polisciboy

yeah, there were a few people earlier in the thread who emailed NYU and just got generic responses. Does anyone here claim the waitlist on the results page?

Here's advice I've gotten from people who have already gone through this process: Get a clear sense of your financial package. (Guaranteed funding for 5 years? TA/RA strings attached? Is 6th year funding possible? Health care provided?). Make sure to compare financial package with cost of living. Get a sense of the faculty members, research groups, or labs that you could work with. Ask yourself: Do they form a supportive community for you to do your best work? Ask about graduate placement if they don't already have that information published. If graduate placement is published, I would still investigate more (look at CVs, reach out to recent grads, etc.). Some placement documents I've seen won't differentiate between post-doc, TT, or adjunct jobs which can be very misleading. What is the program/cohort like? What proportion of admitted students finish their PhD? How many years is the typical student taking to complete their PhD? Will you get a lot of individual attention as a grad student, or will you be working more on your own? Pick a program that aligns with how you like to work. I've heard UC schools are usually more of the "fend for yourself" variety, but I could be wrong. If you are planning on a career outside of academia: will faculty be willing to help you with your career goals? Is there a stigma associated with students who pursue non-academic careers? (I probably wouldn't ask this outright, unless you're sure you want to work outside of academia in which case it might be good to bring up early.) Reach out to PhD students currently in the program. Are they happy? Idk if this is true, but someone told me that if they are too happy expectations might be too low. Obviously if they're miserable you have to decide if you want to submit yourself to that for the next 5+ years Hope this helps!

Does anyone know when NYU or UCLA will let people know if they're on the waitlist? I'm also wondering about Duke, but I see some people have already been notified of this so I'm guessing I was just flat out rejected there

I got an acceptance email from Rochester on Monday but don't actually see this on the portal...so I'm guessing they haven't updated that yet.

Are there some schools that tend to end up accepting a lot of people from the waitlist? NYU was one of my top programs but it sounds like the best I can hope for now is a waitlist.

Also, why Duke did send out waitlist/acceptances awhile ago but no rejections?

Looks like WUSTL is sending rejections before acceptances?

Feeling the same way, although I don't think you need to read too much into the referral. I remember some schools asked about referring to a masters if you don't get into the PhD program and I usually said no.

Since it's looking possible that I might not get an acceptance this cycle, is anyone familiar with the MA program at Rochester? It looks nice, and more data/stats focused than the UChicago CIR/MAPSS (that someone on this forum mentioned).

@jjiffy @scared_phd thanks for the advice, that's actually really helpful @sbidyanta @Lighthopes thanks for pointing out that my post was somewhat callous, I think calling it a "safety" school is a bad term tbh, I just thought I had a pretty good chance at getting accepted/thought I would be a good fit so was a little bummed when I got a reject this morning!

Got rejected from Madison today and that was supposed to be one of my safety schools...am I f**ked?

I have a few questions about interviews in case anyone knows. How common are they? I know some schools don't interview before sending acceptance but, like, what's the percentage that do? Do top schools interview more than lower? How important are they for admission? Someone told me that interviews are actually where the candidate has leverage to negotiate TA/RA positions, salary, etc. but I don't know if that's true everywhere. Does anyone know of materials that can help prepare for these interviews? Couldn't find anything useful in my initial google search so I thought I would ask here in case there's something obvious I'm missing.

@Gryffindor50points there's a post about this here: