explodingstressball

How many did you apply to?

Yale won't be for a week or so (is my guess), called the graduate administrator yesterday to ask.

The NYU department is a weird one.

I don't think it would harm anyone to send them an e-mail stating that you appreciate their time/energy, and that you just wanted to take the opportunity to express your sincere interest in the department, etc.

Dinged by UCLA last night. Boo! I actually was excited about their faculty, although their administrative staff was straight up rude.

In another nerve-wracking step, I just submitted two papers of mine for publication in journals. We'll see how that goes!

I got my first rejection this season on my birthday. Coincidentally, also on a Monday. Bloody Monday, indeed.

Monday, bloody Monday.

A moment of levity: Anyone have any fun Valentine's Day dates planned?

My guess is not. Their graduate administrator already left for the day.

I called initially because I was utterly confused by something on their website that was contradictory and was basically told that it was my problem, solve it. It was like being told that my graduate career depended upon solving a Zen koan.

Has anyone ever judged a department and your inclination to accept an offer based upon their friendliness on the phone? There's a department that I keep trying to contact and every interaction I've had with them (mind you, administrative staff, but still) has been extremely unpleasant and borderline rude. Hmmm.

My 2¢: As my screen name would indicate, I'm hardly in a position to counsel anyone not freak out. All last week before I got my first acceptance I was literally vibrating with nervous energy, but now that I've gotten one, I guess I see the process a little differently. First, the odds of getting into any program are ridiculously low, at least mathematically. Now this is still a little confusing to me, because while a school like Stanford might get 500 applications and only admit 10 students, it's hard to judge the calibre of that huge number of 500 people. Are there 500 equally qualified and wonderful candidates, from which 10 are just so SUPER AMAZING that they are accepted (which would give anyone a 1/50 shot of being admitted. Ouch.) or were there maybe 100 people who applied for the heck of it, 200 people whose stats are really bad, 50 people who didn't fill out the form properly, and therefore only 150 viable candidates? Who can say, but that's something I often think about. Also, I was fortunate to have a conversation with a former professor of mine who is currently on the adcom for his school. He reminded me that he personally had rejected people who had perfect stats (4.0, 1600 GRE) and admitted people who were less than perfect based upon their letters of recommendations and personal statements. So there's no mathematical formula for "getting in" to a school. While I don't find any of these musings particularly comforting, they are something to consider because they all add up to say that there's no way, as far as I can discern, of doing this "right" or doing it "wrong." Sure there are certain low-level improvements one could make (spell checking, getting good letters), but I don't think that anyone here has mastered the art of applying to graduate school because each school is so different in what it looks for. And I think the other thing to remember is that at least the professors with whom I have spoken remind me that they look at each student individually. Another person's acceptance doesn't make yours more difficult; just like someone else being rejected doesn't make you particularly more or less likely to be so. Anyhoo, just my two cents on the thoughts that've been going through my head about this whole process.

I know that Princeton's adcom is meeting, but don't know if they've made any final decisions.

Although I already have one acceptance, like the way you're thinking. This whole process has taught me a lot about how to represent myself and my interests in this field.

Oh no! I'm also eagerly waiting for my own little UCLA bundle of joy.

Time to update your signature! Congratulations!

It depends on the country you live in. In the US, at least in my city, I'm lucky if the mailman bothers to show up once every few days, let alone a few times a day!

It would seem that a lot of schools look pretty bleak when it comes to acceptance rates. Consider Duke: http://gradschool.duke.edu/about/statistics/admitpols.htm

Do you guys think it's rude to call a department and ask when they anticipate letting candidates out of their misery know?

Believe me, I am the KING of reading too much into things and freaking out, but telephone interviews are strange creatures. No body language queues to go by.

I think a lot of these programs expect interviews to be a little awkward. Unless you said anything truly awful, I'd take it with a grain of salt.

Or some seem to trickle out in no perceptible patterns what-so-ever (read: UCLA)

Congratulations!

Time to update your signature, then! Admitted = 1.