[2020-2021 Application Thread]

1 hour ago, ir_guy said:

Well, if you have a courage to make such arrogant and prejudiced claims you should also read well first what you are replying to. I do not see any disclaimer about my anxiety level in my writing.

If I made anyone of you upset and nervous because of what I wrote I am so sorry. I am just trying to understand the situation here. I was honest in asking my questions and as much as I see there were very constructive answers as well. Many of you replied by saying actual acceptance rates are higher and they do not appear here. But while not being a very credible source of information Gradcafe is successful in giving us a pattern. If 20 people entered their results last year but there is a real decrease in the entered data this year, no matter how many people universities take, this is a bad sign for us. I admit that I may be mistaken for Princeton since they may really be trolls. And I sincerely hope I am wrong about NW. Thanks for your insights. 

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

[2020-2021 Application Thread]

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

[2020-2021 Application Thread]

13 hours ago, Indeed said:

Well, I have some bad news. I have contacted Northwestern pol sci before the application deadline and  they told me that it will be an extremely competitive year for admissions since they will accept 1-2% of the applications instead of the regular 10%. So I suppose we all got rejected if they did not decide to admit more people.

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

[2020-2021 Application Thread]

14 hours ago, ir_guy said:

Hello everyone. I have discovered this forum a couple of weeks ago and said enough to just lurk around and decided to share my views with grad aspirants like me. 

Although some of you are hesitant with the authenticity of the posts in the results page I am on the pessimistic side and consider them to be true as an applicant who did not get any response up to now. I am seeing 4 Princeton and 6 Northwestern admits. Do you think it is logical to think people who did not get a response from these two most probably are gonna rejected. I am coming to this decision on the basis of the claims that many schools are gonna admit less students this cycle. As much as I can see, there were 11 admits for Northwestern and 8 for Princeton last year based on the Gradcafe results. What do you think? By the way is there anyone who contacted with those universities to learn whether they are done with the notification of admits or not?

In all honesty, I am far from being pessimistic about my other applications, I am just trying to understand the dynamics of this cycle. I hope everyone of us get what we wish for.

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 

[2020-2021 Application Thread]

3 hours ago, NeedaMormon said:

I think it's interesting that many of the acceptances here (whether Northwestern or some other school) have been in Comparative or International. There have been very few American, Theory, or even Methods acceptances so far.

I wonder if that's due to differences in candidate pool size for these different sub-fields. If the Comparative or International applicants are far fewer in number it would make sense that their decisions are made faster.

I'm not saying I think the claimed acceptances are false though. I find the decision pacing interesting, and there are a lot of different factors to take into account for this "adventure" of an admissions cycle.

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