synthla

Ironically, we only finally settled on a date last week. Given that decisions seemed to be imminent, I made the mistake of thinking that the invite constituted an informal notification, with the formal notification something that would come in due time. Otherwise, why waste their time given that the only people I'm meeting with are those who supposedly are already supporting me. Not meeting with anyone whose mind I can change (for the better at least!). They did mention the recruitng weekend in March as a possibility, but I'll probably be unavailable on those days.

Well I'll be there tomorrow, so I'll let you know what I think. I seem to be in a bizarre predicament. After they had decided to support my application, I was invited by the professors in my field to visit and meet them. Not that big of a deal because UCSB is not far from me, but I had sort of assumed that I would either officially be admitted, or rejected and the visit cancelled, by the time the date rolled around. Not so apparently. So this will be interesting/awkward, and potentially a great waste of time, which I'm not pleased about.

Glad I'm not the only one. Unfortunately it was one of those dreams so realistic that I woke up and it only slowly dawned upon me that the acceptance hadn't actually happened. That was before I got the first real one, but still...

It truly reveals the idiosyncratic nature of the review process. The first interaction I had with any school after submitting applications was a request for an informal interview. After completing that I was of course thinking that if so much in my application was unclear to School A, surely the same questions would occur to every other school, but they may not bother to ask, but just reject me instead. Apparently that's not the case - my one admission so far had no follow-up questions or informal interviews; just an acceptance.

Definitely take the research and publishing opportunities if you're still in school and have the opportunity to pursue them; on the other hand, if those opportunities have passed you by, as they had me, don't think that they'll necessarily sink your application. I went to a small liberal arts college... half the faculty weren't even publishing anymore, so there weren't a lot of opportunities to do so as an undergrad.

Congrats to the UCSD admit that just posted! What is your area of interest? Did they indicate funding decisions would be forthcoming? Obviously I'm not a candidate there any longer, but still curious - especially on the latter because I have applied to other UCs. EDIT: *Smack* - just noticed you said there was no mention of funding.

I believe, contradictorily, that it has made me both saner and crazier during this process, just in different respects. I enjoy the comraderie, but I probably obsess far more than I would otherwise. As to Part 1 of your post, Tuesday would be insufficient. I was researching Indiana admits from years past, and I think I remember seeing that people were still admitted with full funding as late as mid-March, which would mean that wait list opportunities are quite real and not hearing anything first thing doesn't seal your doom.

Yeah, Yale would probably have recycled my application by printing office memos on the reverse side, and thus I didn't even consider applying, so I would benefit from some trickle-down admissions as well. Please. Thanks. :wink: Ps. First dibs goes to Misterpat, however.

So who are our Yale admits? Congratulations!

I hear you on the NYC -> Bloomington transition. I actually lived in NYC for 4 years after undergrad, and have lived in LA for the last 5, so we will be in similar positions, but if you have to be in Indiana, Bloomington is as good as it gets, which is probably understating how livable it really is (and the cost of living is super low). My primary interest, at it's most concentrated, is the interplay between religion and political centralization in Reformation-era France, but for my secondary field, I'm heavily leaning toward late Imperial Russia.

Pretty fantastic, I'll admit. The letter had a detailed breakdown... fellowship first and fifth year and a combo of fellowship and TA work second, third and fourth, which I think is pretty standard in our field. I mean it's nowhere near what I'm making at my full-time job, but the fact that anyone is willing to pay me anything to do exactly what I want to do for at least 5 years is amazing to me. (Especially in today's economy.) Any actual communication from UCSB yet? I haven't heard anything myself and haven't seen any other results post.

Congrats back at you! I'm probably going to visit campus the first week of March. Have you been there? I grew up in Indiana so I know Bloomington and have been to the Indiana campus, but haven't made an "official" visit. Never thought I'd be back in Indiana after leaving nine years ago, but Bloomington is a great place.

You read my mind.

I also just got an admission letter from Indiana this morning, including details on the 5 year funding package. This more than makes up for UCSD on Wednesday. Indiana has been one of my top choices throughout the process and I'm thrilled with my appointed advisor. Good way to go into the weekend.

Meh... I've always done pretty well with standardized tests, but I just feel lucky that schools place any importance on them because I certainly don't think they mean much. There certainly hasn't been a strong positive correlation between my test scores and GPAs... if only...

And you with yours - I'll be keeping a close eye out for the news of your first acceptance...

Well I'm not a History of Disability person myself, so I can't advise you there with much accuracy (I'm early modern Europe - about as traditional as it gets). However, I'd think it would help in that if you identify faculty pursuing this area, I'm guessing that you will not have as much competition for admission as with the more traditional subfields. Certainly I don't think your subfield is well represented on thegradcafe, so to the extent the sample here bears any correlation to the rest of the applicant field, I'd think you're in a good spot.

But have you been to Santa Barbara? It's pretty convincing a locale. Then again, what am I complaining about - if you had, I'd just have that much more competition. :wink:

The extent to which GRE scores matters is a mystery to me. Standardized tests would seem to be out of fashion in intellectual circles so you would think that ad comms would not take them as the end all be all of an application. Would seem to come into play more if you were in a university wide competition for a fellowship or something where they have little else to go on. But this would be a description of my idealized perspective of the world, and probably bears little resemblance to reality.

http://www.historians.org/projects/cge/PhD/Questions.cfm You might find this helpful as well... geared more toward history. There are suggested questions about half way down the page.

I would say that most of the people dealing with admissions have probably dealt with enough of them that they've seen it all, so to speak. If your professor flaked, then there has probably been at least one other professor who has flaked in the last ten or fifteen years, so you won't be the first. I can't imagine why they would doubt you if you're being honest. And if you're comfortable with your application without MIA's recommendation, I wouldn't bother him further.

Haha - that does make a difference. Good luck with them when they come!

I still wouldn't trade my SLAC experience for anything though... I'm still quite actively involved with mine, even though I'm a couple thousand miles from it now. I've having a fun time calling admitted high school seniors right now, when all I really want are some phone calls of my own.

I've had a couple wrong numbers recently that were really disappointing for me. But I agree, I'm not sure why you wouldn't want to talk to someone telling you that you've been accepted.

How rude of me not to say so already (say, in my last post), but Congrats on UCSB!