ashwel11

Is anyone else trying to finish a master's thesis while waiting to hear back? I thought once my last application was submitted, focus would fill my brain and typing fingers but no! The anticipation is such a distraction.

Just an update: I have been asked to interview for the PhD in English (Criticism and Culture). Fingers crossed, will update this forum about how it goes. 

Hi all,
I applied to a whole bunch of biology PhD programs. I got interviews at two, but neither were places that I really wanted to go, and I went on one of the interviews and still haven't heard back so probably messed that up too. I got back two rejections and am waiting to hear from a bunch of others but I know if they were going to accept me I would have heard back by now. 
I know what people will tell me. That I can just work a job in the field and apply again next year. But I'll still be the same person next year and I feel like a complete failure. I don't know how to not feel like that. I really, really, don't.  It's like... you put in all this time and energy and money and pour yourself into these applications and they take one look at you and decide you aren't good enough. To be honest I don't know why I thought I was. I'm just tired and it feels like I have no purpose when all of my friends who are graduating have concrete plans.
Any advice on how to not feel like a complete idiot/failure for putting yourself out there and hoping you were good enough?

I also applied for Cambridge's Criticism and Culture MPhil. I didn't think they typically interviewed for that program, though - now I'm extra nervous! Honestly I don't have very high hopes for Cambridge - I applied all the way back in October (long story) when I wasn't yet very well prepared for all the ins and outs of graduate applications, so it's definitely the weakest application I submitted.
Would definitely love to hear whatever you care to share about your interview when it's done!

Everyone ready for hell week?
Get your wines, ice-creams and tissues ready.

I can tell you why they do this. (Insider info.) They only send rejection letters right away to those they flat-out would never accept. If you didn't get rejected yet, it means you're still in the pool. After the committees rank the candidates, they send offers to the top however many (say five). Then they wait to see who accepts and who rejects them. It's a two-way street, both applicants and programs are playing the waiting game and both get accepted and rejected.
So say offers go out to the top five. Of those one is still waiting for their #1 to accept them, so they hold off on committing to #2's offer. Two of them reject the offer because their #1's already accepted them. Now there are two open slots for the cohort and one tentative and two who haven't bothered to respond either way. The committee moves down the list and sends out two more offers. Then waits to see if those two accept or decline.
From having worked on the programs side of things for awhile, I've seen years where programs got their top five right away and didn't go deep into the list, and years where they had to go so deep into the list that they considered reopening applications to allow more people to apply late, so they'd have enough to choose from because they'd made offers to 22 people who declined for various reasons, only had 30 in the pool to begin with, and if the "current" top five assembled after making all those offers didn't all commit, they'd be "short" for the cohort.
In other words, the TL:DNR version is, if you haven't gotten rejected right away, you have a chance up until April 15th. Even if you aren't in the top five first-round, you ARE still of the quality necessary to be considered for admission. Does it really matter if you were on their list at #30, if you got IN?
Still, it sucks to wait.

Oregon is notifying! I just got in. (I'm also super stoked about this because I am a huge fan of Forest Pyle's work!) 

I just want to say - meghan_sparkle, though I totally appreciate all of your disclaimers and humility, it does definitely say something that you got into these schools. That "something" may not mean "I am objectively better by all metrics," but lottery or no, best friends keeping you honest or no, you did seem to work very hard for it and I hope you're celebrating like a monster. What you wrote hit a serious chord! And it bodes well for your career.
I had a rough damn week, but what you said did remind me - I am actually very proud of my writing sample, and it's genuinely reflective of my interests. I worked hard to say something about a poem people have spilled books of ink over, and I think it's a relatively original take that is still firmly rooted in scholarly conversations past and present, and close reading. If schools aren't into that, we likely just weren't a good fit - though of course I'm going to take the opportunity to look at it again and see how it can be improved. Thank you for your honest thoughts and best of luck on what is probably going to be a really rough decision, lol

From everything I felt going in and all of the replies I've had so far, what set me apart was my writing sample. It was a revised combination of my undergraduate dissertation and a masters seminar paper, both on the same (contemporary American) poet. It ranged back to 19th century, had original archival work, careful close readings, and chewed on broader issues of genre, criticism, reading and the ethics of handling a writer's work and papers.I reaaaaally worked my ass off on it. I usually hate everything I write, but every time I opened that pdf file in between submitting and now, I didn't think 'oh god this actually sucks', I thought 'yeah that's really about the best I could humanly do and I think they'll like it.' Once the cycle is over, I'll have more thoughts—feel a bit weird being so specific in such a public forum without having made a decision yet, knowing that a few places I have left to hear from are probably still deliberating. And again, I really don't think it's helpful in the sense that certain interests = a secret sauce; that kind of logic just isn't correct. 
Edit: I will just say that even though I worked my ass off on it, it had typos. And I think I'm the first person ever to get into Chicago with a statement of purpose that referred to the fiction of—I kid you not—'David Foster Fallace'. Do not edit your statement at 3:30 AM before the 5 AM deadline (I'm in the UK). It will not "get better". Point being, my app had flaws, and I don't present as a "smart" person, and in many ways I really am not lol. My best friend was over for dinner when the Yale email came in and in the course of screaming and celebrating she said, "It's actually really encouraging that someone who is as much of a mess as you are could get into these places" and reader, she is RIGHT.

