DBear

Dude, at least Masters in Counseling has a semblance of relevance to what you actually want to do lol I keep getting those NYU emails too and I'm thinking why would they send this to an English lit/ Communication person? I even tried to SPAM it but somehow they keep coming! I also get these promo emails from some art school.

Butterfly effect

I seem to have found a good distraction - playing with friends' babies = freaking out that they're gonna get hurt instead of freaking out about people scrutinizing my SOP - hang in there everyone!!

Hits a bit close to home!! Money problems

Caffeine withdrawal

@ejpril88 Congratulations!! You should be the first to post on the decision thread!

Shopping addiction

Shopping cart

Donkey cart

Come to think about it, having checked my Spam box even though only once was definitely a nervous twitch. During this whole entire process, never has an email from a school ended up in spam but I still checked it lol

I wanted to say that! Smoothie King

Now that school holidays are coming to an end, I think we'll start hearing some more news now.. I just got an email from my POI at Temple asking for a Skype chat.. Finally some news!!

Mean person

rotten egg

Checked Spam only once! Checked it once for two different email accounts... So perhaps that counts as twice. I have my email sends me auto notifications on my phone so I don't need to actually go and check. Still, everytime I see the little email icon, I get butterflies before I open it and a bit disappointed when it turns out to be just a normal email.

LA Lakers

Rabid dog

Major disaster

Major PainInTheAss If this doesn't work, let's go with Undergrad major

Premier League

Ivy league

This reminds me of the first job I interviewed for (non-academic). I met with over 10 people all from different departments, performing different functions within the company. Although most of the departments had nothing to do with me and I wouldn't be working in or with them, it was still necessary to show that I was suited to the organization's overall goals and culture - aspects that cross disciplinary boundaries. I imagine that in the course of your career, you'll be faced with this type of situation again. So like @TakeruK said, it's important to be able to show at least a minimal amount of interest and knowledge even in topics you may not ever work on because, I think, it shows that you care about the organization as a whole and if needed, you can contribute in fields that may not be in your comfort zone. Also, it's important to learn how to discuss your interests with someone that may not be in your specific research area - more often than not, whether it's submitting papers for publication, applying for a job or a grant, giving conference presentations, you won't be preaching to the choir. So yeah, the interviewers whom you're not all that thrilled about may be thinking the exact same thing about you. So in addition to preparing to express interest in them, you'll need to be able to discuss your plans in a way that can keep them from falling asleep. This isn't easy, even as a grad student, department dinners were always full of people trying to show interest / gain interest in stuff that's unrelated. Like me, trying to explain my research on race relations to a person researching Renaissance tragedies while also trying to be polite and show sincere interest about that person's research on Hamlet and other stuff.... So yeah, as long as we're in academia, this will be a recurring situation.

Poison darts

@socrate4se, if that's the case the only relatively reliable and useful information that can be reaped is to ascertain whether or not a program tends to send out interviews all at once or sporadically. If you look at the past couple of years, depending on the number of posts, a trend should be apparent. For example, there is one program I am waiting on that sent out interview invites all Jan long - so I'm still holding out hope. There is no way to know whether late/ early interview invites impact chances of admissions, but at least you can get somewhat of an idea on whether you should still wait for an invite or not.