TheBunny

I have an acceptance from another school which is the best fit possible in the whole world. It was my top choice and best fit anyway. Harvard and Brown are a bit stretch for my profile

I got rejected from Harvard.

Got rejected from Brown and had my closure. I am not sad at least

I am expecting Harvard only

Nope, I will assume rejection probably as usual

I saw one Northeastern waitlist. I still did not get any answer from Northeastern.

Harvard, Boston College, Northeastern, Boston University, Brown, UMass Boston

I am in that situation, as well. I think the acceptances started to roll out two weeks before and I asked them several times for two different majors. All of them gave the same answer but like I see that people are getting accepted, but the school says there are no offers which they made. I also gave up on 99%. I got into another school in my other major which is the best possible fit for my research interests in the whole world so I will not feel sad when Brown says that they will not accept me. I just want my closure, so I can answer the other school positively. Realistically, Brown is the only school that I have been waiting for some time.

On Friday. Overall, Brown drove me crazy for both majors I applied for. In both majors, I asked them, twice, if the decisions have been made and the offers have been sent and they said no to both of them. However, there are crazy amount of acceptances on the results page so I feel like they are lying.

Did Brown really admit people because I did not hear back from Brown yet and the admissions office told me that the offers had not been made.

I applied to different programs, and I have an admission so far. It is just not in sociology. However, if I did not have anything, the worst condition would be to search jobs and not find anything because, with my degree, I do not think that I can find a job outside of my country.

It definitely is. Where are you from? I feel like I am one of the neighboring countries to your country. I had seven years of RA experience, 5 in bachelor and 2 in master.

Try to get feedback on writing sample from a group of professors who are working on the same topic. You can try reading articles on the topic and try to make your writing sample look like those at least format-wise. The most important part is to get feedback tho.

I spoke with Brown btw, and they told me that official letters of admission and rejection would go out in few weeks. I presume that they are just letting know people who got admitted by personalized e-mails.

The first time I applied for Ph.D. programs was in 2016, and I applied for starting in Fall 2017. I got rejected from all programs, sociology, business administration, and political science. I even get rejected from a borderline for-profit university. It was a bad application in my part. I had very low GRE scores (V: 142, Q: 166, AWA: 3.00). I had a bachelor's degree from a country in Eastern Europe. In retrospect, I am happy that they all rejected me, but at that time, it crushed me and made me believe that I am just stupid. I got into a master program at the end in America and tried to make my profile stronger. I have three papers under review currently and I am very confident that they will all get published. I worked so much for the GRE so my scores can at least pass the stupid thresholds. My current scores are V:158, Q:166 and AWA:3.5. I tried to maintain a high GPA throughout my bachelor's and masters. It was always over 3.7. I presented in two conferences, one international. Yet, in the end, I did not get into my dream school for political science. I am getting rejected from all sociology programs I applied. I think the wrong part in this equation does not lie in you and me but in the system.

I am totally in the same boat for sociology programs and I am borderline depressed. Your test scores are way better than me for TOEFL and GRE Verbal.

Congrats! Which subfield did you apply? I am all for gender and political sociology.

I saw one Brown admit on the board. Should I start worrying about it? I don’t think I can handle one more rejection...

I am waiting for Brown... For political science and for sociology...

I did not hear back from Harvard as well from sociology

I read that article and book written on graduate admissions. Thankfully, I have never had a problem in the US, at least in my school but TOEFL requirements just made me spend extra money. On the other hand, I agree that there is bias against students who are coming from the Global South. I saw this bias in several places I visited. You do not sound ignorant, don't worry. It is just the schools have different attitudes towards international students. For example, most of the Ivy and Ivy-ish schools asked me some level of language credential. On the other hand, there were some schools that just accepted my American degree and directly waived the TOEFL requirement. I was lucky that I took TOEFL way before the deadlines, just in case. If this requirement was imposed me close to deadlines, I do not think I could have taken it and sent the scores. It maybe is. I was in a private school in my country so even though the primary and secondary education was not in English fully, it was 50% English, at least. The thing is I do not have any documentation about my language education in my childhood. I started learning English when I first started talking as my mother was an Egnlish teacher in my country. Yet, I am not able to document my knowledge of English since I was born.

I heard from another person that Harvard is still in the process of making decisions. We will probably learn in a day or two what our fate is.

Did you get an answer from Harvard? Maybe you are in. I did not hear back from them yet.

As an international student with a 2-year master from America, and 4-year undergraduate from a 100% English program in Europe, there are still schools which ask me about TOEFL, and it drives me crazy. Getting TOEFL is an extra $205 which is a very large sum of money if you are living on a stipend, in a large city in America. I was not able to convince some schools not to send TOEFL even though I had a signed document from my undergraduate institution which approves the university is 100% English. In the end, I took the TOEFL and sent my scores, but it drove crazy in the whole process.

A number called me from Cambridge, Massachusetts which I thought is Harvard... It was Eversource... I am sad