doobiebrothers

I wouldn't loose hope. I know several people who have turned them down for other offers. If they are in there they likely have other top offers. 

waitlisted at harvard; they say it's a "shortlist;" is there anything to do at this point???

I didn't want to post on here until I got second confirmation but I was the one who got the Harvard admit in Religion, Gender, Culture subfield. Still no word on funding and the like, just two POIs sending me congratulatory emails.

OMG HARVARD PLEASE JUST ANNOUNCE THE RESULTS. k thanks bye.

OMG HARVARD PLEASE JUST ANNOUNCE THE RESULTS. k thanks bye.

"Fine! I'll go make my own geophysics department! With blackjack! And hookers!"

So, that's why professors were acting odd. In at HDS.
 
Edit: I'm Religion and Society and a masters student there currently. 

In at Baylor. Church History.

from what I was told by a student who got in last year, Harvard CSR will announce acceptances at some point between the 17th and 19th of february, barring snowpocalypse

go bruins!

Does anyone else engage in endless imaginary committee meetings, where you analyze your application as though you are the committee? I'm in the weird situation of having been on the committee of the department to which I'm applying, and I know the people and the process almost too well (I have seen the sausage being made, my friends, and it is ugly.)
 
So I sit almost every day since i hit the submit button and  play the committee in my head:
 
Does doobie make it past the first round?
158 applicants, 6 slots, 6 subfields
 
about 50 don't have the grades, gre's, sop to be considered, so they go (doobie is fine) (this is all sorted out in the first week of january)
 
108 to go, give them to two readers, who scale them from 1-4, 4 being the highest, based on 4 different criteria
readers are: professors, and sometimes two students, sometimes the dean (6-10 people)
these apps are read the second week of january
1. academic accomplishment (grades, GRE)
2. research potential (SOP, letters, writing sample)
3. leadership, extracurric (small part, but matters)
4. "personality" (Do I want to be stuck with this person for the next 6 years?)
 
I've got weak-ish grades in my MA but very strong in my BA and GRE, so maybe a 3 academically
In my own head I think I have research potential, but who knows what the committee will say? maybe if i'm lucky a 3.5
lot's of volunteering, particularly tutoring/teaching. maybe a 3.5 or four
personality gets tricky. the adcom REALLY knows me well--did I make a good impression? will this backfire? depending on who reads it, a 3.0 or a 3.5? could I dare hope for a 4?
 
at this point i probably average a 3.5-3.75, depending on how nice my two readers are (pure luck). then the office secretary puts together a ranked excel sheet, at this point NOT split by sub-field. bottom probably 25 people are almost automatically out, unless they are URM. 
 
it's now the first week of february, and the application goes to chair of subfield (in my case my POI, who is also my letter writer); chair picks the top 5 people for the subfield from the spreadsheet
 
committee has the first actual in-person meeting at this point (first week of feb, probably a friday) where they hash the top 30 picks and reduce them to maybe 10, maybe 15. This is where the politics starts, and the nitpicking gets ugly. This is where I'm afraid I will come under scrutiny for a few B's that I got in grad school. Granted these were in very, very tough classes (advanced coursework in the world's second hardest language) but in the face of 30 other perfect candidates this may be enough to sink me. I also have a few small-ish errors on my SOP; again, in the face of perfection, this might be the straw that breaks my back. This is where my prof will need to "fight for me on committee," where alliances are made and broken.
 
If i make it into the top 15 (about 2 for each subfield, give or take) now it comes down to the question of which subfield gets people this year (last year mine took two, so it does not look good for me) and which advisor gets a new student (mine took one three years ago, so maybe this year will be the year). This is all hashed out in the second in-person meeting, maybe the wednesday of the second week of february, and this meeting is a doozie. 
 
Then the chosen six go to the dean of the entire school, who (usually) rubber stamps the picks--unless GRE or GPA is super low (below 3.3, below 65%)
 
If you make it into one of the chosen 6, your POI will probably email you and let you know "congrats!" by the third week of february, at which point you have pulled out all of your hair and either gained or lost 15 pounds, give or take 5 pounds (ahem, cough cough, must stop eating Macdo as I cry into my SOP). And if not, the radio silence that lasts until march 1 is a good indicator that all of your hopes and dreams--at least for this round--are dead.
 
