cabraloca

This thread could so be a research topic in many disciplines, especially Communication Studies. Very insightful!
I definitely have found the community aspect of this place soothing. I wish there was more action in the Communication forum, but oh well. I feel The sense of familiarity I get from seeing frequent posters like @goldenstardust11 (word game!) is invaluable especially because though I have a lot of friends familiar with grad school life and this whole process, only a couple actually applied this cycle and you can only talk about your applications with non-applicants so much before their eyes start glazing over.... 
So hope this place stays alive!!

I've been lurking and I'm starting to get acceptance letters so I thought I'd share. I think my background is a bit different - my standardized test scores are pretty bad, to the fault of my own. However, chemistry is a passion of mine and I have shown this through other routes. Networking was probably the most important part of my competitiveness. Every school I'm applying to has 2-3 professors that I've met in person and email occasionally. For the higher tier schools, I do not think I'd get in without this. Best of luck to you all. 
 
Undergrad Institution: Very small college (I have an A.S. degree as a transfer student) 
Major(s): Chemistry
GPA in Major: 3.90
Overall GPA: 3.95
Position in Class: Top
Type of Student: Male, learning disability, ethnic background, first gen

GRE Scores (revised/old version):
Q: 157
V: 154
W: 4.0
Chemistry: 670 (sigh..)

Research Experience: 1 summer with my college PI, a well known research in the field, made my own project. Collaboration with a national lab for 2 weeks. Summer at a large NSF CCI, published in high impact journal

Awards/Honors/Recognitions:  Analytical and inorganic chemist of the year, dean's list, McNair, LSAMP
Pertinent Activities or Jobs: established ACS student chapter, tutor, outreach events in the inner city

Any Miscellaneous Accomplishments that Might Help: Keynote speaker for regional conference

Special Bonus Points: I networked very hard. I have a lot of connections in my field currently. I've attended 3 national conferences, 3 regional, and 6 grad preview weekends. My PI has his own network of connections that are available to me. 

Any Other Info That Shows Up On Your App and Might Matter: Was a comm. college transfer that worked full time to pay tuition and rent. My background is extremely financially poor and I am just now getting up to speed on this whole research thing - it's fantastic.

Applying to Where:
UC Davis -- Atmo Sciences
UCSD - Chemistry (Accepted)
Caltech - Env. engineering
UC Berkey - Earth and Planetary Sciences
UC Boulder
These aren't all chemistry, but my field of research can all be completed within these disciplines - it is still in essence "chemistry". 

Hey guys, my status changed for UCI to "being reviewed." Based on past years (and this year!), it seems that means a decision will come out soon.
Some decisions will come out Friday (not Princeton - that is next week). 

Thanks nevermind, hope your first day back was good! I had the most amazing day today, I didn't think days like this existed in grad school but they do and I''m flying so high right now! Things that happened today:
1. Woke up to an email from my MSc advisor inviting me to present my work at a conference in Hong Kong this summer.
2. Had a great impromptu meeting with my advisor who told me my writing was "exceptional and an example of how essays should be written"
3. In our official lab meeting my advisor assigned me host duties for a big name in the field whom he invited to talk to us in a month or so, but he has to go to a conference meeting (he's conference chair) and he trusts me over his other first year grad student to act as host.
4. I managed to write the abstract for the HK conference in a day! and my Msc advisor replied saying he was very impressed and can't wait to introduce me to his colleagues in the field.
5. One of the conferences I'm submitting to is very specialized and one of the guys on the committee came to give a job talk just before the break, and I was the only student at his talk. We chatted afterwards about our research interests, and hit it off - hoping this stands in my favor when they're reviewing abstracts.
6. My advisor asked for my help with the conference he's organizing because I have a background of organizing them (admittedly not academic conferences but still).
7. My IRB proposal is almost done
8. I did 15,000 steps, and did my C25K day even though I had food poisoning at the weekend.
9. Got the syllabuses/syllabi? for my two classes and I'm really excited about them. They're going to really complement what I'm doing with my research this semester.
10. Got to hang out with my friends and we went and shot hoops for a half hour instead of sitting around drinking coffee! 
I'm so sorry if this sounds like bragging, it really wasn't meant to! It's just been the most unbelievable, great day and I wasn't sure they actually existed! 

Same here! It basically reversed back to the old checklist. It's probably just something to do with the system. I hope we hear back soon. I can't with the anxiety.

Very interesting thoughts from everyone. I also think that it takes somewhat being a 'child of the internet' to actually want to hang in these type of sites. I think most people are talking to their friends from university etc about their anxiety and not everyone feels that extra need to talk to other people on the internet about it too. I do. This wait is crazy. And for me, so much right now is hanging for me to get admitted into graduate school. These days feel really crazy with extra pressure. Sending good vibes to everyone out there <3

Very interesting thoughts from everyone. I also think that it takes somewhat being a 'child of the internet' to actually want to hang in these type of sites. I think most people are talking to their friends from university etc about their anxiety and not everyone feels that extra need to talk to other people on the internet about it too. I do. This wait is crazy. And for me, so much right now is hanging for me to get admitted into graduate school. These days feel really crazy with extra pressure. Sending good vibes to everyone out there <3

@Wolverine_Champ good luck!! according to what theyve said and past results we're going to be finding out really soon.. and unfortunately i don't know much more than that. 
@cristyarline do you know about the results thing here on grad cafe? http://www.thegradcafe.com/survey/index.php?q=oregon+gender looks like people have found out in late january/early feb in the past! 

