StamfordCat

So I went to the BU visit on Friday, and I did reiterate my interest that they are my top choice while I was there. However, there's quite a few people on the waitlist and there were a few people with similar interests to mine. Should I email this week to follow up and reassure them that this was my top choice and I would immediately accept if offered a spot? I'm really stressed about moving off the waitlist and don't want to hurt my chances.

Dallas bound y’all!

Turned down funded Ph.D. offer and provost fellowship from CUNY Grad Center! I hope this helps out a GC'er out there!

Just sent an email to Loyola asking about negotiating funding, and let me tell you after years, honestly, of begging the gods to get into a program it felt INCREDIBLY awkward to essentially say thanks so much but you can you give me some more, please? I hope he responds quickly so I don't have too much time to re-read the email and sweat about it.

Off CUNY's waitlist :') 

Gradcafe is a wonderful place, y'all. I had the BU visit yesterday and I was super nervous for it to be full of forced interaction. But as soon as I got there, so many people recognized eachother from GC!!! It was so amazing and so nice to talk about things we've discussed on here in person. It was also nice to discuss how we thought the visit was going when there were no faculty or grad students around. I also am feeling a little more positive about the waitlist and am desperately hoping to move off of it! Good luck everybody!

Waitlisted at UVA!!! Still shocked. Had written them off as an implied rejection, long ago.

GOT INTO THE VILLANOVA MA! Funding pending, but I am OVER THE MOON! 

I don't think so, at all. I got into several funded MAs a few years ago without first having conferences, or an honors thesis, etc. I worked hard during my MA to go to conferences, write a thesis, and eventually published one of my thesis chapters in a good journal in my field. Don't compare your timeline to anyone else's!! That's my biggest piece of advice. 

still deciding between UMass Amherst and Buffalo ? I'm talking to several professors on the phone this week at UMass because they don't have a prospective students event, which is really throwing me decision off! I hope that plus the April 2-3 visit to Buffalo will help me decide. it truly feels like a 50/50 coin toss.
I'm literally writing this from a bar because I'm trying not to stress out so much  

I can offer a bit of anecdotal evidence from last year when it comes to waitlists. I had three waitlists last cycle (along with an acceptance). Waitlist spot #1 came through in the last week of March while the other two literally e-mailed me the evening before the 15th. Unfortunately, I had to hold an acceptance spot while I waited, and I'm sure many people wait out the process with multiple acceptances right up until the bitter end. 
This is all a long way of saying that if schools on your waitlist are your first choice, be prepared and plan to wait until the very last minute. 

I just emailed BU with some questions and got a really nice response about enthusiasm for my application and saying movement after the visit day is likely. Fingers crossed for us both!

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actually, you've gotten it wrong. The category "honored citizen" on TriMet is a special category of rider (and fare) that does not refer to older people but is sort of a catch-all that includes those who are disabled. I have friends (in their early twenties) who got "honored citizen" status on TriMet because they were in a court-ordered heroin cessation program, e.g.

waiting for the official letter, but from Southern Illinois - Carbondale - "You have been admitted, and we plan to offer you a teaching position as a Graduate Assistant. I will send you the offer letter and details soon."
 
!!!!! This is where my favorite scholar (should I have a favorite scholar? what if she thinks i'm a dumbass? what if i'm actually a dumbass?) teaches and where one of my mentor/LOR writers earned their PhD! 

lmaooooo got the rejection from Davis too––
The program to which you applied indicated the following as the reason(s) that you were not selected for admission:
- Not competitive with other applicants because:
      - Statement of Purpose/Written work

Thank you! I already live in Brooklyn and plan to stay in my current living situation, so it would be about an hour commute to Rutgers or half hour commute to NYU. 

In a change of pace from the US applications I was accepted to Hong Kong University with full scholarship! ? I’m almost in shock.... 

In off the waitlist at Loyola

In further craziness, I just had a paper on Frankenstein accepted for presentation at a conference on the Gothic! I’m shook! I didn’t think I would get accepted and I only applied for practice writing abstracts. It feels really good to be already be building my app for next cycle if I don’t get into Villanova. 