Please tell me you guys do this too?
 

Patience is a virtue

you know doobied has never been on any adcomm right?

I'm just crossing my fingers that the same things that worked out well for me to get into my MFA program (my writing, my strong rec letters) will pay off again. My GPA for grad school was almost an entire point higher than my undergrad GPA (which i hope shows growth and not that my undergrad GPA was so shitty) and my VR and AW scores on the GRE were in the 97% so... oy. But my top choice only accepts 3 students a year. Also trying to assume I won't get in and be pleasantly surprised rather than the opposite. Not sure that one is going to work so well...

If I don't get accepted into the one program I've applied to, I will certainly regret applying to one school. At the same time, I can't see myself anywhere else. It's hard to flirt with other options when you know what you want.

Food for thought, if you're currently anxious and trying to not contact the committee/faculty at your institution too much:
 
http://chronicle.com/forums/index.php/topic,158253.0.html
 
Pat yourself on the back for showing restraint, and realize how it looks on the other end. 

that's exactly my philosophy. I only applied to one program (crazy, I know, but I did my MA there and have a pretty good sense of my fit, chances and my would-be advisor wrote my letter) and if they don't take me this year, I'll keep applying till they do.

from what I was told by a student who got in last year, Harvard CSR will announce acceptances at some point between the 17th and 19th of february, barring snowpocalypse

As a rule, verbal needs to be at least 90th percentile to be competitive for top-tier programs.  These schools are predictably cagey when asked about GRE scores.  They imply that it's possible to be admitted with low scores.  But they neglect to say that it is extremely unlikely to be admitted this way.  The main reason most programs will not reveal specific numbers or cut-off scores, however, is because it allows them to use the GRE as the primary way of rejecting applicants.  Believe it or not, some programs even reject applicants with perfect scores because such scores suggest too much "rigidity" in belief and intellectual ability.  The "safe zone" is 90 to 97 percentile, meaning these scores won't necessarily result in admission, but they at least keep you in the running.  Scores outside of this range, in most cases, result in rejection from the most competitive programs (i.e., Emory and Yale from your list).      

You might consult my good friend Sam Adams, I think he's from around your area....just kidding.

Hi guys, have you read this article about the admissions process at Stanford? It was very interesting to read in detail from someone who actually participated in the process. Very glad that I found this article: http://nlp.stanford.edu/~rkarthik/DAGAP.pdf

YES! This!
 
As they say...
 

Hi everyone,
Having been informed that I'm on the waitlist for my top choice program today, I decided to start this thread. We're in for a bumpy ride--as if waiting it out hadn't been stressful enough!
 
It's hard to tell which posts on the results page came from people who were accepted/rejected off the waitlist in previous years unless they've mentioned so in the comments section. Because of this, I decided to summarize the information found on the 2013 waitlist thread:
 

 
I tried my best to populate the table! Yes, I do have a LOT of time.
 
I guess my point of posting all of this is to show us all that there is hope. 18 of 28 posters who reported decisions on that thread got in off of the waitlist. Clearly we could have some reporting bias going on here, but nevertheless… This is pretty encouraging.
 
Best of luck to everyone! I'm told I'll hear back in March!

move to morocco and get my PhD at the university of rabat with fatimah mernissi; I'll be living there all year (will be in Tangier when I get the admissions results, inshallah) and I'll be her research assistant on a book she's writing about Jinn. Maybe marry my Moroccan boo and just live in my paradise country for the rest of my life.
 
Although probably what I'll do if I don't get in (at least at first) is cry and blame God alot.

I rewrote mine. I'll see if it pays off at all. You'll see, though: If you don't get in somewhere, a year later you will likely have second thoughts about resubmitting the same ideas exactly. To answer your question, as I understand it, your materials would be considered afresh because it's unlikely that the faculty would remember the essay or even that the same faculty would be reviewing the application (as some schools rotate responsibilities from year to year).