thing to every program. This time around, I read books/articles by POIs and framed my "fit" with nuance (not the "your program is cool and so am I" approach that I took two years ago).

I wouldn't worry. Loyola was entirely online, right? No lost mail, at least. In the Wisconsin thread, we seem to have decided that there's no rhyme or reason as to who does or doesn't receive confirmation emails. As long as your application reads as "finalized" at <https://gradapp.luc.edu/gradapp/login.htm> you should be okay.

RE: having to repeat the whole application process again, and how it's easier said than done I certainly get that. I applied to 15 programs the first year and was rejected by all of them. I applied to 11 the second year and was rejected by 9, but the other 2 did not offer me any funding whatsoever. This year (the third time), I applied to 15 programs, and finally got a funded admit. The past couple of years were not enjoyable, and they are worth something to me now only because I just happened to be one of the lucky ones. In my case, though, I certainly wasn't prepared to put together a competitive application (especially my purpose and goals statement) until this cycle. Others, I'm sure, are more prepared at an earlier stage.

Hey, gotta have some sort of classification for that month or so that separates admission and rejection notifications .

Because of the late deadline, notifications also are absurdly late, like last week of March or first week of April.

Hah! Maybe if we talk about it enough on the forum we'll alter reality with our thought-energy . The Virginia MA is impressive, and animal studies are getting a lot of respect. Congrats. I drove through Iowa City one time. It looked like a neat place.

I applied to Binghamton's creative PhD last year, but I didn't really research it that much. All I can tell you is that the program offers admission beyond its funding capacity. I happened the check the web site last year and saw that I had been accepted; I got my hopes up, but called the office to make sure. No funding. I declined. I do remember hearing about some big schism that the department went through a couple of years ago regarding freshman English requirements, I think.

My status rolled over to "accepted" this morning. I called the graduate coordinator to confirm this this does actually mean that I am accepted with full departmental funding. As if I wasn't shocked enough, she told me that I was to be nominated for a graduate school fellowship, too. This is my *third* year of applying. Both years past, I was rejected by all programs except for two that admitted me without any funding (which I declined for obvious reasons). This is my very first funded offer of acceptance, and it's from a really, really, really good program. I'm honestly shocked. I did my undergrad at a regional branch university, and my masters was unfunded. I honestly thought that I had *no* shot at a program like this.

Yes, I second the strangeness of the notification. It's almost a month earlier than last year's notifications, which also were e-mailed rather than first updated on the grad school page.

I suppose that means that we should expect acceptance notifications to go out by the end of the week.

I thought that they cut the program in half two years ago, as in accepting only 6-8 instead of 15. Perhaps the McNair fellowship notification would be different because the deadline for those was in January.

Strange. Last year there were a few website notifications the first week of Feb, and then emails a few weeks later. I'm not sure what that means, but it may be that the early website notifications concern only the MA-to-PhD track, as it seems that everyone who has claimed an acceptance on this thread is MA-to-PhD, and last year several of the survey posts indicate Masters as the degree objective for the early web admits. I already have an MA, so I'm applying just to the PhD. Perhaps that is done differently. Perhaps not. Speculation is miracle-gro for anxiety.

Me too, Woolfie. I'm just glad that I applied to a few programs that get only ~100 applications; otherwise, I'd be losing my mind right about now.

I don't see a UW Madison acceptance...

Google "maryland testudo." It should be the first result, and there should be subpages indicated under the general page on the Google result. Click "admissions," and on the right side of the screen there should be a link for grad application status.

Okay. I figured it out. The UID is listed under "Verify Contact Information" in the Application Supplemental Form (ASF). The PIN, as the Testudo page indicates, defaults to MMDDYY birthday. I see "Pending Decision" listed under my status, but this is just the general Graduate School, which tends to find out about and update application status a bit later than informal email/phone acceptance notifications from the department.

Now that I think about it, there's a good chance that the acceptance is fake, especially considering that last year everything initially went out as email notifications (people may have called individually to check in, but it seems that the initial wave (sometime between Feb 10 and 12 last year) was all email). I'm trying to figure out the Testudo thing. I can't find any sort of UID or SID for me to log in; they may be assigned only to enrolled students.

I didn't seriously expect to get in there, but it still makes me worry. According to results from previous cycles, Maryland uses email as its primary method of acceptance notification. If I recall correctly, Maryland gets anywhere from 350 to 400 applications for like 7-10 spots, and it seems to be in that dangerous position of being more of a "safety" school for those who apply almost exclusively to top-20 programs, and more of a top choice for everyone else (which means that the competition is with both really good fits and the super elite applicants). I'd love to work with Neil Fraistat, but I suppose that UMD gets a million applications like mine--18th/19th Brit Lit and Digital Humanities. It's up there in my top 3 as well, but, again, I knew that I had slim to none chances of actually being in the top 7-10 out of 350-400.

I presented at CEA in 2008 and 2009. Good experiences.

I see that yesterday (Friday, Feb 4) someone got a call from Maryland. I'm wondering if all calls were made that day (which, I think, is likely).

Those of you who saw that you are accepted via the website---have you received any emails or phone calls from the department?

I knew they would notify soon, but I would have expected admits to be notified informally via email or phone instead of a web page update. I don't think that I got the email about a user name and password for the status page, so I can't even check my own status! Talk about the anxiety of not knowing!