thescienceoflogic

I am afraid it is not too far-fetched to infer that you saying "I am far from being pessimistic" counts as some kind of expression of disclaimer of anxiety, unless you want to be painstakingly obsessed over the psychoanalytic criss-crossing or the ontological independent meaning of these two terms. And there weren't 20 people entering their results last year; and i doubt there were ever this many people entering results for any given top programs in a given year. the fact that you casually made such a claim is perhaps indicative of your unfamiliarity with the result section on grad cafe. No matter how sincere and honest, there are a few asking questions implicitly knowing that the hypothetical scenarios in their question is apparently unrealistic--a miniscule amount of intellectual labor would reveal it. They were just unwilling to confront it since the act of asking the questions, however empty, seem to be a venue of anxiety-reduction. Hence the almost self-impulsive drive to repeat the same kind of questions. It's called the looop of self-deception. Bad sign or good sign. The exceptionality of the nature of this year's application is universal knowledge with minor individuations for each case. You either get rejected or admitted. Period. There isn't much to be speculated about. Just wait

I am afraid it is not too far-fetched to infer that you saying "I am far from being pessimistic" counts as some kind of expression of disclaimer of anxiety, unless you want to be painstakingly obsessed over the psychoanalytic criss-crossing or the ontological independent meaning of these two terms. And there weren't 20 people entering their results last year; and i doubt there were ever this many people entering results for any given top programs in a given year. the fact that you casually made such a claim is perhaps indicative of your unfamiliarity with the result section on grad cafe. No matter how sincere and honest, there are a few asking questions implicitly knowing that the hypothetical scenarios in their question is apparently unrealistic--a miniscule amount of intellectual labor would reveal it. They were just unwilling to confront it since the act of asking the questions, however empty, seem to be a venue of anxiety-reduction. Hence the almost self-impulsive drive to repeat the same kind of questions. It's called the looop of self-deception. Bad sign or good sign. The exceptionality of the nature of this year's application is universal knowledge with minor individuations for each case. You either get rejected or admitted. Period. There isn't much to be speculated about. Just wait

indeed, that's what I heard haha. The guy told me they will admit only 1 percent. But more likely than not that's a strategically overblown claim on the part of the adminstrative assistants to discourage more people from applying since they have higher number of applicants this year, so they want to reduce more application inflowing. unless we get information that confirm that they are admitting 1/3 or 1/4 of the size of previous cohort, I would dismiss it as bad arthmetic on the part of the person telling you this

Despite your disclaimer, i think the anxiety of waiting is indeed getting the better over you. I see a lot of posts here making claims with an overwheliming of sense of defeatism and ennui that trumps over cool-headed analyticc evaluation of the situation. The questions are posed in such a fashion that are not even worth answering (sorry to be harsh) First of all, programs like NW normally does have 12-15 people enrolled each year. But if they enroll this many, this almost mean they need to admit at least the double the number of applicants. Of course, between the top programs these selected applicants overlap. Not everyone admitted would bother themselves entering the data on Gradcafe. Hell, they probably won't even visit Gradcafe...I for one would not enter data on Gradcafe if i get admitted

i would be surprised if theory and method subfield has more applicants than others. On the contrary, I think it is precisely the heavily empircial and popular American, Comparative and International Relations that have the greatest number of applicants. Hence greater degree of attention afforded and greater number of potential slots for admission, which explain the early turn-out