a_sort_of_fractious_angel

Accepted to SUNY-Buffalo. Got an email from the grad school - department email forthcoming.

I've spent today thinking about if I'd rather be rejected outright or waitlisted at my dreamboat school. I can't figure out which would be less scary. And HOW is is sTiLL January. Ughhh. There's more of it tomorrow! WHY!

WOOHOO! CONGRATS!

I received no PhD offers when I applied as a BA and I was 0/12 when I applied again as an MA. After graduating the MA, I took a 9-5 gig doing social media marketing and a full year off before coming back to applying. The job has done nothing for my application but it gave me enough money and enough time/flexibility to polish the heck out of my SOP and WS (and get some money saved.) The year off gave me time to think about what I wanted my scholarship to be/resulted in those SOP & WS edits. It's paid off so far. A conference may be useful for you - I wouldn't worry too much about publishing (I was consistently told it was not an expectation and that publishing just to publish wasn't necessarily the best call) - and if a conference doesn't make sense financially/professionally, I wouldn't be super concerned. If you have friends or peers who are in graduate work now, I would speak to them; ask them to look at your SOP and WS. Current grad students are really useful since they are not far out from the process and my peers from school and GC have been really helpful in shaping this season's materials. Speak to profs too, of course, but a broad network of people + time + self & peer editing of the SOP & WS are probably the most valuable resources for applications. Just my $.02 of course (others here will have different and other awesome pieces of advice, so these threads may help too!)

Congrats!!!

I agree - personally, I am open to non-ac and alt-ac gigs. Is it my first choice? No, not at all. But it's a viable option that takes thought and hard work of its own kind and any PhD who accomplishes success in that form should be recognized alongside their peers who are pursuing traditional academic paths. It's certainly not a detriment to a department's reputation to show that they are willing to help their PhDs find a career/job that works for them. I've been looking for those placements and there are not many but it's a lot better than seeing one person from a cohort get placed one a year.

pls Go-Pro the experience

Rumor + GC says Delaware and PSU have notified around this time in the past - so ... maybe? I also saw Pitt acceptances come out early Feb (I think? It's all becoming a blur now) - seems they do rejections (or have done them) via the post. So, I'll be watching for snail mail from Pitt, too.

"ARE YOU MY MOM!? ARE YOUUUU MY MOM!?"

Hmmm - that's a great question. I think it is under wraps (possibly because it changes every year) - your best bet would be to email the DGS but I'm not sure what the social protocol is for that. Lol, I'll be "working" on drafting awkward emails to faculty in the style of ".... you sure? Also, I like your book. I never published one of those but yours is very nice. WILL YOU AUTOGRAPH IT?"

THAT IS SO LONG FROM NOW! I thought late February was hard, ahaha.

Hahhaa, that won't happen! I'm sure more good news is on its way! You gonna say anything to anyone at OSU in the meantime? I'm guessing their visit is a few weeks away, too.

@katie64 - from what I've pieced together, most visiting days are between late February and early March. One of my visiting days is 2 days long in total (though I'm not sure if it is 2 full days.) I imagine others are shorter. If you're accepted prior to the visiting day (or maybe wait-listed? Not super sure how that works) you'll get information in your official acceptance packet and whatnot. If you're admitted after the visiting day, I'm sure you can schedule at a time that works for you. That happened at my MA institution (PhDs who couldn't make the official weekend but came down later) and it wasn't a problem. If it was, I feel like that would be telling. I think it's definitely normal to ask about housing and life while you're there, too - personally, I'm trying to figure out if I can start asking those questions now, haha.

The pinned thread on Campus Visits prompted a question: what are you guys doing in the 4-5 weeks between getting an acceptance and the opportunity to visit? One of my schools was really encouraging of talking to faculty/current students; the DGS said some profs may reach out and that she could give me contact info for grad students in my area. At the same time, she welcomed me to reach out to anyone in the dept any time. I imagine the other dept has a similar policy. I think that's something I'd like to do once I get some thoughtful questions together. Is that something you guys are thinking about doing? If yes, maybe want to make this thread a sounding board for those kinds of in-between conversations?

Thank you, @renea - I'm an Am lit person and I've looked for numbers like these before without much success. I'd also be curious to see how the jobs break down between new graduates and experienced scholars.

