rejectedndejected

Double, double toil and trouble I tell you.

Schools like to dole out the bad news on Fridays. March 15 is a Friday. I would anticipate getting an e-mail at 4:55 pm on March 15.

Hey guys--as I've already alluded to, I'm a mixed (PhD and M*) applicant. I got waitlisted to Notre Dame's MTS program (not super high on the list). Does anyone have any experience with ND's waitlist/MTS admissions? Do they often go to their waitlist? If so, how deep? Has anyone been accepted to their MTS this cycle? The M*/MTS/MAR thread is prettymuch dead/moribund.

No one else wants to talk Notre Dame MTS? I figured there would be a flurry of activity on here since those answers came out today. Here's to waitlist purgatorio!

Also, today I got an e-mail from Harvard Divinity School saying, inter alia: "we have organized a webinar entitled “Preparing for What’s Next,” which will take place on Thursday, February 28th from 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm EST." Do you guys think that only students that they are planning to admit received these notices? Or do you think it was sent to all applicants? Maybe I'm reading way too far into this, but admissions season is a stressful time, and analyzing minutia makes the time tick by quickly...

I also was waitlisted to ND's MTS (liturgy) this morning. Blast. Westegg, what is your concentration? And do you know where you sit on the waitlist?

I'm thinking in terms of academic applicants. Does language training matter much at the master's level? I figured that programs used the master's curriculum to begin language training, so that students could use languages at the doctoral level. For the premier master's programs, what is considered a solid GRE score (V/AW)? What is considered a "low" score? What if an applicant has bad undergrad GPA but high first master's GPA?

Thanks for this. What specifically did you consider a "weak applicant" at the master's level?

Hey guys--Any idea what takes Harvard and Yale divinity schools so long to come out with decisions? They don't even have ThD applicants to consider anymore, which makes it strange that they take 2 months to decide on us masters peeps. Also, what is the earliest we can expect to hear back? Does anyone know where Notre Dame is in the MTS process yet?

Hey KA.DINGER.RA, i know you often have the inside scoop on Notre Dame. Do you know when they plan to begin reviewing (and notifying applicants) for the MTS pool?

Any news on any front?

Thanks for the thoughtful response. Although, I think your insights likely pertain more to the sciences than to the humanities. In humanities, isn't analytical prowess concern number 1? Anyone have any thoughts about what makes a good humanities LOR?

To start a much-needed thread (in hopes of shedding some light on an aspect of humanities graduate admissions that is truly mysterious): What, in the name of all that is good and decent, are grad programs/ad-comms really looking for in letters of recommendation? Almost all letters surely sound pretty similar right? What sets some letters apart? What makes others bad? If anyone has any expertise/experience in this area, please enlighten us--but everyone feel free to opine.

Hey guys--has there been any movement in Notre Dame's MTS admissions yet? Does anyone know when concentrations are planning their reviews? Last year, it looks like the first acceptance went up on February 19th or so. In case you're not aware, that's coming up in five days...

I forget if you've already mentioned--did you apply to any M* programs this cycle?

By the way, just in case y'all needed another shot of adrenaline-fueled anxiety, I talked to the religion department at Rice University, and they told me that this year, they had an exceptionally large pool of applicants. So my prognostication that it would be a less competitive year can be filed under "things that have not aged well," right next to Dolly Parton, baseball, and my Chevrolet.

Seriously--congratulations. Does Baylor interview? Did you have any hunch/inclination that you were going to get in? I can only imagine what it feels like to open a letter of acceptance. Has to be cathartic and surreal.

Thanks for this. Do you guys all apply to second M* degree programs as safeties, in the event that you strike out on PhDs? I have it on good counsel that second M* degrees are quite common prior to PhD work, and yet I'm not getting any younger and I don't want the stigma of "too many degrees" if there be such a thing. Also, where would you put the median age for an individual entering a religion PhD program? I would bet it's significantly higher than the national average because of the language study that is prerequisite.

