ArcierePrudente

The ability to handle rejection and outright hostility without taking it personally is a skill you will need to succeed in this field (and academia more broadly, perhaps life...). As a graduate student I didn't expect everyone to love my work, but I never expected people to outright tell me it was garbage. I didn't have thick enough skin for such comments at first, and it was a struggle to find my confidence pretty early on in my program. It's important to view comments on your work as separate from comments about yourself. It's hard not to take it personally. There is something to be said about coming in with pre-existing skills in combinatorics, probability theory, and programming (be it R and/or Stata, LaTex etc), but the capacity to deal with pretty destructive (as opposed to constructive) criticism is really important. 

I take your point and agree to a large extent (full disclosure: I did NOT apply to Princeton), but we can reasonably assume the majority of applicants on Princeton's 'top 50' list have what is, on paper, a rock solid application. This includes all the criteria that you list above. 
 
After that, it does really boil down to fit and a host of other particularities relevant only to the current application cycle. So I think we all agree with you, but even after all of the facets above are accounted for, there's quite a lot of chance. 

I have email notifications on my phone -- so every time I see that I get an email, my heart drops. I just look at it right away, most of the time its not from schools.  So far, only have gotten one email notifying me of a decision (acceptance, thank goodness). 
I think its just better to look at it right away, that way you don't have to have to agonize over it all day. Waiting won't change the decision!
Best of luck to you!

I go through this moment of panic every time I get an email notification. Probably not that healthy. 

So I'm a political/social sciences applicant who applied to late-notification schools (if past and present Results searches are any indication). At least one is supposed to start notifying admits this coming week—with no news generally meaning bad news. 
 
Has anyone else been really nervous about checking their email on the days when admissions decisions are supposed to get sent out? If so, what did you do/what are your plans for checking? Did you/will you wait until the end of the day, do it around friends (and/or alcohol), wait for complete privacy (and/or more alcohol)? 
 
I'm at a loss over here. Obviously this isn't the kind of thing that can be put off, but... oy. 

I take your point and agree to a large extent (full disclosure: I did NOT apply to Princeton), but we can reasonably assume the majority of applicants on Princeton's 'top 50' list have what is, on paper, a rock solid application. This includes all the criteria that you list above. 
 
After that, it does really boil down to fit and a host of other particularities relevant only to the current application cycle. So I think we all agree with you, but even after all of the facets above are accounted for, there's quite a lot of chance. 

My mail doesn't automatically fetch on my phone. I go through phases of obsessively checking and avoiding it like the plague. Tend to be more sane when I limit it, but god is it hard.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/02/us/groundhog-day-2018-shadow-trnd/index.html
looks like there's going to be another six weeks of pending applications...

Yeah, based on the results forum, either UoC's poli-sci PhD only decided to admit the South Korean student this year, or it's a somehow erroneous report, or this ^ 
 
February 2 looks like it's been a hot day for them in years past, though, and doing a final conference/admit email blast on a Friday makes sense. So I'd say they're getting ready to release. 

Yeah, based on the results forum, either UoC's poli-sci PhD only decided to admit the South Korean student this year, or it's a somehow erroneous report, or this ^ 
 
February 2 looks like it's been a hot day for them in years past, though, and doing a final conference/admit email blast on a Friday makes sense. So I'd say they're getting ready to release. 

Or ask to attach a resume and then make you effectively re-write your resume in the "Work Experience" section... I want so badly just to type "see attached," but of course I'm too desperate for approval and validation. 

Last night I dreamed I was admitted to Northwestern and I didn't even apply to Northwestern.
 
From this I draw two conclusions: Too many of you applied to Northwestern; and I spend way too much time on GradCafe. 

This is hilarious; last night I dreamed I was admitted to UC-Irvine and I didn't apply there.

Last night I dreamed I was admitted to Northwestern and I didn't even apply to Northwestern.
 
From this I draw two conclusions: Too many of you applied to Northwestern; and I spend way too much time on GradCafe. 

Last night I dreamed I was admitted to Northwestern and I didn't even apply to Northwestern.
 
From this I draw two conclusions: Too many of you applied to Northwestern; and I spend way too much time on GradCafe. 

Last night I dreamed I was admitted to Northwestern and I didn't even apply to Northwestern.
 
From this I draw two conclusions: Too many of you applied to Northwestern; and I spend way too much time on GradCafe. 

Last night I dreamed I was admitted to Northwestern and I didn't even apply to Northwestern.
 
