katie1421

Yep, quite a bit depends on whether you want to get a degree in medieval history or medieval studies. Your list is looking good. I'd also suggest taking a look at Rutgers and Saint Louis University.

Thanks for this information! I was starting to wonder if I was ever going be hearing anything from them. Agreed that April seems very late for notification. I wouldn't really want to attend Indiana without ever having seen the campus, so at this point I think I'm just writing it off. Thanks again for making the call and sharing the info!

I'm glad I wasn't the only one who thought that. I did a little bit of a double take when I realized that that amount of money only constituted 1/3 of the tuition. I probably should have applied to a few extra MA programs as well. I'm not sure if this is how things work - the financial side of graduate school is not something I know a whole lot about - but it seems like there's at least a slight possibility that some extra money might open up if not a lot of people take them up on the offer. If you're really sold on U Chicago, it's at least worth a shot to wait around a bit and see how things go.

Same thing for me. I'd love to head over to Chicago, but 1/3 tuition isn't going to be enough. It was a nice offer, though.

What kind of teaching have you been doing? If you play this up on your application in the right way, I think it could easily come across as an asset to your application, rather than a distraction from your studies. You seem to have a rather wide array of different experiences, from research to teaching, that will all be helpful as a PhD student. I think you could definitely present the 3.5 years as time spent building up experiences rather than as lacking in diligence, or anything like that. Best of luck!

I'm a medievalist as well. Congratulations on the acceptances to UNC-CH and UMinnesota! I'm still waiting on a funded offer (I've gotten into Catholic University, but financial decisions aren't released until March). What other schools are you waiting on?

Well, mine was a rejection. Turns out HistoryGrizzly was right all along: the glass really is half empty. /

My hopes are currently hovering around that level as well. Although I'll play the optimist to your pessimist, and say that the only reason for the delay is the fact that it's going to take quite a bit of time for whoever is accepting us to craft precisely detailed and personalized acceptance emails.

I hadn't thought of it that way, but you're probably right. Yikes.

The website seems to suggest that once it's posted that the decision has been made, a letter is sent "within approximately two weeks."

I just checked mine, and while the status section didn't have any information, it did say that it was in the department. I wouldn't read too much into that either way, though. Hope you're managing the ups and downs as well! I wish I had some tips to give you, but so far the only one I've managed to follow myself is to make sure that I leave GC at least occasionally and try to keep busy. Still stressed, though.

Thanks for the heads up, I didn't think it would be worth checking anything related to BU for a while. My status says the same thing: "decision on admission made on 2/8/11." Unfortunately, they don't seem to want me to know what the decision is? Mysterious. edit: Ah, never mind. It turns out that the departmental decision has to be forwarded to the Graduate School before anyone gets officially notified. That's what I get for not reading the fine print. I'm not really sure I can contribute much insight into whether it'll be good news or bad news, but at least things are moving along.

I understand. I just thought that this thread took a surprising turn towards the hostile fairly quickly, and I just wanted to point out that everyone seems sort of right to one degree or another.

Well, since this is just one case, it doesn't really prove anyone definitively right or wrong. I think a good rule of thumb is to understand that many programs will let you know if something is missing from your application. However, not all of them do. So if there's any legitimate reason for you to think there's a possibility that something hasn't arrived, make sure you do all you can to check into it.

Well, you know, it's all relative! Six weeks isn't all that long.