The Hoosier Oxonian

These are definitely all things I worry about! I'm terrible at separating work from life - work is my life, which makes my work relationships probably inappropriately important to me. Regarding contacting this professor's advisees: I spoke briefly with two current students who have him as their advisor before I actually met him; both described him as nice but a bit intimidating (I didn't find him intimidating at all and am not sure exactly what they meant). I suppose I could email them to find out more, though it's a bit awkward to know how to phrase what's basically a request to be told honestly if their advisor is secretly a jerk.

I really appreciate your anecdotal sharing about your experience building relationships with faculty - this exactly what I'm concerned about. I definitely don't want to sound like I'm saying Yale's visit wasn't nice, either - I had several faculty members reach out to me beforehand to engage with me about my work and had good conversations with them and others while visiting. I would just say the overall vibe was more professional and less effusive, which maybe is good - I'm not sure Northwestern could possibly maintain the level of warmth and enthusiasm displayed during my visit, and frankly if they did it might stifle rather than augment my academic growth. Or maybe such warmth would keep me from having the mental health issues that seem to plague grad students, which would be a good thing... What I'm hearing myself do in all of this is try really hard to talk myself out of Northwestern, though, which makes me think deep down maybe I do think it's the right choice? And I haven't even visited Michigan yet - argh!

My university (not an Ivy and in state that so far has fewer than 10 cases, none of them connected to the university) informed us all a few hours ago that we are to stay away for the two weeks after spring break (which starts Monday) - we'll be doing everything online until April 5. Frankly, I'm angry - I think this is a massive overreaction that is far from guaranteeing to stop people from getting the virus anyway (they're just sending everyone home and telling them to come back in three weeks; some people will be going home to harder-hit places than my area and the odds are someone will just bring it back with them!) and that will inevitably take a major toll on academic performance across the university.

So I'm finding myself in an unanticipated situation after my first two visits. I had thought the choice would be clear for me to go to Yale, and I did have a really lovely visit there - the current students I talked to were honest and kind, and at least four out of the six faculty members I met with seemed quite warm and supportive (and obviously none were unkind - they're recruiting, after all!) I liked the smallness of the New Haven community. I even liked (if I did chuckle at a little) the artificially aged knock-off Oxbridge architecture of the university. I like the structure of the program (except for wishing there was a bit more teaching, but I've already talked to the DGS about this and there may be other opportunities) and the stipend is very livable. In short, I walked away from my Yale visit thinking, "Yes, I could see myself here." Fast forward to my Northwestern visit: if I thought the folks I met at Yale were nice, it was nothing (with one or two exceptions of outstandingly kind Yale people) to the welcome I received at Northwestern. The whole atmosphere of the visit was much warmer and more laid back than Yale. All the faculty I spoke with were intimately familiar with every detail of my application when I came into meet with them (which Yale faculty for the most part weren't). I also felt that I really clicked with my prospective cohort mates (most of whom indicated that they will probably choose Northwestern), an opportunity I felt I didn't have at Yale due to spending less time with fellow prospectives there (though I'm sure my fellow Yale admits are lovely people). Finally, here's the big factor I feel is pushing me toward Northwestern: there was one faculty member in particular with whom I met who basically told me he thought I was one of the most outstanding applicants he'd seen in a while. We had a great conversation about my work and his work (he's someone whose work I was in conversation with before meeting him), he gave me a long list of book suggestions and even emailed me a few days later with some articles he thought I might find interesting. He also addressed some of the personal elements of my less than traditionally privileged background and shared the story of working through undergrad himself, and I felt like he really understood where I was coming from in that regard. Basically, if I had sat down before my visits and sketched out my idea of the ideal faculty interaction, it would have been my meeting with this professor. BUT I want to be cautious about a few things: firstly, his effusiveness may just be a recruitment strategy and he'll lose interest in me as soon as I matriculate (or he might not but might turn out to be an egomaniac/hyper-controlling/insert other problematic behavior); secondly, as a person without significant father figures in my life, I'm well aware I tend to get excessively emotionally attached to men of a certain age who express a tendency to mentorship or in fact any interest in my general well-being, so I may be overreacting to this professor's behavior. All this being said, I'd really appreciate the perspectives of current students: how important is finding the faculty mentor? Like many of us in this line of work, I'm excessively dependent on approval from authority figures, so my instinct is to think that having a really supportive advisor is quite important. Obviously I want someone who will work me hard and help me grow, but I don't think I'd fare well with someone who was all tough love and never had anything affirming to say about my work. But even supposing this one professor at Northwestern is the perfect mentor I've been dreaming about (which is a big supposition), is it worth walking away from Yale essentially for just one person? (There are lots of other things at Northwestern that are appealing in terms of campus/stipend/community/etc., but nothing that's a significant improvement on Yale). In this job market, am I an idiot to walk away from Yale under any circumstances? My takeaway on the overall vibes at both was that Yale would be more a more rigorous and Northwestern a more nurturing environment (though I'm not suggesting there's no nurture at Yale or no rigor at Northwestern), and I don't have a good sense about which of those two things is more important. All in all, I'm really surprised at how torn I feel - I thought it would be easy to choose Yale and be done with it, but walking away from this Northwestern faculty member (and from my truly lovely cohort group there) is going to be really painful, even though I still think it's probably right. Help?!

