I miss being able to procrastinate on this forum before I heard back from all my places and had nothing else to talk about. So I'll bite:
PROFILE:
Type of Undergrad Institution: U. Chicago
Major(s)/Minor(s): Political Science, minor: Near Eastern Studies
Undergrad GPA: 3.8
GRE: 800q, 710v, 5.5awa
Any Special Courses: Not really.
Letters of Recommendation: 1 lawyer/lecturer/program director; 1 historical/middle east scholar; 1 anthropologist/middle east scholar; 1 big name poli sci guy
Research Experience: quite a bit: post-bac fellowship ($$ to do research); a few publications; work with/grants from research institute; several international conferences
Teaching Experience: none really
Subfield/Research Interests: middle east, culture, religion, gender
SOP: spent a lot of time on it
Other: I hated extracurricular activities.
RESULTS:
Acceptances($$ or no $$): Ohio State, Berkeley, Michigan, Uchicago (CIR). No funding fom CIR, but 5 year fellowships from the rest.
Waitlists: Stanford
Rejections: Harvard, Columbia, MIT, Princeton, Yale
Pending:
Going to: Probably Berkeley
What would you have done differently?:
My writing sample had absolutely nothing to do with my proposed research interests. I don't know why I thought that was a good idea at the time, but it probably wasn't. Also, I wrote to a bunch of profs before applying, and I don't think it made a lick of difference oddly enough. Finally, I stressed out too much, but that's probably unavoidable.