fuzzylogician

My boyfriend says that this xkcd comic reminds him of how I've been behaving in the past two months: http://xkcd.com/281/. Just replace "aww, still in Memphis" with "aww, still no decision."

My schools all had 12/15 or 1/1 deadlines. I submitted my apps about 1-2 weeks before the deadline for most programs. I had a couple of interviews in late January (I ended up withdrawing my app to those schools). My first three admits came in the first 10 days of February, my last one on the last day of February. There didn't seem to be any meaningful correlation between the submission deadlines and the acceptance offers.

I'm afraid that in a field as small as mine, accepting an offer and then transferring a year later (without good reason) will surely hurt me in the long run. If I become known as someone who cannot fulfill their obligations, no one will want to accept me into their program, and no one will want to hire me after I graduate. That said, if I felt I couldn't get along with any of the potential advisers in my program, or if my adviser went to another university after I had been working with them for a long while, I would definitely consider it.

I've gone 5 for 5. I withdrew 3 applications after receiving better offers from other schools. If I had to guess I'd say that I probably would have gotten into one of those three, maybe two.

I've been very open about where I've been accepted and which offers I'm strongly considering. I've been asked what places I've been admitted to by practically every prof I've interviewed with and didn't find it 'unprofessional' in any way. Honestly, my field small enough that people can guess where I applied to for themselves without my having to tell them, so I don't see the gain in being secretive. I think more than anything people have been interested in where I rank their offer compared to others, and what factors are most important in my decision. It's not all about the money :wink: . I haven't felt any pressure as a result of this. Everyone understands that I have to make the choice that's best for me. In fact, the profs I interviewed with obviously knew the potential advisers at the other schools and only had nice things to say about them, even though they're the competition.

Being placed on the waitlist is a positive thing in and of itself. I think the email is friendly but I don't think you should read too much into it. The bottom line is they'll let you know by mid-April, depending upon what their admitted students decided to do, whether they can offer you funding (and thus, acceptance) or not. I've heard it's sometimes helpful to let a school you've been waitlisted at know that they're your top choice and you're still waiting to hear back from them, but it's hard to tell if that's the case here. Good luck!

Congratulations! that's great!

I've visited 4 schools by now and at each and every one of them I was hosted by a grad student. This has some obvious advantages, not the least of which is saving me a huge amount of money. It also allowed me to see how current grads live (how they get by with the stipend, etc) and gave me extra time to ask questions. Even schools that couldn't afford to reimburse me for the trip found me a host and some lunch money. Maybe your schools have a similar policy? I'd try to find out if this type of arrangement is possible.

I just had a conversation about this exact same topic with a faculty member at the university I'm currently visiting. I was telling him how some schools have been very aggressive in trying to recruit me, while this school was relatively nonechalant and had previously even ignored an email I sent. He told me it was school policy not to actively approach the students so as to avoid putting any pressure on them to attend that school. Rather, they thought that the fact that they offered you admissions should be enough of an indication that they are interested in you, and if you wrote or visited and had any questions, they would be more than willing to answer them. I've actually been pleasantly surprised by how warmly I was welcomed at this school, since it has a reputation of being very cold. So, I think you should investigate some more before you write a school off just because they aren't friendly enough. They might have a different take on things.

My thesis adviser was behaving a bit flaky throughout the application process. At some point I wasn't sure she would submit het letter on time (if at all) nor if she would be able to write a good letter during the short period she had left herself to do it in. About a week before my first deadline she suddenly tried to back out of writing the letter altogether, then changed her mind again and said she would do it...I decided to have a fourth person write me a letter, just to be on the safe side. I ended up having four recs (submitted on/after the due date, but who's counting ); I didn't see any of my letters but I've had several profs comment on my strong recs, so I guess it turned out ok in the end. I know you can't *not* have your adviser write a letter for you, but if you suspect that this is what damaged your application, maybe the solution could be having an additional letter to balance out the bad one.

I'm sorry to hear that. Good luck with the funding at the other school!

I had a disastrous semester my last semester of undergrad that made it seem as if I had bad skills in a certain area that's very relevant to my research. Fortunately I took a fourth year in which my grades improved back and I was able to show that I actually *can* do research, so I chose not to address this lapse in my SOP. I am doing just fine this application season so I would say the one bad semester didn't hurt me that much. The same situation happened to me. I decided to include original transcripts from my year abroad even though the credits transferred, so the programs I applied to could see my grades. It didn't affect my GPA, but it seemed to do the trick.

