DankOcean

I'm a long-time lurker, but I just wanted to share that I got into the English PhD program at Washington University in St. Louis!  It's a great fit for me.  Thank you all so much for providing this community - it's been so helpful to hear from other people undergoing the same challenges.  
If any other WashU applicant has any questions about my experience, feel free to message me, but I posted everything I know in the results page.  I'd also be curious to hear from any current PhD students in the program.  Best of luck to everyone!

Minor, half-hearted vent here, but I dislike it when you either take yourself off of a waiting list, or turn down your offer of admission, only to receive an email several days or weeks later telling you that you have been rejected! I want to respond like Coriolanus to Rome, shouting "I banish you!"

I know it's just an administrative blurp, but it's a point of pride, dammit!

Yayayayaya! I've been accepted at Arizona State! Matched with my dream advisor and got a pretty decent funding package.

Agreed. Relationships don't work out.

If you were worried about the state of your relationship, why did you apply to Purdue in the first place? Might this be an unconscious sign that you're ready to move on?

I have officially accepted OSU's offer! I am immensely excited!
This also means I declined offers from Auburn University, the University of Georgia, the University of South Carolina, the University of Delaware, and the University of Florida. I do hope that this helps anyone on those waitlists; they are all stellar programs, and it was an unbelievably difficult decision. 
Good luck to anyone still waiting on results/waitlists and for those still making decisions. Stay strong!

Unless UCLA pulls a rabbit out of its hat and I get off the waitlist, I've decided on UC Santa Barbara! 
UCSB is a great program with friendly people, awesome faculty, and is actually committed to interdisciplinary amalgamations (as opposed to just saying that to seem hip). They've offered me great funding, and it's also a gorgeous campus right on the water. Bike-friendly, and I wouldn't have to deal with any real kind of "winter" for at least half a decade!
Since UCLA is practically a public Ivy, it would be silly to turn them down if they gave me a shot--however, for my own peace of mind, I'll wait a week and then just take myself off the waitlist--butting up THAT close against the deadline isn't worth it when I already have a bird in the hand.
Everything about this application season has culminated in a kind of vindication one rarely receives in academia, and I'm basking in it  
 

I haven't signed but I called the DGS at Boulder on Tuesday to accept their offer! Excited to be continuing my education at such a great program after getting rejected almost everywhere else! Yay! 

I've also accepted my offer from Berkeley! Super excited about the program—it really felt right during the visit. 
@imogenshakes Glad to see you accepted the offer from Davis! You might have to take the train down to Berkeley for a seminar

So. Lucky. T_T 

Now that all my visits are finally over, UC Berkeley is the winner! Couldn't be happier about it, especially since everything I saw at the visit was extremely positive and welcoming.

I think if it were me, I would ask School X to what extent you would be able to collaborate across departments. This was a specific concern of mine as well, because my intended research is interdisciplinary. Frankly, it sounds like that's your main concern about School X and that it otherwise presents a near-ideal opportunity for you. 
If I'm understanding correctly: I suggest sending an email to a professor in the department and asking them about interdisciplinary or intersubfield (I just made up that word) collaboration and support. Specifically, I might ask whether it's permissible, given the nature of your intended research, that your future dissertation advisors be composed of faculty from different departments. The answer will likely help you a great deal.

Thanks, that's a really good point! I could indeed produce an infinite list of reasons... I guess what would be more useful would be to prioritize some factors so things make more sense instead of being a mess of unsorted information. 
Unfortunately I wasn't able to attend the open house, which is why I'm agonizing over this decision! 

Anyone else annoyed / repulsed by the pictorial clickbait ads that now pop up on the results page? No, I do not need to see one "odd" trick to cure erectile dysfunction, nor would I be "shocked" by Barron Trump's IQ...

Maybe they've been there all along, and they've just recently found a way to circumvent my ad-blocker, but I'm seriously looking at the results page far less because of them.

Just got off the phone with the DGS at Syracuse University. I've been accepted to their fully funded MA Program as one of their top choices!

I can't believe that I have the good fortune to choose between 3 R1 programs. Everything is unreal.

After waiting through a painful number of rejections, I woke up to an acceptance from the University of Toronto! Absolutely thrilled, and totally in shock since I was already steeling myself to apply again next year.
@ThePomoHipster Congrats to you! Will I see you at the visit day?

