vestigialtraits

~~~~~(Extended version)~~~~~
 
I was checking my email every 5 minutes or so that day as it was a Thursday and we were told to expect emails that week if we were accepted (and to wait for a letter in the mail the following week if rejected). This was the only program I applied to so I was anxious to hear back as I planned to try to put in a few more applications to other schools if rejected but those deadlines were quickly approaching. 
Anyway, it's Thursday. I went to take a mid day shower, got out and dressed to take my elderly father to the store and decided to check my email once more before leaving and there it was - "congratulations! You have been admitted." I was completely floored, to say the least. I smiled a smile bigger than I thought possible and said a quick prayer thanking God for allowing me the possibility and hoping to be able to pursue him and reflect well on him through my future work. 
I told my dad, we decided to hold off telling mom (she's a teacher and was at school). At the store, we also bought cake and ice cream and roses for mom and I cooked fdinner or her to come home to. She didn't really question anything when she came home because my parent's anniversary was the previous day. That is, until I told her she wasn't allowed to cut the cake because it was mine. She asked why I had a cake and I let my dad tell her the good news. 
I've never seen the two of them so proud. I'm my dad's 6th kid but the first nto ever go to jail and the first to graduate from college and the first in our family (at least 4 generations) to go to grad school. 

~~~~~(Extended version)~~~~~
 
I was checking my email every 5 minutes or so that day as it was a Thursday and we were told to expect emails that week if we were accepted (and to wait for a letter in the mail the following week if rejected). This was the only program I applied to so I was anxious to hear back as I planned to try to put in a few more applications to other schools if rejected but those deadlines were quickly approaching. 
Anyway, it's Thursday. I went to take a mid day shower, got out and dressed to take my elderly father to the store and decided to check my email once more before leaving and there it was - "congratulations! You have been admitted." I was completely floored, to say the least. I smiled a smile bigger than I thought possible and said a quick prayer thanking God for allowing me the possibility and hoping to be able to pursue him and reflect well on him through my future work. 
I told my dad, we decided to hold off telling mom (she's a teacher and was at school). At the store, we also bought cake and ice cream and roses for mom and I cooked fdinner or her to come home to. She didn't really question anything when she came home because my parent's anniversary was the previous day. That is, until I told her she wasn't allowed to cut the cake because it was mine. She asked why I had a cake and I let my dad tell her the good news. 
I've never seen the two of them so proud. I'm my dad's 6th kid but the first nto ever go to jail and the first to graduate from college and the first in our family (at least 4 generations) to go to grad school. 

As someone who's lived on the west coast their whole life, earthquakes aren't really a big issue. My main concern would be the cost of living there.

@Need Coffee in an IV Is your TA a high school student? Seriously, does she not know how to act like an adult?
 
In other news, I accidentally left the slow cooker on for two days. It's one of those weeks

Hi Lauren,
is $75,000 in debt worth it?

University Of Chicago Economics, PhD (F16) Wait listed via E-mail on 15 Apr 2016 O 15 Apr 2016 report spam Please decline Chicago, its my dream school. You will fail the first year exams and dropout, (read EJMR if you dont belive me) go to other programs!.  
Well, that's a convincing way to get off the waitlist.

Haha sorry, I just can't understand your research. Do you collect data and pass it off to someone else to analyze? Do you expect all your data to be fit with a nice, normal regression? How do you communicate with mathematical biologists/sociologists and computer scientists when you need fancier techniques (like machine learning, perhaps) without having a rudimentary knowledge of those things? 

Agreed! Congrats on pulling it up. It's just that a 4% is extra scary when you consider that there are plenty non-STEM majors who take the test as well. Since the GRE quant is effectively high school calculus, I would have questioned your abilities to understand basic analytical techniques in your field, e.g. carbon dating (had you not improved) 

Or it means that they applied to both reach and safety schools, and got unlucky with the safeties. Or they're switching fields and applied to many options in hopes that one would smile upon their unique background. Super judgey bro 

Um, work? I work two full-time jobs. I sleep 2-3 hours about half the week. If you think all you can do is 40 hour weeks, think again. If you push yourself you'll be surprised what you're capable of.

