bonesandbakes

I'm currently a PhD student at the University of Pennsylvania. Sociocultural isn't my subfield, but I can share some general thoughts. The department definitely has its issues when it comes to social justice, in the ways that the history of the department is full of racist white men and the department is generally still pretty white. That said, there is a lot of younger faculty who, along with the grad students, are really passionate about steering the department toward equality and activism (this is even the topic of our colloquium this year!). Deb Thomas in particular is a big name who does a lot of interesting work with experimental ethnography and also focuses in activism.

I'm currently a PhD student at the University of Pennsylvania. Sociocultural isn't my subfield, but I can share some general thoughts. The department definitely has its issues when it comes to social justice, in the ways that the history of the department is full of racist white men and the department is generally still pretty white. That said, there is a lot of younger faculty who, along with the grad students, are really passionate about steering the department toward equality and activism (this is even the topic of our colloquium this year!). Deb Thomas in particular is a big name who does a lot of interesting work with experimental ethnography and also focuses in activism.

I got accepted at Penn last year and I believe all of the people who are eventually accepted get interviewed. However, each individual POI sets up the interviews and some take more time to do it than others. We just started the second semester here, so I'd give it more time before assuming it's a no. My DMs are open if you want to ask more specifically about Penn or your application.

I got accepted at Penn last year and I believe all of the people who are eventually accepted get interviewed. However, each individual POI sets up the interviews and some take more time to do it than others. We just started the second semester here, so I'd give it more time before assuming it's a no. My DMs are open if you want to ask more specifically about Penn or your application.

If you are applying for a PhD, I would say don't worry about the department not reading your application because of your GRE score. If you have established relationships with POIs (and hopefully done a phone/skype call), email them after you submit your application letting them know that it's submitted and thanking them for their help and support. With that reminder, they should be on the look out for your application specifically, and it should get read. Generally professors don't have a correspondence with that many potential PhD students, so they'll want to look at your application. That being said, I don't know of any PhD programs that have a GRE score cutoff so your application should be read regardless. If you have (a) great SOP/LORs/writing samples then that'll help, but contact with the POI will really be one of the most important pieces for getting in (at least it was for me, as a biological anthropologist. If you are cultural, it may be slightly different). However, if you are just really similar to another candidate they're considering and the only significant difference is that they have a great GRE score, that might lead to them picking the other person.
Basically, what I'm saying is that if you're applying for a PhD, there shouldn't be any cutoffs for getting your application read. And at the end of the day, if you don't have the funds to take the exam again, then that's that. Grad school is cool and all but you shouldn't go into any sort of debt just applying. Focus on your application materials and your relationship with the POI. At the end of the day, there's no perfect recipe for getting in, and I can say I know there are people in my competitive PhD program that got GRE scores around yours. Hope this helps. Good luck!

Hi there! I'm currently finishing up my undergrad at UNL. Someone else asked me about Lincoln on this site, so here is the pros/cons list I sent them:
UNL Pros:
1. big school pride (Memorial Stadium has a larger population than all cities in Nebraska other than Lincoln and Omaha on football Saturdays)
2. People are nice, will do things for you like hold doors and make small talk about the weather
3. Professors are really engaged with students. I know most of my professors by first name, which is huge as an undergrad
4. Big research focus (my best friend got his undergrad in the English department here and got to do a funded research project with a professor)
5. Grad students can teach some lower-level classes
UNL Cons:
1. Big Greek life (probably applies more to undergrad)
2. We love our football team, but they're not actually very good lol
3. Can be difficult to find challenging enough classes (may be less true in english as it's a bigger department, but in the anthro department all the grad students take classes with undergrads)
4. Not a lot of money for humanities/social sciences departments
5. Expensive parking (might be covered for you?)
Lincoln Pros:
1. Good size downtown, right by campus
2. Lots of small breweries/coffee shops
3: Get some good concerts at Pinnacle Bank Arena
4: Close to Omaha for bigger city stuff
5: Cheap rent (I live in a furnished on-campus apartment with one roommate and pay less than $500/month including utilities)
Lincoln Cons:
1. Cold as fuck (and they'll make you go to class anyway)
2. Conservative state (the governor wants to bring back the death penalty, you'll see some pro-life rallies on campus, etc.)
3. You basically need a car to get around (too cold to bike half the year and campus is technically in a food desert)
 
Hope this helps! Also I'm not in English, but used to have a Women's and Gender Studies minor and really loved the women's poetry class I took!

Thanks for the advice, everyone! I ended up emailing one of the schools and my POI replied saying he was planning to email me later today letting me know I've been accepted! Don't give up on your dreams!

