OnceAndFutureGrad

The only thing I have is a waitlist, and I only know that because I e-mailed the program. I'm extremely happy to have that. When I got four rejections I was devastated and sure that I was hopeless. According to UConn my application made the committee very impressed. That one sentence completely changed my outlook. I know everyone's cut their slots - sometimes by more than half - but the difference between getting rejected/waitlisted because of economics, and rejected because I didn't stand a chance, is sooo much. I know everything may still come down to naught, but I'm so thankful to know that I'm in range of the target rather than fifty miles away.

You win...A HUG!!!! And pity.

Annwfn (also spelled less intimidatingly as Annwyn) is a name for the Welsh Otherworld, pronounced in my horrible New Jersey-accented non-orthographic rendition as "AH-noov-in". W is a sort of oo sound in Welsh, meaning it's a vowel, meaning you have words like "cwm" which appear to have no vowels and drive non-Welsh-speakers crazy. In other Welsh news... And brewing mead is AWESOME...if you are patient. If the longship crew is courageous and valiant, and our mighty warriors and berserkers are victorious under

Oh Sh#&! I take a night off for Jabberwocky and the Burn Notice premier and now we're more than a dozen posts deep into a thread of which I am an eponymous contributor :shock: I nominate myself as head of the Dark Age North Atlantic History Department which is of course in charge of all the pillage, plunder, and raiding necessary for this graduate school to survive, let alone distribute border collie puppies and shortbread biscuits. ("QUICK, CREW! TO THE PUPPY FARMS!") We will of course do a joint honors program with the Colonial Caribbean History Department to best utilize their advances in gunpowder, multiple-sail rigging, and frilly shirts. Applicants should row to sea and set fire to something, because that would be badass. Courses include: 501: Rocking Out To Viking Metal (Includes fieldtrip to T

You saw "Accepted", right? I'll be the kid who studies setting things on fire with his mind!

Really, though? I'm not a stats person but it would seem to me that, if you made the first massive cut of rejects without an acceptance, your probability - based on the number of people you're competing with - would still be much better. You began as one of hundreds and are now one of dozens, and even though the number of slots is smaller, it was pretty small to begin with. Or maybe I'm misled/too optimistic, can a stats person make sense of that?

Thank you for the advice. I decided to get up the moxie to e-mail my remaining schools and I now know that I'm on a waitlist for UConn which, considering what I've had so far, is very good news for me.

THE SUSPENSE IS KILLING ME *dies* *revives* Any phone calls or e-mails yet? No? *resumes being dead* Congratulations on the acceptance Dirt. How does UConn rank with you? Any financial info? EDIT: Nyah! Just after I posted that I got this in my inbox: "Thank you for your email. As you may have heard, with all of the economic problems faced by universities right now, the admissions process has slowed considerably, and I do apologize for that. I can tell you that the committee was very impressed by your application and is still interested in you. But we only have an extremely limited number of positions this year. You are on the waiting list as the committee makes and awaits decisions. I hope that I may have more information for you soon." Waitlist? I don't care - I made a committee very impressed and I haven't got a rejection! Huzzah!

I KNEW it. I've been keeping an eye on the Oslo Viking Museum website because they're due for a replica and as far as I can tell Norway is better about gov't funding than Denmark. But their "English translation" website version is only a page on museum hours...and I was all like damn it not knowing Norwegian (yet)! Well obviously. Basically the reason I'm going to graduate school (bare optimism!) is so I can do this to "conduct research" rather than looking like the local loon:

I just wanted to start this post as a base for MS students applying for MS programs. My current, rather unhappy status is in my signature below. And here's the scoop on the rest of the schools I'm waiting to hear from: - It appears that Cornell accepted a bunch of people, by phone, in mid-February, with nothing really before or since. Have you or your friends heard from them? Any news about the MS program this year? An e-mail sent to them went unanswered and I'm too scared to write again because it's my top choice and I'm being paranoid :? - I can't find a contact e-mail for Fordham. Apparently someone got into their MS MA program with a full boat ride. I am jealous. Anyone know who the contact person is for grad applicants? - University of Connecticut is driving me crazy. I got a form e-mail confirming that they received my application and materials, and then on February 4 I got a personal e-mail asking for clarification about something on my application. The mistake was embarrassing but at least it meant that someone was looking at it. Now it's a full month later and it doesn't seem that anyone's heard anything from UConn MS. Anyone know anything about UConn? I know you MS people are out there! Any questions, comments, requests, rants about other MS programs?