I finished a funded MA with a TAship at George Mason a couple of years ago. It was amazing. In hindsight, I think the money is the most important thing. Choose the option that means the least cost to you (including cost of living in addition to tuition, fees, moving expenses). Even though my program was funded and I had a stipend, I still had to take out a crapton (I mean, a crapton) of loans to pay for living expenses. That debt is no joke, and you don't want to start a PhD in a couple years with as much debt as I have!

Well, the third phone call to Baylor (after two ignored emails and two unhelpful phone calls), Baylor finally decided to let me know that I had been rejected back in February, but they failed to send any sort of formal rejection until yesterday afternoon. 
 
That wraps my cycle up at long last. Thanks to you guys for all your support! I’ve enjoyed it. For better or worse, University of Southern Mississippi here I come!

Been meaning to respond but the chaos of waiting during February prevented all of that lol. My first acceptance was... It happened in steps and it all started in January 31st. Basically was caught in surprise and was e-mail watching obsessively for most of these.
1st: I got an e-mail from someone in the admissions committee asking for a phone call. Nearly fainted seeing this e-mail, wasn't even doing anything at the time except talking to my SO.
2nd: I get the actual call with the verbal/unofficial acceptance a day after. I managed to get through the phone call but I probably sounded incredibly breathless.
3rd: Then I get the official letter from the department alongside my funding package 14 days after the phone call. This letter is what kept me sane through the sea of rejections.
4th: Then 9 days later I get the official okay from the Graduate Division and the option to actually register. This is where I actually let myself get excited lol. (I was hyped but my mind made up these scenarios of 'omg but what if' that messed with me all throughout last month). Registered a day after and can't be any happier to know where I'm going  

emailed a program: "I have no updates for you at the moment but will be in touch as soon as there's news." 
 
i just want some news.

Ha, sorry to keep you all in suspense! I've been doing my winter travel and don't check this site nearly enough as it is.
So, I applied to PhD programs in the 2012 and 2013 cycles, and in Spring 2012 (I had my math slightly off in the first post!) I applied to NYUs PhD and was instead accepted to their MA. Being the bright-eyed and ignorant college senior I was, I thought it sounded like a great opportunity, but the price made me want to check it out first. I visited on a day when the MA students would meet up in the department for chat and coffee, and some of the things that I found unsettling only make sense in serious hindsight. 
To be clear, I don't blame anyone who does go to the program. It can be really hard to get honest information about whether paying for an English MA from a top program is worth the money, but I think the answer is unequivocally no. I met students that day who were excited to be studying in a wonderful program, but were also deeply stressed by the two or three jobs they were working to live in Manhattan, or the long commute they were making to keep costs down. Most of them had dreams of going on to a PhD, and the woman who showed me around most of the day was hopeful about her waitlist position at Harvard.
I also noticed that there wasn't really any effort on the department's part to have me interact with any faculty, which I think speaks a lot to the value that they place on their MA students. Most of the students I spoke to would talk about their advisor and somehow intimate that the advisor was "just so busy". FYI, a busy advisor is good, but they should never be too busy for you if they care about your career. And nobody seemed willing to admit that $100,000 total in tuition over two years was an absurd amount of money. I didn't really understand the job market and the very real devaluation of the humanities, but I did know that that wasn't a deal I was willing to take.
I ended up getting an offer of a one year post-bac fellowship from UPitt, and it was, IMO, the perfect example of what academia should be doing. They paid me for the pleasure of taking graduate seminars for the first time, and I had a wonderful advisor who was also part of the WGS program that vetted all of my PhD app materials, and gave me excellent advice about how to tell if something is a good offer. If they don't want to invest their time or their money in you, then it's just not worth it. I'm now an ABD 4th year at UT Austin, and I can promise you that I never would have had anywhere near this success if people hadn't invested time and money into getting me here. A PhD is an uphill battle, and your program shouldn't make it worse.

Srsly