Most of the areas around UPenn are very safe. The graduate housing is right in the middle of the campus and would be a great choice. My recommendation is to look at the google map below to see which places are safe (green), less safe (yellow), getting a bit dicey (orange), and "not safe" (red). This is a bit outdated, so even a lot of the red would be orange, yellow, or green today. For instance, Mantua, Brewery Town, and Point Breeze are much nicer today than they were, but are not recommended as a living place for a first time city person. Even most of the red areas are certainly not "no go" areas, though you will have little need to wander into neighborhoods such as Kingsessing. As you can see, you can easily avoid red neighborhoods anyhow. I lived in Philadelphia for many years, and I was never a victim of crime, nor did I know anyone who was a victim of crime. The city really is quite safe, and has only been getting safer over the last decade. There are occasional robberies in some of the more southwesterly yellow parts near the UPenn campus. A lot of students cluster hereto live, and the fraternity/sorority housing is here too, so it occasionally attracts attention. I suggest you look at Penn Alerts and get in touch with the public safety division if you have any questions about housing safety. In any case, the majority of the campus is swamped with police presence, and it is an incredibly safe environment. 
https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?oe=UTF8&client=firefox-a&ie=UTF8&hl=en&t=h&msa=0&start=60&num=200&ll=39.95285039883474%2C-75.21377128424047&spn=0.076884%2C0.181103&z=15&mid=1HzxpniA-9y5MpbLwK1n_FyNNP90
 
https://www.publicsafety.upenn.edu/pennready/upennalert/

P.s. Thanks for the advice @Mofanthrooo!

Thanks for the advice, everyone! I ended up emailing one of the schools and my POI replied saying he was planning to email me later today letting me know I've been accepted! Don't give up on your dreams!

Thanks for the advice, everyone! I ended up emailing one of the schools and my POI replied saying he was planning to email me later today letting me know I've been accepted! Don't give up on your dreams!

I really hated that I rushed to get all my applications in only to wait 3 months to hear back from schools... I wish there was a way to get periodic updates about application status so I'm not waiting in the dark. The silence is ABSOLUTELY awful!

Hi there! I'm currently finishing up my undergrad at UNL. Someone else asked me about Lincoln on this site, so here is the pros/cons list I sent them:
UNL Pros:
1. big school pride (Memorial Stadium has a larger population than all cities in Nebraska other than Lincoln and Omaha on football Saturdays)
2. People are nice, will do things for you like hold doors and make small talk about the weather
3. Professors are really engaged with students. I know most of my professors by first name, which is huge as an undergrad
4. Big research focus (my best friend got his undergrad in the English department here and got to do a funded research project with a professor)
5. Grad students can teach some lower-level classes
UNL Cons:
1. Big Greek life (probably applies more to undergrad)
2. We love our football team, but they're not actually very good lol
3. Can be difficult to find challenging enough classes (may be less true in english as it's a bigger department, but in the anthro department all the grad students take classes with undergrads)
4. Not a lot of money for humanities/social sciences departments
5. Expensive parking (might be covered for you?)
Lincoln Pros:
1. Good size downtown, right by campus
2. Lots of small breweries/coffee shops
3: Get some good concerts at Pinnacle Bank Arena
4: Close to Omaha for bigger city stuff
5: Cheap rent (I live in a furnished on-campus apartment with one roommate and pay less than $500/month including utilities)
Lincoln Cons:
1. Cold as fuck (and they'll make you go to class anyway)
2. Conservative state (the governor wants to bring back the death penalty, you'll see some pro-life rallies on campus, etc.)
3. You basically need a car to get around (too cold to bike half the year and campus is technically in a food desert)
 
Hope this helps! Also I'm not in English, but used to have a Women's and Gender Studies minor and really loved the women's poetry class I took!