Neither of my parental units (nor all four of them if you count the step's) have a degree so they've mercifully stepped back, well apart from the occasional "It's not the end of the world!"'s from mom. My aunt on the other hand has more MA's than I can count, and she tossed out this amazing one-liner that I'm still trying to comprehend when I told her I was rejected from Harvard and Princeton: "The only person more shocked than you is me!" Umm...thanks????

If I had that ability, I would drag a longship to Cambridge MA, New Haven CT, South Bend IN, and Princeton NJ for the most glorious display of Viking violence in the New World since Freyd

It's Odin's Raven, a three-quarter replica of a Viking longship. She was sailed from Norway to Peel, Isle of Man in honor of their Tynwald Millenium celebration and now resides there in the House of Manannan museum. Somewhere there's also a photo of me embracing the Hahvingsten fra Glendalough at the Collins Barracks in Dublin before I saw the sign not to touch the ship :? In my defense though they had already sailed it from Denmark so there was little chance of my hug wrecking it. In my opinion, the only thing more badass than going to graduate school would be getting in on a replica longship voyage. I ALMOST applied to help sail the Hahvingsten back to Denmark last summer, but it was just all at the wrong time. I'm afraid that's one of those things I'll regret in sixty years, so hopefully another project will come up before then. age nerdity> Erm, sorry if I hijacked this thread...yes yes, graduate school waiting SUCKS! Argh!

*raises hand timidly* Yeah, this is exactly what I'm afraid of...

I always get two lines of Coldplay in my head when it comes to grad school rejections: "Nobody said it was easy/no one ever said it would be this hard..."

0 for 4 here, so also half rejected/half waiting. I sympathise! Internet friendly non-creepy hug! And adding insult to injury - as I wrote in another post, Friends A and B, both with poorer scores, extracurriculars etc. than I, are accepted whilst I hold naught but rejections. Friend C also got accepted but without funding so now he's struggling for fellowships, etc. - I wish I had his dilemna rather than the one MDLee and I share. Let me guess, all your friends and family are providing a rousing chorus of "But not all your schools have gotten back to you yet, don't be upset, you still have so many chances!"?

I've heard that rejections come faster, and I'm praying that's the case as I got four of them around the same time, and now no news for a couple weeks. You have to imagine that they throw out a full first round of people whose scores, LoR, SoP, or whatever immediately disqualifies them, who hear about it immediately - and then the app com takes their time working through and accepting or rejecting the ones worth debating. So I'd say the wait is, overall, a good thing - it means you weren't discarded at once - but it definitely doesn't mean an automatic acceptance OR rejection. And on second reading it occurs to me that my post is the same as Victory's, just sloppier and without any backing evidence. Ah well, at least there's two of us!

I thought I would be in the same happy place of getting to turn down Harvard instead of Cornell...while I'm still waiting for Cornell, Harvard has gone down the toilet. Although I have to say, some people say that they prefer getting a rejection e-mail because it's faster than snail mail. I much prefer the snail mail, because when I got the one-letter envelope from Harvard I had the satisfaction of ripping it open and throwing it across my kitchen, something you really shouldn't do with a computer.

I had a dream about three weeks ago that I was accepted to Harvard without funding, Notre Dame with full funding, and Cornell with partial funding. So then I had to decide whether to go to Ithaca, NY (4 hours' drive away) or Indiana (something like 20 hours' drive away, so likely needing airfare/shipping). Not an easy conundrum but certainly more pleasant that the present reality. Still praying for Cornell...

I totally feel you. I wanted to do medieval studies in the Northeast US. That means big heavy schools around here. I'm already at Rutgers and know they don't do the specialties I'm interested in, so it's all Ivies and world-famous schools. I asked everybody everywhere whether I stood a chance and my professors and my family members with grad school experience all said, "Yes, you have the scores and the experience and the determination, go for it!" So I did. Damn, are Ivy app fees expensive. Damn, are Ivy rejection letters snobby. Damn, I feel like I should have listened to my own nagging doubts and shot lower. I added in an application to my JYA alma mater because they have ridiculous stipends, but I'd really prefer not to live outside of the country for a few years. Then again, Damn, do I want to go to graduate school this September!