Just wrote to the director of the MA program at NYU to decline their offer. What a weird offer letter they sent, BTW - it essentially said, "We think you're such a great applicant that you probably got into a lot of PhD programs, but if you didn't, pay us money for our MA!" If I'm such a great applicant, why didn't you admit me to your PhD, NYU? Whatever - guess I'll have to go to Yale. (Just kidding - haven't committed yet!)

Do it! As long as you aren't pushy, I think it's much better to reach out than not; just politely say that you remain very interested in the program and would like some more information about how the waitlist works (i.e. is it ranked or by subfield, etc.). I did this for Cornell, and the DGS wrote back and said that Cornell's decisions about taking people off the waitlist are partly based on a perception of continued interest (i. e. they're more likely to accept people off the waitlist who have made it clear they're still interested), so it was very good I reached out. This may not be true everywhere, but as long as you aren't being obnoxious I can't imagine that expressing continued interest could possibly hurt your chances of getting off the waitlist.

Thanks for the kind wishes, @caffeinated applicant ! Also congrats @MedievalIllusions on the NYU MA acceptance!

After weeks of sitting on what I thought was an implied rejection from NYU, I've just learned that though I wasn't accepted to the PhD, I have been accepted to the MA. Definitely won't take it (it's only partially funded), but it reduces my number of outright rejections, so that's a comfort to my ego if nothing else.

I've just written to the director of admissions at Rutgers to decline my offer (oof!) Hope this is good news for someone!

Thanks all for your input about finances! Regarding placement: for those who have connections with people affiliated with the departments, does anyone have any insights on placement in the last few years at Yale and Michigan? Yale's website is particularly vague on this front.

The very first thing I plan to do after graduating with my BA in May is to sit down and make myself a long list of all the books I want to read for pleasure before August, and then I'm going to read them! Other than working my 30 hour/week job, that's my whole summer agenda, and I can't wait.

Thought I'd start a new thread for folks with multiple offers to commiserate about the stress of decision-making and help talk each other through this craziness! First question for all you lovely folks: what are the ethics of discussing alternate offers with other schools? For instance, one of my schools offers a much better financial package than any of the others, but isn't my top choice. I've been urged by my undergrad profs to make this known to the DGSs at my top choices and see if I can get better offers. Apparently this is common - if a school really wants you they'll offer you more to keep you from going elsewhere? But does anyone have thoughts (or, better yet, experience to share) about broaching such topics? Is it bad manners to discuss other offers with people in competing programs? Is it dishonest not to? Should one be cryptic, admitting one has other offers but not saying where? I have two visits next week and really don't want to trample on any rules of etiquette I don't know about, but I don't see how the topic of competing offers could fail to come up at least obliquely. Thoughts?

