8in2009

Anyone else accepted at Brandeis this year?

Does anyone have advice about Waltham, Massachusetts, where Brandeis is located? I used to live a few towns over from Waltham, but that was before I had to get an apartment, and I've never actually been to Waltham.

I'm glad to read this. It's nice to think that some of the results posted by people who heard from future advisors don't necessarily mean that everyone who has been accepted has already heard.

I've certainly been thinking about it as a very real possibility. In the short term, I'd do my best to keep my current job. Then I'd think hard about whether I should try to apply again. And I'd think hard about whether I should go to law school instead, where a good LSAT can all but guarantee that you get in a few places. But, I still have quite a few places left to hear from.

Your signature says that you've been accepted at one, so that's not so bad.

Most schools didn't want to reject a lot of applicants on Friday the thirteenth. Then there was the weekend. Then Monday was a federal holiday. And now the schools have a difficult problem: they can admit fewer people this year, because of the economic downturn, but because of the economic downturn, people are more likely to accept any offer. So schools are having a hard time making decisions. Completely uninformed, but that's my guess.

I suppose that no one is expecting any news today, since it's Presidents' Day. Right?

Thanks for the information, Shancis. Congratulations on making it at least to the short waiting list.

On the one hand, I'm sure that I want to go to graduate school, so I regret anything that I left undone that might have given me a better chance. On the other hand, waiting for graduate schools to tell me what is going to happen with my life is awful. At least I only have to wait eight schools (well, seven now).

I don't mean so much what are the odds of getting into a particular school, but what are the odds for anybody getting into at least one program. In other words, there are X thousand people applying to graduate schools, of whom Y thousand will actually matriculate in the fall. It seems to me like someone would have those numbers.

Is anyone aware of statistics about the percentage of applicants to graduate school who are accepted by at least one school? I tried looking at the Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed, but I didn't find any stats. It would be nice too if those stats were broken down by discipline.