I don't have good news for you. They told me during the interview that they can't re-offer the funding if the international student they offered admissions to declined. That's why I withdrew my application. Maybe someone who's been accepted and visited can give you more exact information about their current funding situation, because they were hoping it might improve. I've met two Americans who have been accepted, but I haven't heard about any internationals who were accepted. I imagine it's possible that UCSC hasn't officially offered admissions to any international student yet, and that instead they are informally going down the list of international applicants and finding out the likelihood that they will attend. At this point I don't think it can hurt to write UCSC to let them know they're your top choice and ask what the status of you application is. If a waiting list really does exist, your position on it might improve..

I had the strangest feeling during my visit in LA that everything around me was to some extent fake. People are "partially augmented" by surgery (to put it as one grad student there did), the desert is made to look lush and green, streets go on forever so you can be on the street you are looking for but miles away from your actual destination. I did feel the connections I made with people at the university were genuine, though, and that's the most important thing.

Yep, I visited UCLA. In a nutshell: loved the people, loved the beach, hated the city. I almost feel the decision was made more difficult by this visit, but it was definitely worth it.

I had a phone interview with them where they told me they could only fund one international student this year and basically asked if I would come, if admitted. This subsequently resulted in my withdrawing my application.

Now that I am halfway through my two-week visit to the grad schools who admitted me, I can say this: (1) location is much more important than I had previously thought, both with regards to weather and to size. I'd hate to live 5 years in a place that bores me after 2 days. (2) You can learn *a lot* just by talking to your potential adviser. It doesn't even have to be about research, you can test your ability to interact with a person just based on a conversation about the weather. (3) Likewise if you get a chance to visit a colloquium or other gathering at the department, you can learn a lot by observing who talks to whom and which groups are forming in the room. (4) Grad students will tell all! (including valuable information about things I would never have thought to ask.) As an international I found that the way current internationals are doing in the program is the best gauge of the way I would do there. (5) Talk to as many of your potential adviser's current students as possible. I've changed my mind about a person I was seriously considering working with based on this. My revised preferences, based on the conclusions from my trip, are now: fit with peers + fit with potential adviser > number of ppl doing related work in the dpt that you think you can work with > funding > location > other. I think those are the factors that will have the largest impact on my well-being in a given place.

My reactions vary. For most of them I was initially very excited (heart beating fast, jumping up and down and doing a little dance in my room) followed by a celebration in the evening, reading everything I can find about the university and the town during the night, leading to a sleepless night of me imagining myself at the university. With my last acceptance (today!) I was so shocked I screamed when the person on the phone told me I was admitted and proceeded to say things I now think were sort of embarrassing to the point she had to lol . My friends think I'm still in shock because I didn't sound excited at all when I told them I was accepted, even though I've wanted to go to this school for like three years. I did go out to celebrate though, and I think it's safe to say that alcohol is the one constant factor involved in all of my acceptances..

...you save forum posts/chats/news articles because you think about writing your next paper about a quirk you found in them. ...you pester friends and family to know if said quirk is something they find grammatical and would use in a sentence. ...you notice ungrammaticalities in your own speech and wonder how to analyze them. ...you find sentences just fine that your friends shudder at. ...you can typeset IPA characters in LaTeX by heart. ...you own a LAMBDA CALCULUS ROCKS T-shirt and a set of matching lamdba earrings.

None of them did, and honestly, I'd rather not know.

Being the pessimist that I am, I'm now thinking: just because MIT said they'll make their decision by the end of the month doesn't necessarily mean that they'll let us know by the end of the month. But yes, good luck to us all!

I wonder if any of you have visited your prospective programs either before or after being admitted. How did the visit go? Did you like the campus/town/faculty you met? I'm interested in people's impressions of programs from first-hand experience rather than from rankings and email contact, which I think can be misleading. Did you change your mind about a program as a result of visiting it? What factors do you think would change your opinion of a program?

I voted "the week before" but it really varied according to the deadline. For the earlier December 15 deadlines I had plenty of time and everything went out about two weeks before the deadline. For the January 1 deadlines I was starting to get pressed for time and was done with the apps about a week before the deadline, sometimes less. Probably a good average for me would have been ~10 days before the deadline.

Rutgers wrote that their expected class size is 4, for what it's worth.

I'd put a lot more emphasis on interactions with your prospective department than on any contact you may have had with the graduate school at a specific university. Especially at large schools which have a lot of applicants, the treatment you get before being admitted could be significantly different than the one you get afterwards. I think I've learned a lot about programs by the way they have interacted with since I've been admitted (coordinating a visit, answering questions, etc,) to the point that I might change my preferences based on this. However, I try not to let nasty interactions with a cranky grad secretary I won't ever have to deal with after I go to the school affect my decision. That said, I do think that some schools could treat prospective students considerably better than they do.