rooguild

I've been living in the Amherst/Northampton area for about 10 years (I'm about to leave to go to grad school!) and loved it. Housing is, unfortunately, very expensive, especially if you're looking for a one-bedroom. But if you have a car and don't mind a commute, you can always find cheaper places to live in the surrounding towns, like Pelham, Belchertown, Sunderland, and Hadley. If I were a grad student moving to the area, I would definitely try to find a place in Hadley, close to the B43 bus line. It's rural and quiet, there's a bike path that runs through it, there aren't many undergrads around, and it's right in between Amherst and Northampton.
I lived mostly in Northampton, which is great, but housing can be tricky here-- lots of slumlords and houses in disrepair, especially if they're close to the center of town. Amherst can also be tricky. I tried to move to Amherst a few years ago, and every apartment I visited looked like it had been wrecked by undergrads. I also prefer the social scene in Northampton; it's a little more artsy and there's more to do. Most of my friends who live in Amherst end up driving or taking the bus to Northampton every weekend.
Good luck!

I've been living in the Amherst/Northampton area for about 10 years (I'm about to leave to go to grad school!) and loved it. Housing is, unfortunately, very expensive, especially if you're looking for a one-bedroom. But if you have a car and don't mind a commute, you can always find cheaper places to live in the surrounding towns, like Pelham, Belchertown, Sunderland, and Hadley. If I were a grad student moving to the area, I would definitely try to find a place in Hadley, close to the B43 bus line. It's rural and quiet, there's a bike path that runs through it, there aren't many undergrads around, and it's right in between Amherst and Northampton.
I lived mostly in Northampton, which is great, but housing can be tricky here-- lots of slumlords and houses in disrepair, especially if they're close to the center of town. Amherst can also be tricky. I tried to move to Amherst a few years ago, and every apartment I visited looked like it had been wrecked by undergrads. I also prefer the social scene in Northampton; it's a little more artsy and there's more to do. Most of my friends who live in Amherst end up driving or taking the bus to Northampton every weekend.
Good luck!

Madison is amazing, as is Charlottesville!
Editing to say: Amherst/Northampton is amazing also-- a great, inspiring, artistic place to live. But just to warn you, it's also surprisingly expensive to live in Massachusetts. The MFA program is very well-regarded, I think its reputation is gaining traction with every year. But I also think it has a slightly better reputation for its poetry program (Ocean Vuong teaches there now, Wendy Xu went there) than fiction. Just my two cents!

Hi everyone
I’m just dropping in to say best of luck to all and thanks for your posts. Its nice to know that everyone feels pretty much the same way. Congrats to those who already have wait lists and acceptances  
 
 

It's not over til it's over! Hang in there.

I got my first acceptance phone call while sitting down to breakfast at a restaurant with my partner. I took the call outside, came back, hugged him, and had to pack up my food right away because I was too excited to eat. 
Got my second acceptance on Valentine's Day, at work, via email, from a school that I did not expect to get into *at all*. 
It's a huge deal for me because I didn't get in anywhere last year, and this year, I applied to programs that were just as competitive. I was absolutely CRUSHED last year but used it as an opportunity to hone my intentions and increase my dedication. The lack of hubris honestly made me produce much stronger work. 

I got my first acceptance phone call while sitting down to breakfast at a restaurant with my partner. I took the call outside, came back, hugged him, and had to pack up my food right away because I was too excited to eat. 
Got my second acceptance on Valentine's Day, at work, via email, from a school that I did not expect to get into *at all*. 
It's a huge deal for me because I didn't get in anywhere last year, and this year, I applied to programs that were just as competitive. I was absolutely CRUSHED last year but used it as an opportunity to hone my intentions and increase my dedication. The lack of hubris honestly made me produce much stronger work. 

Hi all.
 
Tired of waiting for graduate committees’ decisions I estimated decision timelines myself based on gradcafe data. For each university and program in albums below you will find three graphs:
Decision timeline as a cumulative sum of decisions (accept, reject, interview, waitlist) as a function of time between Jan 1 and May 1 for the last five years combined. Boxplots of GRE Q and GRE V for people who reported both scores. Histogram of GPAs (from 2.5 to 4.0 with 0.1 step).    
Here is the list of programs I analyzed (some important notes below):
 
Computer science PhD https://imgur.com/a/cXaEs 
Computer Science MS https://imgur.com/a/u3joC 
Electrical Engineering PhD https://imgur.com/a/ra3Eh 
Electrical Engineering MS https://imgur.com/a/KUGrD 
Economics PhD https://imgur.com/a/NzlYm 
Economics MS https://imgur.com/a/JfgSk 
Statistics PhD https://imgur.com/a/mB5UC 
Statistics MS https://imgur.com/a/tXowL 
Mathematics (applied and pure) PhDhttps://imgur.com/a/d0821 
Chemistry PhD https://imgur.com/a/U5x91 
Physics (applied and pure) PhD https://imgur.com/a/35tTy 
Chemical Engineering PhD https://imgur.com/a/Tng2r 
Literature PhD https://imgur.com/a/LDKpT 
Anthropology PhD https://imgur.com/a/d5ub4 
Bioengineering PhD https://imgur.com/a/RpTSD 
Philosophy PhD https://imgur.com/a/ihoGS 
Biology PhD https://imgur.com/a/FWhoD 
 
How to use the graphs?
I used this data to decrease my own misery. Now that I know decision timelines of universities and programs I applied to, I can refresh gradcafe less and concentrate on more useful stuff more. Also, it is interesting to explore differences between different universities/programs. For example, some universities do gradual accepts rejects/accepts and others do it in waves. Some programs start early (chemistry) and some — later (CS). Keep in mind, that there may be errors in my analysis so use this data at your own risk.  
How reliable are timelines?
I personally trust them (but I am biased). In general, it depends on curve shapes and available data. If there are more than 100 observations overall — I would consider that data to be pretty reliable. If there are characteristic ‘steps’ — it is a good sign because may indicate internal deadlines for waves of accepts/rejects. But the number of admissions/rejections records in the data is definitely inflated by question records (i.e. ‘to poster below: what program?”). I filtered some, but definitely not all of them. Also, bear in mind that department policies can change.
How reliable are GRE/GPA?
Somewhat reliable. There is noise, mistakes (i.e. switched Q/V) and self-report bias. For example, salty people with good scores may more likely report rejections and lucky people with low GPAs may less likely report accepts. But for some universities which publish admission statistics (for example, Duke), calculated GRE/GPA medians are pretty close to reported averages (I didn’t calculate means, sorry). Also, we can’t affect GPA/GRE right now, so it is mostly for entertainment.
How did you do it?
Scraped and parsed all gradcafe results. Selected all records from Jan 1 2013 to May 1 2017 and combined data for all years together, so all data is based on five year period. For each university and program in question I built a cumulative sum of decisions as a function of days since beginning of the year. For analysis of GRE I only chose records which included both Q and V scores. For analysis of GPA I used only 4-point scale grades and didn’t convert other scales to it (i.e. 10-point). Selection of universities/programs was done by regular expressions so there can be some noise added by incorrect parsing. For example, “University of Washington” may both mean Seattle and St. Louis. I tried to avoid it the best I could but there can be mistakes nonetheless. How did you choose universities/programs?
Voluntarily, so there are a lot of omissions. Sorry, if your university/program is not there. Also, bear in mind that programs may overlap (for example ‘Computer Science’ and ‘Electrical Engineering’). Finally, I excluded uni/program from analysis if there were less than 30 observations.
Will you share your code/data?
I am thinking about it, but undecided yet.

Hope it helps and good luck with the admissions!


 

lol'd at "I hate shapes"