caffeinated applicant

sushi and a movie is an EXCELLENT idea gonna pop this frozen pizza in the oven and make a Sad Boi grocery list for tomorrow after work. thinking I'll follow @gooniesneversaydie's lead and grab a cheesecake from the freezer section.........

UVA rejection on the board--jeez louise, am I gonna get two in one day?

FWIW, as someone who lives close enough to Philly to have considered moving there and researched accordingly, I think you’d be quite comfortable on ~$30k, depending on housing and a few other considerations (e.g. if you’re cool to live with someone else in a 2bdrm, you’ll have more wiggle room than if you need a 1bdrm).

hahaha no need to email brown folks! they're sending rejections as we speak! I know because I got one!

In other news, watching the Harvard acceptances crawl in is vaguely nauseating (will they email me?? are they done emailing?? will anyone else notify today?? I'm out if I haven't received an email yet right?? but there's another post now???), and I can't wait for February to be over!

All of this post is Very Very Good. I keep writing and deleting, but I'll leave these two linked thoughts: In my limited experience (being a young person without a large social circle), it appears that women experience an even higher pressure than men to, essentially, dump the partner and pursue the career. This strikes me as reactionary--a response to centuries of women being told never to start a career and that the highest goal to attain is a husband. Sometimes the right answer is to prioritize something that isn't career or "dream" job, whether that's partner or family or work-life balance or any manner of other things. I left Big City to move to Small City when my partner got a job near there, and it felt somehow antifeminist to follow them, even though I was working a temp job as a receptionist in Big City and had no job prospects beyond that after dozens and dozens of applications. I got a much better job here than I could have in Big City. It was a leap of faith, but it worked out. Would I have been as happy if it didn't? Perhaps it always was going to work out, one way or another. This isn't an advice post, but another datapoint.

@nideaqui: I'm fairly ill-informed on Cornell, but from what I do know about the campus climate via a Cornell undergraduate acquaintance I met at Oxford, the housing situation is a huge pain in the ass. From their telling, people lock down leases nine or ten months in advance, and it's stupidly expensive considering Ithaca is in the middle of nowhere (i.e., not a major city or adjacent to one). I'd definitely encourage you to ask around about the housing situation while you're there--how folks found their apartments, what kinds of units they're living in, what rent is like, that kind of thing. This is a good idea anywhere IMO, but perhaps especially relevant for Cornell.

Does anyone want to email Brown to ask when they're gonna get on with the rest of their decisions? Tick tock, it's almost March and they extended two offers more than a week ago? It kind of looks from the board that they're still deliberating (I'd expect more than two people to report in on GC), but maybe they've got a decision date? Frankly after my last two emails to schools went unanswered, it's making me both itchy-fingered to send more emails and bizarrely worried that I'm cursed. ?

One tip: find something that you can do that consistently takes your mind off of applications, preferably something that physically blocks you from checking email etc and that overall boosts mood. Maybe this is something creative or productive, maybe it's a mindless distraction that quiets everything. Invest in making that thing a routine activity, to the best of your ability (I'm bearing in mind, for instance, that if you're a student currently, you may have very limited free time). Carve out some time, as often as possible, to practice forgetting. In this vein, I finally restarted my running routine, which went to the wayside for the last half of 2019 for a combination of reasons including apps, and with a podcast on to keep my mind from spiraling in the quiet, that twenty or thirty minutes is enough for the anxiety to uncurl and allow me to forget about the pending number. I've also bumped up my skincare routine from my usual cleanser and SPF moisturizer into a whole Multistep Ordeal--something about being in a quite small room, again with a podcast playing, a candle lit, maybe drinking an espresso, while I rub nice-smelling stuff on my face is very soothing for me. Perhaps because it effectively wraps in all of the senses?

@ adcomms: look y'all I wrote down in each week of my planner which schools I expected to hear from and with the exception of UT-Austin and Chicago, y'all are S L A C K I N G. Harvard is excused because you're always late but the rest of you............................................... I'm waiting (respectfully) pls (It does not help matters that I emailed Maryland about status a week and a half ago, and I emailed UT-Austin yesterday to reiterate interest and ask if there's been movement, and neither has gotten back to me. I can understand if communications on the subject are embargoed until they're able to offer or decline, because that's the kind of thing that universities love to do even if it's--IMO--unhelpful and rude, so I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt and assuming that this is the reason behind the lack of response rather than reading into it...)

I used my last react on your post on the other thread (lol), but congratulations, and wishing you the best for the decision process!

CONGRATS!!! I love this glow up!!!

Hauling the conversation in a different direction--welcome to the rejection club, and if I may speak frankly, lowkey congrats on one of each, 1a/1w/1r? There's something kind of satisfying about that.

Out of reactions, co-signing as well. Ditto staying out of the mental health discussion. Sometimes it’s difficult to feel joy instead of envy when confronted with others’ success. When I’ve felt despair seeing that someone else has been admitted and I haven’t, I log off. I come back when I can celebrate with them. It works for me; if it didn’t, I would log off permanently. IMO, there should be no impulse here to censor your celebrations or your stress on account of another’s potential feelings, within the bounds of reason (no mocking others, for example). I’m afraid that impulse is developing within the forum as February wears on, and it’s disappointing. Edited to add: seconding comment just above from @punctilious.

first response: honestly wouldn't even be mad to be woken up at 11:59pm on the 29th by a call from penn second response: "text from unknown number (maybe: harvard): hey u up?"

this is a mostly facetious comment but.......... do you think that programs are excited that because it's a leap year, they have an extra day to wait to release decisions and have it still be "by the end of february"?

Out of reactions but this is the most heartwarming story I've ever heard and I love it ???

It was very off-putting just to hear about! I suppose it worked, though--I'm pretty sure my friend notified this program within hours after they received a fully-funded offer (with health insurance!) at a much higher-ranked program.

To be clear, this program just wanted to know if my friend was accepting another offer/if program could give friend's slot to the first candidate on the waitlist! But they were extremely persistent. The professor who extended the informal offer (shortly before the full details came through) also sounded kind of like they expected my friend to turn it down, realizing that the small amount of money, only for three years, in a high COL city, with no health insurance, was not going to be a competitive offer.

refresh refresh refresh

Oooo, yeah, gotcha, one of those "do you want to go out on a date with me? if you want to, I want to...maybe. but I didn't ask you out if you don't want to!" waitlist offers. A friend of mine (not humanities) got one of those this cycle, and then when they expressed interest, the program kept asking them every couple of days if they had chosen a program... which was super annoying because this program got back to the friend a full 10 days or so before any other program, so they had to say, "No, I haven't heard from anywhere," several times. The program also only offered funding for 3 years, so it was especially like, "Believe me, I'll let you know if I hear back from anywhere else."

I'll bite--I must know what was odd about it. (Only if you're comfortable sharing!)

yesterday I stood in the shower after a run for an extra, idk, 15 minutes or so? with the thought, if I stand in the shower longer, that gives Brown more time to email me

bless your kind souls for quickly nipping off my anxiety attack at the bud, truly

(Imagine me with a hand raised at the back of the classroom) Point of clarification, does this mean that you've heard from Harvard this cycle?