Kaiwei

@kotatsumuri @spicyramen Congrats, folks! Looking forward to hearing about your decisions! Also, on the topic of funding: if your offers have been made available, maybe via the web portals, and you still don't have your financial-aid info, I would call the financial-aid office at the school; they should be able to confirm what your package is. I had an official funding letter scanned and sent to me via email to confirm the amount of aid I would receive, without having to wait for the snail-mail packet. 
加油！

@kotatsumuri @spicyramen Congrats, folks! Looking forward to hearing about your decisions! Also, on the topic of funding: if your offers have been made available, maybe via the web portals, and you still don't have your financial-aid info, I would call the financial-aid office at the school; they should be able to confirm what your package is. I had an official funding letter scanned and sent to me via email to confirm the amount of aid I would receive, without having to wait for the snail-mail packet. 
加油！

@kotatsumuri @spicyramen Congrats, folks! Looking forward to hearing about your decisions! Also, on the topic of funding: if your offers have been made available, maybe via the web portals, and you still don't have your financial-aid info, I would call the financial-aid office at the school; they should be able to confirm what your package is. I had an official funding letter scanned and sent to me via email to confirm the amount of aid I would receive, without having to wait for the snail-mail packet. 
加油！

Glad to hear it! Best of luck with your decision
I heard from my final program today...so nice to have the worst part over with!! (Now to wait for funding info and, finally, decide!)

I am DONE! All my apps are back, and i just have to commit somewhere. I will be sure to update you all once I officially commit! 

Well, folks, this marks the end of my application cycle. I wanted to say thank you to everyone for the advice and commiseration during these stressful months. Gradcafe is such a valuable resource, and I hope to meet some of you in person in the future!
后会有期！
加油！
P.S To RSEA admits: I spoke with financial aid, and they will be mailing the official offers tomorrow. See you guys in Cambridge! 

Well, folks, this marks the end of my application cycle. I wanted to say thank you to everyone for the advice and commiseration during these stressful months. Gradcafe is such a valuable resource, and I hope to meet some of you in person in the future!
后会有期！
加油！
P.S To RSEA admits: I spoke with financial aid, and they will be mailing the official offers tomorrow. See you guys in Cambridge! 

Oh my god, this week is finally looking up!! Just had acceptances from both U Michigan (Japanese MA) and Columbia (EALAC MA)!! I applied for FLAS at Michigan and the results will be out by 3/15, so I'm hoping that application will be successful as well. *fingers and toes crossed* No word on any support from Columbia. I don't think they have much for MA students, but I'm going to look into in just to cover all my bases. I don't want to go into Columbia-level debt, lol, but it's exciting to finally have other accpetances after getting 4 rejections.
Now to wait on funding, and my final app: USC EAAS!

Well, folks, this marks the end of my application cycle. I wanted to say thank you to everyone for the advice and commiseration during these stressful months. Gradcafe is such a valuable resource, and I hope to meet some of you in person in the future!
后会有期！
加油！
P.S To RSEA admits: I spoke with financial aid, and they will be mailing the official offers tomorrow. See you guys in Cambridge! 

Well, folks, this marks the end of my application cycle. I wanted to say thank you to everyone for the advice and commiseration during these stressful months. Gradcafe is such a valuable resource, and I hope to meet some of you in person in the future!
后会有期！
加油！
P.S To RSEA admits: I spoke with financial aid, and they will be mailing the official offers tomorrow. See you guys in Cambridge! 

Well, folks, this marks the end of my application cycle. I wanted to say thank you to everyone for the advice and commiseration during these stressful months. Gradcafe is such a valuable resource, and I hope to meet some of you in person in the future!
后会有期！
加油！
P.S To RSEA admits: I spoke with financial aid, and they will be mailing the official offers tomorrow. See you guys in Cambridge! 

Well, folks, this marks the end of my application cycle. I wanted to say thank you to everyone for the advice and commiseration during these stressful months. Gradcafe is such a valuable resource, and I hope to meet some of you in person in the future!
后会有期！
加油！
P.S To RSEA admits: I spoke with financial aid, and they will be mailing the official offers tomorrow. See you guys in Cambridge! 

Haven't posted for a while because I've been really busy. But I've been admitted to RSEA as well!!! So excited!!!! 

Haven't posted for a while because I've been really busy. But I've been admitted to RSEA as well!!! So excited!!!! 

Haven't posted for a while because I've been really busy. But I've been admitted to RSEA as well!!! So excited!!!! 

@Naito Thanks and best luck for you too!
 
@costevens同喜同喜！The email I received was from the chair and I am still waiting for funding information. Probably will choose from RSEA/Berkeley/Chicago maph. Hopefully we will meet in Boston！

Haven't posted for a while because I've been really busy. But I've been admitted to RSEA as well!!! So excited!!!! 

Shortlited means either one one of two things:
1. You've made it past the initial cut, but you're not guaranteed a spot yet. You're still competing with other people, but the pool is much smaller (I.E. 2 other candidates, instead of 40). It's a bit of a double-edged sword to know your shortlisted. On the one hand, you're close to getting admitted and you know it. On the other hand, there's still a good chance you'll get beat out and it'll blow up in your face. Don't put too much stock into the program until you're actually offered admission. 
2. To light a candle with a very short wick. This is hard, as there is not much room for the candle to burn.
 

I only contacted my POI at Harvard so I cannot say that all of our POIs will definitely tell us the reason. Maybe this has something to do with the personality of POIs and/or our rapport with them and/or how busy they are. It's not their responsibility to tell us the reasons, so if they do,  I'd say they've done us a huge favor. Think about it, a renowned historian bothered to take time to comment on our writing even though we are not their students - to me that's a huge privilege.  By all means, I don't think asking them about our application is gonna hurt us, although how we word this inquiry is important, in my humble opinion. Mine was something like this:
[short introduction to remind POI who I am] 
[A]s I intend to learn from this history of failure and reapply in the fall of 2017, I was wondering if it may be proper for me to ask for your advice regarding my application so I could make more improvements this year?
I apologize if I have caused you any inconvenience. Also, please allow me to thank you again for your encouragement. 
You can see that I used "from this history of failure", indicating I was very emotional back then (I was, which means I was less professional, oops), which, in hindsight, was unnecessary and should have been avoided. My suggestion is to try to frame our email in a positive and professional way with as much elegance and grace as you can gather, don't focus on the rejection but see it as an opportunity to make improvements, and of course let's take this opportunity to thank our POIs for reviewing our application.  You may not even mention the word "rejection", I think I said something like "I have received the official notification about the result of my application to XX program, and would like to thank you for reviewing my application. Meanwhile...." 
Hope this helps!
 
See if you can make this into a professional networking opportunity.  

@costevens 8 years! Yikes... If you do a PhD, see #3 here, "Finish as quickly as possible": http://100rsns.blogspot.com/p/if-you-decide-to-go-anyway.html
If you're willing to go abroad, there are always opportunities even for literature. I think you should choose EALC at the most prestigious schools (and you will), and eventually you'll also have options to go abroad to be a TT professor. See Lucas Klein whose specialty is Chinese poetry. I can totally imagine you becoming like Prof. Klein! http://www.chinese.hku.hk/main/dr-lucas-klein/
 
 

農曆年快樂！

Congratulations! @costevens

Congrats! @costevens

That's great news @costevens!! Congratulations!

@costevens Wow, CONGRATS!!! Woohoo!!! Yay!!  You're a smart cookie!