mstama123

Thank you! I got an email from DGS, who said "By now, you should have received your official acceptance letter from the UVA Department of Politics." However, I never received said official acceptance letter... that was the first I'd heard that I had been accepted.

Well, congratulations!!

How did you hear from them?

Claiming the UVA acceptance

Wah so far no emails on my end... congrats to all admitted thus far!

Similar to the person above, this is how I've been replying to schools: "Dear Professor X, Thank you for your email, I am humbled to be offered such a wonderful opportunity at University X! [ask any questions that you may have here] I will be in attendance/[or not] to the Open House in March/April, and I sincerely look forward to learning more about the program at University X. With kindest regards, name"

Hi - this is my second round of doctoral applications, and in both the first and this round, I have never contacted a POI. I have heard very mixed things about contacting POIs from my advisors and recommendation writers. The majority have told me that by the time one begins to think about applications and emailing POIs, it can come across negatively because it coincides so closely with the application season. However, I have read on one school website (Tufts) that they actually encourage potential students to reach out to a POI, though I have never seen another program explicitly encourage this, and some actually discourage it (but I do not know the individual schools you applied to, or their sentiments about this). My advisors have always told me that the most effective way to reach out to a POI is via your SOP, where you can mention who you'd like to work with by name and explain why (which I am sure you have done already). To be fair, professors are very busy people... I sometimes have a hard time getting an email back from professors on my thesis committee, and I know for sure they are interested in my research! If you don't get an answer I don't think it is necessarily a reflection of being uninterested in your research, but most likely a product of busy schedules and overflowing email inboxes. As long as you applied to schools with professors whose research interests reasonably matched your own from what you could gather from websites, pubs etc., and you articulated how your research could benefit from the professors/resources at the schools and vice versa, and the rest of your application profile is reasonably competitive, you should be in good shape.

So for anyone who is having trouble accessing their OneLink account like I am (I get a blue-screen error message that my username/password are incorrect from Oracle) I would suggest calling the IT support at Duke. I just got off the phone with them and they said that many applicants have been having similar problems, and they need to send a request ticket over to the IT support people to unlock it for you. I was told that because it's after 5pm EST my account won't be fixed until tomorrow, but for others having the same problem I highly suggest calling them and having it sorted out.

Did you guys get a notification through the OneLink thing? Or was it through the original application portal? I never got an email from Duke regarding OneLink and I'm wondering if that would prevent me from getting a notification.

So far no emails on my end...

I agree with both of the posters above - your many degrees can be a double-edged sword. On one end it helps demonstrate your ability to complete a degree successfully, and on the other end it may inadvertently signal to some ad coms that you are good at getting degrees, but perhaps not as good with sticking to a single career path (although I don't know your individual case well aside from what is provided here, or your reasons for pursuing said degrees). I think that choosing the right program at the right school, in your case, is very critical. Some programs are heavily centered around producing scholars to enter into academia at top institutions, while others recognize that students may want to pursue an alternative career-path outside of academia. When applying to PhD programs my first cycle two years ago, my undergraduate advisor recommended that if I intended to pursue a career-route outside of academia, that I not tout that too heavily in my SOPs to schools that were geared towards producing academics. I did not heed that warning, and here I am in my second cycle of applications. Not to say that the SOP was the defining factor that got me rejected from most schools during the first round, but it certainly did not help. If your intent is to enter academia, then you must make it clear in your SOP that that is your intent if you apply to schools geared primarily towards producing professor-academics. If your intent is to do something else, I would advise researching and applying to those schools that place students both into academic jobs, as well as alternative jobs like advocacy, government, and non-profit work (there are indeed many, now-a-day). Either way, making your career aspirations clear in your SOP and choosing the right school for those aspirations is critical. Hope this helps!

Wow! Congrats! And for the rest of us.... so much for an email free weekend!!

My subfield is IR. I was accepted Wednesday night without an interview or anything... There was another poster on here who got an interview request on Wednesday evening from MSU, but I don't know what that person's subfield is. It is possible that they are interviewing only for certain subfields, and sending flat-out acceptances or rejections to others, but unfortunately it's hard to predict :/ I hope you get in if it's one of your top choices though!

Yes - from what I understood from the MSU DGS email that I got on Wednesday, they will be updating the application portals next week (or at least shortly thereafter). Hope that helps!

Yes, I am from the US.

I got an acceptance email from DGS at MSU on Wednesday evening with a full-funding offer for 5-years + stipend and healthcare, as well as an invite to the open house in March. He said that the form acceptance letters hadn't gone out yet, but that they will in the next week or so (which lines up with what you were told, as well). Good luck to you! Perhaps we will meet at the open house!

Looks like UC Berkeley rejections are rolling in, just in time to dampen some weekends.

It seems that for the last two cycles or so, Duke has notified exactly on Feb 3rd. Definitely a possibility.

I didn't even apply to Yale and I still refreshed my email 10 times after seeing the Yale post!

Judging from the dates from past cycles, they don't necessarily seem to notify predictably. Some people were posting in February, and some others all the way in March... it's hard to know.

Yes to UVA! Super anxious... I think it's a great fit for me. Best of luck!

Claiming the most recent MSU admit! I got a personal email from DGS, and they haven't sent out form letters yet. So to those of you who haven't heard yet, don't give up hope!