polisci001

First and thankfully last PhD cycle is finally over! Final tally: 5 acceptances (Oxford, LSE, UCL, Princeton, Yale) and 5 rejections (Berkeley, Stanford, Michigan, Harvard, MIT). Will almost certainly be giving up spots at LSE, UCL, and Yale (CP), but very undecided between Oxford and Princeton. Best of luck everyone!

Adding to the confusion for Harvard: given my deadline to reply to another offer, I emailed again the DGS administrator who had previously told me that decisions would come out last Friday. He replied within minutes on Sunday evening (GMT) saying that the DGS was sending out decisions “just now” and informed me that I was rejected. I’m very grateful he replied to my emails and told me the outcome (plus he was very nice) but why insist on decisions being officially sent out even though that was obviously not true?

I am assuming that based on the fact that acceptances and waitlists seems to have already been released. But AFAIK (correct me if I’m wrong) no one has yet received an official portal update.

No. The admin guy had said we would hear back on Friday but maybe they were delayed?

Did anyone here receive an offer from the London School of Economics with absolutely no word about funding? Or does it mean I didn’t get funding?

I guess this might be useful for everyone: I emailed the DGS assistant and he replied "We hope to have decisions available late tomorrow or, most likely, on Friday.". At least we have an ETA for the rejection email lol.

Do you think it's acceptable to email the Harvard DGS to ask for an update? The situation is that I am assuming a rejection but I can't wait another week for the official outcome, as I need to respond to some other offers (outside of the States) *very* soon.

Apologies in advance if this is a dumb question. I’m an international applicant and I’m extremely undecided between staying where I am and going to the US. Do you think this funding freeze will affect Ivy League schools? And can schools change the funding amount and/or conditions after you accept an offer?

In case anyone still hasn't heard from faculty: the visit days will be 26-27 March.

What’s the deal with Harvard? Someone is actually claiming a rejection a few days ago but there are no acceptances (except a dodgy one)?

Does anyone know if Yale will hold a visit weekend? All I got from them was the portal update, still haven’t received any sort of (vaguely) personalised email.

Definitely not the norm. If I recall correctly, last year DPIR enrolled 32 students in the DPhil Politics and a majority are funded either through Oxford-related money (colleges, university, DPIR, research councils) or through external scholarships (Rhodes, La Caixa, all the German and Swiss scholarships etc.). However, two things to note: (1) funding is definitely a factor in people declining their unfunded offer, with the general expectation in UK institutions being that an unfunded spot is basically a rejection; (2) it's much more difficult to secure funding for non-UK applicants due to quotas set by the national research councils. I'm a current DPIR student so feel free to DM if you want more info

Claiming Yale acceptance for CP. No notification, checked portal. This is wild, there’s literally no one that does similar research to me lol.

Are the dates official or based on gradcafe posts?

I haven’t heard anything + checked portal and there’s nothing there. There’s just that one weird “DEI” result 🤔