Zouzax
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Posts posted by Zouzax
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I am TERRIFIED of getting all-round rejections. I applied to nine schools, and as an English major, I'm afraid my options are limited. I do NOT feel like spending a year working at Starbucks while going through the application process again. I don't have a plan B. I can't imagine doing anything else.
Okay, now that I've vented....
Have you gotten all-round rejections in the past? Do you have a plan B in case it happens?
if you see my other postings, youll know it's my fear as well. It's all I think about, which is probably not good as I read we manifest our own destinies (actually I didn't read that. My mother is an Oprah addict and happened to watch too many episodes featuring the author of 'The Secret' and has unfortunately read the book 'Eat, Pray, Love", thus causing her to remind me at any and all opportunities that we create our own fate).
If I dont get in, Im going to move to a different country and teach there, all while perfecting my application for the following year, finishing my thesis, and attending conferences. Thats the plan, at least.
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Thanks to the OP for opening up this space. It feels good to know that other people are having this (all too rational) reaction.
I agree, this has been very therapeutic seeing my exact thoughts (and I mean EXACT) voiced by other posters.
If I didn't have this venue to vent on, I don't know what Id do. When I try to explain my anxiety to friends or family, they just roll their eyes and say, "You know you'll be accepted." and I'm like, actually, NO i don't!! Don't you understand this process?! Since I've explained it to you one million trillion times?! *pulls hair out*
a rollercoaster between zen and despair is exactly what it is.
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Not that this has any real-world relevance, but the increase in spamming/cutesy chitchat on the results page fills me with disproportionate annoyance. It's like trying to land the plane while the other passengers toss airplane peanuts at your head.
Youre right, its super annoying. I stopped checking the results page (for the most part)
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We really should provide the community with a pamphlet, "When Someone You Love is Applying to Grad School". We can include sections like "Just Because Your Loved One is Smart, Does Not Guarantee Acceptance" and "How Adcoms Hold Your Loved One's Future in Their Hands" and "Why Telling Your Loved One to Look at the Bigger Picture is Frankly Insulting (No One Goes to Grad School for the Lulz)".
please. someone needs to make this. i would send this to all of my family and friends immediately.
My family thinks academic studies are for people not capable enough to do something 'real' with their life and are only capable of being a bookworm/recluse!
Yepp welcome to the club. When I say I'm applying for a Ph.d, the next question always is, "So what are you going to do after THAT?" like a Ph.d is nothing, it's just one more hurdle before getting a real job. And everyone loves to call me the "permanent student" because they think I'm too lazy to work and not ready for the real world.
And what don't I want to hear if I'm not accepted to my dream school?: "There's always next year."
ARGH.
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"this hurts me more than it hurts you"
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Thanks all. I know I'm being a bit negative so early in the season, but I do want to notify professors asap before they erase the letters from their computers.
I'm a bit shy when it comes to asking people to do things for me; it took a lot of self-encouragement for me to even email the professors in the first place to ask for the LORs. I just want to get it out of the way soon, so that they're not surprised if I ask them to do it all over again next year.
My professors are actually pretty cool, the only thing is that they don't seem to really understand the American Ph.d application system. As I said before, they were quite surprised when I said I was applying to 6 schools. They're also surprised that it's taking so long for me to receive a response. I *hope* this year will be a successful one, so thanks for the positivity @newms
I'll leave the decision to rewrite up to them .. but if I know my professors, they would probably just send in the same one
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As I'm feeling increasingly negative at this point, and am already thinking ahead to the fall 2012 application cycle, I have a question: is it too much to ask a professor to second your recommendation again the second time you apply?
My department is really small- there are only 6 professors. This year, I asked the 3 professors that I'm closest to to write the LORs. They seemed a little surprised at how many schools I applied to (6). It's not that normal to apply to that many over here. I am thinking to email them within the next few weeks and ask them to save the letters they wrote for me, if possible, as I *might* need to send them all over again next year.
Has anyone had experience doing this? Were you met with a favorable response?
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Her response might mean nothing at all. I am the director of an art gallery and I get a lot of emails. I view all of them on my blackberry. I try my best to respond to thoughtful email messages in a similarly thoughtful way - often this means that I respond in a less timely manner, and always from a computer. When I receive emails asking whether I've received emails, I almost always respond quickly from my blackberry in order to quell any fears on the part of the sender. I almost treat it like a text message.
I hope this helps - she might not have meant anything at all with her flippant email, and I certainly wouldn't write her off as rude. She may just want to take the time to reply with equal thoughtfulness.