Penn rejection on my portal too - thank goodness all my waiting is over! (I'm not even counting the implied rejection from NYU because I have zero emotional investment in it.)

I think I'm going to write back to the DGS at the school where I'm waitlisted and ask how (if at all) visits are normally handled for waitlisted students. I don't see how it can hurt in any situation as long as you aren't pushy/demanding!

I'm wondering the same!

Holy crap - just got my visit schedule for Yale and it has on it that I have a meeting with Michael Warner and I'm so starstruck I might die (I've got to get these histrionics under control before then!) But seriously, how do you walk into the office of someone whose name has been a legend to you for years and not just melt into the floor?

Sharing the deciding stress - on top of the acceptances I already have, I just got a very kind response from the DGS at Cornell about the waitlist indicating that the waitlist is very short and there's a good chance (though of course no certainty) that I could get an offer in early April. Cornell is a top choice for me, so now I'm tearing extra hair out at the prospect of potentially throwing it into the final decision mix as well.

On the subject of schools waiting forever to send out rejections, I'd like to take a moment to express my exasperation with NYU. I'm 9000% sure I'm rejected (and I have better offers, so I don't care!) but historically it appears they usually wait about six weeks after sending out acceptances before sending rejections, which makes no sense to me!

This person you know must be superhuman! I'm facing the prospect of trying to survive going on a visit the day after getting back from a conference in the UK (which happens to be during literally the only week of the year when the time difference between the UK and home is 6 hours instead of 5 because of daylight savings, so great timing!) and am worried enough about jetlag impeding my experience of that one visit - can't imagine doing it multiple times!

It seems totally reasonable to me to reach out to departments and let them know your situation and ask for help! Especially since you're coming from overseas, which makes everything more complicated and more expensive. Not on the same scale, but I can definitely commiserate about visit planning stress! Besides the fact that between visits and an international conference I'm missing two and a half weeks of my last semester of undergrad (and I'm a goody two-shoes who usually has perfect attendance, so that really freaks me out!), I had nine-tenths of a heart attack yesterday when I was looking at my calendar at the flights I booked for Yale's visit next week. I'm returning home via two flights, the first of which leaves CT on Tuesday evening and the second of which arrives at my home airport at 12:17 AM on Wednesday. But for some reason my stupid Google calendar pulled my flight info from my inbox incorrectly and showed me that my second flight LEAVES on Wednesday rather than ARRIVING that day, making it look like I had a 24-hour instead of a 50-minute layover before my connection. If that were true, I'd miss both a day of school and probably my Thursday flight to Chicago for Northwestern's visit, so I spent about fifteen minutes hyperventilating and checking and rechecking my flight receipt and the airline website until I was completely certain that the problem was with my calendar importing the information incorrectly and not that I'd stupidly booked a completely wrong flight! So if visits are making you crazy, at least you don't have to be crazy alone!

Just got the call from Rutgers! Kind of surprised - I didn't think it was that great of a fit. But I'm not complaining!

Two rejections for me today (one of which I'm really quite sad about), so I may follow suit. I'm a huge Hitchcock fan, but haven't seen The Lady Vanishes (my idiosyncratic forever favorite being Rope).

Just joining the Brown rejection party! Not a big surprise, as it was one of the poorer fits on my list, and at least their rejection letter was kind.

Just jumping on the "yes from Penn would make my life much harder and I need to know" train! *tears hair and gnashes teeth*

Just got rejected from Cambridge for an MPhil. Not a big surprise, because I had to apply very early, back in October (long story), which made it my weakest application. I had pretty much made up my mind to take one of my PhD offers anyway, but I won't lie - my feelings are a little bit hurt.