noneckmonsters

I know some people including myself still have nothing in their UCLA portal and wanted to share some comments one of my profs had about it. I told him what was up and said that I suspected someone was going through and manually updating them and that within a few days mine would just be a rejection but he suggested that some schools have an 'internal waitlist' where they won't tell you that you're on it but they have you on the hook just in case (isn't that fun?). Not sure if that's the case but it is something that happens apparently.

Opinions: UCLA has sent out acceptances, waitlists, and rejections. I just checked both the application and the status portals but nothing has been uploaded as of right now. What does it all mean?! 
 
Also, can we talk about how the thread for this English/ Lit cycle has 55 pages?! That is wild and a testament to our overachieving personalities. Cheers!!!

Opinions: UCLA has sent out acceptances, waitlists, and rejections. I just checked both the application and the status portals but nothing has been uploaded as of right now. What does it all mean?! 
 
Also, can we talk about how the thread for this English/ Lit cycle has 55 pages?! That is wild and a testament to our overachieving personalities. Cheers!!!

Opinions: UCLA has sent out acceptances, waitlists, and rejections. I just checked both the application and the status portals but nothing has been uploaded as of right now. What does it all mean?! 
 
Also, can we talk about how the thread for this English/ Lit cycle has 55 pages?! That is wild and a testament to our overachieving personalities. Cheers!!!

Opinions: UCLA has sent out acceptances, waitlists, and rejections. I just checked both the application and the status portals but nothing has been uploaded as of right now. What does it all mean?! 
 
Also, can we talk about how the thread for this English/ Lit cycle has 55 pages?! That is wild and a testament to our overachieving personalities. Cheers!!!

Thank you for providing us with a life raft to cling to. ?
Much needed while sitting here twirling my thumbs and obsessive compulsively checking portals/this forum/email between tasks at work. 

Another possibility is that they nominated a few people for fellowships, so they had to process their acceptances first. I'm wouldn't mark it is an implied rejection till monday. this cycle I had one implied rejection turn to an acceptance and another into a waitlist

Another possibility is that they nominated a few people for fellowships, so they had to process their acceptances first. I'm wouldn't mark it is an implied rejection till monday. this cycle I had one implied rejection turn to an acceptance and another into a waitlist

Another possibility is that they nominated a few people for fellowships, so they had to process their acceptances first. I'm wouldn't mark it is an implied rejection till monday. this cycle I had one implied rejection turn to an acceptance and another into a waitlist

Thank you so much! I’m still in shock. I only applied to three schools, and UCR was my top choice. So this was best-case scenario for me. I was really hoping to be able to stay in Southern California since I have a kindergartner and moving would be difficult. I’m so excited about the award since I don’t have to teach my first year now (and because of the additional $). I was anticipating a much more stressful wait, so I’m incredibly relieved. 

I got in with the Eugene Cota Robles Award. Acceptances went out January 31st. I haven’t seen any waitlist or rejection notifications. Open house is March 4th, so maybe they will send out more notifications after that. Someone else said that they were aiming for a small cohort of only 4 or so students. 

I aspire to have your search engine skills! How did you come across such an obscure calendar reference?! LOL
Also, thanks for sharing this!!!

Rutgers will apparently make their decisions on the 21st: https://english.rutgers.edu/news-events/events-98/icalrepeat.detail/2020/02/21/1167/-/admissions-final-meeting.html 

I'm not in a position to comment on common/uncommon, but I know that this is A Thing, and it's like, the absolute worst Thing in all of the offer/admission process nonsense. 
My two cents is, once you have an acceptance, speak w/ a union rep if they've got a grad student union, then calculate your TAship minus health insurance and see what it does out to. Can you live on $15,800 in that area? If it's a no and you'd have to turn it down anyway, it won't hurt you to try to negotiate. 
Alternatively, if your partner's $0 premium doesn't go up to $350 when adding a spouse... elope??? (This is like 70% a joke and 30% something that I am legitimately considering for when I age out of my parents' insurance.) 

University of Chicago needs to stop with these advertisement emails about "Come Join Our Institution and Work with Top Notch Professionals." I'm like, look man, the only thing you are giving off right now is annoyance... I already know you are going to reject me in a couple of weeks, so why insist with the ads? Is this going to turn into more Sierra Club unsolicited email/ paper mail situation? I swear I will form an alliance with all of the other Chicago rejects and pursue legal action... 

University of Chicago needs to stop with these advertisement emails about "Come Join Our Institution and Work with Top Notch Professionals." I'm like, look man, the only thing you are giving off right now is annoyance... I already know you are going to reject me in a couple of weeks, so why insist with the ads? Is this going to turn into more Sierra Club unsolicited email/ paper mail situation? I swear I will form an alliance with all of the other Chicago rejects and pursue legal action... 

Ugh, I'm sorry. I'm on the same boat with my partner. It's been putting so much stress on the relationship. Compromise sucks. I hope you guys can stay close together. 

Ugh, I'm sorry. I'm on the same boat with my partner. It's been putting so much stress on the relationship. Compromise sucks. I hope you guys can stay close together. 

