coffeelyf

I think somewhere between 7 and 12 is good - not so big that you get lost in the crowd (not to mention a large cohort is unethical in this day and age) but not so small that you have no one to get along with. A friend of mine who's in her first year at a top program has a cohort of 9, and she says she enjoys that size because they all have such different personalities that if there were only, say, 4 of them, it would be difficult for her to make a friend in the cohort.

After several great, slightly patchy virtual conversations, I've accepted my offer from NYU. This is literally everything I dream of in a program (complete with a small cohort size), so it's unbelievable to me that it happened. This means I will give up my other offers and my waitlist spots. Best of luck to everyone making a decision!

Just need to vent re: visit days. I'm an international student and thought I had all of my visits figured out perfectly: I was sponsored to go to a conference in the US, got my visa, and planned my visits for right after the conference. Booked my flights to the cities and everything (non-refundable ones). And now the conference was just cancelled, and all my plans went out the window with it, including seeing Salman Rushdie speak at my MA school. At least JHU is going to make things virtual anyway, but I have no idea about NYU, or if they would be willing to reimburse my ticket. GOD. The US ne

Agreed with many points above re: the SoP. I'd also say put more weight on the WS. I always thought the SoP was the most important thing, but as it turns out, the WS is often what my AdCom and PoIs remember best about my application. It makes sense because people would latch onto things that resonate with their own work and that have concrete arguments and analyses. The WS is also where you prove that you are capable of doing the level of thinking and writing that you discuss in the SoP. I used my MA thesis, which was a good piece of work. I found it extremely difficult to cut it to the

Turned down McGill's offer the other day. Hope this helps someone out there!

@jm6394 The DGS is Robert Young. You can find his email address on his NYU page (all the way at the bottom of the Faculty list).

Between that Princeton rejection and silence on Rutgers' side, I think I will be capping the cycle at 4a/4r/1w. My decision falls to JHU vs. NYU, and I will be visiting both before making the choice. It's crazy how the acceptances did turn out to be my best fits/top choices, and JHU wasn't even put off by my terrible GRE subject test score taken in 2016 (for anyone applying in the future, don't worry too much about the subject test!). I was shut out last year while finishing my MA, including from NYU. Taking another year to polish my materials (a WS from my completed thesis, which is 100

@meghan_sparkle Congrats on the Princeton acceptance! Just wanted to come here to ask you - were you called/emailed by a PoI or was it a mass email from the dept? Still on the edge of my seat for that school alone....

My vote is for taking the terminal MA with funding anytime. I was in a similar boat as yours, graduating from a small liberal arts college with a pretty average GPA (I did 2 majors, and my other major besides English was crap, while my English major GPA ended up around almost A-minus range because I had no experience studying literature in English as an international student). I also applied to both PhD and MA programs my first round and was accepted into 2 low-tier PhD programs (with pretty low stipends) and a top-20 university MA program with full funding. This was an incredible stroke of lu

Oops, posted on the wrong thread. Oh god I'm so anxious about Princeton, which makes no sense because I've already gotten into some of my top choices. Just had to get that out. What are they sitting on their results for?

Thank you! I hope to visit in March

Johns Hopkins acceptance and Emory rejection came within a span of 10 minutes. JHU is fantastic and a completely different kind of department (because of their small small cohort size), and I'm so thrilled. In other news, Princeton is really dragging it til next week, huh.

The Johns Hopkins acceptance letter was the most well-written among the personal acceptances I received. Holy shit.

First Emory acceptee on the board said they only have 5 spots. Can anyone claim that acceptance and did anyone else hear from Emory? I was rejected by Cornell as well, which I kind of expected because it was the worst fit out of my 9 programs.

Don't give up on NYU y'all. I just got an acceptance via email from the DGS! They are still rolling out.