chickenist

Thank you for this thread! I hope everyone tries to find some way to destress during this difficult situation.
I am so, so frustrated. The US embassy in my country has suspended visa applications, and I'm not sure how I'll get to graduate school by August with this coronavirus situation. I can imagine so many barriers on top of my family: acquiring a visa, quarantine, healthcare, etc. I just don't know what to do, and I feel so helpless.

Thank you for this thread! I hope everyone tries to find some way to destress during this difficult situation.
I am so, so frustrated. The US embassy in my country has suspended visa applications, and I'm not sure how I'll get to graduate school by August with this coronavirus situation. I can imagine so many barriers on top of my family: acquiring a visa, quarantine, healthcare, etc. I just don't know what to do, and I feel so helpless.

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

I'm deeply relieved to contribute to this board after receiving acceptances from both Yale and Georgetown (MA)! I got my Yale acceptance an hour before I started a Friday night double shift. As a bartender, I get asked about 900 times a day how I'm doing or how my day has been and since Dec 15, I have wanted to say "I spent a sh*t load of money to put my future in the hands of several strangers and am currently waiting to receive judgment on an application I have spent years and hundreds of hours developing, and now I'm just waiting on the confirmation that I'm a full POS. What can I get you?" One of my friends yelled to the whole bar that I had gotten into Yale and everyone clapped and I didn't cry so...Today was a good day.

Perhaps I'm misinterpreting, so apologies if so, but calm down, dude. Her sharing specific details about herself and her application are not really going to help you with yours, and her doing so would not really be "paying it forward" as you so put it. 
 
I feel like there's more to say, but as I may be misinterpreting it, I'll leave it at that.

Yes. Please. Take it easy, guys! The specifics in this case are specific to her. I understand that this is a difficult time for the rest of us, but this hounding is uncalled for. 
 

From everything I felt going in and all of the replies I've had so far, what set me apart was my writing sample. It was a revised combination of my undergraduate dissertation and a masters seminar paper, both on the same (contemporary American) poet. It ranged back to 19th century, had original archival work, careful close readings, and chewed on broader issues of genre, criticism, reading and the ethics of handling a writer's work and papers.I reaaaaally worked my ass off on it. I usually hate everything I write, but every time I opened that pdf file in between submitting and now, I didn't think 'oh god this actually sucks', I thought 'yeah that's really about the best I could humanly do and I think they'll like it.' Once the cycle is over, I'll have more thoughts—feel a bit weird being so specific in such a public forum without having made a decision yet, knowing that a few places I have left to hear from are probably still deliberating. And again, I really don't think it's helpful in the sense that certain interests = a secret sauce; that kind of logic just isn't correct. 
Edit: I will just say that even though I worked my ass off on it, it had typos. And I think I'm the first person ever to get into Chicago with a statement of purpose that referred to the fiction of—I kid you not—'David Foster Fallace'. Do not edit your statement at 3:30 AM before the 5 AM deadline (I'm in the UK). It will not "get better". Point being, my app had flaws, and I don't present as a "smart" person, and in many ways I really am not lol. My best friend was over for dinner when the Yale email came in and in the course of screaming and celebrating she said, "It's actually really encouraging that someone who is as much of a mess as you are could get into these places" and reader, she is RIGHT.

You keep repeating this as if people are unaware of it.  What you are missing is the fact that identity has always been used as a criteria in academic hiring decisions.  The only difference is that--in a tiny minority of current postings--it is being used as a criteria for inclusion rather than exclusion.
 
The obvious "tell"?
-Departments that are 100% white faculty?  Crickets.
-Job postings that openly exclude LGBT applicants (and two cycles ago, there were SEVERAL such positions)?  Crickets.
When complaints about "diversity" and "identity" only arise when the "victim" is the straight/white/male trifecta, the issue, as someone said earlier, is one of privilege.
 

Yeah so this is basically: cisgendered heterosexual white men are being “screwed” in academic hiring practices. As if diversity considerations aren’t trying (and often failing anyway) to counter a systematic structure that has homogenized academia for years. As if the point of considering diversity is not to counterbalance the obstacles faced by their beneficiaries. As if equity and justice are lesser goals than equality or impartiality. As if gainful employment is a right one can be screwed out of (yet that this is not the case for the historical bias of academic hiring). As if a lack of diversity doesn’t plague most universities. As if a lack of diversity is not a disservice to the ideals of higher education. As if, even if every single new hire for Fall 2020 were a diversity hire, faculties nationwide wouldn’t stay primarily white and mostly male (and heterosexual, cisgendered). As if, in a hiring pool where everyone is supremely, a diverse candidate is inherently a lesser candidate. As if, in that context, someone’s minoritized identity is less important than having 3 instead of 2 articles. As if faculty identity has no bearing on their interpersonal relationships with students from similar backgrounds. As if identity does not give an insight into the lived experience of English, scholarship, or academia which might be relevant for an educator.
As a cisgendered heterosexual white male (able-bodied, mid-to-upper class, non-religious) who has never been in any graduate cohort (out of, so far, 4) where the majority - the immense majority - did not share those identities (except for gender): boo hoo.
To be clear, if being rejected in favor of a diverse hire worries you: you are not worried about getting a job, you are worried about your privilege. If you want to worry about someone “screwing you out” of employment, maybe worry about all the non-diverse people who are gonna do that by virtue of all the access and opportunities they outnumber you with.

Thank you so much!