philosonista

I honestly think it varies from language to language. Likely the problem with my application is that very few people actually need to lean Korean insofar as learning English is standard there. Sure, would it make me a better scientist in the future (journal articles with more international collaboration have been shown to be better articles) and allow me to more fluently collaborate with a country that is increasingly specializing in my field of research? Yes. Sure, my resume is bright and shiny and they have reason to suspect I could handle the program, add to the diversity of the group, etc. But do I need to learn Korean? No. I would suspect people who made the Korean cut would be those aspiring to do work into Korean history that requires that you understand untranslated texts and those in similar situations that really require it. I also bet Korean had one of the highest volumes of applicants -- no previous experience required, generally popular country, etc. Languages like Urdu, on the other hand, which, to my knowledge, aren't spoken by people who know English, would have an easier case to make...
Oh well. I'm writing up four applications to computer programming-intensive programs. Would likely do me more good in the future anyways... Though I still have never been out of NY and it perpetually bothers me that I cannot afford to fix that myself.
Good luck, guys.

After you've applied to so many things, you begin to realize winning things is a bit of a crapshoot and tend not to dwell on things you haven't won. I'm pretty well decorated with accolades, but if I think about it honestly, I've only won about 1/3 of everything for which I've tried. It's a crapshoot.

semifinalist for bangla!

Got the notification 2 mins ago! I'm a semi-finalist for Arabic!
Did people from the other languages hear back yet?

I wonder how many of us are semi-finalists...It could make for an interesting study on application success relative to expressive and communal anxiety-tendencies....

Well, I'm betting today or tomorrow. Looked back at 2014, and we were notified on a Thursday afternoon and Friday afternoon (right near closing time, like 4-5pm) in January and February.  I think they send out the notifications in the afternoon to reduce the volume of calls they might receive.  Though if they make announcements on a Thursday, they'll still get people calling on Friday. Just speculation though! Can't do much else while we wait

D.C. is open today. 

Could today be the day we hear back?  I'm hopeful, but when I did CLS in 2014 all of the notifications were on a Friday, if I remember correctly.  Won't they come back from their long weekend, raring to give us some peace of mind?