I hope it's OK for me to chime in. After a first season (MA offer) and second season (complete shut-out), the taste is absolutely different. I feel so grateful for what I have and I am excited about preparing for The Return. I also have a "little" and a "bigger" fear. The "little" fear: I'm not sure how to think about my dream schools as they haven't reported yet. Part of me wants to hold onto hope/ambition; part of me wants to focus entirely on what I do have because not focusing on that makes me feel like an ungrateful brat. The "bigger" fear: what if I feel uncomfortable/out of place when I get to where I'm going? CMU and Temple were surprises since my application was really focused on the Caribbean and neither department is really "strong" in that sense, at least from what I could tell; moreover, CMU is a TINY department with a ~ srsly smol~ PhD group. I trust that the faculty at both places made the right call but what if I end up disappointing them? In short, what if I f**k up and am shitty and end up taking up space that a better candidate could have used? FWIW, my concerns are no comparable to the question of "will I be accepted" - that's the hardest place to be.

As an Eagles fan, all I am armed with is Crisco and an anger that can't be channeled in a positive direction. Also, batteries, but only if you're dressed like Santa Claus.

No, I know nothing. I am John Snow. However, I read "interview for a short wait-list" as such. I could be totally wrong. I don't know anyone at Maryland so I cannot confirm. And if I misinterpreted the interview for short wait-list, I'm am the Most Wrong and Most Sorry. I'd imagine @punctilious that whatever vibe (or facts) you got when y'all went down is far more accurate than my tea-leaf attempts.

It absolutely does. I understand the interest in narrowing the pool* but the limit as it currently stands is too arbitrary; if someone has a low V score but also has a letter writer who can phone in a request (which happens), they might fare OK. But what is a low V score? I've heard anything below 163 (the lowest 90th percentile) is dangerous. It's like, really?? I don't have a problem with minimum scores per se provided the scores reflect what a majority of the applicant pool can achieve without spending 1/5 of their lives/wallets in preparation. But when the exam ceiling is 170 (which almost no one hits) and a 165 is required - the adcoms are losing strong scholarship. And then to pair the hard academic data (GRE/GPA) with bias - it's just .... UGH. AND I KNOW NOT EVERYONE DOES IT BUT SOME DO WHICH IS ENOUGH TO BE A PROBLEM! Also - my rant doesn't touch on the problem of cost, which is another stupid thing. Fee waivers and free score-sending should be widely available. At the minimum (if I put my EVIL ETS hat on), I would argue that scores should "cost" to send during high-priority months, like Dec/Jan and be free every other month. It's still a stupid solution but it'd allow grad students to plan around the fee. I've emailed this idea to ETS several times and they have not responded. And why are there no test fee waivers? WTF. *In that (from what I understand) adcoms are asked to do admissions on top of regular work, which is confusing to me because it is a full-time job and could probably be done more easily/quickly if there was a dedicated group whose sole task (for 3 weeks) was to read through applications, but that is a problem for another day/another 50 billion dollars/a university building in my name. Because if we could do this and let adcoms be totally devoted to the job, we could do away with the significance of hard academic data. Because, you know, they could read all the apps.

Don't give up on Maryland! I know the interviews were for the short wait-list but - hey - you could be on the accepted list, or the long wait-list (or, actually, a short wait-list since it wasn't clear if the short wait-list was for the whole cohort or period/area specific spots.)

I figured this link/article is perhaps OK to drop in this thread - I discovered it in another, earlier GC thread. Props to that OP. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/01/06/new-book-reveals-how-elite-phd-admissions-committees-review-candidates The article's introduction: in 2016, "Julie R. Posselt, the author and an assistant professor of higher education at the University of Michigan, obtained permission from six highly ranked departments at three research universities to watch their reviews of candidates, and she interviewed faculty members at four others. All the departments were ranked as among the top programs in their disciplines. To obtain this kind of access (not to mention institutional review board approval), Posselt had to offer complete anonymity." I was intrigued and bought the book - I think the article does a great job of summing up the text, so the book definitely isn't necessary to get to the significance. The interviews reveal that adcoms (the ones she interviewed at least) rely more heavily on the GRE than applicants are led to believe (upsetting but not entirely surprising.) In addition, Posselt touches on questions about bias and diversity and elitism - all questions everyone here has brought up. The anonymity seems to offer pretty secure protection to these adcoms, as I don't think the conversations are exaggerated. They are, however, troubling and indicative of an urgent need for change/the development of a transparent admissions processes. And since we're all academics here (FWIW, the assumption that the academic identity requires a current institutional affiliation really grinds my gears since I spent 2 years as an "independent scholar") who have bright futures in education/culture regardless of this year's results, I figured this might be interesting/cool/able to confirm That Feeling That All Is Not What It Seems.

The day before I heard from Temple, I was out buying Eagles gear and saw a wall of Temple Owl shirts. The license plate is definitely a sign.

Done and one. Y'all are gonna help me find the One.

Well, it looks like I'm relaunching my Tinder tonight and tryin' out these beauts.

YAS! DO THE THING! WOOHOO!