Thanks for the nice response. Actually, I used to be like you -- I was in charge of importing goods for a fashion company from Europe to America, and also of collecting money from vendors for the goods received -- so I used to get well over 100 emails per day. As soon as I sat down at my computer at 9 AM, I would have at least 40-50 emails waiting from Europe that had to be responded to within the hour (due to the time difference). Then, when that was finished, I had to move on to the local emails from vendors. Not to mention all the other work I had to do. I always made sure that, no matter how short they were, that my answers were always polite (like you).
Unfortunately, she didn't take the time to reply with equal thoughtfulness
I sent the email back in September lol. I'm over it at this point, I just wanted to share my experience with the original poster, and I'm afraid I kind of hijacked his post. -
Well Kathiza I'm really sorry to disappoint you, but the pool of international applicants is reviewed apart, because US grad schools have... quotas. For instance, you are, let's say German. You apply in 2010 and this year, there are 45 other European people applying to the same program, your chances are lower than if you had applied in 2009 with only 10 European applying. I read this article wrote by an Harvard Adcom which explains the process : they clearly and immediatly separate international (they put a blue stickers on their applications) from the rest of the pool (people from minority get a red sticker). Then they make the decisions. Final step? they adjust the decisions according to the School quotas policy. I'll post the article in question.
So do you have more chances to get in as an International? Theoretically yes, because there are fewer of us compared to US students. But you are not competing with all international students, it depends on how many people from your area are applying... To conclude : it's impossible to tell and don't hesitate to reapply the next year, your acceptance or rejection is also a statistical matter.
Now I'm going back to my chocolate cookies, the only thing that cheers me up !
PS : I talked to three US professors who are or were on Adcoms'. They all confirmed what the Harvard professor wrote...
now THAT's interesting. I wonder what the chances are for an international minority? and what color tag would you receive lol
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I think I may actually try to flat out ignore the results board until the end of February. I've been controlling my nerves pretty well, but my heart skipped a beat this morning when I saw an acceptance posted for my top choice school...and then realized it was for a totally different subfield/degree. I cannot become a crazy person. I have too much shit to do this month.
Anyone with me?
Ive been trying to do this for weeks already. Seriously, if you think about it, there's no reason to continually check that thing. If you're accepted or invited for an interview, you'll find out basically the same time everyone else does. And if you're rejected, well ... do you really need to obsessively check all the posts from the fortunate people who were given offers? I prefer to keep that last glimmer of hope until April 15, tyvm.
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It is so good to see that I am not the only one quickly getting out of bed any single time my phone notifies an email in the middle of the night!! Damn you useless Facebook messages and Columbia admission blog! Stop sending me articles about the School, send out my decision!!!
I have trouble focusing on my job from 15pm to 2am. I'm also relieved that other International students haven't gotten their decisions yet when some Americans have.
I turned off my facebook notifications, but i get SO many GradCafe forum notifications its crazy! Today I woke up to 22 new emails, almost all from GradCafe. I was *praying* that I would find an email from a school buried in between them, but no dice. sigh.
Well, in my case I cant be sure if the school *only* sent invitations to Americans or not, there just happened to be two americans that reported the invitations, and no internationals. The idea that they're waiting on international interview requests is what lets me sleep at night
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I totally feel the same. And what makes it worse: Some US students already had interviews at "my" schools, "my" programs.
Don't worry, I'm in the same boat, too. One of my schools seems to have given out interview requests already. The only thing that's keeping me sane is that both students were American and were invited to the interview weekend. I'm telling myself that International students will come later ...
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I was wondering for all the internationals out there (I'm from UK) if anyone else is being driven nuts by the waiting, made worse by the time difference!
I hate getting up every day trying not to think about this all but having to wait til 2pm (and even 5pm West coast!) before people will even make it into their offices stateside, let alone get in any contact!
I've tried thinking of those morning hours as my 'safe time' when there is absolutely NO USE worrying as everyone who has important decisions to make about me is probably fast asleep, but no luck!!
Any similar experiences, or tips to pass the time?!
xo
SO in the same situation. I'm in Istanbul, so I have to wait until 4 pm for the stress to start. Of course, this is no way means that I sit around, relaxed until 4 pm -- nope. Instead, I check my email obsessively as soon as I wake up, thinking that a POI will be *so* excited to give me the good news that he'll write me at 3 am EST.
And do you wake up in the morning, wondering if you have any good news waiting for you in your inbox? It's like the excitement of Christmas morning, but without the guaranteed presents. I've even woken up, checked my mail on my phone, then gone back to bed.
