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There are a couple accepts from the end of January on the results page, but that's it. I don't recall whether anyone claimed them in this thread though.

I agree. Although if the GPA cut-off was a strict minimum requirement for admission, I'd actually suggest it's the administrative staff's job to catch such a thing. I'd prefer, in fact, that such things be made explicit before people submit and pay application fees.

I don't know, I frequent the CHE forum regularly (though I haven't registered), and at least the 'teaching' subforum, which I read the most, seems pretty 'soft' and self-congratulatory. Every time someone posts their issues, it's always the students' fault, and thereafter flows a stream of "students are so incompetent, stupid, childish, etc." reassurances. I'm not even disagreeing with that, but it seems at least as uncritical and 'support-group'-like as these forums.

Certainly true, but in this case, they really shouldn't have e-mailed an acceptance, albeit unofficial, to the OP, and, moreover, informed him that they were 'working on the financial package'. From the description, it wasn't an individual prof speaking on his own behalf, but expressing "the judgment of the committee", so to speak. There's no way this is anything other than incompetence.

I can't say that I don't share some of that envy of the OP, but I also don't think anything he's said has been boastful or immodest. To the OP, though, are you already excluding Stanford and Columbia? Why so?

Anyone heard from Vanderbilt? They sent out that e-mail about notifying applicants "soon", but I haven't received anything. I'm assuming a reject but I'd appreciate knowing for sure.

No, not at all, any examples are great. I was talking about papers because that's where these sorts of things annoy the most. I certainly understand a more casual attitude on the internet and in less formal settings.

Wow, I've never seen those particular examples. I think I would literally burst out laughing if I saw "Viola!" in a paper. Although I can't see many circumstances where even the correct word would be used in an academic setting.

Interesting. Can you elaborate on the difference? In my OP, I was sort of using 'grammatical' in a loose way, but I really would be interested to hear from someone in linguistics on this. The "its/it's" mistake: spelling or grammar? From my lay perspective, I'd say a spelling mistake is when a word is correctly used but just spelled incorrectly, where it is a grammatical mistake when the wrong word is used altogether (though most of these are homonyms). EDIT: I also wouldn't call it a matter of 'word choice', which I see more as an error in which there is some kind of semantic difficulty; someone meant one thing but used a word which doesn't quite capture what they presumably intend or is awkward/vague/ambiguous in some way.

the beginning

Hmm, it seems like they're trying too hard to be 'youthful' in their internet-speak. That, or they're employing excellent snark. Yes. What I don't get about some of these is that it actually takes more effort to type the incorrect word. Presumably, it's more work to type "loose" instead of "lose", even if that difference is marginal.

Oh, I certainly understand some confusion if English isn't one's native language. God knows that my grammar is probably terrible in the only other language in which I am semi-fluent (French). As for that specific issue: especially or specially? So, one might say "This is an especially trying time for prospective graduate students, an agony which is amplified by a specially tailored forum on which to commiserate".

I'm not a linguist or literature major, and I freely concede that I occasionally make mistakes, but there seems to be a growing lack of 'grammatical sense', so to speak. I mean, when I'm writing and reading, I have this constant awareness of whether words and sentences look and sound right and pleasing, as I'm sure many of you have. This seems to be an eroding capability; (some) students have seemed completely oblivious to their repeated and egregious errors. This suggests that the mistakes are not momentary instances of mental collapse but systematic learned behaviour, as though somewhere along the way, "you're" and "your" became confused, "affect" and "effect" became interchangeable, and so on. Unfortunate, really. EDIT: It may also be the case that, increasingly, people just don't care. They don't read back what they've written, they don't look up something if they're unsure but, instead, guess, and they don't value written expression as a representation of themselves, as a "face to the world".

Yes, that's right. I also had one place where I sent my entire MA thesis, but I indicated a portion of it which I wanted read if time was a constraint (which it surely was). I received funding details today from my one admit thus far, and am pleasantly surprised. I'm feeling good about that choice if it were to come down to it. Congrats to all the recent admits! The week has seemed a little quiet, hopefully things start moving tomorrow.

