Swans

I guess you don't have a lot to lose by attending, even if it's for a shorter while. You never know what you might learn which helps shape your decision.

Oh awesome, keep me posted on that. Would be interested to read it when it's finished!

While we wait for UPenn (and for me to seal the deal that I'm going to have to up my game this year), my academia.edu got unblocked (yay!) so I've followed the people who posted theirs here. Here's mine. Still very empty but the mission for this year is to flesh some of the current paper ideas out and hopefully have it a bit more populated for the next round.

Yes to both, being international makes the funding harder as well which is why I focused on those two first (and the fit seemed good in particularly USC). I'll expand my options now though.

You could request to unlock it explaining you're not actually a robot. I'm fairly certain I'm not actually a robot, so hopefully I can access it again soon. I received my rejection letter from USC a week ago. I'm still waiting on UPenn but that probably won't be much better news, so I need to start thinking about my profile for next year!

Darn, I wanted to join in on the academia.edu fun but apparently my account was locked for suspicious behaviour. All I did was upload two papers and follow a few researchers, weird!

you.usc.edu, and create an account there. If you use the e-mail address from your application it'll automatically link up all the details.

Yes, we'll see. I suppose there's no rejection yet either. Congrats to you of course.

I checked YouSC. Oh well, time to start preparing for the next round.

Hmm ok, mine still says under review. That's probably bad news then.

Can anyone claim that USC acceptance?

I see on the results page that there's a few UT Austin acceptances going around, well done to the people getting those!

That sounds good, fingers crossed for this round (and the journal publication)!

What did you do to improve your application in the past year, if I may ask?

Cornell is very good, unless you mean whether it fits your research interests, which is a different matter entirely. Congrats to the people who have acceptances coming in, I'm mentally preparing for another round next year already...

Awesome, I'm from The Netherlands although I live in London at the moment. Fingers crossed!

As an international applicant myself I can't help you with that, but out of interest, where are you applying from?

Ha, well hopefully I can look back on it as being fun soon.

By the looks of it some schools have notified students late January before, but yes it's probably best not to look until mid-February anyway because it's not a guarantee it'll happen again and it will just stress you out.

Another London based applicant here.

I've only heard about that programme via all the e-mails you get from universities as soon as you register for the GRE test, and if that's the only way I know about a programme I don't think that's necessarily a good sign. But maybe it's just that it's a new thing.

Good luck, and good nickname!

As a fellow international applicant (Dutch), I'd brush up my English skills first. That score really is rather low.

My girlfriend is trying to secure Oxford funding for a PhD at the moment, not easy at all. Worth a try nonetheless. On another note, I just sent out my applications. Still waiting on one of my referees to submit the letter, but I'm not too worried about her. And now the wait begins...

Now that my application is practically done I'm probably going to write another paper that I'll try to get published or presented at a conference, so that I have something to add to my CV should I not be successful this time. I will probably try and find another job as well, even though my current job is relevant to my interests, it can always be a better fit.