Kilos

Got an email from the DGS at Purdue this morning asking if I was still interested because they "may be able to make an additional offer soon."
I don't know if this means I'm first-in-line for this offer (I'm assuming/hoping this is the case) or if they're just scoping out the remaining pool of applicants, but it seems like progress either way! I also don't know if "soon" means the next few days or just sometime before the 15th. Either way, fingers crossed this works out, because I never thought I'd be admitted to Purdue & would be thrilled to attend there. 
 

Yep, still waiting in silent misery here!
No joke. I've been able to tolerate it up until now, but this last week has been torturous. It's hard to wrap my mind around the fact that the trajectory of my life may very well hinge on where my name is written on a list pinned above somebody's desk. I'm usually pretty good about controlling my anxiety, but having something so important be so completely out of my control is heart-wrenching.
My neurotic side has definitely started showing itself. I have an email that I've been painstakingly editing for about three weeks, and it's just sitting in my drafts folder; it's a simple six-sentence note addressed to the DGS of my dream program (where I'm waitlisted), reaffirming my desire to join their incoming cohort should a spot open up--but I can't send it. I'm afraid that sending it would label me a nuisance, but then I'm conversely worried that not sending it makes me look apathetic. Then I realize that sending or not sending it won't change anything at all, and I chastise myself for acting like a dunce. Really, I feel like I'm stuck in some chaos theory time-warp where each and every one of my actions has some karmic butterfly effect on the outcome of my admission status. Can't wait for it to be over. 
(I'm mostly joking here. Mostly.)

I know the lie was pointless because the school wasn't going to rescind your acceptance if they'd learned you hadn't been accepted anywhere else, and it wouldn't result in you being treated worse than your colleagues.  As has been said here many times, there are people that get accepted to a school in the top 10 or top 5 who were rejected by schools in the 20s and 30s. This is common knowledge.  The professor was probably just curious, programs like to have that data so that they can know a bit more about their applicant pools.
My admittedly armchair psychoanalysis is that when you were asked, you had a moment of impostor syndrome panic (which happens to the best of us), and wanted to seem more impressive to your future advisor.  It is perfectly understandable, but, like so many other behaviors associated with impostor syndrome, is unnecessary and leads to unnecessary anxiety!  Going forward, just remember that they wouldn't have admitted you if they didn't think you were a smart person with a whole lot of potential who will fit nicely into their department culture.
He isn't going to find out. I can't think of a conversation in which it could possibly come up without really wracking my brain to concoct a series of coincidences. If he did find out, it's possible that he wouldn't want to be your advisor anymore, but I think that would speak to a lack of professional maturity and empathy that would not be becoming of an advisor anyway.  If it were me, I would probably chalk it up as one of many incidences I've experienced of an anxious graduate student having a gaffe and saying the wrong thing or behaving in a baffling or frustrating way. I would probably use it as a teaching/mentoring moment to prevent you feeling like you need to lie to me in the future. 
But you don't know this person, and you don't know how they'll react. It is exceptionally unlikely this will come up again as anything other than a joke at your dissertation defense.  So just bury it and move on.
 
 

Man, if you end up skipping grad school and you need a job, I'll hire you to be my hype guy. You just made my relatively glum day.

Man, if you end up skipping grad school and you need a job, I'll hire you to be my hype guy. You just made my relatively glum day.

Like @hotpotatosaid: that’s so awesome!!!

Thanks @hotpotato! Best of luck back at you.
I'm doing everything I can to not get my hopes up, but it's hard to be so close and so far at the same time.
If there's a silver lining, it's that I got into a fully funded MA program close to where I live. It's no perfect-fit-UConn-Ph.D. program, but I love the faculty and the school.

Heck, hire me now. I'll accept IOUs and assorted snacks as payment until you're officially Dr. Kilos.
Fingers crossed, @evanmarie!

Thanks @hotpotato! Best of luck back at you.
I'm doing everything I can to not get my hopes up, but it's hard to be so close and so far at the same time.
If there's a silver lining, it's that I got into a fully funded MA program close to where I live. It's no perfect-fit-UConn-Ph.D. program, but I love the faculty and the school.

Just got a waitlist email from UConn. It's my top choice, so here's hoping enough people get in somewhere they'd rather go!