Hello! I thought I would start a thread for women's/feminist/gender studies applicants for fall 2017 to share stories, provide support, etc! 
I am so nervous... I have applied to four phd programs: emory, ucsc, ucla, and stonybrook, and 3 american studies phd programs: yale, harvard, and nyu. I really want to get in somewhere!! This application process has been so stressful, I'd hate to have to do it again. Where are y'all applying? How has the application process been for you?

Very interesting thoughts from everyone. I also think that it takes somewhat being a 'child of the internet' to actually want to hang in these type of sites. I think most people are talking to their friends from university etc about their anxiety and not everyone feels that extra need to talk to other people on the internet about it too. I do. This wait is crazy. And for me, so much right now is hanging for me to get admitted into graduate school. These days feel really crazy with extra pressure. Sending good vibes to everyone out there <3

If only such a group could preserve anonymity. 

I agree, it's nice to know that there are others as neurotically obsessed with this as I am. Solidarity against the unknown!
When I was thinking about graduate programs, finding this site and reading posts in this group reminded me that maybe I wasn't as crazy as I thought for doing this.

@Dibenzofulvene @sk8er determinant @meteora
Applying to UW-Madison as well but a different program (Gender and Women's Studies MA).
Mine says "Status temporarily unavailable", and it has been that way since Saturday. It makes me wanna cry.
I hope they work that out throughout this week. Please do keep posting any information you have!
 

I'd try Paul Rabinow at UC Berkley.  He teaches in the Anthro Department and worked with Foucault. 

You all make me laugh. I took the time to register this account, because I thought that I was looking at a thread of disasters. In-fact, almost all of you have decent GPA's. I dont think I saw anyone with below a 2.6....That's pretty good.
 
This isn't a here's my story, it's better than yours. Rather it's a true disaster which cannot be fixed in any way.
 
I finished my undergrad with a 2.41 in business. I was studying accounting, but if your GPA falls below 2.5 at the University of Colorado then you lose your emphasis. Mine was accounting. I read everywhere that with a 2.4 I can eliminate 98% of grad schools in the U.S.
 
In my entire college tenure, my best semester was a 3.29 and my worst was a 1.6
 
Between those two extremes I fit everywhere probably averaging around a constant 2.5 the entire time. But my backstory is what helped (which I don't encourage you to do). I was in Iraq where I was severely injured to the point where I now have seizures on a weekly basis. I'm a disabled veteran, and I found out that this doesn't play into anything when applying to grad school. Since I had saved money, I decided to take my 2.4 gpa and apply to every top school that I could think of. I don't have good grades, my professors won't write me letters of recommendations because of my grades and my work experience is non-relevant to accounting. Basically I have no help getting into grad school.
 
However, I was wrong. I spent two days creating applications, paying fee's and writing countless essays as to why I would be a good fit. I then picked the six schools that I *knew* wouldn't accept me because of my bad grades and applied to them. I spent over $1000 in application fee's and other items. My top six schools that I applied to for a masters in accounting: Stanford, Michigan, Cornell, Wisconsin,California and Harvard. Then I completed five applications to schools that I thought I had a moderate chance of getting into: Texas A&M, Texas, Ohio State University, Nebraska, and Auburn. After finishing those applications, I tried some other one's that I thought would be sympathetic to my veteran status and applied to five more: North Dakota, Western Michigan, University of Utah, and Boise State University.
 
I didn't think anything of these. At worst, I thought that I may have just submitted 16 applications which would end up in the trash can followed by a degrading rejection email that is sent to the auto rejected students.
 
However here is my current problem:
On my desk I currently have acceptance letters to every single school except Utah because of an application error which is supposed to be resolved soon. The first thought that came to my mind was "wow, I got into Stanford". The first idea was to immediately call/email all of the admissions staff to see what kind of marijuanna they were smoking because my acceptance likely ended the dream of a better qualified student at that particular school. To keep things short, I summed up the responses from all of the universities by displaying what Michigan wrote back. I did this because it generally follows what Stanford, Cornell and just about every other school said. Texas A&M said that my veteran status improved my rankings consideribly. But anyways:

Michigan: "Your undergraduate grades were horrible, and frankly I cannot believe that you are applying knowing that the GPA floor is 3.3 for minimal consideration to the accounting program. After looking through your packet, I saw nothing which indicated that you would have the ability to complete a graduate level degree. Furthermore, after our interview it became very clear to me that you have no relevant experience in accounting outside of academia. I left the interview perplexed because nothing statistically showed my staff or myself that you belong at Michigan. However, I did enjoy reading your essay and listening to your thoughts on the Enron scandal. For having such a low GPA, I am interested in how you learned so much. While I am grateful for your service and terribly sorry for your injury I cannot simply put that in front of your academic performance. You got into Michigan because you can communicate well. It's not too often that a student will present themselves as a problem solver and a situational thinker yet not be able to test well. I think you will bring something profound to our program and that is the ability to hear and speak."

So just so all of you know, having a 2.4 doesn't help but if you can overcome with something else then you can definitely go places.

hulaprissy, I don't think your original question lacked clarity.  
There are 17 departments in the United States that currently offer PhDs in the field. They are: Arizona State University, Emory, Indiana, Oregon State University, Ohio State University, Rutgers, Stony Brook, Texas Woman's University, University of Arizona, UCLA, UCSB, UCSC, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Minnesota, and University of Washington. Michigan doesn't offer a standalone PhD in the field; it offers a joint PhD in Women's Studies and English, History, or Psychology. 
It's a small enough number that you should be able to quickly survey all of them.