keymash

My first round of applications a few years back, I emailed one school that I hadn't heard from to say that I had funded offers elsewhere and to take me out of the running if they were still reviewing. This was early April, and it was by far the least prestigious and competitive program of all that I applied to. I had two funded PhD offers at my top two choices, and a funded Master's at another highly selective program that I ended up taking because I decided I wasn't quite ready to commit to a PhD. The school wrote me back to say that they some piece of my application had been lost (though the online system said it was fully complete), and rather than informing me so that I could get them another copy, decided not to do anything. They told me that they flat out just didn't review my application, didn't feel the need to inform of me this fact. Just cashed my check and called it a day. I wouldn't have know if I hadn't emailed them. So yeah, ridiculous stuff like this happens, but I don't think it's common. If you're concerned, a short email just to confirm that your materials have been received probably wouldn't go amiss. Again, I wouldn't be too concerned about it because I really don't think what happened in my case is a normal occurrence, but if it'll put your mind at ease, admissions offices I've found are pretty understanding about letting you know that your application is complete and under review if you ask.

Media/Communications PhD, major urban areas, large, private institutions: School A: $30,000 a year, 4-5 years, 2-year teaching commitment School B: details pending, but previous years have been around 24-25K

No prob -- I don't know about anyone else. I assume others have gotten acceptances, but don't personally know anyone else that has applied this year. I actually just opened the physical letter today and that's just for the Provost fellowship, not the actual acceptance. So the actual acceptance letter I only have in email form. It does include info about a visiting weekend for accepted students that will be happening the second week of March, though. Their department is going to start coordinating travel with students at some point next week. Hope that helps!

Thanks for the info! Here's to hoping more calls will be going out after the holiday weekend. I got an email notification about the Provost fellowship on Feb 10th, but didn't receive the actual acceptance letter (both email and regular mail) until the 18th. Last I heard from a friend within the department (last week) was that they were still discussing candidates. Hope that helps!

Last round, I had applied to 8 schools and was in full panic-mode by March because all I had heard was one rejection. As it turned out, I had actually been accepted by my top three programs, and they had all unsuccessfully tried to call me. I'd lost my phone and gotten a new number the previous month and it hadn't even occurred to me that the notification wouldn't come by email. This time around (I had decided to turn down the PhD programs last time and do a fully-funded masters in a totally different field), I'm far more laid back (and everyone IS using email). I only applied to two programs, have been accepted to one, and am generally mellow and amazed that this process was so stressful last time. Now I'm mainly anxious to find out for the second school so that I can lay out what my options are going forward and start making arrangements for whatever I decide.

I only applied to two programs -- PhD at USC Annenberg and NYU Media, Culture, and Communications. I've already been accepted to USC, but have yet to hear anything from NYU (unless you count one of their profs following me on twitter). Has anyone else applied to the MCC program? If so, any news?

I just had something similar occur -- a very prominent professor in one of the programs I applied to just started following me on twitter. After the immediate freak-out of "oh my god, what were my last five tweets about?" I've been going back and forth about whether or not I should send a DM . . .

So here's the messed-up thing about PhDs in the hard humanities -- sometimes you can get rejected because they think you're not quite ready for the level of scholarship and professionalization required in a PhD program, and then you can go out and work really hard and build up an impressive body of work to prove that you are, and then . . . you can get rejected for being too professionalized already. There can be a stigma against having too much other academic experience, because there's a perception that they will need to retrain you. Especially with some of the top-tier, extremely selective programs, there's a desire to mold and brand the students that they invest in, which is harder if your intellectual outlook has already been dramatically shaped by another program at an advanced level. This isn't universal, of course, and different departments have very different philosophies on these sorts of things. I'm speaking from only my experience and those of my colleagues, mentors, and friends. The first time I applied to PhD programs (in Comparative LIterature), I got into my top choices, all of which were highly selective (one only accepted 5-6 students), and I noticed that a significant majority of the people I saw on my accepted-student visits were straight out of undergraduate like I was at the time (not counting years abroad on fellowships, etc). One school turned me off by implying very strongly that if I went there, they would be able to shape me into the scholar that they believe I should be. Another explicitly noted that they actually preferred people out of undergrad. I wound up not taking any of the offers, going into a funded masters in a different field, turning down a deferred offer two years later, and then heading out into the professional world to try that out for a while. I recently decided to maybe head back into academia, and applied to PhDs for this fall. In that process, I spoke to a number of professors (many on admissions committees) about the challenges I had to address as someone returning to academia after a couple of years out. Over-professionalization was one. Another was age. I don't know how old you are, but I was warned very explicitly both when I left academia and when I started considering coming back that I needed to start my PhD sooner rather than later (I was given surprisingly specific range of 27-28 as the drop-dead age deadline for starting a PhD from three different very successful professors, though taken with a grain of salt that they were trying to get me to stop stalling already) because the reality was that a lot of the most successful academics just charged through without detours. Admissions committees will consider that in putting together a cohort, but they will also consider that if you're older it will be harder to place you in jobs because the hiring committees will be younger than you. While this shouldn't be a problem in terms of talent and ability, academics are often not the most socially adept, and I've heard of people rejecting potential hires because they just felt awkward about hiring someone older than them in a lower position. Whew, that got long-winded and demoralizing. But I don't think it should be because here's the thing: you've already proven you can do work outside academia. You can make it professionally writing, and while journalism isn't exactly a growing profession, it's still doing better than the academic job market in the humanities (A lit professor gave me this advice despite having achieved the holy grail of tenure at not one, but two world-renowned institutions: "If you can do ANYTHING but this and be happy, don't do this"). So while the prospect of not getting into programs sucks, it's important to keep in mind that you have skillsets and experience that may allow you to be more flexible and ultimately more productive with your life than a lot of those students who did get in. If you really, really want to go into academia as a life path, I would actually suggest thinking about switching fields if your interests allow it. There a lot of emerging disciplines that rightfully see experience outside academia as a good thing. As for back-up plans, there are a lot of really great companies out there that genuinely appreciate the kind of intellectual play and rigor you find in the academic world (IDEO comes to mind), and you'll get to have a quality of life that your academic compatriots can only dream of.