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I guess the thing I'm wrestling with right now is weighing whether I make the assumption based on radio silence and the results page whether or not the proverbial fat lady has sung for some schools. Looking back at some of them, it seems very early for the officially official word to have come out (at least through portals and formal graduate offices), but there's also no real solid evidence beyond hearsay to the contrary--if that makes any sense.

I thought I saw that someone had claimed Harvard on behalf of a friend and I could've sworn I saw a Yale one, but I could be misremembering?

This was the same feedback I got as well when I reached out a couple weeks ago. No idea what the apps look like, though. In past years, based on what I’ve been able to dig up (thanks Google), it’s been about 40-some apps with the 6-8 admits.

I think something we all need to remember is something that was said much, much earlier in this thread: part of this IS random chance. It’s not about fit or qualifications in some cases, it’s about who’s able to take who in a given year and what the landscape looks like. It’s not personal. I definitely agree that lack of feedback is difficult, as is the spotty nature of information coming out - the mystery of who’s rejected and who’s not, how many applications came in vs how many slots are available and departments not letting us know at the outset that information so we could all make more informed decisions about where to apply and how. But it’s okay. We’ll all get through and on the other side, we’ll be able to look back and decide whether or not it was worth it and then decide, after that reflection, whether or not to pick up and do it again—or decide what the next step is. But either way, eventually, we’ll be okay.

So if we've received no contact via email from POI/department, we can assume rejection, I take it? I imagine it'll take the portal another week or two to update.

Out of curiosity (I'm assuming at this point that I am neither waitlisted nor accepted to the program at U Chicago so this really doesn't affect my life beyond wanting to know), did your contact mention an official History Day visit date? I'm just curious about whether or not they're going to attempt one this year given the pandemic and the restrictions that the city has been placing and lifting with regard to visitors to the city from certain areas.

That is 100% valid! Something tells me that 2020 is going to be a benchmark for bad years for some time to come and it's going to be hard for 2021 to be worse (that is not a challenge, fates, please do not take it as one). I know that in the event that I don't get in anywhere this cycle, once I'm able to get to the GRPL archives again, I'm going to be digging through their collections for information on how Grand Rapids handled the 1918 flu--that particular pandemic was something I was interested in before COVID-19 hit and has been something I've wanted to look into more deeply for a while. I just haven't had much chance thus far.

Something to keep in mind is that the cost of living is a bit less in Washtenaw County than it is in Cook County, though. $20-30k in Ann Arbor will go a bit further than the $32ish stipend out of Northwestern will in Chicago.

I don't, but I'm certainly curious about the answer to this question. I'd guess probably half the normal number.

I mean, when I checked the application portal a bit earlier this evening, there was no change, and considering how every other school seems to handle this, it's weird that there wouldn't be some kind of notification on the portal, too.

Congrats to the folks who got into Yale! On the subject of U Chicago, was anyone here confirmed to the waitlist or are we thinking that they're trolls? (If someone's already said they were one, I missed it).

I just saw that about the U Chicago waitlists on the results page and checked portal - nothing thus far, nor anything via email. I'm not optimistic (considering my other two rejections thus far)--much more hopeful about UIC but trying not to pin anything too high. The upshot is that I do already have a masters, just in a different research area than the one I'm applying for now. This said, I can only hope that maybe it will make me more interesting? Just the waiting game for most of us now.

That makes a lot of sense! Thank you. I guess I was looking at some of the grad realities through the lens of the realities being faced by the departments that I’m currently engaged with at the undergrad level. There has been a lot of uncertainty with how things are going to continue to look so it’s had a huge impact on the shape of department offerings and class types both this year and for the coming year. I’ve been lucky enough to have some very frank conversations with professors about the state of things in the past few months, hence my (erroneous) assumption.

It feels like that would be a side-effect of not being able to do a lot of travel/research actually in Europe, don't you think?

The environment is much different and there's less emphasis placed (in my experience) on actual firsthand research. This having been said, it depends very heavily where you go, so like I said, do your research on the programs before you apply to an MA. The place where I went did offer a thesis option, but most MA students took a field exam instead, which basically meant that they read a lot of books and talked about them rather than having to do a lot of historiographic and primary source work.

Do NOT pursue an MA unless it's funded. I made that mistake myself and while I don't necessarily regret getting my MA, it wasn't the experience I might have hoped for overall and the debt isn't anything fun to wrestle with. Something to keep in mind about a lot of terminal MA programs is that they're not funded and in this field a lot of them are geared toward secondary ed teachers (at least in the US) doing continuing studies. These are often subsidized by their school districts as professional development. As such, in a lot of scenarios these programs are designed to make money for the school as much as they are to provide academic merits and the opportunities for research, etc. will be much different. Moral of the story with an MA is choose wisely and make sure you're funded if you're going to do it.

