sovietviolinist

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This is absolutely not a shot at Arizona, but...they have a highly competitive history MA program?  Is that true of that specific subfield, or?
Sorry you got that response.  From the sound of it, you have a pretty solid background that should get you into a few good programs you're aiming for!

Extremely bad. Do not do this. 

Grad school has approved admits; expect formal notification by early next week.

Went to check results and saw this. Thought you all would get a kick out of it. 

They need to update. I need to know what kind of crying I’m supposed to do today. 

Thanks to everyone that responded and sent me a PM! I'm still keeping my fingers crossed! 

Hi DGrayson! To my understanding, UPenn interviews consistently, like you said. I got an interview last year but was unfortunately rejected (so you see, this is my second cycle...), not even wait-listed. I believe you can find some useful information in last year's thread about UPenn's interviews. Also, at least last year UPenn did not send out the interview invitations all at once- I think I got mine one week after everyone else on the forum got theirs.  Hope this helps. 

So for any of those that have been through past cycles, does not getting an interview with Penn (regular history, not HOS) usually mean you haven't been accepted? I know that not getting an interview is not always a bad sign, but UPenn seems to be one of the only history programs that interviews consistently. Trying to figure out if I should write it off.  

I guess we might simply have different standards or different understandings of what a "top" program is. I was replying to an user that placed Wisconsin at the same level as Harvard, Columbia, Chicago, and Princeton. In the latter, which is obviously the program I am most familiar with, I am not aware of any professor with a PhD from Wisconsin, yet I could mention from the top of my head several professors with PhDs from each of the three other institutions. 
Look, if people want to apply to Wisconsin so be it -there certainly are worse programs. Perhaps my situation is different because I am an international student who was offered funding at my home institution, so I would only leave my Europe aux ancient parapets for a really good (actually top) American university, preferably one that is not in the middle of nowhere. 

You did it again!! Wisconsin is not a top pogram  

You can definitely call the graduate administrator and just ask them what the time frame is. They're not making admissions decisions but are kept abreast of the timing. You don't even have to give your name-- just say "Hi, I applied to the PhD program, do you know when decisions are supposed to come out?" and they usually tell you which week you'll hear back. They're also an administrator, so you're A. not really annoying them and B. have no influence on your decision. The worst thing they can tell you is that they don't know, or that they can't say.
I called Penn's earlier and she told me that the committee just started meeting today and that no formal interviews have been sent out, so no one is going to hear until the end of Feb. 

For some reason, the first thing I thought of was the scene in The Red Violin with the girl in Maoist China during the Cultural Revolution. I think your area of interest is very intriguing! 

Adorable! Don't take half measures, though; be sure to hit up Mike McCormick and Drew Faust at Harvard, too. I'm sure they'll be interested.
It takes an interesting set of mental gymnastics to try to anonymously doxx someone for online bullying. Hopefully you didn't sprain anything.

Admitted to UC Riverside! I'm thrilled as there is a faculty member there, who has a fantastic mongraph on the topic on which I will also write. 
For anyone waiting from them, they said that the graduate college is being a little slow processing things this year. Patience...

Admitted to UC Riverside! I'm thrilled as there is a faculty member there, who has a fantastic mongraph on the topic on which I will also write. 
For anyone waiting from them, they said that the graduate college is being a little slow processing things this year. Patience...

@MikeTheFronterizo congratulations on your successful application season.
I think that you should find different ways to describe established historians than "great" and "decent." I also think that you should rethink how you phrase your relationships to others in your field, or, at the very least, how you phrase those relationships publicly. Confidence is important, communicating that confidence appropriately is more important.
IRT your options, understand that "fit" is also about personalities. If Professor Best Thing Since Sliced Bread doesn't like you in particular or graduate students in general or is simply an asshole, it may not matter that you're potentially Professor Better than the Best Thing Since Sliced Bread.
Were I in your situation, I would look at each school's library systems, proximity to archival sources you'd want to use for your dissertation, and opportunities to work with scholars in other departments and at other schools. I would look very carefully at the weather in Dallas because it is hot there, very hot, almost all the time.
 

What argument are you trying to make? What are you trying to achieve with these numerous posts? Is it your argument that you're under more stress than "typical" applicants?
If one were to agree (for argument's sake) then the next questions might be how well are you handling that stress publicly? What does your public handling of your stress indicate about your ability to handle the additional stress of a doctoral program? Are you making the case that you could handle that additional stress independently, gracefully, and,ultimately, professionally?
As for the "tiny bits of information," I think that you're trying to have it both ways. You make more of your private life public (and this tactic is a mistake) but when you don't get the response you want, you attempt to pull rank (as a single parent, as a potential homeowner, as a person with a graduate degree, as a person who has had health issues, as a person who has lost a beloved family member) and then you say that people don't have enough information. If you received the affirmation you clearly want, would you dismiss it by saying that it is based on "tiny bits of information"?
Here's the deal. When graduate students are going through their qualifying exams (arguably a stressful experience), professors respond to explicit and implicit prompts for empathy with mockery and a cold grin. "Why so glum? When I took my quals, I had to walk to the department up hill ten miles both ways on a frozen road under a 110 degree sun after growing the trees and milling the paper on which I wrote my answers, in Old East Slavic, using my blood as ink and a gnawed fingernail as a quill." Or words to that effect.
Regardless of what is said, the message is "Deal with it." (Well, in some cases, it's actually "Fuck you, deal with it.")
"Deal with it" will be the same message professors send when you get bounced off the walls in seminar, when due dates fall in the same week, when a professor stands on your head in office hours for screwing up an essay, and when your schedule and your teaching responsibilities collide.
What is your plan for when you're told to deal with it? Will it be similar to the one you're executing now? If so, please understand that professors will be watching and judging and, generally, doing so with a profound disinterest in the circumstances of your everyday life. (The disinterest will be especially ironic when when it comes from a social historian.)
You, and at least one other person reading this--trainwreck of a sidebar--are misunderstanding the guidance being offered. You're not being told that you can't make it, or that you can't do it, or that you're not resilient, or that you're not worth it.
You're being told by people further along the road that you're walking that the path gets harder and less certain. You're being told that NOW is the time to start steeling yourself for the tough sledding ahead. You're being told that airing your personal grief/anxiety/angst in a semi public place using your actual name is an exceptionally bad idea because you're seeking entry into programs run by some of the most imaginative and skilled researchers on the planet. You are being told that many of those academics view themselves as guardians of a profession under siege.
You are being asked: are you sending a message that your up for this fight or are you sending another message?
 