Holy sh*t, I'm in at Yale!

Holy shit, you are having the most successful season ever! Can I ask about your profile? Like, BA, MA, publications, research interests? You must be some kind of ideal candidate. 

In at Yale with the kindest email I've ever read from the DGS oh my god 

It's getting incredibly difficult to vent to my friends and partner, as none of them are in the academic world. So far, I've heard back from two schools (both rejections) and my friends try their best to keep my spirit up, but I know they don't fully "get" it. Hearing a response of, "Oh, they weren't good enough for you anyhow" or "Screw them! You didn't want to go their anyways!" Like, no, I very much wanted to go their because the program/faculty is amazing. Hence why I spent several months of stress and anxiety trying to apply to these places. 
My partner, bless him, cannot figure out why I am constantly hitting refresh on my email or on gradcafe. I know it won't make anything happen more quickly, but the desperation to know something (anything!) has become compulsive. I applied to 13 schools this round, which during the app process seemed like a lot. Now, with 2 rejections, that initial 13 seems like such a small number. 
May the universe, God, gods, nature, and JK Rowling give us strength. 

The way I've been thinking about it, which was re-affirmed by the language in the waitlist email I received from UT-Austin, is that it's a strong endorsement of your application. Like, your application is strong enough that they're as confident that you would be a successful graduate student and that you would fit well in their program, but for whatever reason, your application just missed the cutoff. For example, maybe there was another student in the same subfield, they couldn't take you both, and that person's research interests fit slightly better with what their POI wants to be advising in three years, that kind of thing. 
Definitely from past GC results it appears that many, many students end up accepted to programs off of the waitlist, which intuitively makes sense if you assume that top-ranked grad programs don't want to admit outright more students than they can fund and support. 
Edited to add: I also can't think of any real incentive that grad programs would have to waitlist candidates they don't consider viable. For undergraduate programs, more students = more money, so sure, waitlist enough students to make sure you'll have a big enough freshman class. But for graduate programs, where students cost money and advising resources and their success or failure reflects very strongly on the program itself, and there are 250-500 applicants, many of whom have quite strong applications, for your 6-14 slots... there's no reason to think that they'd stack the waitlist with candidates they don't really, really want. 

*waves* Hey, everyone. Longtime lurker here... I feel kind of weird because I feel like I'm familiar with a few of you as a result of my lurking and no one knows who I am, LOL. My name is Elia, and I applied for English Lit PhD programs for Fall 2020. I'm currently finishing up my last semester of undergrad. I'm interested in the interestion of race, sexuality, and gender within the African Diaspora (primarily African-American and Latinx) within literature. I applied to the majority of the UC schools because of a summer program I did, as well as Penn State, Yale, and USC. Other than that I've been anxiously waiting and obsessively checking Grade Cafe and Reddit like most everyone else, lol. Curse this neverending humanities decision wait time!

Oh my goodness....I got into Berkeley??? Funding for five years!!! WHAT

Feeling this hardcore right now. 

Got a rejection from Stanford. Oh well, I didn't want to do a cross-country move to California, anyway.*
*Berkeley adcom, if you're reading, please disregard this statement.

Just checking in. It feels nice to know we are all checking this page together =]

Hi Clementine. I know the process can be discouraging but I wanted to just check in and let you know that its not over yet. Sometimes a program just doesn't have a right fit at the moment, or maybe they are looking for something specific this year. Your application could end up being a perfect match for one of the programs you haven't heard back from yet, so I think there's definitely still hope. 

I just assume that I didn't get in anywhere. Then, if I do get in, it'll be a pleasant surprise, and if I don't, I won't be disappointed.

I'm in the "no word from anyone" boat thus far, and my deepest fear, even though I know it's irrational, is that I somehow missed a key step or submission, and I'll just wait in limbo indefinitely because the applications never actually got submitted.
Sigh.

Received an email from the ADGS at Yale declaring their interest and requesting more information about my breaks during school???!!! It took me about a decade to finish my BA while working full-time and often paying out of pocket. Essentially, I took breaks from school because I had lost hope or funding and worked in the service industry until I could save enough to attend again. HOW DOES ONE SPIN THIS FOR YALE??? HOW DOES ONE TYPE WHEN SHAKING BECAUSE YALE

We expect Berkeley to notify any day now, right? Hurry up and reject me already, Berkeley - I just want an end to the suspense!

Who was the last NYU interview posted? Was it a late post or are they doing interviews this week?