At some point in the disaster that has been my application process, I submitted a PhD application to BSU (Ball State), completely missing that it was the only school on my list that required an MA first, so I called and had it switched to an MA. Although the smarter first move might have been to ask for the fee back, especially since I don't want to move for an MA.
Anyways, I got an acceptance email this morning, except it was a little bit of a shock because I somehow got mixed up a second time and thought I'd made this mistake with ANOTHER school. I'd gotten over it because this other school is in a location I don't really want to go to, so it seemed to be for the best. But BSU sounded nice, so I'd been waiting hopefully for their PhD decision. So that went great.
Best of luck, @Kilos!!!

This is great, thanks! I'm gonna have a craaazy February. ha. ha.... ha... somebody kill me?

I varied my writing sample depending on the program/school I was applying to. The rhetoric program I applied to got a tailored excerpt from a huge 40+ page research project I wrote/presented on comfort levels/instructional anxiety and success rates/productivity in writing tutorials and classroom composition instruction; it focused on the relationship between comfort and metacognition--the science behind the way in which comfort levels can directly affect (boost) self-efficacy and (decrease) writing anxiety--and how practitioners can go about making the tutorial experience a more comfortable one for all involved. It was geared towards writing centers and tutoring, but I branched it off to directly address comp/rhet instruction. 
For another program I used an essay exploring the way in which absurdist authors/playwrights (Beckett/Stoppard and a few others) use intricately developed personal relationships as a bulwark to defend their characters (and subsequently their readers/viewers) from unmitigated nihilistic despair. It included a bit of a deep-dive into the foundations of the Absurd, exploring some of Camus' and Kierkegaarde's work/theory. I actually regret using this essay, as I think I could have used something more fitting, but it was easily the most enjoyable thing I've ever had the pleasure of writing, and I felt that my enthusiasm may have shone through in the finished product. /shrug
p.s.: totally blown away by some of your topics/ideas/theses. It might just be my impostor syndrome piping up, but for a few brief moments here I felt completely out of my element! You guys are awesome. It's no surprise you're all headed off to amazing programs.

I've been lurking for a while, but this thread is so encouraging that I decided to post. I have yet to have any acceptances, but am still trying to keep the faith! Congrats to all those who've gotten in!

It's impossible to tell everybody individually, but I wanted to say congratulations to all of the amazing top-tier acceptances everybody's received over the last week or two! It's so cool to hear all of your great stories, and it's a bit humbling to know that I'm surrounded by the next wave of literary scholars and academics! So happy for everybody; I'm still waiting on most of my schools, so I've been living vicariously through you all.
Here's hoping the next month is as kind as the last--good luck!

Ha, it seems like a century ago now that I wrote it, but the topic was on the interplay between films in stabilizing or destabilizing the cultural memory of the Vietnam war in the United States.  Relied heavily on Althusser and an intransigently modernist conception of both national identity and opposition.  Six and a half years later I'd be a bit embarrassed if I had to read it again.  It involved Apocalypse Now, Rambo, and No Country For Old Men as principal texts.
As I think frequently happens when folks go straight to PhD from undergrad, I'm worlds away from the subject matter now, and the argument was exceptionally vulgar.  But I think something that a lot of folks forget when applying to grad school is that if you already knew everything you were supposed to know, if you were already a brilliant fully developed scholar, you wouldn't need to be in a PhD program.  What seemed to matter most to the program was not whether I was already a real smart well-read guy (I was certainly not), but whether I seemed like I could find an interesting trajectory given time, mentorship, and resources.  
My program director said to me the other day that he was really surprised, in a good way, about the direction I ended up going.  Every program differs, but I don't think a writing sample needs to be a ready-to-publish, immaculately conceived and executed document that provides a segue directly to your dissertation.  It should show them something about you and what kind of scholar you would like to be.

It's impossible to tell everybody individually, but I wanted to say congratulations to all of the amazing top-tier acceptances everybody's received over the last week or two! It's so cool to hear all of your great stories, and it's a bit humbling to know that I'm surrounded by the next wave of literary scholars and academics! So happy for everybody; I'm still waiting on most of my schools, so I've been living vicariously through you all.
Here's hoping the next month is as kind as the last--good luck!