The mistake of using the contraction <it's> for the possessive <its> is annoying to all heck, and seems to be becoming more and more prevalent, to the point where I've seen it numerous times in reputable news sources. You wouldn't believe the number of times I came across it while grading student papers. What is going on? Another one, and I got this from someone's post, so I apologize for stepping on that poster's shoes: <advice> is a noun, <advise> is a verb. The pronunciations are different. One advises someone by giving them advice. An advicory opinion: I advice everyone in future to take this advise and stop using advize incorrectly. What are your grammatical annoyances?

I would also say it's not worth it, but only you can decide how confident you are in your other applications and whether you'll potentially regret not doing it.

The world is a spheroid region 705 meters in diameter. And these protests are qualitatively very different in purpose and scope. They don't portend the imminent apocalypse. There's already a thread for the Wisconsin situation, specifically.

Uh, why not? Forums is a perfectly acceptable plural form of 'forum'.

Thanks, The Realist and others, for all your responses. I certainly understand that the process is more complex and less structured or formalized than my assumptions suggest. I also understand the staggered acceptances thing, even if it does result in greater anxiety for applicants.

Wow, some real superstars in here! Congrats to the Harvard admits! Tough decisions lie ahead.

I don't see what the first point has to do with anything. By the description of the Realist's OP, it's clear that there's a point at which all decisions have been made. As balderdash and I have said, it doesn't matter, after that, when decisions are sent out, only that they're all sent out on a specified date. This could be done administratively, with individual faculty following up on their own. I also don't understand your point about funding at all. How would they admit more people than they could fund? If they wanted a cohort of, say, 10 students, they could send out admits to them, waitlist a sufficient number of others (perhaps 20 or so; a good number could probably be ascertained through trial and error, modeling, or just educated guessing), and reject the rest who under no circumstances would have been admitted. That's the stage of the decisions I'm suggesting could be sent out simultaneously. Granted, being waitlisted is another kind of agony, but at least every applicant gets a clear idea of where they stand.

Well, I'm not going to take this personally, because I don't think that was your intent, but my concerns have nothing to do with not being able to 'take it'. I simply would like the process to be more rational and transparent than it is. If we could alleviate some of the more negative aspects of the process while not substantively changing it, why should we not think about it? I'm not asking for someone to 'hold my hand' and 'look out for my feelings'; if anything, I'm asking to get rejected outright several times, in my case. As I said, I'm not expecting adcomms to care about my feelings, but about the efficacy and orderliness of their own processes, with the side-effect of making it 'easier', i.e., more predictable, on applicants. Alright, maybe I did take it a little personally. Yes, exactly.

Have you read the 'admissions committee notes' thread? I've asked these sorts of questions there, and gotten interesting responses from a faculty member; feel free to add your thoughts.

Thanks for responding. At the risk of sounding pretentious, which, believe me, I'm not, I do have an MA and have some idea of the various duties and commitments faculty have. I fully expect that they "don't really care" about our 'feelings' as applicants. I think these suggestions, though, actually make it easier in a number of ways for faculty: they wouldn't, for instance, be fielding 'endless emails' from applicants if there wasn't so much uncertainty and opacity in the process. I'm not suggesting that they should be pressured to make decisions quicker; for all I care, the date could be the middle or end of March, or even later (personally, I don't see a reason why the whole admissions calendar couldn't be pushed a few months, but that's a different issue). In terms of the notifications, by your account of the process, at some point, all decisions have been made, no? After that, the faculty on the admissions committee are pretty much done their part. Since most of the rejects usually come in the form of a generic letter, I don't see why this isn't just an administrative matter: create a mailing list of all the rejects and send them out, and do the same with the accepts and waitlists. If individual professors want to e-mail 'their' prospective students, they can do so at their own leisure, but at least everyone knows where they stand. I'm not suggesting, again, that the notifications need to be sent out right after decisions are made, only that all notifications are sent at the same time (or within a few hours). Forgive me if I'm just missing something obvious here, but I don't think these changes would even affect in any way the actual decision-making process, only the actual notifications. They would also be no more taxing on the faculty or the department; as I suggested, they may even alleviate some of the work.

Yes, you really need to provide more information if you want any useful advice. Also, it depends on what each is offering.