Just got my acceptance/offer letter from University of Oregon! Stoked, although now ancy about the decision making. Congrats @Zelda!

https://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/college-rankings-blog/articles/2017-02-21/coming-soon-2018-best-graduate-schools-rankings
 
Apparently, the rankings will be updated on March 14th of this year. Do you foresee a lot of changes, and if so, would it be wise to wait until the new rankings are released to make a decision?
I have to say that I prioritized fit over ranking, but I am also open to finding jobs outside of the academy once I finish.

haha!  It would definitely be okay for you to post the questions list, but here it is.  Also, I'd just be honest with the programs, especially since the money they're giving you won't be enough to cover either visit individually.  
 
-PLACES TO STUDY AND WORK
-Where do most people do their writing and reading?
-What study spaces are available? Do students get a carrel? Do those who teach get or share an office?

-LIBRARY
-What is the library system like? Are the stacks open or closed?
-What are the library hours?
-Are there specialized archives/primary sources that would be useful to my research?
-Are there specialist librarians who can help me with my research?

-FACULTY
-Are the faculty members I want to work with accepting new students? Are any of those faculty members due for a sabbatical any time soon?
-Are professors willing to engage you on a personal level rather than just talking about your work?
-Are there any new professors the department is hiring in areas that align with my interests?
-Students’ relationships with their professors – are they primarily professional, or are they social as well?

-FUNDING
-Is funding competitive? If so, do students feel a distinction between those who have received more generous funding and those who haven’t?
-How does funding break down among the cohort? i.e., how many people receive fellowships?
-How, if you don’t have much savings, do you make enough money to live comfortably?
-Are there external fellowships one can apply to? If so, what is available? Does the program help you apply for these fellowships? How does receiving an external fellowship affect internal funding?
-If people need more than five/six years to finish, what funding resources are available? (For instance, Columbia can give you an additional 2-year teaching appointment.)
-Do you provide funding for conferences or research trips?
-How often is funding disbursed? (i.e., do you get paid monthly or do you have to stretch a sum over a longer period of time?)

-COHORT
-Do students get along with each other? Is the feeling of the program more collaborative than competitive?
-Do students in different years of the program collaborate with each other, or are individual cohorts cliquey?
-How many offers are given out, and what is the target number of members for an entering class?
-Ages/marital status of people in the cohort – do most people tend to be married with families? Are there younger people? Single people? What sense do you have of how the graduate students interact with each other socially?
-Do people seem happy? If they’re stressed, is it because they’re busy or is it because they’re anxious/depressed/cynical/disillusioned?
-Is the grad secretary/program administrator nice?
-What is the typical time to completion? What are the factors that slow down or speed up that time?
-I’ve read that there are two kinds of attrition: “good” attrition, in which people realize that the program, or graduate study, isn’t right for them and leave early on, and “bad” attrition, in which people don’t finish the dissertation. What can you tell me about the rates of each, and of the reasons why people have chosen to leave the program?

-JOB MARKET/PROFESSIONALIZATION
-What is the placement rate? How many of those jobs are tenure-track?
-What are examples of institutions in which people in my field have been placed?
-How does the department prepare you for the job search? Are there mock interviews and mock job talks?
-Are the people helping you navigate the job search people who have recently gone through the process themselves?
-If you don’t get placed, is there anything the department can do for you? (e.g., can you stay an extra year?)
-How does the department prepare you for and help you attain conference presentations and publications?

-SUMMER WORK
-What is encouraged/required?
-If there separate funding/is the year-round funding enough to live on during the summer?
-Do people find themselves needing to get outside work during the summer in order to have enough money?
-Am I expected to stay in town in the summer, and what happens if I don’t?

-LANGUAGE REQUIREMENT
-What is done to help people who don’t have language proficiency attain it? Does the university provide funding?
-What is the requirement, and by when do you have to meet it?
-Given my research interests, what languages should I study?
-When do you recommend doing the work necessary to fulfill the language requirement? (i.e., summer before first year, summer after first year, while taking classes, etc.)

-LOCATION REQUIREMENTS
-How long are students required to be in residence?
-How many students stay in the location for the duration of the program? (i.e., how many dissertate in residence?)
-How is funding affected if you don’t stay?

-Incompletes on papers at the end of the term: What is the policy, how many students take them, and how does this affect progress through the program?

-TEACHING
-What sort of training is provided?
-What types of courses do people teach?
-Does teaching entail serving as a grader? Serving as a TA? Developing and teaching a section of comp?
-How are students placed as TAs? Is there choice about what classes you teach and which professors you work with? Do classes correspond to your field?
-How many courses do you teach per semester/year?
-How many students are in your classes?
-How does the school see teaching as fitting in with the other responsibilities/requirements of graduate study?
-How do students balance teaching with their own work?
-Is the department more concerned with training you as a teacher/professor or with having cheap labor to teach their classes?
-How, if at all, does the economic downturn affect teaching load/class sizes?
-What are the students like? Can I sit in on a course a TA teaches to get a sense of them?

