DKG18

Claiming the Duke admit off waitlist.

Congrats! I'll see you in the Fall

Claiming a last minute admit to UIUC for comparative!

Claiming a last minute admit to UIUC for comparative!

Claiming a last minute admit to UIUC for comparative!

She said Yes!!! She is Yale. Claiming an admit, slightly hysterically. 
Edit: notified by POI email. 

hey, just claiming an acceptance at university of florida.  

Receive email from Oxford with subject "Graduate Admissions".  Proceed to open email and find a request that I complete a survey...
 
British schools are cruel XD 

To my fellow UT Austin rejections, I feel for you. I poured weeks into my application but I came up short. And as if it couldn’t get worse, I got rejected via a generic update to the website. It would have been nice to see a little compassion in the rejection. They couldn’t even mention my name.
Also, congrats to those who got in. 
 
 
 

Fully funded acceptance at Brown!! (Ahh now I'm conflicted because someone I'd really be interested in working with there...)

Just received a letter of admissions to University of Maryland along with funding info.

Re dress-code, you just want to look presentable. Be yourself, is the best I can tell you. I have been to such visits and have seen students come for visits to my current program. If you look professional it helps, but you don't need to wear a suit, that's over-dressing and you will look out of place (because, really, grad students don't wear suits everyday). If you're an investment banker and you're going for a visit, then sure do wear a suit, but if you're an investment banker I'd advise you to stay there and avoid academia...
Overall, don't overthink it. Look nice, presentable, but don't over-dress...
Also re shoes you want something comfortable. You may be going up and down the stairs, or walking around campus on a tour. If you are from a warm climate (like California) going to a cold state (like Michigan) then don't forget that you need to dress warmly (and vice versa). This sounds so basic but some people do forget how cold it gets in some states or are just to stressed to think about it...

If I had to sum up this entire application process:
 

I got a Domino's Coupon, but no Michigan acceptance

UT Austin PhD acceptances will be coming out this week. A faculty member reached out to me Sunday notifying me of my acceptance. 

Another long week ahead of us... Hope everyone gets some good news in the coming days 

Must. Stop...

Looking at the previous cycle it seems that there were a few acceptances that came in first and then a larger batch a few days later. Maybe we still have hope  

Looking at the previous cycle it seems that there were a few acceptances that came in first and then a larger batch a few days later. Maybe we still have hope  

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...

There is a lot of stress and everything going around right now, so to make you guys feel a little better I want to tell you my story. 
I was an AP scholar with distinction in high school and entered to one of the best public universities in the country with sophomore standing, but couldn't even get into my state's flagship (Cal is tough to get into). Once I got to college I struggled academically and put more focus on extra curriculars. At one point I had a 2.6 GPA. But I began to turn it around about the time I started interning in the state legislature. I thought my academic career would end with undergrad until I wanted to write a senior thesis and the Political Science department convinced me to take a grad seminar instead. I loved it, but I didn't do particularly well. I got an AB, which is like the B+/A- range at my undergrad institution. I realized that I wanted to go back to grad school, but thought that this was another 5 to 10 years or so away.
Then I graduated. My first job out of college was working on my last political campaign, and I hate campaign work, so I was miserable. I decided to move back home. I was unemployed for six months until I got a job in a law firm that I also hated. I decided to go back to grad school a lot sooner than I expected, but I knew what I wanted to do- teach undergrads.
So I enrolled in the closest MA program to my house. When I got there, I put in the work and I excelled. I earned a 3.9 GPA, presented work at seven different conferences and became the first student in the program's history to get an article under peer review (though I have yet to publish anything). 
Now, I'm 24. I'm have a master's. I have been admitted to three PhD programs already and I am starting a semester long job as an adjunct professor at a local Community College. If you had told me at basically any point in my undergrad career that I could achieve these things so quickly, I would not have believed you. Is my first job out of grad school going to be at NYU? Probably not. But I'm still proud of how far I have come and I know I have it in me to go farther.
So I know rejection stings. I hope no one strikes out on the cycle, but some of us may. But above all else, pick yourself up, lick your wounds and keep going! Maybe some of us will decide that we don't want to be academics after all. That's okay as long as you do what you love and go as far as you can with it. Your life isn't over because you didn't get into Princeton or even if you don't get in anywhere. If the latter is the case, work hard and either try again next cycle or go do something else you like. This is a particularly tough profession, but it's tough to do anything well. We have to be resilient. I want to remind people who are being rejected from top schools that there are plenty of good programs and those who see the rejections piling up without an acceptance that all it takes is one! So please, please, please, don't lose hope.

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

I feel like we should have heard from Texas by now.

Can't have that mindset in January--it's a long application process and you never know how things will turn out.

Nothing from NW, Duke, or UCLA... Thank god beer exists...