Just a little steering here: I think a lot of the bitterness comes from the fact that (1) grad schools charge absurd amounts just for (often cash-strapped) applicants to have the privilege of having their materials considered, promising "holistic" review, when most often for top programs, there are articulable GRE and GPA cutoffs; (2) schools are generally very, very tardy in communicating rejections to unsuccessful applicants (decisions are made in late February, but rejections go out in late March/early April) despite the fact that everyone knows that applicants are waiting with a good amount of anxiety, counting down minutes; (3) programs don't even do us the courtesy of mailing out tangible letters of rejection--most are electronic and often you aren't notified that there has been a change in your application status; you just log in to check one day and a soul-crushing epistle is staring you in the face; (4) many programs just seem like they couldn't care less about professionalism and politeness in responding to applicant questions: SLU got my name wrong in their correspondence with me (lol); yet, if heaven forbid, my CV had a simple typo on it, according to some ad comm members, it would have been discarded. Parity anyone? No one is "entitled." We know we aren't guaranteed a spot in a doctoral program. But it'd be nice to be treated like a human with dignity, as opposed to a mere collection of soulless papers in an application file.

Perhaps I was being too cynical. Actually hearing that parakletos didn't get a single interview in his first cycle, even with sterling numbers, confirms that grad schools may not be purely blowing smoke when they speak of "fit" and "holistic" review. The problem now becomes, for those of us with middling-yet-plausible GRE scores (164V/4.5AW) and crappy uGPA but flawless gGPA, determining whether we are being relegated to the trashbin based on uncompetitive numbers or because our SOP suggests a poor fit. It's harder for us to know when it is time to throw in the towel. I don't want to be that one weird old guy enrolled at every grad school that no one can figure out exactly why he is there...

This.

I feel for you. It's my second cycle. When I started applying to schools, I thought there'd be this suspenseful climax where I got a decision letter in the mail and had to breathlessly open it to discover my academic fate--a fate which had been carefully adjudicated by a panel of fair-minded, wise professors who endeavored to see my promise as a student (and my heart of gold) through the superficial facade of my fastidiously-prepared application materials. It's not like that at all. For the most part, snooty graduate departments just fawn over the three applicants (who've been diligently grooming themselves for a career as religious scholars and studying Greek since they were still sperm) that were deemed "worthy" of an acceptance, and leave the rest of us undesirables to rot in grad-school purgatory well into April (having barely even glanced at our files because we got a b minus one time as lost undergrads six years ago and the goody-two-shoes with whom we are now competing have had straight A's since kindergarten--this is what they mean when they say they review "holistically," BTW). Then, by mid-April, seeing the writing on the wall, we accept our fates and "reach out" to our respective departments of interest for official confirmation by a low-level staff member (who, of course, resents us for having the nerve to make an inquiry about something as trivial as y'know, our entire future because they now have to do a minimal amount of work in pulling our files up) that our applications had been quickly relegated to a vermin-infested dumpster where they belonged all along. Other than that, it's a bucket of fun! Who's looking forward to next year?

I don't think that it hurts your chances of being admitted to solicit a decision notification. It's just that it behooves schools to notify their top choices quickly, so that they can coax such students into attending their programs. Hence, if you don't hear quickly, IMO chances are you weren't a top choice, and are likely not admitted. It's a correlation and not a causation. Perhaps you are the fallback, on an unofficial wait list of sorts.

I agree. In my experience, whenever you're at the point where you're tempted to contact the department and solicit the disposition of your app, you're likely toast. If you peruse the results section of Grad Cafe, it seems to confirm this. Almost everyone who solicits, when they receive an answer, is rejected. I've brought it up a couple other times, but are any of you lurkers applying to Rice's religion department? Anyone heard back?

Anyone know what the acceptance rate is for Harvard and Yale Divinity schools for the MTS/MAR (NOT the MDiv, which is much easier to get in to)? What are their average GREs, and what makes a strong applicant in general? Also, I applied to ND for their MTS (liturgy). They used to post their average GRE scores (but they have since been taken down). The claimed average was like 161/157/4.5. But almost every acceptance posted on Grad Cafe's results page had numbers that were off the charts--like 167/162/5.5 (in other words, elite PhD numbers). Can anyone speak to this disparity? Is it self-selection of posters? What does ND's theology department really want in applicants?