semling

Unusually way of asking the question (as others have pointed out), but to actually answer what I think you're asking: I use RefWorks to organize my all academic reading and notes. I have a source for everything I I read (which I usually do by dragging the PDF of the article into it, or I have a "Save to Refworks" link in Chrome), and I take limited notes on the reading within the Notes section of the reference. For things that are really relevant, I'll mark up the PDF with highlighting, notes, etc. and save the annotated version there as well. Each source is tagged with the subjects (for example, "arabic_syntax", "tunisian_arabic", "negation", etc.), and then I use the folders for projects. So I'll have a folder for the paper I'm working on now, and all the sources will be in that folder. (Sources can be in multiple folders.) My actually papers and research data is on Google Drive. I write my papers in Google Docs, and I have the Cite with Refworks plugin, so I can just insert the citations and create the bibliographies directly from Refworks. It's a really great system and I wish I'd come up with it years ago ....

It definitely is for me. Georgetown is one of the few places where I can focus on Arabic linguistics (syntax of spoken Arabic, natch), while also keeping up with modern Arabic literature and my translation work. There's not a whole lot of places where you can do both ... I'm so excited. Although, coming from a well-paying, full-time job, I also have my share of reservations:

Got an email from NYU Graduate Enrollment Services, referring me to check my status. That's a rejection. Which means, I can officially say, I'm going to Georgetown!!!

Yeah, I really wish the programs were more transparent in their decision timing. Although I'm not too stressed out about it, since I already have one acceptance I would be very happy with (Georgetown), whatever happens with NYU. But I also can't start making definitive plans until I know if it's definitely going to be Georgetown or if I have a decision to make. I hope your wife hears back soon!

Was your acceptance for the NYU MEIS Masters program or PhD? I noticed a "rejected" on the results page for the masters program, but I haven't heard anything about my PhD application yet ....

I haven't heard anything yet, has anyone else?

I got accepted to Georgetown and there was no interview or anything. I submitted my application and then radio silence until I got the email notifying me I was admitted. So not all schools do interviews.

Just got an email from the department that I got in!

I ride the bus with a professor in that department ( we both work in Providence, and live about a mile apart), and I ran into him today for the first time in a long time and asked him why I haven’t seen him on the bus lately, and he mentioned that he’s been working really late lately. Maybe that’s what he’s doing!

Maybe I should've mentioned it in my SOP ... ;-)

Well, I got an email, but it wasn’t the one I wanted. Rejected. :-( But, hey, it’s their loss. Not only am I a kick-ass scholar, but I bake. See this Rosemary Pecorino Star Bread? None for you, Yale.

OMG, someone just posted on the survey that they got an acceptance email from Yale Linguistics yesterday! (And it wasn't me, sad face.) I haven't heard anything yet ... aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaih! please send me an email please send me an email please send me an email ....

I applied to the Linguistics department at Yale.

"Fewer than 7" seems like a really weird way to say "6", but whatevs, it's their letter ... Sorry to all the Berkeley applicants who didn't make it.

Somehow, I suspect you'll be okay. ;-)

Yeah, not a good sign. On the graph, though, Berkeley has 14 interviews and 17 acceptances, so it could be they accept some people without interviewing. (Or it could be that the data is incomplete, hmm, which is more likely ...) Luckily you still have lots of other good schools to hear back from. (I've noticed that I'm very much in the minority, having only applied to four programs, and currently questioning my life decisions...) Best of luck!

I think it would be tough — if you want admission committees to look past some unfortunate stuff, they're going to want to see recent grades and LORs. You can tell them, "I'm doing much better now" all you want, but they're going to want some hard proof before they take a chance on you. I'm not very familiar with your field, but I would recommend you try to get into employment in your field first off and get some experience, contacts, perspective, etc. (even some research, if that's possible?) And then look into post-docs or master's programs where you could get some grades and faculty to recommend you.

Wow, that Literature one is ... sobering. Y'all have my sympathies. If this doesn't work out with the Arabic thing, I think I'm going to switch to Computer Science ....

It definitely looks from the graph that Berkeley sends out the rejections first and then the acceptances a few days after ... Maybe you got in. :-)

Also not my field, but I'm got some experience with very selective admission committees and wanted to add an important point to all the great ones mentioned above: Don't take it personally Seriously. You would not believe how, at a certain point, this process is largely arbitrary. Because, really, it's not like the departments are looking carefully at each application and saying "this person meets our standards, this person doesn't" and all the former get in. No. They do that, then look at the still large pile of people who meet their standards and they'd like to accept, and then somehow figure a way to whittle it down to the number of slots they actually have available. It bothers me when I see people on results page say "oh, I knew my GPA [or GRE] wasn't good enough" or "I bet it was because I didn't have any publications." If your GRE/GPA is way below the average for your program, that might be the case. But for people at or above the average, it is literally impossible to guess why you weren't accepted and someone else was. (It's not impossible to know, you could ask them and they might tell you. But it's impossible to guess.) Once you meet a certain standard on the basics and you're on the shortlist, you can bet that what gets you accepted or rejected after that point is entirely out of your control. Departmental politics, a particular faculty member's ability to take on another student, the profiles of the students accepted last year, the profiles of the other students who will probably be accepted this year, unconscious biases (or affinities), funding issues ... Or a billion other things that could affect the decision — all of which are out of your hands, and none of which are even really about you. So if you get rejected, even if you get rejected by all of them, don't take it personally. Take a good look and if you have obvious deficiencies make a plan to correct them, but if you don't, don't drive yourself crazy trying to find what small flaw caused them to reject you. Because, a lot of times, it's not you; it's them.

Congrats. We need more women in CS (and especially WOC), so I'm rootin' for you!

In case you guys didn't see this bit of awesomeness:

I'm out of "reactions" for the day, but you rock!

It will be fine. They probably won't even notice it, and if they do they probably won't hold it against you. The committees are made up of real people (who have made plenty of their own typos in their lives), and who are also going through lots of applications pretty quickly. So I can almost guarantee you that that little typo is not going to affect your application either way.

Looking at the schools that I applied to on the results page, it looks like they send out decisions between mid February and early March. And none of them appear to do interviews, so I don't think we'll hear anything before the decision letters. Not sure what schools you're applying to, though, might be different ...