LeeLeeLove

monkey face, I second that emotion. got right to the end before i relaxed my face and let myself stop thinking oh shit oh shit oh shit - how does he know this! I am like the dim one in any standard US Sitcom.

The irrationality of this is even more pertinent if you dont reside in the US and the States is say, 5 hours behind you. So when you wake up and immediately start checking your staus and emails at 08:00 even though you know there is no way in God's name anything can have changed as it is only 03:00 in the US only a deep-seated insanity can explain such actions. Its not healthy in the slightest especially considering I am more than positive its going to end in heartbreak. arrrrrr

Amen to that! In my undergrad, I was accepted everywhere I applied so it never occurred to me that I would not be accepted. With my Masters, I was accepted at the school of my choice one week after I got the last of my paperwork submitted. It was the only school I applied to, as I didn't want to pursue a masters degree but wanted to pursue a masters degree at that particular school. I wasn't expect to be accepted there at all and I was expecting a long wait. This time, however, I know how fierce the competition is, I know how few seats are available, and at my adviser's encouragement did not apply to safety schools. Then, my first contact from a school was an outright rejection. Too much knowledge is not a good thing.

And it's turned me into a nervous wreck.

Wow, your brother's undergrad school really missed out on having a great grad student. He was probably glad to move on elsewhere with his studies. :]

Sorry, but won't be disclosing that,
as some stray adcom members might be searching this forum.

I would say I'd hoped it would increase my chances of admission,
but now that the rejections are coming in and there's no good news yet,
and not likely any to come,
I start to hope that it does not make a difference,
or is even weighted negatively,
because otherwise I must be seriously crap.

Seriously, I can't wish for anything but replies to come sooner!!!! Waiting is killing me.

Oh and I hope that my next rejection letters attached in emails will be named better than "Refusal Letter" which I thought was bit harsh (that was for Cornell, which I got denied three weeks ago).

At least you got in somewhere! If I don't get accepted somewhere, I might have to do a qualifying year at the Masters level and do this process all over again. Never look a gift accept in the mouth. If you don't like the schools that accepted you, why did you apply there?

Um, yes -- you're giving me your account, and I'm giving you mine. Again, this is school-by-school, department-by-department. The search results pages confirm exactly this, nothing more and nothing less. If you have an explicit piece of information from a source, then good, there's your answer, but not mine. As there are different answers to be had, I offer a meager contribution (which is true from the Korbel end of things) and warn against the untrue blanket statements that simply don't apply to all. I would imagine that someone else applying to Korbel could appreciate that, so I'm sticking to it. Not only do their search results verify it, but "explicitly" their Admissions blog, too.

PhD results usually come first because those programs also have earlier deadlines... My MA programs also send out notifications in late february/early march.

A lot of minorities are admitted into undergrad with these "low stats" and have done well in their undergraduate career. Why is graduate study any different? If they have the right research experiences, a good GPA, good recs, and a good SOP, I don't think poor GRE scores = unsuccessful graduate student. Remember the GREs/SATs, etc are culturally biased and aren't good measures of success to begin with.

I don't think this is bad news at all. In an ideal world, we would all be judged blindly on merit. This is most certainly a less-than-ideal world, however, which is why I was born with privilege that I did not earn, and was more easily granted access to the merits I carry today, simply because I am white.

I heard that the reason as to why they ask if you are a Ltino/Hispanic or not on every application I've come across is for such reasons. But then again, I am not from the US, so I don't know.

The presupposition that affirmative action (and by extension, the acknowledgment of race) is somehow childish -- the antithesis of something as "important and prestigious" as grad school -- is incredibly offensive to me. Many things we take for granted when we talk about race today -- the understanding that racial discrimination is wrong, or the idea that race is a social, not biological construct, for instance -- arose in huge part from the work that was done in higher education BY people of color. People who, if not for affirmative action, would not have been able to participate in higher learning.

We shouldn't assume that we've reached a static understanding of race perfectly equitable to all people, PRECISELY because of graduate/higher ed research. One example I can pull from the top of my head is Roland Fryer, the economist at Harvard, whose work and life I won't summarize here but are well worth reading for the perspectives they provide on this topic.