I can't overstate enough the incessant feeling of dread and despondence that had been following me like a dark cloud during this waiting process. After getting a first rejection and an implied rejection (from a top pick), on the same day, I resigned myself to knowing I'd be unanimously rejected this cycle. If a top match rejected me, I didn't stand a chance elsewhere. Since that day, I'd been unreasonably depressed and moody. It was still January, but I just wanted to get it all over with, and felt irritated that other impending rejections weren't arriving yet. On top of this, my job had been beating me down all month. I work at a non-profit for a cause I'm very passionate about, which means I am burdened with compassion fatigue. It's been a lot.
Spoiler alert: my top choice (which you can see in my signature I'll be attending, despite other decisions still pending) is UNC. I absolutely did not feel confident about the match but wanted to get in so bad. I'd looked at the admissions stats, etc. and knew I had no chance.
Monday, January 28 is the day I got the decision. I'm off work Sunday-Monday, and I'm in school full-time for my master's right now, too, so my days off are my days on for writing my thesis. I'll do 12 hour days writing non-stop. (Side note, maybe this is why I am so burned out and anxious, hmm)
I'd woken up like any normal Monday, started coffee, gotten my laptop ready, stuck a bagel in the toaster. Strangely, I remember that despite how I'd been feeling so down about likely rejections, at this point, as of this morning, I had kinda moved on? Like, I'd made peace with rejection. I think this is a coping strategy I subconsciously employed. Maybe this is one of those "stages of grief?" I felt strangely calm and had renewed focus on my thesis project. If I wasn't getting accepted to a PhD program, I had to at least make sure to have a kick-ass thesis paper--"this is still an achievable goal," I thought.
As I'm settling in to write all day, I checked my email on my phone to find this subject: "UNC Anthropology Decision."
All that BS I just said, about my mental state, where I'd "moved on" and "made peace?" Yeah, that all immediately evacuated my body. I cared a LOT, actually. My heart dropped, it was such a neutral subject line, the body of the email said nothing, just "Please find your attached decision letter regarding your application."
I took a breath and opened the attachment. "It is with great pleasure that I write to confirm..."
I think maybe that's when I started sobbing? Who is to say, but at some point, I was HEAVING with sobs, I went and hugged my dogs and thanked them each individually (I have three who are the lights of my life), I then called my boyfriend who was at work and answered--I scared the hell out of him (I never cry and I called him sobbing). Before I told my friends and immediate family (I actually only told like 5 people I was applying to PhDs at all, lest I be rejected everywhere and embarrassed) I read the letter 15 times to make sure it was real. I also (after reading horror stories on this forum) confirmed it was indeed my name on the letter.
I didn't get much done on my thesis that day, my brain was buzzing. I also was so sure that the decision would be revoked or something that I refreshed my email constantly. Once 12 hours had gone by, I thought maybe I was safe. But really, it wasn't until I got additional emails from the department that I fully realized I had actually been accepted (and not by mistake).

I was sitting in my lab, working on something in R for a project we are presenting at WPA in April. I had my email open as well, it pinged and I switched over and saw an informal offer and congratulations from my POI at my second choice school. My current undergraduate professor and my lab group use #slack to message each other, and I sent my mentor a message in all caps, "ARE YOU UPSTAIRS?!" because her office is one floor above our lab. She messaged me back and said she was, and I ran upstairs. I peeked around the corner into her office and whispered "I got into Nebraska" and she yelled and ran and gave me a big hug and started tearing up. I'm her first student to get into a PhD program. This was definitely a moment I will remember forever. ❤️ 

I had been checking my email every 30 seconds all day waiting for notification from a different school, and decided to distract myself by making english muffins. Finished cooking those and checked my phone, and boom! First official acceptance. A watched pot never boils, I guess.  

Hahaha this is so relateable. Literally a week ago I was like "Please just let me into one, then I'll know I can go to grad school and my stress will go away" and then I got accepted to a program. Was over the moon for about a day, then moved on to "God, if [insert top program here] doesn't accept me in the next two days I'm a loser and my life is probably over."
 
Here's to hopefully getting results this week!

@vam1390 I felt the same way about a recent interview. Like my leg was shaking with anxiety under the table the whole time (luckily it was over Skype).
I'd recommend sending a follow-up thank you email to the interviewers in the next day or so. Gives the double benefit of being polite and engaged, while hopefully prompting the committee to give some indication on how they thought it went and/or telling you when decisions should be made.
Good luck!

Hahaha this is so relateable. Literally a week ago I was like "Please just let me into one, then I'll know I can go to grad school and my stress will go away" and then I got accepted to a program. Was over the moon for about a day, then moved on to "God, if [insert top program here] doesn't accept me in the next two days I'm a loser and my life is probably over."
 
Here's to hopefully getting results this week!

@chojo @puffy Someone posted this on Friday and also posted a while back that not everyone who gets into Penn gets interviewed. Apparently they only interview people if they need another professor to come on as a secondary adviser or if they are bringing that candidate off their unofficial waitlist. Either way, judging from this post on Friday, hopefully the wait will be over soon (though I don't know if this post applies to all subfields at Penn).

Hahaha this is so relateable. Literally a week ago I was like "Please just let me into one, then I'll know I can go to grad school and my stress will go away" and then I got accepted to a program. Was over the moon for about a day, then moved on to "God, if [insert top program here] doesn't accept me in the next two days I'm a loser and my life is probably over."
 
Here's to hopefully getting results this week!

Excited to see what happens this week. Good luck to everyone, hoping the best for each of us.
Fingers crossed!

@chojo @puffy Someone posted this on Friday and also posted a while back that not everyone who gets into Penn gets interviewed. Apparently they only interview people if they need another professor to come on as a secondary adviser or if they are bringing that candidate off their unofficial waitlist. Either way, judging from this post on Friday, hopefully the wait will be over soon (though I don't know if this post applies to all subfields at Penn).

I kind of wish graduate school application portals worked the same way as postal service tracking. Like you would know when your file passed through here and there, if it's awaiting delivery to the ad comm, if its on its way to the waitlist pile, etc. etc. 

This weekend is going to be so. slow. and. anxiety. inducing.