I feel like this season is especially a bit of a mess because everyone's department funding is a bit of a mess. Everyone still seems to be in a bit of a scramble mode with everything constantly shifting around them. I imagine that a lot of schools were thinking that maybe by September the world would be a little closer to normal but the reality that's emerging is that we're probably going to be into 2022 before we hit that benchmark, at least in the US.

With results from this year's application season rolling in, given the utter strangeness of this particular application season (mirrored to a greater or lesser extent by last year's and perhaps--perhaps--mirrored by next application season as well), I'm curious regarding what everyone's plans are. If you got in somewhere but weren't funded, are you taking the spot? If you didn't get in anywhere, what's next for you? Got into a program, funded, but suddenly having second thoughts? This past year (2020) was challenging for everyone. Unpopular opinion, but 2021 will also be challenging, but in different ways. So what's your path ahead?

True story re: the refreshing email. I did not apply to Princeton or Yale (though if I don't make it in this cycle, I might cast my net wider and see what happens...) but I do find myself at this point remarkably zen about the waiting. Maybe it's the two rejects and coming to peace with the fact that maybe I won't make it into any school this cycle (this being said, I really hope that's not the case). Good luck to those who have applied to Princeton and Yale! The campus at Yale is very cool and the environs around the campus are very walkable in my recollection.

Based on what I've heard, they don't, no. It sounded like they are in the process of reviewing all of the files now.

Based on my email with the department, UIC should be middle to end of this month with A LOT of waitlist activity afterwards. The good news is that they're still taking a normal sized cohort. Also an Americanist (recovering medievalist, if you can believe it), focus on urban and policy history.

I know U Chicago's website says that they usually send admits in March, too, so it could be that something changed a bit on their end due to everything going on this year. Judging from the results from last year and the year before, looks like unofficial information comes from potential advisors with actual word coming from the university mid to late February, so it seems that most of us will probably have a couple more weeks to wait. I am also not expecting anything positive to come from them on my end, but at this point, this season, anything is possible.

Thank you for the feedback! I actually took the route you suggested when I reached out to Loyola's program after I received my rejection a few weeks ago--just asking if they could provide any advice for me going forward. I received a very nice response the same day letting me know that it most definitely was factors larger than me that resulted in my rejection. I had actually already reached out to the grad coordinator for NW yesterday a few hours before results came out, so my biggest question (cohort size) will be answered. Probably won't reach out after all, though, because in reflecting on all of it, I think I know more reasons why I didn't make it in than I wanted to believe (there were professors there that would have been far better for my research interests than the ones that were taking students this year, but that's the way things go). It just stings like hell, in part because one of my recommenders was a Northwestern PhD herself (though from a different social science discipline), which I thought MIGHT help. I did end up having a nice correspondence with the graduate chair at UIC yesterday via email that I am trying not to read too much into, so that also helped ease some of the sting. All four of the schools that I applied to this year were very close when it came to preferences and I would be happy to be accepted at any of them. For anyone curious, UIC's decisions should be coming out at the end of February (though admits from their very active waitlist will range from March through April).

Thanks. Nice to know that my struggle in getting back on what should have been my path in the first place is helpful to someone somehow. I'm lucky that I have a lot of professors who understand the challenges of stepping into a program at the age I'm at (I have a few professors whose trajectory was nontraditional as well) so they've been very realistic when talking to me about the challenges but also very encouraging. Still, even having been told you're a great candidate by those encouraging you doesn't take all of the sting out of this year's rejections. Imposter syndrome still reaches up and shakes you hard.

Definitely good to know! I will be turning 39 this coming November, so I was already looking at entering the academic job market in my 40s. This said, I love doing research and I have always felt more at home in academic settings than anywhere else in my life, so it's unsurprising that I eventually came back to the idea of pursuing a Ph.D. That was always the plan out of my initial undergraduate career but the experience of my MA and needing time and space to think ended up putting that on hold. I'm finishing a second bachelor's degree right now in political science after briefly thinking I wanted to teach high school (I wish my mother had actually expressed that she didn't think that was what I really wanted rather than hinting that she didn't think that was what I really wanted back when I decided to leave my well-paying job that was killing my soul to go back for another bachelor's instead of something else) and hoping like crazy I get into a program this cycle because while I don't think it will be any harder next year to get into a program, I know that the age number will bother me for no good reason.