I'd tell myself to apply to more than one program and compromise on the location a bit.

~~~~~(Extended version)~~~~~
 
I was checking my email every 5 minutes or so that day as it was a Thursday and we were told to expect emails that week if we were accepted (and to wait for a letter in the mail the following week if rejected). This was the only program I applied to so I was anxious to hear back as I planned to try to put in a few more applications to other schools if rejected but those deadlines were quickly approaching. 
Anyway, it's Thursday. I went to take a mid day shower, got out and dressed to take my elderly father to the store and decided to check my email once more before leaving and there it was - "congratulations! You have been admitted." I was completely floored, to say the least. I smiled a smile bigger than I thought possible and said a quick prayer thanking God for allowing me the possibility and hoping to be able to pursue him and reflect well on him through my future work. 
I told my dad, we decided to hold off telling mom (she's a teacher and was at school). At the store, we also bought cake and ice cream and roses for mom and I cooked fdinner or her to come home to. She didn't really question anything when she came home because my parent's anniversary was the previous day. That is, until I told her she wasn't allowed to cut the cake because it was mine. She asked why I had a cake and I let my dad tell her the good news. 
I've never seen the two of them so proud. I'm my dad's 6th kid but the first nto ever go to jail and the first to graduate from college and the first in our family (at least 4 generations) to go to grad school. 

this may make me a bad person, but I came to this thread to feel better about myself and my chances to get into grad school. lol 
sorry

You could probably write to NYU to decline and tell them you can't figure out the site, so that someone else could have an offer with time to consider it. I don't know why so many schools make the websites and the PhD application process so confusing: it's almost like a test of your ability to jump through hoops.

@Ignis was trying to help you interpret the situation, which is exactly what you asked for in your original post. Instead of listening to his/her interpretation you became argumentative and went on to say that you have, "pretty much made up your mind". Why bother posting, if you aren't willing to listen to other people's advice and you have already made up your mind?
 

I was cooking breakfast and getting ready to travel to yet another interview. Got a phone call from a mysterious number ( I am starting to like mysterious numbers), that turned out to be my POI for the program. The conversation lasted for like 30 minutes. I silently screamed the whole time. There were moments that I broke out in dance and jumped around the room while he was on the phone. I hope he did not hear the gasp for air as I rolled around on my kitchen floor. I finally got myself together and wrote " F#$% YEA!!" on a slip of paper attached to my refrigerator. The program had wait-listed me two days prior, so I had given up hope in being accepted. Nothing like Pancakes and an Acceptance to start my morning! :-) 

Honestly, just the little things that make you think, "Wow, this guy's a jerk." Some examples I saw the past few interview days where I was helping to interview prospectives...
Continually apologizing for attending a poorly ranked undergrad ("I could have gone to Yale but my parents wanted me to stay closer to home, I really regret that, my state school was pretty terrible, etc.") Makes you sound like you only care about the prestige of the school... Being a suck-up. No one likes a blatant suck-up. Do it tastefully. But shoving your way past three other people just to ask me a totally obvious question, (e.g. "I've been wanting to talk to you all morning since you come from my same home state! So, do you like it here?" Uh, duh I like it here or else I would have left? And being from Texas in no way implies we are anything alike.) This also extends to blatant show-offs.  Treating other candidates disrespectfully when you think the interviewers/profs aren't watching. That's why we have student volunteers and admin assistants hovering around to help out.... they report back to us.... Any sort of bizarre hobby, like.... attending anime conventions every weekend or being part of a burlesque troupe or cold-calling for Bernie Sanders. Not saying any of these things are inherent bad, but you don't want to be singled out as "weird" or uncommitted (unless, of course, you're doing Culture Studies, Dance Studies, or Political Science, respectfully, in which case maybe a brief mention would be fine). You can let that crazy out once you've been in the program for a while, but not on interview day.

If you were just talking about personality compatibility, shouldn't you encourage people to be themselves so everyone can suss this kind of thing out honestly, rather than trying to conceal some kind of mysterious "weird quirks"? Which @dancedementia suggests could be as trivial as liking anime? (The other points on your list are not "weird quirks" you could conceal for a day, they are behaviors that manifest precisely because people are trying to impress and are self-conscious.) I am honestly trying to figure out what you might have been talking about for this reason: 
You have populations of people on the autism spectrum, people who have social or performance anxiety, people from other cultures or subcultures, who might behave in a way that is different without at all being wrong or bad, unless you find deviations from social norms internally intolerable somehow. You're telling people like that that they can't be themselves, the their nature is a liability, and then putting the onus on them to fake it through rather than calling out the circumstances that apparently give people license to judge others academic worthiness on their hobbies or harmless personality traits. It's more than a little messed up, which I grant that this whole process is, but we don't have to actively contribute to it by adding in extra layers of judgment, fakeness and jerkery. 
 

I love this comment so much! I really worried about trying not to be fake in my interviews. Now I'm in the waiting game, and I don't know if I'll be accepted anywhere, but if I were, I would feel like I was accepted as the person I am, and I would have some idea what it might be like to work with the people I spoke with exactly because I was myself during my visits. And I agree, being a jerk to other people isn't a quirk. you shouldn't do that at an interview, but you shouldn't do it anyway. On the other hand, if someone would hold it against me that I tried to make conversation about where someone was from or that I have interests outside of psychology, that's not someone I want to study with for 5 years. Psychologists can be a conservative group and our study of norms can sometimes seem to pointlessly restrict the lovely wide range of human behaviour. Lucky for me, I only interviewed in places where people seemed to value diversity of life experience. But I agree that we shouldn't be contributing to making each other super paranoid about being nervous during visits or about liking anime or burlesque or whatever it is people do when they are not studying. This is stressful enough without us all trying to kill off our interests and eradicate our personalities! OK, rant over, back to working and waiting here!

That's a really awesome thing to say @communityhopeful, I didn't think about it like that, but you are completely right!
I found this part of your comment really offensive due the fact that I get super excited when I meet someone from my state on the east coast, (let's just say there aren't very many New Mexicans living in New Jersey) and I am in no way trying to suck up to someone or just make "small talk" with them. So I would imagine that someone living in Texas may be excited to meet someone from Texas living in Boston as well. Also, just because you left Texas and moved to Boston does not mean that you like it there. Many people move to new states/cities due to jobs, school, etc. every single day, but that doesn't mean that they like it there. Lastly, just because someone said they were from the same state as you doesn't mean they are implying that they are like you.
I sincerely hope that this candidate was not spoken poorly of or labeled a "suck up" for mentioning that he/she was from the same state as you. If they really shoved past three other applicants, I could understand how that may be too forthcoming and seem desperate, but during interview days, applicants are extremely nervous and under so much pressure that it is really unfair to judge them on something like this, especially since they are most likely looking up to you and trying to impress you because you are a current student.

~~~~~(Extended version)~~~~~
 
I was checking my email every 5 minutes or so that day as it was a Thursday and we were told to expect emails that week if we were accepted (and to wait for a letter in the mail the following week if rejected). This was the only program I applied to so I was anxious to hear back as I planned to try to put in a few more applications to other schools if rejected but those deadlines were quickly approaching. 
Anyway, it's Thursday. I went to take a mid day shower, got out and dressed to take my elderly father to the store and decided to check my email once more before leaving and there it was - "congratulations! You have been admitted." I was completely floored, to say the least. I smiled a smile bigger than I thought possible and said a quick prayer thanking God for allowing me the possibility and hoping to be able to pursue him and reflect well on him through my future work. 
I told my dad, we decided to hold off telling mom (she's a teacher and was at school). At the store, we also bought cake and ice cream and roses for mom and I cooked fdinner or her to come home to. She didn't really question anything when she came home because my parent's anniversary was the previous day. That is, until I told her she wasn't allowed to cut the cake because it was mine. She asked why I had a cake and I let my dad tell her the good news. 
I've never seen the two of them so proud. I'm my dad's 6th kid but the first nto ever go to jail and the first to graduate from college and the first in our family (at least 4 generations) to go to grad school. 

~~~~~(Extended version)~~~~~
 
I was checking my email every 5 minutes or so that day as it was a Thursday and we were told to expect emails that week if we were accepted (and to wait for a letter in the mail the following week if rejected). This was the only program I applied to so I was anxious to hear back as I planned to try to put in a few more applications to other schools if rejected but those deadlines were quickly approaching. 
Anyway, it's Thursday. I went to take a mid day shower, got out and dressed to take my elderly father to the store and decided to check my email once more before leaving and there it was - "congratulations! You have been admitted." I was completely floored, to say the least. I smiled a smile bigger than I thought possible and said a quick prayer thanking God for allowing me the possibility and hoping to be able to pursue him and reflect well on him through my future work. 
I told my dad, we decided to hold off telling mom (she's a teacher and was at school). At the store, we also bought cake and ice cream and roses for mom and I cooked fdinner or her to come home to. She didn't really question anything when she came home because my parent's anniversary was the previous day. That is, until I told her she wasn't allowed to cut the cake because it was mine. She asked why I had a cake and I let my dad tell her the good news. 
I've never seen the two of them so proud. I'm my dad's 6th kid but the first nto ever go to jail and the first to graduate from college and the first in our family (at least 4 generations) to go to grad school. 

A little background first: As an undergrad that's graduating a year early (only 3 years of undergrad, heck yes!), my mom kept asking me to give grad school a try. The result was that I made up my mind to apply literally 2 months before the deadlines. Last minute running around for LoRs, taking the GRE without studying (or knowing what they were), etc. It was a maddening few months.
Fast forward a bit to a day ago. I was chilling and watching anime (yes, I know…very nerdy). It was an incredibly emotional anime, so had a few tears running down my cheeks. Suddenly my phone buzzed and I noticed (through red, swollen eyes) that I got a new email, so to give myself a small break from the emotional hell I was putting myself through, I checked it. When I saw the word "Congratulations from [uni name]", I began bawling my eyes out.
The thing was, with a meh GPA, a pretty average GRE score, and last minute running around applying for grad school, I never once considered that I'd get into any of the schools I applied to, let alone getting a fully funded offer from one of the top universities. I immediately called my mom, sniffling and still sobbing (she thought I had hurt myself or something…you can imagine the confusion), and managed to somehow relay the news to her through snot, tears and incoherent babbling.
It was definitely a moment I'm never going to forget.

