besbesbes

I am so sorry.  Truly one of the worst years to apply to PhD programs. 

I'm wondering if I should take my POI saying they submitted a recommendation letter for me for an internal fellowship as a good sign? ? I have an interview in the department too so we'll see.... fingers crossed!

Since decisions have started rolling in, I wanted to wish everyone good luck! Admissions to anthro seems so random and there’s a lot of luck involved—I think that’s probably even more true this year with COVID and fewer spots. I’m hoping to see a lot of acceptances in this thread, but a gentle reminder that a rejection says nothing about your ability to be a great anthropologist. One of my fav grad students was rejected by all schools for the first 2 application seasons, but in that third application season, had a wave of acceptances... stay strong y’all. We got this! 

Hi all! Just checking back in after some time and wishing the best for everyone this week into next. I got my first official decision today, which was a rejection from Princeton. Not how I wanted to start this out, but it's the reality, and now it's up to me to figure out how to process this in a healthy way. 
I still have 2 good chances, so we'll see how it all plays out. This is feeling more and more like playing the lottery though.
Best of luck to everyone in the coming days and weeks, and I'll check back in when I hear more. 

I know one professor I talked with recently said applications basically doubled from the regular amount at their program this year because of Covid and such so yeah... definitely a difficult application year ?

Not trolls, sorry to disappoint. One is me. It's a rather short interview (15 mins) which seems hardly enough time to make or break ones' candidature, so was wondering what ones' chances of rejection are at this point...

anyone got an idea of how many people Stanford typically interview versus accept each year? 

Hello again, I just want to update this post, based on the research I did during the last year. I need to clarify that despite there are some or perhaps several schools working with media/sensory/multimodal anthropology, just a few of them have both faculty related and institutional support for non-text-based approaches. I mean: some a few universities are interested in your media creations along with your anthropological inquiries. This is changing, of course, but this list could be taken as a photograph of the current situation in the genre. I focused my research on cinema, photography, and sound, as these are the tools I use.
- Harvard: Anya Bernstein, Lucien Taylor, and Ernst Karel.
- NYU: Faye Ginsburg, Arlene Davila, Elayne Oliphant, and Tejaswini Ganti.
- UPenn: Center for experimental ethnography, with Deborah Thomas, John Jackson, and compelling post-doc scholars. 
- UTexas at Austin: Craig Campbell, Marina Peterson, and Kathleen Stewart.
- UCLA: Jason de Leon, Philip Burgoise, and Norma Denton.
- Cornell: Natasha Raheja just arrived there, she's NYU alumn. 
- UC Santa Cruz: Nancy Chen and Megan Moodie.
- Emory: Anna Grimshaw, though she's retiring.
- Programs with faculty interested in media but not based in production: JHU (Naveeda Kahn and Anand Pandian), UC Davis (Alan Klima), Brandeis (Patricia Alvarez), Rutgers (Zeynep Gursel just arrived), and Columbia (just Brian Larson, as Michael Taussig retired in 2019).

@tundratussocks Have you been in contact with this recommender? Two of mine waited until the 11th hour to submit for all four of my schools, so I don't think it's out of the ordinary!
And don't stress (too much). You're gonna do great!!! This also being my first cycle, one of the things that's helped keep me sane has been to only allow myself a specific 15 minute period each day to refresh things like r/gradadmissions, gradcafe, and my admissions portals. That has helped at least to minimize the negative thought spirals. 
Another thing that I think too few of us recognize is the incredible accomplishment in simply submitting these applications. Those of us who have been through a cycle know the toll it takes on us emotionally and intellectually to get to the point where they're ready to submit.  So congratulations!!! You've done an amazing thing just by getting here.

Nerve-wracking time currently but here goes-
This is my second cycle and possibly the worst year to apply (my top choice of UCB did not accept applications at all). I work on minority folk music & musicians in the Middle East and how they do or don't self-identify within nationalist narratives of the state. 
I applied to :
Stanford for Linguistic Anthro
UCLA for Ling Anthro
U Chicago for Sociocultural (sub-selection Ling anthro)
U Michigan for Ling Anthro
and Northwestern for Sociocultural/Ling Anthro

Hi YS90 I'm also a ME sociocultural applicant this cycle! Would be great to connect. 
Just wanted to note for others sakes that
Brown
Columbia
NYU
UC Berkeley
UC Boulder
UPitt 

all are NOT accepting applications for F21. https://www.chronicle.com/article/more-doctoral-programs-suspend-admissions-that-could-have-lasting-effects-on-graduate-education 
 
Wishing everyone best of luck! 

Hey all. I got my first grad school interview ever scheduled for Thursday. I'm both excited and nervous. This is my 4th application cycle so I hope something good comes from it.

Penn/Harvard /Yale/Columbia/brown all suspended their application cycle. It's really only Cornell and Princeton accepting ppl for the 2021 cycle. There have been no updates as both applications were due last week. 

Hi YS90 I'm also a ME sociocultural applicant this cycle! Would be great to connect. 
Just wanted to note for others sakes that
Brown
Columbia
NYU
UC Berkeley
UC Boulder
UPitt 

all are NOT accepting applications for F21. https://www.chronicle.com/article/more-doctoral-programs-suspend-admissions-that-could-have-lasting-effects-on-graduate-education 
 
Wishing everyone best of luck! 

Johns Hopkins interestingly has quite a few people working in and around visual anthropology. Deborah Poole readily comes to mind. You could also check out Anand Pandian's work, especially his book called "Reel World: An Anthropology of Creation". In fact even Naveeda Khan is also interested in studying photography, alongside her other research interests. They're all in the dept of anthropology at Johns Hopkins.

Also Harvard has a center in their department, run by Lucien Taylor. NYU has a formal certificate that I understand Faye Ginsberg runs. USC might also be helpful, and there's an MA program at San Francisco State (I think!)

It might also be worth looking at Goldsmiths, Manchester and Oxford.