MaoistTowelette

The UI-Champaign rejection letter was the kindest I've seen, and I've seen 'em all. But, weirdly, it says that they accepted under 20% of applicants. Isn't that a way higher application-to-acceptance ratio than everywhere else? That means if they accepted 5 people, they did so out of a pool of 25 applicants; if 10 out of 5, and 10 seems like a high yield this year. What I'm saying is that for those of you playing this game again, IUCU sounds like an excellent program that hardly anyone bothers with.

Thought I'd done this already:

How do folks like us with great record collections strike out?

It's gonna be an honor just to get a rejection letter from Harvard. Or so they think. I'd like an official notice from Buffalo.

Who are you and when will we be able to read your wonderful things?

I'm an early modernist and I tanked at most of those. If you would ever feel comfortable sharing your SoP and writing sample I'd be grateful; I clearly do not know what to aim for, nor the right stance to take. Plus it's just plain fun checking out other folks' work ?.

This is a wholly reasonable response, which I thank you for. I reached out during a couple cycles myself, not to every school but just here and there, and my application went no further.

Sure. But any number of people on here claim to have received acceptance letters from POI. Perhaps in these particular instances these particular professors are, just temperamentally, quite eager to contact applicants whose friendly exchange they remember months, and hundreds of applications, later. It sounds to me, however, like a relationship had been built; how, I do not know, and if I admit that I suspect that the applicant's mentor reached out to a friendly colleague to put in a word on that student's behalf I do so without bitterness. And in any case this is the last time around for me. But just for the sake of knowing I would be interested to know what goes on, as would, I'm sure, other older or working class students who may be throwing hundreds of dollars out the window on chances they, as outsiders, just do not stand.

Bring on that final assault of rejections!

Thank you both for saying well what would have sounded bitter coming from this non-trad student.

That Vanderbilt rejection letter is getting roasted on the results page. I didn't think it was that bad--probably the kindest of the three I've received from them. Then again, maybe I'm used to being treated like a rug, so you figure it out.

Any scholars manques--Predestinated Washouts of the Americas and Beyond--wanna bet on who eats it first? I'm out everywhere but a couple tony, tippity-top schools, and they ain't gonna take me. Can anyone beat that?

Thanks for letting me know, I'll cross that one of my list!

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo?

If you haven't applied to McGill you should do so in the future: you get an email telling you to check your portal, and then you have to click not a "View Decision Letter" key like at a normal school, oh no, you have to click on a key that says "Read Refusal Letter." Kinda got everything I needed from the headline! Oh well, my French is terrible and I hate puppetry. Canada's loss, the poor dears.

Cornell rejection was no surprise. They've rejected me before, it's kind of the way our relationship works. Are they still out there in IU-Bloomington? Did they get buried in snow? And Vanderbilt?

Fellow thirtysomething here. It's a lonely age to be in academe. My work experience is similar to yours, only shittier and not meaningful on any grad school application. We may have outlived our chance at a PhD. That's alright., life is bigger than a university--unless you're that John Barth novel. This is not my first application season, but it will be my last, regardless of outcome. Too expensive, too stressful, and frankly I'm getting too old and crotchety to sit around batting flies away from my face as I blankly refresh school portals. Plus I really ought to take care of this fly problem. Reasons to be hopeful, of course--I'm no nihilist. Acceptance: I get to go to graduate school! Rejection: I don't have to go to graduate school!

The above was a mistake but is representative of my current mindset. Whither Indiana-Bloomington?

YES offense, Wallace. Yechk.

Yeah I'm thinking that's all she wrote for Vanderbilt.

Northwestern is gonna feel awful for missing out on me.

Any other early modernists? And could you, like, take a dive on this one? In some seriousness, all the best to all of you, this is an awful process and knowing that others are suffering brings a little light into it.

Awaiting Northwestern as well.