vpaglioni3

I would, but as a current Ph.D. student, I lack the leverage to emphasize the necessity of releasing decisions today. Also I'm a coward.

Don't troll us please Edit: If this is real, I'm sorry to hear that. I hope you'll excuse our incredulity

Fire Guy!

In a way, we will be liberated if the results are not released today. We are all on edge because we were told where (when) the finish line is - and we are anxious for it to arrive. However, once that is taken away, we won't have a hard deadline to look forward to, to be anxious over, or to lose sleep over. Either way, today is the last day of our suffering under the mental bondage of a deadline. Rest easy, fellow applicants, because the wait is over at 1700 EDT today.

God is dead.

Lowest bidder wins the government race

I worked for two years for the DoD... this isn't that surprising. There are a lot of legacy systems and procedures/protocols that make no sense in a modern context, and small-ticket items like the administration of a fellowship don't have money for upgrades. There's also momentum for stuff like this - if it works, even nominally, then it's fine and they'll figure it out once it breaks for real. Edit: the system is throwing errors for us, but if it doesn't really affect the way they do business, then it stays on.

The official line is that decisions will be finalized no later than April 13, with notification no later than April 15.

This. I leave no stone unturned in my quest for information, which at this point restarts roughly every 2 minutes.

Don't do this to me, I beg of you. But for real, how hard would it be to send out emails just saying 'nah fam' and leave it at that. Edit: if I get one more email that's not from SysPlus, I am going to lose it.

~DecemberGang~ 'til I die. In the words of Darryl Philbin: "If this [gang] is going down, I want to go down on it... with it, I want to go down with it."

DAWN OF THE SECOND DAY And so it was that the applicants to the 2019-2020 NDSEG Fellowship found themselves on the forum at the dawn of the Second Day, April 14. The Second Day was far from the second day of waiting, but was the second day wherein notification was possible, as laid down by the mythical NDSEG Administrators themselves. The ~DecemberGang~, with its characteristic boundless enthusiasm beginning to wain ever so slightly, was holding strong as other clans found updates even on the First Day, April 13. The community had survived the Troll Attacks of the Zeroth Day, a day of fervent activity for the Forum that sowed despair among some of the ranks and camaraderie among others. But at the dawn of the Second Day, the group was hopeful. Could it be that the benevolent Administrators would end their wait on this day? There was hopeful anticipation, nervous anxiety, and of course cynical despair (as was common among many in the year 2020). But in the end, only the Administrators could know what was to come on the Second Day. Good luck waiting everyone, one day or another it's coming to an end soon.

I mean that SysPlus probably told us all that decisions would be released "by April 15 at the latest" because they were anticipating April 15 release.

Unfortunately I think they had a reason to give themselves until Wednesday to release decisions... ? ? ?

Don't be afraid to continue reaching out to the schools. Just calmly explain that their funding decision is critical to your admissions acceptance and hope that they can get you some answers.

It's hard to say that it won't impact your applications at all, but I wouldn't be too worried about it. I asked this exact question when my school had a town hall meeting regarding coronavirus, and was told that we were getting special "Emergency pass/emergency fail" designations instead of normal 'pass/fail", to differentiate from students who were doing poorly and switched to pass/fail to save their grade. It sounds like you also have serious extenuating circumstances that mean you really would need pass/fail to avoid suffering undue consequences from this. I think you should take the pass/fail, and if need be you can explain this semester's circumstances when it comes to application season.

Baltimore drivers are nuts, let's just get that out there. However the JHU campus is surrounded by the nicest neighborhoods in Baltimore (Charles Village, Roland Park, Tuscany & Canterbury, Abel, ...) and there are some decent bike lanes around the campus as well. I would keep your bike inside if you can, because this is still Baltimore. I'm currently a student at UMD but I live in Baltimore while my gf is working here. I live in Charles Village right across from JHU and until coronavirus hit, I commuted by car to College Park almost every weekday. Feel free to post here or message me if you have questions about Baltimore, and especially the area around JHU, and I will try my best to answer. Again, I can't really speak to JHU life because I don't go there, but I can talk about Baltimore .

Hope it's today. Good luck everyone, see you on the other side

Rest assured that, either way, you are in a great spot for what you want to do. If you have an idea of which professor you want to/will be working with, check out their publications and reputation in the community. Who you work with is more important than where you go - especially when your choice is between two elite schools like UT-Austin and GT. For living, I can attest to the awesomeness that is the city of Atlanta. I was a Georgia native who was lucky enough to do undergrad at Georgia Tech, and the city is BOOMING with new start-ups, Fortune 500 industry and interesting labs. It's also just a fun place to be and really is a "City in the Forest." GT is centered right in Midtown with a lot of great food, living and drink options around, as well as great access to concert/sports venues. On the flipside, it has no real public transit (MARTA is kind of a joke) so you might want a car - which brings us to the almost unbelievable traffic that plagues the city at all hours. Austin is also supposed to be an amazing place to live, but I think it's a bit smaller than Atlanta (never been).

If you want to get a leg up on the work, you can always ask your adviser to send you relevant articles or previous research. Other than that, just keep it simple with the fact that you're excited to work with them, looking forward to starting, etc.

Agreed. I laughed a bit at the first one, but the next few just stressed me out - and I can't imagine being in a situation where my living arrangements and life for the next 2+ years depended on this. I move that any trolls with December updates be summarily expelled from ~DecemberGang~

Mine still says “Under Evaluation” so I think this is a dastardly, brilliant, annoying awesome prank.

About an hour left to COB here in D.C., I guess we won’t be hearing today after all. The good news is the thread can relax for the weekend before we pick it up again on Monday.

I'm not anxious, I just find it hard to sleep or focus on anything else right now.