bugbear

Yep, I stayed up till midnight, and then checked again today, nothing yet. Last year, according to the results page, the first admits went out Feb 20, and there were acceptances and rejections going out into mid-March (some people waited until March 19th....to get rejected). Haha...yeahhhhh. I hope I start hearing back from my other schools soon so I can forget about UCLA for now.

I wonder about this too. Impossible to say really.

Hmm. Midnight has come and no word from UCLA yet. I'm curious to see if anyone hears anything during the day. I don't know if I'm on some sort of unofficial waiting list to get on the waiting list or what. I think I'll try to forget about it for now and proceed to worrying about Cornell.

Sorry to hear the bad news. I really wonder what their rationale is for letting the rejections trickle out like that instead of just notifying everyone at once.

I'm there as well. I have no idea. It's scary. Hold me? Also, your username made me do a double-take.

Hmm, seems as if there were a few more UCLA admits this evening. Since I haven't received anything yet, I'm guessing this means I will be getting a rejection tonight at midnight. Quite a few acceptances have already gone out, there can't be that many more left. I really hope they don't make me wait a week or more for the rejection. *settles in to stare at the wall for a few hours until midnight*

I knew Limp Bizkit would eventually justify their existence.* * not really.

I'm one of the people who have yet to hear from UCLA. I'm not optimistic though, I'm guessing they are pulling a Northwestern and staggering their rejections over the period of a few days. Because they are evil. I mean, one of the people who was rejected from UCLA describes themselves thusly: "Ivy grad with highest honors. Paper published. Internship/work experience at prestigious institutions and organizations." That's not me. That's *really* not me. If that person can't get in, what chance do I have?

Why not just send out all the rejections at the same time? If I don't get rejected tonight, and then get the rejection email tomorrow night instead, I will scream. JUST REJECT ME ALREADY, I KNOW YOU WANT TO. *crazy eyes*

Oh God now I won't be able to sleep.

waiting for good news oh god, email is silent. tonight I get crunk.

Hmm, I do see your point. There are still some things I feel I could have done better, so that gives me more hope for next year if I (God forbid) strike out this year. But an important thing to remember is that how much effort you put into it is just one factor. I'm pretty confident in saying that at this level, most of us are competent in our fields and could do solid research (especially if you take into account the self-selection of a website geared toward uber-nerds). As a result, once you get past the handful of obvious super-stars, there's a pretty significant element of chance to it for the rest of us. Who was on the committee this year, what the department's financial situation was, etc etc potentially ad infinitum. When the rejection letters say that it was difficult to choose from so many qualified candidates, they are not necessarily lying. So not only do you need to put forward your best effort, you need to also have that effort align with favourable circumstances. Because of that, I'd say that you shouldn't give up even if you strike out. Try again to make sure you account for that factor.

I'm thinking exactly the opposite. I really regret not applying to more than 7. I can think of one or two more that would have been a decent fit. With more schools, I'd have a better chance of getting in *somewhere*....right?

Oh, I want to, I just didn't get one.

No, this happened to me. There's a particular program, which shall go unnamed, that has the rudest admin staff I've ever encountered. Really makes me wonder what's going on over there...

I'm surprised that I didn't even make the first round of cuts at Northwestern. Don't get me wrong, I didn't think I was a shoe-in (far from it), but I thought I had enough to at least get past the first round. It makes me wonder if I'm making some mistake I'm not aware of, or if I'm dramatically underestimating the competition. I wish I could just get someone who's in the know to sit down with me, give my record a thorough examination, and say either "lol....no. just...no" or "if you fix x and y, you might have a shot". The thing is, I did solicit advice and feedback from people, students and profs both, and at least some of them were straightforward enough that they would have told me if I was aiming too high. Especially if I strike out, which seems possible because the Northwestern rejection is giving me really bad vibes...how do I know if I should dust myself off, work on things and try again, or if it's just futile given the accumulated weaknesses in my record that can't be fixed at this point (for example, I've already done an MA, so I can't use that as a way to improve things)?

My first official rejection today, from Northwestern via the website. I wish they would have just sent them all out yesterday instead of waiting a day and giving me a smidgen of false hope. Ah well. 1 down, 6 to go.

The news about Northwestern rejections going out is terrifying. I must have looked at the website 10 times today. Still no rejection. Will they post it at the end of the day? Maybe tomorrow? Do I actually have a chance? *chews fingernails off* This highfalutin discussion of fancy food is alien to me. My post-app diet consists of junk food, fast food, and alcohol. There's nothing like the anxiety of waiting to get oneself burgin'.

Is it safe to say that if I haven't heard from UCLA or Santa Cruz yet, I'm not in, since acceptances have gone out? I haven't heard anything from anywhere yet.

I don't know who else is applying to CUNY, but I had a question about their process for submitting transcripts. They require you to send a "transcript request form" to the institutions you need transcripts from, and they are supposed to mail the form along with the transcript back to you, and then you finally mail the whole thing to CUNY. Some schools ask you to get the institution to send it directly to them, and some ask you to get a sealed copy from your institution and mail to the school you're applying to yourself. But CUNY is the first place I've seen that requires you to have a specific form along with the transcript, and I'm a bit confused about how it works. Can I just send them an official, sealed copy of my transcript, but without the transcript request form? Why even require it in the first place? The reason I'm asking is, I already have a transcript I could send to them, but if the request form needs to be included in the envelope with the transcript, then I have to request another transcript, mail them the request form, have them mail it back to me, and then mail it to CUNY, which would take a while. Is anyone else applying there, and how did you handle the transcript issue?

I got 800 verbal, 4.5 AW, somehow. What's even weirder is that I wrote the test once before. My Verbal and Quant improved dramatically since last time, but my AW score went down from a 6 to 4.5. I don't feel like I did anything different so I have no idea what happened.

So I did my GRE today. I got 800V, 650Q. Now, my Quant score isn't anything special, but for me, completely math-phobic, it's a big accomplishment. The verbal score, on the other hand, is more of an accomplishment from what I understand. Basically I'm afraid my results are a mistake, a fluke, an error in the CAT algorithm. Could it be? If this happens, how often does it happen? Don't get me wrong, I studied very hard, but it's almost hard for me to believe I got the exact scores I wanted. I PROMISE this isn't a stealth-bragging post. I'm honestly paranoid that I'll get a call in a few week saying "sorry ur scores are wrong, lol". I'm just so bad at math, and although I studied for 2 months, I was sure that nerves would get the best of me. On the other hand, I was scoring in the 600's on the ETS CAT tests. I got 610, 710, and 610 (I did one of them twice). So I guess it's not that shocking that I got 650. The verbal though...I dunno. I did the test once before, with nearly no studying whatsoever, and got 720V, 340Q (ugh). So again, I suppose it's not out of the question that I would get what i did. I know this post is insane and just me thinking out loud, but I do genuinely wonder how often the unofficial scores turn out to be a mistake. Like I said, this honestly isn't a disguised brag about my results thread. It's more of a "I was so anxious about the test for so many months that I literally cannot believe I succeeded". So if you take away anything from it, let it be this: the test can be conquered, it's not beyond you. You will have this moment of profound, almost disbelieving relief too. Unless it really was just a computer glitch. Then you might be screwed.