~~~~~(Extended version)~~~~~
 
I was checking my email every 5 minutes or so that day as it was a Thursday and we were told to expect emails that week if we were accepted (and to wait for a letter in the mail the following week if rejected). This was the only program I applied to so I was anxious to hear back as I planned to try to put in a few more applications to other schools if rejected but those deadlines were quickly approaching. 
Anyway, it's Thursday. I went to take a mid day shower, got out and dressed to take my elderly father to the store and decided to check my email once more before leaving and there it was - "congratulations! You have been admitted." I was completely floored, to say the least. I smiled a smile bigger than I thought possible and said a quick prayer thanking God for allowing me the possibility and hoping to be able to pursue him and reflect well on him through my future work. 
I told my dad, we decided to hold off telling mom (she's a teacher and was at school). At the store, we also bought cake and ice cream and roses for mom and I cooked fdinner or her to come home to. She didn't really question anything when she came home because my parent's anniversary was the previous day. That is, until I told her she wasn't allowed to cut the cake because it was mine. She asked why I had a cake and I let my dad tell her the good news. 
I've never seen the two of them so proud. I'm my dad's 6th kid but the first nto ever go to jail and the first to graduate from college and the first in our family (at least 4 generations) to go to grad school. 

~~~~~(Extended version)~~~~~
 
I was checking my email every 5 minutes or so that day as it was a Thursday and we were told to expect emails that week if we were accepted (and to wait for a letter in the mail the following week if rejected). This was the only program I applied to so I was anxious to hear back as I planned to try to put in a few more applications to other schools if rejected but those deadlines were quickly approaching. 
Anyway, it's Thursday. I went to take a mid day shower, got out and dressed to take my elderly father to the store and decided to check my email once more before leaving and there it was - "congratulations! You have been admitted." I was completely floored, to say the least. I smiled a smile bigger than I thought possible and said a quick prayer thanking God for allowing me the possibility and hoping to be able to pursue him and reflect well on him through my future work. 
I told my dad, we decided to hold off telling mom (she's a teacher and was at school). At the store, we also bought cake and ice cream and roses for mom and I cooked fdinner or her to come home to. She didn't really question anything when she came home because my parent's anniversary was the previous day. That is, until I told her she wasn't allowed to cut the cake because it was mine. She asked why I had a cake and I let my dad tell her the good news. 
I've never seen the two of them so proud. I'm my dad's 6th kid but the first nto ever go to jail and the first to graduate from college and the first in our family (at least 4 generations) to go to grad school.