It's impossible to tell everybody individually, but I wanted to say congratulations to all of the amazing top-tier acceptances everybody's received over the last week or two! It's so cool to hear all of your great stories, and it's a bit humbling to know that I'm surrounded by the next wave of literary scholars and academics! So happy for everybody; I'm still waiting on most of my schools, so I've been living vicariously through you all.
Here's hoping the next month is as kind as the last--good luck!

It's impossible to tell everybody individually, but I wanted to say congratulations to all of the amazing top-tier acceptances everybody's received over the last week or two! It's so cool to hear all of your great stories, and it's a bit humbling to know that I'm surrounded by the next wave of literary scholars and academics! So happy for everybody; I'm still waiting on most of my schools, so I've been living vicariously through you all.
Here's hoping the next month is as kind as the last--good luck!

No, actually.

This has nothing to do with the OP's question, but as a metric, I think major GPA is a strong indicator of one's academic potential. It's possible that I'm biased, given my own strength in that area, but on the most basic level, major GPA is based on how well you've fared over several semesters of studying what you'll need to be familiar with in grad school. There's a bit of arbitrariness involved, given that some professors (and some programs) will be more strict or more lenient about grading than others, but it usually shakes out -- since there are usually at least half a dozen separate numbers involved, there's simply more data to give an adcom a sense of the student's potential. Contrast that with the GRE, which is a 3.5 hour test -- one hour of which is focused on an abstract knowledge of vocabulary, one hour is focused on generating as many big words as possible to trick the computer into giving you a good AW score (and yes, the writing portion is analyzed by a computer as well...), while another hour and a half is focused on that necessary graduate English skill of twelfth grade mathematics.

In completely practical terms, a graduate student with a sub 3.0 GPA (major or no) is likely not a student who can excel in the academic environment, even if he/she is capable of doing some things well. It might reflect intellectual laziness, but even if not, it reflects an inability to perform the necessary academic functions on a high level.

This is partially my opinion, of course, but I hold it because despite the frustrations we all have over the vagueness of the process, I appreciate the major GPA as a part of the determining factor as it demonstrates sustained ability in one's field. Exceptions can be explained away (poor performance in a semester due to a death in the family etc.), but in general, I certainly wouldn't applaud an adcom's decision to admit someone with a sub-3.0 GPA in almost any situation.

Thanks y'all. I was really reticent to write the post because I know everyone is in the same boat. But that to say, I really appreciate your helpful (and calming) comments. I didn't anticipate having such an exasperating waiting period, but here I am. 

Now you all are making me feel homesick.

That's hilarious--same here! Henderson and Powell's (in Portland) are my favorite bookstores. I miss the PNW.
Edit: Elliott Bay and Mercer Street in Seattle are nice too! 

If I lived in Bellingham, every waking second would be spent in Henderson Books! One of my favorite places on earth, and that's not hyperbole...

Yep, I won't bore you with my life's story, but I'm a 32 y/o nontraditional student finishing up a B.A. I've been working full-time since I was 17; I finally got my life settled down enough to go back to school and finish. I'm applying to a small handful of Ph.D. programs in my field. No clue what my chances are, but I figure it's worth the time/money/anguish.
 
I can absolutely understand why you find this insulting/sexist/degrading, but I genuinely don't (and I'm a raging feminist who constantly seeks out things to harp on) . These POIs/AdComms have one priority above all others: making sure the people they admit (and typically fund with large sums of money) finish the degree. I worked with a guy who told me a similar story--he was probably late thirties at the time, married, and they asked if he had kids (he did) and how he would handle that commitment. He rationally explained that he understood the time commitments, had a partner to help out with the kids, didn't believe that it would interfere with his teaching/research, and understood their hesitance. He ended up getting fully funded. I'd liken the situation to me stating that I had a 50/hr a week salaried career, and I really loved it, and there's no way I could possibly quit while going to graduate school; I wouldn't expect this to rule me out, or even negatively affect my chances, but I'd find it odd if they didn't ask about my outside commitments (when they had reason to believe those commitments might exist). Raising kids (as I'm sure you know) is more than a full-time job, and many people would argue that completing a Ph.D. program in a timely fashion is also more than a full-time job. Working two full-time jobs is going to really, seriously, severely wear on somebody over 4-6 years with minimal breaks. They're just covering their bases to make sure their prospective candidate understands what they're signing themselves up for.