RealMowgli

After 2 hours of refreshing my email every 5 seconds, I opened my SOP and gave myself even more anxiety.
Do not, I repeat, do not follow my lead. 

I think informal "Yes!" emails are informal for a reason, and it's not worth driving ourselves crazy.
I'm just going to hold out hope that I get good news tomorrow and try not to think about it
(he says as he posts on this board instead of doing work)

Although emotionally preparing for decisions tomorrow, a sliver of me is hoping HKS mimics MIT undergrad admissions results and reports decisions today at 1:59pm in honor of pi day (3.14(1:59))

In other news, I haven't been on tumblr this much since 2008.

Hopefully this means we'll hear something tomorrow! Based on the blog post cadence, looking like Thursday though...
 

My patience expires tomorrow

No, here's how it seems to have played out in 2016 and 2017:
2017: 
March 02 (Thursday) - Admissions Decision Page Explainer March 05 (Sunday) - Admitted Decision Explainer March 06 (Monday) - Name Reading Process March 08 (Wednesday) - Admissions Decisions Posted 2016:
March 04 (Friday) - Admissions Decision Page Explainer March 07 (Monday) - Admitted Decision Explainer March 08 (Tuesday) - Name Reading Process March 09 (Thursday) - Admissions Decisions Posted

It's 4:46am in the west coast and i am awake. Yup the suspense is real 

The entire section at the bottom with a message is gone. The top left section to navigate messages also shows only “home” now, no “documents & messages” anymore. Anyone on the same boat?

Today’s post is copy paste from last year except for a few words in the first sentence. I think the point is that the financial info will come separately, from the finaid office. But they are trying to release both around the same time.

Ok, as it is becoming increasing difficult to kill time and waiting for this decision is becoming a laborious thing now, so I went ahead and did a statistical study of last year result. As the portal changes is the subject that most of us are obsessing over so let us take a glance at what the stats say from last year before we get into what it means:

Last year portal changed at different times for different applicants just like this year. I have just glanced over the result and the disclaimer is that it was just glancing and data collection did not follow any due diligence protocols so they may not be accurate, but just listing them seems like fun!!!

the good news is that portal changes cannot conclusively say anything about your admission, and the bad news is that it seems like the time of change changes the probability (But again the good news is that the sample size is so small that it does not make sense to conclude anything, but then what the hell we have to kill time )

By going over the last years posts, I found 5 waves or portal changes and here it goes:
1) Those who got the portal change in the very beginning: I found seven people sharing the information, out of them two got admitted, one got waitlisted and one rejected, other three did not answer, so assumption is that they two got dinged. So all is not lost for those who got the stuff changed very early on!

2) Second wave of portal changes: 3 people in total, two got in and one got dinged
3) Third wave: 2 in total, 1 in and other in the wait list
4) Fourth and the most beautiful wave: 4 in total, all got in
5)  Actually this is not the fifth wave of portal changes, because the portal did not change for this wave other than that they got the status update: 3 in total, 1 in the other two dinged.
So as you can see, the probability may vary but based on the data that we have it seems that at no point you can conclusively count yourself out until and unless the harvard people tell you so !!! so keep on hoping, May the force be with you all !

Now, the further research could actually be if these people would have mentioned their porgrams, them we can actually see if there is some trend between changes and the program but well it takes a lot of time to so this research so I wash my hands of it .. perhaps next year someone else may have the time and inclination to do so 

Another reflection that I have is : What is the point of portal changes to begin with! Even if they manually update everything, why do they have to make the text disappear, so based on my experience, I will conclude that there must be a glitch in the system, because otherwise it is just simple plain outright sadistic of the people who coded the program !!! So whenever they enter any data, the front page changes, now the million dollar question is why dont they just remove this glitch? or if it is not a glitch then what is the reason behind it?

Ahh well, this is a question answer to which we will probably never have ... but as I said earlier, May the force be with you all, and good luck  

I hate to be pessimistic, but honestly it's going to be a tough commute on Tuesday if these forecasts come true... https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2018/03/11/more-snow-coming-our-way-thousands-remain-without-power/Vh3IroieEmr7Peq1QZmwJM/story.html

BTW - I can’t think of a more effective way for HKS to make us all feel unworthy than this Friday blog post about their alumnus who was a Navy SEAL, lost his legs, and then won an Olympic gold medal. 
Well played, HKS. And I was proud of myself for going for a run today!

Gah! Matt bikes to work year-round! ?

https://www.mass.gov/files/2017-08/Bradford Application -- Fall 2017.pdf
 
It says on pg 3 that the admissions answer will be given the week of march 12th. I am pretty sure it will be exactly the 14th. 

Latest prediction: Matt is looking at our <30k views. "These are rookie numbers!" Once we hit that magic number, decisions roll in. So...tomorrowish.

Definitely won't come out today, I'm dying to know if Dubin and Gietsman Fellowship interviews have already been carried out  

As per my observation, it’s the MPA & MPA/ID applicants who have been updated with the counsellor. The MPP applicants are yet to be. This is also because both these courses have separate “teams” to handle it, & if you remember even the grievance redressal Email IDs were different for the two: MPP was appstatus@harvard while for MPA & MPA/ID it was something else.
So essentially, nothing to worry about I’m sure!

No changes to admission portal but have been assigned a  counselor in the MYFAID portal. I was a part of the last year hks group in gradcafe and can surely say that changes or no changes are insignificant to one being accepted or rejected. It just signifies that results would be out soon and changes are being made to our portals. All the best to all.

I seriously considered sending him an anonymous bouquet from all of us at Gradcafe but I fear that they might see that as an attempt to unduly influence our #1 Director of Admissions...

Unfortunately
Unfortunately, we cannot... Unfortunately
Are unable to recommend... 
We attract the best: brighter, younger things. 
We cannot extend
An invitation to you, unfortunately. 
Many thousands of qualified applicants — 
And then there’s you.
What’s a committee to do? 
Dossiers on dossiers, friends of friends
Commend them to us in the millions:
The quickest, steeliest, wiliest applicants you’ve ever seen, 
Sharp-elbowed and ravenous.
They’ve got the stuff, and what it takes. 
But not you.
We can’t say yes, and them’s the brakes. 
Somewhere else you’d do — 
Just not with us. Unfortunately.  
 

The feelings of fear, acceptance, rejection, elation, and extreme situational depression can be felt on each and every page. It is like a roller coaster made out of academia.

All I've seen are PhD admits. I looked at the timeline for HKS PhD admits last year and it was the same so hopefully that means MPP does come out next week.

I think we should expect hearing from CPL regarding the interviews later this week, according to te faq. Pls post when it happens...

Agree that moving up the Financial Aid deadline to end-of-Jan and including it with any admissions decisions is smart for this season. Lots of business schools manage their decisions that way, and I would think really helps to manage the emotional roller coaster of the "I'm in, now what" for those students lucky enough to get in. 
Included a screen-grab from one of the Fall Financial Aid webinars below to validate that Admissions + Financial Aid decisions should hopefully come in tandem in mid-March