-METHODOLOGY
-Is a theory course required?
-What methodology do most people use?
-Where, methodologically, do you see the department – and the discipline – heading?
-Is interdisciplinarity encouraged, and what sorts of collaboration have students undertaken?

-Typical graduate class and seminar sizes

-What should I do to prepare over the summer?

-Ask people I know: What are the questions – both about the program itself and about the location – I should ask that will most help me get a feel for whether this is the right program for me?

-Ask people I know: What do you wish you knew or wish you had asked before choosing a program?

-Is the school on the semester or the quarter system, and how does that affect classes/teaching/requirements?

-What is the course load for each semester, and how many courses are required?

-What kind of support is provided while writing the dissertation? I worry about the isolation and anxiety of writing such a big project. What does the program do to help you break the dissertation down into manageable pieces, and to make the experience less isolating?

-What do writing assignments look like in classes? Do they differ based on the type/level of class and/or based on whether you intend to specialize in the field?

-Ask professors: what have you been working on lately?

-Ask professors: What is your approach to mentoring and advising graduate students?

-How long are class meetings?

-How often do professors teach graduate courses?

-Are course schedules available for future semesters (10-11, etc.)?

-Can I see the grad student handbook? Are there any other departmental documents – such as reports on the program prepared for accreditation – that I can see?


-QUALITY OF LIFE
-Prices – how does the cost of gas, milk, cereal, etc. compare to other places I've lived in?
-Cost and quality of typical one-bedroom apartment.
-What does the university do to provide you with or help you find housing?
-When (i.e., what month) do people start looking for an apartment for the fall, and where do they look?
-Is it easy to find a summer subletter?
-How close to campus can—and should—one live?
-What grocery stores are there in town?
-How late are cafes, bookstores, malls, restaurants typically open?
-What do people do to make extra money?
-Does the town have more of a driving or a walking culture? What is parking like near campus (availability, ease, cost)?
-Where do most English grad students live? Most other grad students? Most professors? Where is the student ghetto? Do most students live near each other, or are they spread out far and wide?
-How far does the stipend go in this location?

I don't think you have anything to gain by committing this early. While I think you're probably right to assume those are implied rejections, it can't hurt to wait a few more weeks until you get final word. If you ultimately end up attending the program you're currently leaning toward, it's not like committing now as opposed to, say, March 30th, is going to score you any extra points. They know that other programs are still notifying and won't (or shouldn't, at the very least) expect you to solidify you position right now. 

Guys, after that Oscars flub I'm pretty sure I'm gonna have nightmares that I didn't actually get into a PhD program. "I'm sorry, but there's been a mistake—we've actually admitted Moonlight to the English PhD program at Notre Dame!" 

I just got into the Comp Lit PhD at Yale! My top choice!

A few people suggested in the acceptances thread that it might be a good time to get the ball rolling on a separate decisions thread! So, if you feel comfortable share which school you've decided on here! What were the biggest factors in your decision? How incredibly excited are you to have made it through to the finish line? If you're having trouble making a final choice feel free to mull it over here too! It can be a nice way to network with future classmates as well. And of course it's a space to celebrate each other and all the hard work everyone put into this process! 
To start us off, I'll be heading to Notre Dame next fall! They were always one of my top choices, so I'm incredibly excited to have gotten an offer. There are numerous faculty who are great fits for my research interests, their funding is very generous, service free years one and five, and all kinds of great resources. My other offer was unfunded, and although I was waitlisted for two great programs they wouldn't really have been able to beat Notre Dame's offer or fit for me. I also fell in love with the school and department while visiting for recruitment! So ultimately wasn't too tough a choice for me. It's also closest to my family which is a nice perk. All in all I am very excited with my decision! 
Looking forward to hearing where everyone ends up! 

Ok, whomever posted the Trump University acceptance--you win today! Literally laughing & made me so happy when I normally have so much anxiety looking at that survey page! 

Two thoughts:
 
1. Given that both are strong programs that would be a good fit for your research interests, I don't think it's unreasonable to pick the NYC option to stay with your partner. If there was a large difference in fit/ranking then I could see arguments against doing this, but it seems to me like a very valid tie-breaker.
2. Have you visited these programs? On paper it sounds like both are good options. But you may find that you simply click with one program/advisor and not with the other. This is probably something that can only be determined by visiting (although that's not even 100% conclusive).
So, I'd say visit both and go with your gut. If it's still a wash at that point, go for NYC for personal reasons.