kenshiro

Duke ThD reject... See (some of) you guys again next cycle!

I have to say I'm pretty surprised that there was a Skype interview process for the GPR; that's a significant change of protocol. Was your interview with people you listed as your potential POIs, or faculty chosen at random? Invites for on-campus interviews have gone out already, and in years past that has been a soft acceptance; it remains to be seen whether that's still the case. I and others weren't invited for remote interviews with GPR, which I assume means we didn't make the initial cut; if you weren't invited for on-campus, that may mean the best you can hope for is waitlist. I had been hoping to make the waitlist, but it's now sounding as though I didn't make it past the desk reject. Alas.

It's tacitly understood that Duke GPR interviews are 'non-competitive' and represent a soft acceptance. In other words, don't come off as a sociopath and you're in. Congrats! Commiserations to the rest of us who will now have to hope for waitlist!

Is it legit this time?

You just made my evening.

Why not both?

Depends what sorts of accounts you have, I suppose, and how they would be identified with you. Some services (e.g. FB) allow you to change your name, others (e.g. Insta, Twitter) allow you to make your account private, with varying degrees of success. Some (e.g. Reddit) don't have tools like that but have third-party tools that allow you to scrub everything you've ever written. But I doubt anyone is going to make more than a cursory effort to find you online, so completely eradicating yourself online is probably overkill. In any case, it's a bit late for this cycle.

I think any answer to that question can only be speculative. Every hiring manager I've had in the last ten years has done some basic web searching for me, and the competition for RS PhD spots is much fiercer than for most job openings. Why take the risk? Unless the whole adcom are luddites, odds are someone's going to have a rummage.

Well that's somewhat reassuring at least. It seems unreasonable that admission or denial can hinge on one high-pressure thirty minute video chat.

People in medicine do this all the time when they're getting ready to match for residency or fellowship. A good friend of mine still has the Facebook name "Notthedroid Yourelookingfor" and is unsearchable three years after finishing his medical training.

I wonder if everyone comes out of Skype interviews feeling like they bombed?

Academia.edu has basic analytics and I believe emails you by default when your profile is clicked through to from Google.

I have no idea. Perhaps it's a side-channel conversation like mine and nothing to do with the adcom formally.

The holiday was made for man, not man for the holiday. ? Beggars (amongst whom I very much account myself) cannot be choosers, but I'm glad I was looking at my phone while doing laundry. As for the Ph.D., well, if there's an adcom interview for the GPR Ph.D. as the result says, then not getting it is not a good sign, especially given that the poster said it arrived 1/16. Now it's time to go read the abstracts for every publication every DDS regular rank faculty member has written in the last ten years. Sigh.

Looks like some more results are up, including a Skype interview @ Duke (I don't think I've ever heard of this?) and Vandy and ND results. I'm not sure what to make of Duke. My understanding is that Duke interviews are on-campus late in the candidate review cycle. I went in and had an hourlong chat with a potential PoI; does that count? [Edit] Well that is a stomach-churner. Email at 10:32PM: "The Th.D. Admissions Committee has established its short list of applicants for 2020. As the next stage in the process, we invite you to meet for 30-40 minutes via Zoom video conference with two members of the Admissions Committee. This will give you an opportunity to talk in greater depth about the fit of your research interests with Duke’s Th.D. Program as well as to ask any questions you may have." Maybe the process has changed this year. I suppose this doesn't bode well for the Ph.D. application, then.

Am I missing something? I don't see a PTS result...

Sorry for my ignorance here, but what's GETS?

The comment was specifically addressing a person who applied to 5 M.Div programs and does not apply to other M* programs or Ph.D.

Perhaps... I've tutored extensively and always found that quant scores tend to be relatively stable because understanding the problems and what tools to use, though they're not really very difficult, is built on layers and layers of experience throughout high school and maybe undergrad, so returns on practice are diminishing if you are weak at the fundamentals. Practice at writing is obviously necessary, but because the solutions aren't closed-form and you're not necessarily able to get immediate feedback, returns on practice time are similarly low. Meanwhile, I've always found that learning vocabulary and simply reading prose of any sophistication (e.g. academic papers) tends to raise verbal scores. Still, YMMV I guess. I just think that gains in verbal tend to be linear (with a low coefficient, of course) with time, whereas the others tend to fall off.

Out of curiosity, why do you think you can't improve your verbal score? I feel like verbal is much easier to improve than quant or writing.

Hey, 0% to 1% is a ∞% improvement.

That's the official line, yes, that incomplete applications are not considered. What is going on with this LoR? Presumably it was written and submitted for your other programs?

I *think* Duke will accept a late LoR - I had an issue with the earlier ThD app (recommender didn't get the link) and when I called the Monday following they seemed pretty relaxed about it (ymmv). The issue is going to be much more getting the LoR in before the review begins in earnest, which I can only assume will be shortly after the new year. Good luck!

Had a similar issue that had by blood pressure up. Just got an email giving me proof of life, finally. Phew. PTS is due Sunday? Have they no respect for the sabbath???

Wife's Duke faculty, so moving elsewhere is basically a non-starter.