DiomedesVIII

My two cents about applying to or accepting offers from Columbia:
I am a current 2nd year PhD student at Columbia. The majority of grad students are currently on strike for a living wage, better healthcare, and protection from harassment and discrimination. I have been watching the process of our new graduate union try to bargain for our first contract for over two years. In these sessions, I have seen admin (and their sleazy lawyer, who charges $1,500/hr) do everything possible to stall negotiations, belittle us, and play down heartfelt testimonials that make clear why our demands are reasonable and necessary. Every time we've gotten a raise in the past, our Columbia rent magically goes up by a higher percentage. Our wages are not enough to live in NYC. There is no dental or vision coverage, and they recently removed the better health insurance plan option. The school has a terrible history with harassment and discrimination cases brought by both undergrads and grads (Google it), and at the moment they are doing everything possible to avoid meeting our contract demand about changing the investigation process to give more rights to the complainant (see link below).
We're entering the 3rd week of the strike, and Columbia has made very clear that they plan to not only doc our bi-weekly pay (which we receive for TA/RA work), but our academic stipends--yep, they are going to debit our student accounts, thereby jeopardizing course registration, degree progress, visas, and health insurance. We have a legal right to strike, but this later action constitutes illegal academic retaliation.
Long story short: I'm sure a lot of schools are as corrupt as Columbia, but I've just seen first hand how rotten this place is to the core. They only care about profit (their endowment grew $300 million during the pandemic alone), squeezing as much our of grad workers and adjuncts for as little pay as possible, sweeping bad press under the rug, and gentrifying Harlem with multi-million dollar campus expansions.
I encourage folks thinking about attending/applying to Columbia to express concerns to department chairs and administrators, and ask them why they insist on denying grad workers a fair contract: 
President Lee Bollinger officeofthepresident@columbia.edu, Phone: (212) 854-9970 Provost Ira Katznelson provost@columbia.edu,  +1 212 854 2404 GSAS Grad Admissions: gsas-admissions@columbia.edu  
https://gothamist.com/news/columbia-grad-students-strike-over-wages-and-harassment-policies-nyu-counterparts-vote-similar-actions

Thanks @somethingClassics and @ClassicsApp21 for your quick response. Congratulations @somethingClassics.
Even though I want to work on a PhD, I'm okay waiting for now. There's always next year.
@ClassicsCandidate, sorry to hear that you got all rejections as well. From what I can tell, this was a tough year for a lot of candidates. 

To address a lot of things already posted in this thread: I've been worried as well about the idea of more people applying to schools they may not have considered originally (as I said in a previous post, a couple of the schools originally on my list had to be taken off and I added one I hadn't originally planned on myself), but on the flipside, as someone else said, a lot of people might be less inclined to apply to graduate school in the midst of the pandemic. I know there was a lot of chatter on Twitter about people saying they'd rather wait until things had leveled out/gone back to a closer-to-normal pre-COVID environment before they applied. So I wonder if a lot of people are waiting for things like a vaccine before going (I was in undergrad when Swine Flu was going around, but it was honestly nothing in comparison to this), or just waiting until it's subsided for the most part. I wanted to apply right now because the 2020-2021 school year was my off year; I was keen on keeping to my plan and I luckily managed to get application fee waivers for most of the schools but I'm sure the cost of applying was a deterrent, too (my alma mater actually sent me a fee waiver unprompted, so that was nice). 

As for hearing back from anyone yet, I'm not expecting anything until mid-January at best and heard some people (last year or earlier) waited as long as April to hear anything at all. Worst case scenario I've heard is when people say they never heard back from some schools at all, which surprised me! So I'm hoping for mid-January but I'm bracing to wait as long as March/April for answers. 

I guess we'll have to wait and see. Some programs still have deadlines in January.
Overall, I don't expect that there will be a significantly larger demand for Classics than in previous years. I could be wrong, but I doubt there will be a wave of applicants like in other fields (e.g. Psychology). 

I don't know if this is the norm, but I was talking to one admin at a grad school in NY who said their program has an unusually low number of applicants this cycle.

Seconding all of this, trying to get back into a mindset of actually engaging with hobbies again!

Hey everyone, I'm super stressed about the admissions cycle with Covid and a lot of major schools not admitting anyone this year. Does anyone know if the programs that are still admitting people are going to be more competitive/ reduced admission? I'm just stressed and feel like I don't have any information about this, the departments have not posted anything on their websites. Idk. It would just really suck to be rejected just because of covid, and I don't know if I have it in me to try to apply again next year. Does anyone have any information or feel similarly? 
I oscillate between despair and thinking I'm basically qualified, with great undergrad gpa, multiple years greek and latin, great grade on my UK masters, good recommendations, interesting (I hope) research experience and goals. I just feel very powerless with covid and all these disruptions to the admissions cycle and no answers anywhere. :( 

This may not apply to other institutions, but not good news from my home dept. Admin is allowing us (R-1 Classics dept. on the east coast) to accept only 1 PhD student next year.  Yes, 1 -- across all Classics subfields.  Normally we take up to 6 or 7 PhDs.  Hopefully things will get better next admissions cycle. Good luck. 

Also can't generalize to other schools, but my dept has a target number for next year's cohort that's one less than normal (20% reduction).

I don't know if this is the norm, but I was talking to one admin at a grad school in NY who said their program has an unusually low number of applicants this cycle.

I don't know if this is the norm, but I was talking to one admin at a grad school in NY who said their program has an unusually low number of applicants this cycle.