I would LOVE some insight on how to pass the time, because if not it's going to be a loooonngg february.
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So I found out through the grapevine I was rejected from my dream program. They are having interviews in 2 weeks and unfortunately I am not one of the applicants.
When I found this out yesterday, I was sad, I felt I was a great candidate- lots of research experience, publications, blah blah blah. Oddly enough (and the point of my post) I cannot explain to you the joy and the sense of relief I felt once I realized it was all over now. I can move on to my plan B (permanent scientist) and make a hell of a lot more money. I have been offerred a job through one of my POI's who was THRILLED i did not get into grad school because they want a straight up scientist and not a grad student who is taking classes.......
I hope this is inspiring or helpful to some people who see no light at the end of the tunnel. I promised I would cry myself to weeks if I didn't get in but even if I didn't have this job offer (which I only found out about like 3 mins ago) I woke up this morning in a hell of a better mood.
SO good luck to waiting and hang tight!
First off, congrats on landing an amazing job!
Your story was inspiring. I truly feel like things happen for a reason, and yours is a perfect example. It's funny that you wrote this, because the past few days I've been seriously putting together a plan B ... and truth is, the plan B is ... awesome. It would involve my moving to a country Ive been wanting to live in for a very long time.
I put a lot of work into the Ph.d apps, and at this point I feel like if I'm meant to go I'll be accepted. Or, if I'm meant to take the leap and continue my European adventure, I won't be accepted. Call me naive but it helps alleviate the stress a little bit.
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YESSSSS February is here!!! I am so excited/nervous I ate two chicken pot pies in one sitting! I don't think I will hear anything definitive until March but I know I should at least hear something about interviews this month!
haha! Ive been craving Dominoes like a fiend. Im trying to limit myself to once a week though. Can't say the same about whiskey.
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Well, that's assuming the places you applied to only accepts 10% of their applicants. I would suspect that some of them might accept more than 10%. You can check by looking at the acceptance rates that Peterson's has here http://www.petersons...te-schools.aspx Just search for your program and school. Of course, the info Peterson's has seems to be a rough guide, since they don't seem to separate Masters and PhD applicants, but it seems a reasonable guide IMO.
thanks for that website! I thought the acceptance rates were going to be much lower. Now, with my new calculations, I'm down to about 35%. Not bad.
EDIT: by the way, how old is the data? the application fees are way off lol.
EDIT EDIT: I am by no means taking this seriously. But I still enjoyed it.
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has anyone else been getting an inordinate amount of emails from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee?? How annoying are those?? The other day, I heard my email "ping" and I ran over to check who it was from. I didn't have my contacts in so all I could see was a long name as the sender. My heart stopped, thinking it was from a university. Of course, once I could see properly I realized it was a spam email from "President Obama". Argh!!!!
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Think of it this way: Give yourself an approximate probability of getting accepted at each university. Provided your GPA, GRE scores, letters of rec, etc. are solid, this should be a viable way.
Say you're pessimistic. Give yourself a 10% chance at each university. Now do the math for getting accepted to at least one: .9^15. That gives you only a 20% chance of being rejected by every university that you applied to.
Oh no! I only applied to 6 schools, so by this calculation I have a 53% chance of being rejected by every school. I knew it. The odds are against me.
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The bad part is when you know that your dream school is having interviews in about 2 weeks and you still haven't got an invite. I find myself crying at random times when I look at my calendar. I feel so pitiful these days!!! This application season can't come to an end soon enough!!!
Im going through the same thing. Schools I applied to are starting to have interviews and I still havent heard a THING. I have now started going over every detail of my application in my head and thinking about all the things I should've changed. When I'm not doing that, I'm questioning my life decisions. UGH.
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Same for me, as soon as the date turned to February 1st, I thought "here we go!"
On a side note, has this day seemed REALLY long? Maybe because of all the anticipation and worry, but I was really shocked to look down at my calendar right now & see Feb. 1 still. I thought for sure it was the 2nd already.
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I agree with Natsteel, Akraz. I wouldn't try to contact them at this point. Let the chips fall where they may.
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yep, i figured the same - if a question came to her mind and she wanted to ask me about it, she would -- no need for me to harass further.
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I've got an interview request from NYU. We haven't fixed the time slot yet. The two slots they suggested do not work for me.
That's great, good luck with the interview!
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So the Results section says that people have received interview requests from Yale and NYU ... was it anyone from this forum?
Plan B?
in Waiting it Out
Posted
lol! maybe we'll cross paths as we both try to survive