futureadjunct

hey man, this is kind of tone deaf. anyway, it seems like the first wave of ND acceptances went out in the last week or so. Crossing my fingers for you, and good luck with Yale!

You're definitely right that there are certain things under an applicant's control - GRE/GPA, SOP, etc. By all means, make your application packet as strong as possible, and use all the resources you have at your disposal to do so. I wasn't trying to say that the entire process is all chaos and that your chances are completely random. My point was more about how some applicants approach specific programs. An applicant can do certain things to make their application broadly more attractive to all schools (do research work, go to conferences, etc) but when it comes to a particular program, there is no "special sauce" for getting in. A number of users here have been laboring over tactics to get into specific programs, and there's just too much going on to reliably predict whether or not this or that tweak will get you into that program. In short, most of the applicants on gradcafe are already aware of the general types of things they could do in order to make a more attractive application. All programs, no matter what their rank, are looking for basically the same criteria. It would be an error, however, to attribute one's getting into any one particular program directly to something in their application packet. (e.g. You might have a great application that is worthy of getting into some of the CHYMPS, but there's no guarantee that that packet will get into Harvard in particular).

I'll second this - if you've posted something about yourself on gradcafe, expect the grad students at the programs you visit to have already read it. More importantly, it's only after you've been admitted that you truly understand how chaotic the process it. "Fit" means very little to admissions committees. They presume that you'll change your research projects after you get in and learn a bit more. In reality, a committee will whittle down an applicant pool to a manageable size (~50) then it's basically a crapshoot from thereon. Related to that, faculty members hate doing admissions and don't spend too much time thinking about the process. If you don't get it, don't take it personally. If you do get in, don't feel special. I was in the same position as many of you a few years ago while I was applying, and I felt the same impulses to overthink the process and psychologize faculty members. As it turns out, the whole thing is messy and unpredictable so it may be best to just sit back and enjoy your suffering. Drink a lot and have some fun right now - your life will get very boring in just a few months.