I would write this information in a way that raises your eligibility and funding opportunities. Departments like to know students are committed to the field and can overcome obstacles (specially cause academia has so many obstacles!)... This is great! It probably means they are interested in your application!!! Best of luck!

I would write this information in a way that raises your eligibility and funding opportunities. Departments like to know students are committed to the field and can overcome obstacles (specially cause academia has so many obstacles!)... This is great! It probably means they are interested in your application!!! Best of luck!

Yeah, there are always ways around the stipends. I know people who got their Phd's at UCR and lived in LA the whole time. It's not impossible. Best of luck!! And yay for state/ public schools!! UCs are the best! I'm a product of the california public education system, all the way from Community College through MA. Went to an UC for my undergrad and a Cal State for my MA. Excellent institutions with top grade scholars and super interdisciplinary across the board. I can't recommend them enough to people. 
Also, I feel you on the reading through your statements of purpose and cringing. As I go back through mine I'm noticing that I have positive results in the ones that I mentioned women as my PoI, which in retrospect makes sense: I'm a radical feminist/ queer scholar... I make men uncomfortable and I think it comes through in my statement of purpose. LOL! At the same time, I am who I am... too old and woke to trade who I am for a Harvard... (no offense)

I just want to give everyone encouragement in these times.
If you don't have a specific project or a definitive method, that is okay. While yes, strategic specificity is key in things like the SoP, nobody here is expected to produce a dissertation prospectus. It can be incredibly helpful to have a project, but the projects in an SoP are going to be tentative and indicative of a direction than the play-by-play that programs will expect from you after qualifying exams. I came into grad school with some ill-defined notion of a queer archive that, while I have it in the backburner, is a project I'm not currently writing on nor do I plan on writing about queer poetic archives for my MA paper. If you don't feel that your proposal is specific enough, remember that right now, it's not supposed to be a hyper-specific document. What is more key is a strategic specificity that outlines a potential direction that your program can support and shows you're in conversation with current issues in your field, but one that does not foreclose the possibility of you growing within the program.
This process is notoriously tough. If anyone's expressing worries, I'm right there with you. I have heard whispers that this particular cycle is a touch more competitive than last year's due to the fact that there's an increase in applications for some programs. Of course, it must be taken with a grain of salt, but the general point I want to make is that this is a hypercompetitive process with almost no feedback except in most cases a decision. Fit is an elusive beast, and you could have an extremely polished SoP and WS, but there may have been circumstances in the department that meant that your app, as strong as it may have been, simply would not have meshed well with the program. If you find yourself staring at a sea of rejections/implied rejections, remember that it's the very likely case that it's not about you nor is it a final judgment on your skills. Fit, to priorities in the department (too many/too little grad students per cohort, too many in one field), funding structures/decisions dictated by admin, etc. and so many factors out of your control can go a very long way into determining the decisions you can get.

I can relate to this anxiety. Such (seemingly) capricious, subjective, and opaque processes are engineered to engender existential dread, I think. But the wonderful part of this entire self-worth-through-a-cheesegrater game is that rejection results are never permanent. The no of today is a gilded yes of tomorrow. Like harsh peer review, it helps us hone our rough edges. I certainly learned a lot in my last decade of rejections.

I was rejected from a ton of schools and accepted to Cambridge, Edinburgh, and Glasgow in 2012 but received no funding offers and had a family emergency which meant I had to temporarily give up my dream. I was later rejected from all the (U.S.) schools I applied to in 2013. It crushed my soul. Fast-forward to this year when my first rejection was from Texas Tech, the lowest ranking school in my application pool. At that point, I pretty much gave up hope since the other schools were top tier schools. Imagine my shock when I was accepted to a top 20 school last week! With funding!!!!! 

This is all to say: don't give up hope for this year. And even if this year is not your year, that does not mean it is the end of your aspirations. I'm actually very glad I ended up not taking out loans for Cambridge, and that I waited this long for a funded acceptance, as the school where I was accepted is a much better fit for me (financially, geographically, academically, socially, and in terms of my research interests) and the school I am waiting to hear back from (Berkeley) would likewise be an ideal fit for me.  

Anyway, glad we are in this anxiety-fueled pressure pit together, and I hope you receive wonderful news soon!

I was told by my connection at UC Berkeley that the English department graduate admission team met last week. This might mean Berkeley applicants will hear back sooner rather than later. Historically, the first two weeks of February have been the time when acceptance emails were sent out, though it could really be anytime between now and April. Trying my best not to compulsively check GradCafe & my email & my application portal every 3 seconds!

OK, excellent to know (and very useful website!). I totally missed this message, so I got paranoid, as I applied to a bunch of UCs as well. (UCLA, UCB, and UCSB... I also applied to UC Davis, but that's either waitlist or rejection at this point - not surprising, since two of the three faculty I had my eyes on were actually retired! yikes. Make sure you double-check faculty lists at the beginning of the semester, anybody future applicant who's reading!) I'm already pretty concerned about the cost of living for all the UCs, but they are excellent fits for me, and if I do actually do get lucky enough to get into one, I am likely going to heavily consider it. Keep me posted (and of course if I learn anything, I'll do the same!).