So if I'm reading you right, you're saying your issue is not that you can't handle rejection (which everyone here is right in saying is a major aspect of academic life), but rather it's how the instability of the application process is impacting your non-academic life that's upsetting you? I'm a bit surprised by this, because like rejection, the application is only the beginning of this sort of instability. It sort of goes with the territory of grad school and academia. None of us know where we're going to be in five years, or where our funding will come from, or what places/archives our research will force us to go to. It's March and I know I have to go abroad for research this summer, but I still don't know (A) exactly where I'll need to be going, and (B) how much funding I'll have to go there. It makes it a bit difficult to plan, and I'm only 3 months out. This is to say nothing of the fact that I have no idea where I'll need to be living two years from now, etc. Of course there are arguments to be made of having Five Year Plans and trying to have some semblance of a trajectory, but this is all fluid and contingent on a hundred things--and that's just professional/academic contingencies, let alone personal ones. I guess my question is, if it's really the not-knowing/not-being-able-to-plan/instability that's you're major stress factor, how do you see that changing once you're in a program? Perhaps other people have different experiences with this, but I have found a lot of academic life entirely un-planable. Of course we can map out ideal plans, but so much of whether those happen or not are out of our control. It's completely nerve-wracking, sure, but it seems to just be baked in the process.

Fortunately/unfortunately, we all have "good stats" and "good letters of recommendation". There needs to be more to your application than these factors. However, if your application showed even the slightest hint of the immaturity you've displayed on this page, I can see why programs might be hesitant to accept you. Everybody has "life things" that hang in the balance (e.g. finding summer funding to get you from June - September, for instance) and/or have families impacted by certain processes (fellowships, archival work that takes you overseas, etc.). Take the constructive criticisms from other people on this thread and learn from them. But if you want us to have sympathy because you can't buy a house yet, it's not happening (buying a house is a luxury, not a right). 

The profession has been shaped by a generation of scholars who made significant personal sacrifices and took incredible risks to get where they are. Now, we take certain approaches to the past as best practices, but that's only because we're walking on a path blazed by those who went before us.
It is said that academic historians seek to replicate themselves in their graduate students. It may well be that even if you don't talk about the twists and turns in your life that "kept" you out of school, BTDTs are going to wonder about your commitment relative to theirs. (To paraphrase Darrell Waltrip, when you sit down for a breakfast of eggs and ham, the chicken is dedicated but the pig is committed.)
When you do the forensics on why you did not receive an offer of admissions from a particular department, was it because you weren't a good fit, or was it because you're a non-traditional student, or was it because of "arbitrary" circumstances "totally out of [your] control"?
Or did the professors making the decisions see in you a plate of eggs but no ham? 
This is a tough question to ask one's self; it can lead down a path of self destructive introversion rather than probing introspection. Yet, if you are disappointed by this application season, you may profit from asking it. 
 

@montanemand anyone else looking to improve their GRE score (especially quant):  I highly recommend Magoosh as a prep source. I purchased the premium membership ($79 when it was on sale) and followed (imperfectly) the 6-month math beginners study plan. The Magoosh instructional math videos are GREAT. They really break down the content conceptually such that I understood math better than ever, and the practice problems were on-point. Besides the practice problems contained in each video, there's a library of over 500 math practice problems and Magoosh keeps track of amount of time spent on each question compared to what is optimal for that question, as well as subject area and difficulty. The verbal program is similar but for me I needed to make the biggest gains in math so that was my focus. There's a supportive Facebook community for Magoosh GRE students and I'm even pretty good friends with two people I met there. The other resources that the Magoosh math plan recommends also round everything out. I ended up scoring 157 on Q which was exactly my goal (reported as the average for admitted Harvard Sociology PhD students). I hope you give it a shot! I have a referral code too, but that's not at all motivating this post!

I finished my M.A. at Boulder last May and, to fill the time while I wait for all those Ph.D acceptance letters to come pouring in (any day now, right?!), I thought I'd pass on some highly relevant Boulder/Denver info.

local coffee shop reviews:
http://coffeebot.co/

This site adds new reviews for the area about 1-2 times per week.

*Back to staring absently at the snow*

FYI Clark is meeting on February 16th to make their final decisions