I think that I'm definitely going to be accepting the MAPH offer, as Chicago has always been one of my dream schools, and recently I've been leaning more and more towards putting off my PhD plans until I get a better sense of what I'm interested in doing.
The email I received included this paragraph, but I wasn't really taken aback, as I have family members who are profs at a top-ranking university (lol, one that I idiotically did not apply to) who repeatedly tell me basically the same thing and that I'm delusion for pursuing the PhD path in liberal arts. Despite all of their warnings, I'm still intent on pusuing graduate studies for as many years as possible, but I understand others' concerns and their need to send out rather blunt warnings. Especially given the poor mental health that seems rampant among PhD students. :/
Besides this paragraph, the rest of the email was shockingly personalized. Coming from a huge public university, I was pretty pleased with the individual attention.