Beyond this, we should question the notion that one's ethnicity and racial identity don't impact the research one is capable of doing. In sociology we learn about "access," and what that means in terms of membership in a racial minority/majority. But in every field, there are real obstacles that arise because of race -- black kids who don't apply themselves in science and math classes for fear of being accused of "acting white," Asian American kids who are pressured into those same fields not only by their parents but by their peers and societal expectations, for example. Even if race theoretically "shouldn't matter," even if race is arbitrary, even if it isn't "real" -- it creates very real feelings, very real problems, and very real consequences.

There are nebulous aspects of affirmative action, and I won't pretend that I'm arguing wholesale for either side (well, obviously I'm leaning one way). Just, please -- consider the ramifications of EVERYTHING you are saying.

This won't end well.

I'm so with the OP on this topic. I think I have the worst kind of emails too because most of them are from my potential schools. I almost get an email everyday from one of my schools regarding my application which is getting annoying and uneventful to say the least but at least they know I exist so that's a plus. But today, I received this extremely irritating email that scared the crap out of me:

Dear ----,

I am pleased to inform you that your admissions file has been recently forwarded to the Department of Mechanical & Materials Engin for committee review.

Who the heck starts an email off like that "pleased to inform you" and then ends with telling you it's been sent to the committee! What the heck, seriously! Trying to give me a heart attack for no reason. I'll just take all these stirring emails as since you like to spam me with so much irrelevant matters, that means I'm in. Yes I'll think that.

I got a badly worded email today that had me excited for a few hours. This came after I interviewed with them Thurdsay...

"Dear Michael,
We recognize with the downturn in the economy, the challenge of funding a graduate education is greater than ever. You may be struggling with questions about how you will be able to afford your studies at California College of the Arts (CCA)."

They sent this out to everyone who applied. My heart was racing for awhile.

I am in the same boat as the OP.

I keep getting emails from my UG university that start with like 'University of' or 'Dr. such and such' and I pretty much go into cardiac arrest until I realize it's nothing special.

I also have avoided posting status updates on Facebook and sending emails to people so that I don't get emails as often, so there is a higher chance that when one hits it is legit. Wow, that sounds all kinds of crazy once I typed that out... haha

Um no, I contacted the admissions offices directly and at least for the ones I'm applying to they explicitly said all notifications for the Masters programs are made end of Feb- March. Also if you look at the results search pages you may or may not have noticed that for this current application season, almost all results have been PhD's so far. You are just starting to see Masters results pop up. If you also compare it to previous years you'll see in general that PhD's come first. I agree it depends on university for the specific timing but take another look at the results search page.

Yeah, sorry dude -- masters decisions have already been made!

So we all jumped through flaming hoops of hell fire to pave the way and make things less challenging for the next generation... yeah that makes me feel a whole lot better.

When applying to Columbia of all places, I found that when I converted my SOP to PDF it had lost a letter in the third or fourth word of my first sentence. I'm a crappy writer to begin with but losing the letter 'y' out of 'my' is pretty embarrassing. That and I didn't notice until two weeks after I had submitted it.

My GPA is a 2.97. I missed automatic funding to one of my universities by a mere 0.03 GPA. Automatic funding of $10k a year...That's gonna sting for awhile.

My verbal GRE was in the 720 range on practice tests. I was super sick the week of my GRE so I went in EXHAUSTED for the test. The first section they gave me was a verbal section. Too bad it was the FAKE/normalization/experimental section. I hate you ETS. When I came to the last question and realized it was an experimental question type I almost cried. Surely I had at least a single tear. The realization that I had just performed so valiantly, exhaustion and all, on a non-scored section was super demoralizing. I figure I would have a 700+ on the FAKE section. I ended up with a 560 because when the second one came around as the last section I just didn't want to be there anymore. Did I mention that I hate ETS? Thanks for changing the test to something more practical after I took your dumb test. *ETS should be required to disclose the score on that section, I want to know so that I can hate them at an appropriate level...