From this I draw two conclusions: Too many of you applied to Northwestern; and I spend way too much time on GradCafe. 

Last night I dreamed I was admitted to Northwestern and I didn't even apply to Northwestern.
 
From this I draw two conclusions: Too many of you applied to Northwestern; and I spend way too much time on GradCafe. 

I honestly read more into the emails I receive from grad admissions departments than I ever have into any romantic relationship.
 
With that said, about a week ago, one of my programs sent me an email notifying me of a foreign language fellowship whose applications were due 1-2 weeks after the department's historical 'unofficial' notification dates. It did sound generic, and the email was careful to specify that the fellowship program office didn't have any information on the status of anyone's PhD application.
 
Part of me feels like it would be silly to send out a mass email and potentially receive a flood of irrelevant fellowship applications (from non-admits). But most of me is too wary of getting my hopes up and wants to write it off as a generic email blast that will weed out non-admits retroactively. 

I honestly read more into the emails I receive from grad admissions departments than I ever have into any romantic relationship.
 
With that said, about a week ago, one of my programs sent me an email notifying me of a foreign language fellowship whose applications were due 1-2 weeks after the department's historical 'unofficial' notification dates. It did sound generic, and the email was careful to specify that the fellowship program office didn't have any information on the status of anyone's PhD application.
 
Part of me feels like it would be silly to send out a mass email and potentially receive a flood of irrelevant fellowship applications (from non-admits). But most of me is too wary of getting my hopes up and wants to write it off as a generic email blast that will weed out non-admits retroactively. 

I honestly read more into the emails I receive from grad admissions departments than I ever have into any romantic relationship.
 
With that said, about a week ago, one of my programs sent me an email notifying me of a foreign language fellowship whose applications were due 1-2 weeks after the department's historical 'unofficial' notification dates. It did sound generic, and the email was careful to specify that the fellowship program office didn't have any information on the status of anyone's PhD application.
 
Part of me feels like it would be silly to send out a mass email and potentially receive a flood of irrelevant fellowship applications (from non-admits). But most of me is too wary of getting my hopes up and wants to write it off as a generic email blast that will weed out non-admits retroactively. 

@ArcierePrudente, 30 fully funded months of PhD study would be more than welcome!! I took a bunch of "pre-law" classes in undergrad, and for the life me, I just couldn't regurgitate the >5,984,217 dates and case names unless I used silly mnemonics to remember them. 
I kid you not, this website https://haikubriefs.wordpress.com/ was a God send for my grades. 

I can still never remember which 'eminent/immanent/imminent' I want to use on the first try. Once I have a free second to breathe I'll need to devise a mnemonic. Especially since I'm in... eimmainent critique. 
Biggest Application Blunders:
1. When writing the phrase "Machiavellian political thought," in one SoP (fortunately for a school that's much lower on the list) I accidentally missed a 't'. Evidently I am going to orient such-and-such with respect to "Machiavellian political though." 
2. Not my fault, but because of a system glitch, one of my M.A. courses showed as 'Incomplete' on my transcript. After several frantic calls to the University Registrar's office, I ended up having to attach an explanatory letter to all my applications with the Registrar's phone number, my assurance that I'd gotten an 'A' in the class, and my subtle but clear indication that the 'incomplete' mark had nothing to do with me or my performance in the class. My transcript only just now got changed. 
(In hindsight I should have just gone full Donald Trump circa the Hawaiian Missile-Misleading Crisis... 'This was a registrar thing but I am now going to get involved with the transcript office. I love that they took responsibility. They took full responsibility.') 
3. I applied to two PhD programs in the same department, and therefore had to open two applications on the same portal. If I had both application windows open at once, the server would automatically copy my responses for one application and paste them into the other application. Talk about terrifying. I hate robots. 

+ 30 points. 
And by points, I mean fully-funded months of PhD study. 

I wouldn't rule out any options for you at this point -- you never know how these things go! 
That said, as I wrote above, referring me to MAPH was the best thing CST could have done for me at the time (MAPH is the Humanities equivalent of MAPSS, though I wound up mostly in MAPSS-oriented courses while at UofC and many just assumed I was in MAPSS and... I don't know... never came to discussions?). It made me a much stronger candidate this cycle, and my scholarship—and trust in it—benefitted exponentially. (I never would have believed that when I first got referred to MAPH either, by the way... I was crushed not to get into CST.) 
I'll cross my fingers for you to hear good things from any of the four—Poli-Sci, CST, MAPSS, MAPH!