Yes, there needs to be a considerable amount of drink-buying going on, whether or not an acceptance accompanies it. Someone wrote in another post that they'd prefer a bottle of bourbon shipped out with every rejection letter and I second that motion! Last summer I bought a bottle of "Kvasir's Blood" mead to sit in my closet and await my grad school results: shared if accepted somewhere and drunk alone if not. By all rights it should be half-drunk at the moment but I'm trying reeeally hard to stay positive until the end!

LOL. While I don't suggest heroin as a coping mechanism, I'm glad to see I'm in the same boat as other hopeful applicants. I want to believe - and it's sooo easy for co-workers, friends, family, etc. to believe too - but wishes and good luck can't guarantee anything. Particularly when everyone from your favorite professor to your favorite aunt paints you up as an ideal candidate and then are "oh just so surprised!" when the rejections come in. Argh!* *I seem to end most of my posts with "Argh!" so I will instead end this post with this sentence.

Totally, which is one of the reason I'm so happy to have found this place. Friends A and B are the only two people I personally know who are applying for Medieval Studies along with me and so, as it's a small field, we've applied to some of the same schools and are in direct competition with each other. So far the only thing we've shared are rejections from the same schools. I like hearing from Anthropology and Linguistics and Urban Planning and Astrophysicist students going through the process, but not as much Medieval or Irish Studies. Let's face it, if someone is applying to the same schools with the same program in mind, you can't help but feel competitive. I wish it could be an atmosphere of cheer and camraderie, but competing with friends is cruel and futile antagonism when a third party arbitrarily decides the winner.

So I admit, I'm one of those "a good attitude and positive outlook will take you far" people. I'm not a fan of "The Secret" but I at least in some way believe that enough desire can lead to the desired outcome even against tall odds. My New Agey aunt keeps telling me to "believe in the Universe" and "attract positive thoughts" and "What is meant to be, will be". Except that that's not how graduate school works! Argh! If graduate schools did not require extensive applications, grueling standardized testing, and four years (years!) of intensive schoolwork, then yeah maybe being hopeful would be enough to get in. Can you imagine if graduate schools worked the opposite way? Graduate schools send out $90 application fees and $40 copies of exam scores to promising students across the country - they have reaches, targets and safeties - and by April 15 the students finally toss them a bone about where they think is worthy. Seeing as that's not going to happen, I hereby call for the approval of a healthy Rejected Until Proven Accepted (RUPA) attitude. I'm so sick of everyone - parents, family, friends, the boyfriend - telling me that if I believe hard enough and I stay positive then I can achieve anything. Sure, I can finish writing this paper, or run this mile, but I can't make an app com approve me by the power of good thoughts! My loved ones get mad at me when I look at job opportunities or consider teaching certification programs, as if thinking that I won't get into graduate school will get me magically disqualified. And then when the rejection letters come they give me an "it's not the end of the world" and "this school wasn't good enough for you" attitude, like I really think that a. it's the end of the world b. the school rejected me for being too good. People who are not personally involved with this agonizing, drawn out, and almost entirely arbitrary process need to step back and let us be RUPA. RUPA - we're allowed to think about the future without graduate school. We're allowed to go on job interviews and apply for certification programs in a non-scholarly field. We're allowed to prepare for rejection by thinking of why this school or that school will ultimately not accept us, even though they're taking their sweet time in letting us know. And most of all, we're allowed to be idiotically happy when an acceptance finally does come, because we weren't gambling our lives on it! Or maybe I'm wrong and the difference between myself and others with acceptances is that I haven't believed hard enough What's your opinion?

I'm sorry that your first reply was a rejection. Even if it was your reach, even if it was the school you only applied to because they had a cheap application fee and one more couldn't hurt, even if you would never want to live in that state but applied just to see if you'd get in, it still SUCKS. A small part of you believed that every application you filled out would be returned with a smiley face, and now that part just died. Now a dark cloud has been put over the rest of your applications, but there are two things you can do about it; mope and moan and gnash your teeth (always loved that phrase), or get serious about your plan B and realize that, even being a great student, you can fall through the cracks of graduate school apps and have to hang back for a year. And that's not the end of the world. I admit that I had no Plan B until that first rejection letter arrived. Three more rejection letters later I have Plans B, C, and D armed and ready in case things go south. Of course I don't want to enact any but my Plan A, but having a backup means that it's not life or death in every email, letter, and phone call. It's given me perspective, and I hope it provides some sort of comfort for you as well.