I didn't apply. Too pessimistic

I think most PhD's have already been notified. MA's don't usually hear till last week in Feb and the first two weeks in March. You might have been going through the serch results from previous years. Good luck though.

A few of my own thoughts to kick this off:

I have the best impression of DC schools and Columbia, as I lived and worked in NYC and DC prior to going abroad.

SAIS- I applied to SAIS because of its strong China program, essentially. I have mixed feelings about the mandatory econ track, but I do want to tool up on quant work in grad school so I'm ok with that. SAIS is certainly well-regarded in DC, and I've seen SAIS alumni in positions that I find interesting ranging from academia (with a subsequent PhD, of course) to the Treasury to the Carnegie Council. I also collected an enormous amount of World Bank friends, most of whom seemed to be from SIPA and SAIS with a smattering of others. SAIS people did come across as a bit more conservative on average than, say, SFS people. However, with SAIS' large incoming class, I hear it's easy to find people one get's along with. For me, the positive of SAIS are, located in DC, strong on China, good alumni base, interesting classes, alumni seem to get frequently get good jobs, etc Downsides: Located in DC (I worked there before and wouldn't mind a break, as I very well might end up working there anyway )large incoming class size, not attached to research university (JHU is inconveniently far away) so electives are relatively narrow, etc.

Georgetown MSFS - I lived with two people who went to the Walsh School while I was working in DC. Both were nice, laid back, smart, and interesting, as were most of my other friends who attended. In many ways I liked SFS better than SAIS (smaller class size, perhaps better perceived "fit" based on my interactions with current students), but their lack of dedicated East Asia resources put me off a bit. SFS also prides itself on being very professionally focused, and I hear few people go on to a PhD from SFS (except for Parag Khana). I'd like to keep the PhD option open.

Tufts Fletcher - I toured it and did the interview last summer prior to coming to Beijing. I have to say that I was really impressed with how nice everyone is. I also have family in Boston, so the location is especially great for me. Pluses include flexibility, top notch staff, ability to take courses at Harvard and HKS, great career services (according to my friends), great sense of community (no snarky competitiveness), and people go on to get PhDs with some frequency. Downsides may include lower "brand" recognition outside of the IR field and abroad, though I'm not sure how to evaluate that.

HKS - I have a friend who worked in the administration at HKS for 10 years and waxes lyrical about its strengths. It does seem like a great program, and I had a good experience when I went there to visit, but I've heard a mix of superlative and negative comments from friends. The person I talked to in admissions was extremely helpful and quite nice.

I have very little in the way of personal impressions of SIPA, Yale, Oxford, Cambridge, and Harvard EAS. I didn't apply to GW, but I took a class there when I was working in DC. The professor was great, as are many of GW's adjuncts, but I felt like students were a bit scattershot and many seemed to be straight from undergrad. That was a sample size of one, however.

Anyway, just a few thoughts. I don't know how many others are currently turning similar considerations over in their heads, but I'd love to hear what people are thinking.

And it's something to do for the next month. :-)

LeeLee - I think we are in very very similar positions. I applied to four of the 6 you did (Gtown, SAIS, Tufts, and GW) and my order of priorities is very similar. One difference is that if it comes down to Fletcher or GW, I think I'll be going to Fletcher, despite my desire to stay in DC. I've met several people who have gone through the Fletcher program (some recent grads, others longer out of school and further along in their career). I bring up the issue of being outside of DC with them and universally they say that they had the same concern, but that it was misplaced. They insist that Fletcher works very hard to place students and grads and position them for internships and jobs. I'd say that the difference in reputation outweighs the drawback of Boston vs DC. That said, if you, like me, have friends and networks already in DC, there are other reasons to want to stay in DC.

In any case, best of luck. it seems you are competitive for all the programs you've applied to.

Thanks for the vote of support! What were the other two schools you applied to? I think you're right about Fletcher-- that the reputation would make up for the location (in comparison to GW, anyway). If you don't mind me asking. what does your resume look like? I'm pretty insecure about my GPA and I think my SOP was a dud. It's so hard to judge which schools are realistic, and which are out of my league. There isn't much of a second tier for IR, it seems...