Verticordia
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Posts posted by Verticordia
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Emerging from my long career of lurking to verify that applying to BU is absolutely the worst. Last cycle, I didn’t hear from anything them until April 26th(!), and it was only an acceptance to their irresponsibly underfunded MA program. If you haven’t heard anything back from them yet, it’s safe to assume they’re playing the same game this year.
2020 Applicants
in Literature, and Rhetoric and Composition
Posted
The reassurance I can offer is one from experience—I was completely shut out my first cycle, but the time it gave me to re-evaluate my priorities until the next cycle was absolutely invaluable. I got a new job, tried some different industries that allowed me to hone my skills without being an a university setting, expanded my pool of friends and connections, tried several new hobbies (didn’t keep all of them), read things far outside my usual recreational and academic interests, continued to love the things I already loved, took more time to research which programs would actual be a good fit for me as an individual, completely rebuilt/rewrote my writing sample and personal statements from the ground up, because clearly they didn’t work the first time. In short, I changed the things I could, accepted the parts of my application that were beyond changing, and learned that there were many other things I could be happy doing outside of academia! The fact that I was able to step away for a year and still felt the urge to reapply was only confirmation to me of how dedicated I was to pursuing this path.
I cannot stress enough how very competitive the admissions process is—my current PhD application cycle, even after all that, resulted in 4 MA acceptances, three of them wildly underfunded, three waitlists, and more rejections than I care to number. I was eventually accepted off of the waitlist to my favorite PhD program, and I could not be happier with my choice to attend—all it takes is one acceptance! All this is to say that you should absolutely not take this shut out as an indicator of your personal value in any way. It’s true that programs will likely become even more competitive next year, but if you feel like you’ll regret not giving it at least one more try, you have the financial means to reapply next year, and you’re able to work on strengthening your application, I would give it another shot. No one can make this decision but you—give it some time, weather out this current weirdo curveball of a year, and you’ll know what to do.