Simple Twist of Fate

W&M are done, so I've officially been left hanging at the very top of the wait list. Disappointing, but IU just gave me a fellowship for my 3rd year (instead of teaching) which I'm considering the spoonful of sugar to make the W&M medicine go down. So I'm headed to IU. I'll talk to my advisor tomorrow before making it official, but I'm decided, and I'm confident.

While I agree with a lot of the comments that have been made, there is something to be said with having a place to start looking. For instance, I know what many would consider to be the top 3 programs for my sub-field. However, that is mostly common knowledge and isn't far different from the (rapidly aging) US News rankings. And I bet that 6 months ago, I would have loved to have a nice, fat set of rankings to dig my teeth into. Nevertheless, I'm glad I didn't have that detailed set of subfield rankings for my subfield. They would have driven me nuts and I might have applied to a whole bunch of programs I had no reason to apply to. Now I'm headed to a program that wouldn't be ranked highly in my sub-field, and isn't an obvious choice, but is nevertheless an excellent fit for me.

Go for it if you're ready to commit to it. I've heard of some adcoms who really place a lot of weight on connections, but I think that's the exception rather than the rule. Don't worry too much about your school. I came from a similar environment - not prestigious, small, doesn't send many students to grad schools. I did have an advisor who's young and fairly involved in the field, but actually I didn't get into the schools that he has contacts at. However, my GPA, GRE, recs, SOP and writing sample were all strong. One prof I spoke with recently at a school I was accepted to told me I beat out students from very prestigious schools, including Harvard.

Wow, I wasn't expecting unanimity like that. Thanks for your responses. I've been engaging in some extensive email correspondence this weekend. I hope to have a talk with my advisor and a few other people whose opinions I trust this week, and will hopefully narrow my choices down to one (plus W&M) as soon as Wednesday.

Thanks tmp and llama. At this point, I think whatever happens will work out well for me, so there isn't too much pressure. No wrong decisions, etc.

I'm supposed to be taking a break from school/grad school stress this weekend, but... Consider this hypothetical situation that may be loosely related to my own situation. School A has an advisor whose research interests align with mine perfectly (better than any other POI), and a great group of professors in my subfield. School B has an advisor whose research isn't as perfectly aligned with mine, but it isn't as if it would be a problem. But I'm in love with this prof's work, and s/he's probably better established and connected in my field. However, there's only one other prof there who is in my subfield (and our interests don't really align at all). There are a million other variables at play also, including location, stipend size/years of support, cost of living, and a host of minor things as well. But I'm having trouble figuring out which school would provide a better intellectual environment for my studies.

Yeah... It would be, but Indiana just sent me an offer. Wow. As excited as I by this (and I am) it makes what was going to be a relaxing weekend into crunch time.

True. Just sent off the final version of my (undergrad) thesis. Feels good to be done with that - and baseball season starts today (Go Reds!). Headed to visit my girlfriend's family for Easter - will hopefully not be checking my email/gradcafe too much. Have a great weekend, everyone.

Don't worry - I'm definitely planning on waiting. I appreciate your concern. Thanks for the advice, tmp, I guess that April 15 falling on a Sunday complicates things.

Oseirus, I think I speak for Buckeye nation when I say that we're happy to pretend that 2006-2007 never happened if you are. tmp - the good thing is that since you have a pretty even split in terms of the things that matter, you get to think about the things that we're usually told not to decide schools based on - like sports, lifestyle, city, proximity to family and friends, etc. Or you could flip a coin.

Definitely planning to, but I hope it doesn't come down to that. I won't let myself be disappointed if (as seems likely) it doesn't work out, because BU is a fantastic option for me and I would be pretty disappointed to not get to live in Boston and work with the wonderful people there. Congrats teachgrad/Cagefree! They must like you a lot there.

Just declined UConn officially. I've been headed in this direction for a few weeks, but I wanted some time to let the decision sit before I made it official. So looks like I'm headed to BU - though W&M and IU could still complicate things in the next 11 days. (only 11 days? eep) I hope this helps someone off the wait list at UConn.

Heard from W&M about the wait list. I'm second on their list, and there are two offers that are still undecided. My reaction:

Congrats. Glad the twigs didn't have a chance to snap.

Congrats to the person admitted to W&M off the wait list! Any chance of details? A PM would be very welcome. Either way - congrats.

I'm an undergraduate senior, so I'm not sure about the applicability of this to graduate study, but I've found a program called Evernote to be very useful for research projects. It has several advantages to just taking notes in word documents: 1. Each document is easily searchable and taggable. For my thesis, having tags for certain sources was extremely helpful when I started to analyze them all together. I can use tags to categorize both secondary and primary sources. 2. It translates easily across devices. I use it on my laptop and my iPad. I'm sure it exists for iPhones, etc also. When I have pdfs of articles or sources open on my laptop and I'm trying to take notes, I frequently use both at the same time. 3. It's backed up on an external server and on my hard drive simultaneously. I don't have to worry about losing all my data. It's free, also. And I promise I'm not involved with that company - unlike someone who seems to have posted an ad in another thread lately.

Thanks for starting this thread, Llama - and thanks to Sigaba to starting the reading tips thread. I'm almost obsessive about reading books cover-to-cover (as I think I noted in the What Are You Reading? thread). I realize that realistically, this may be a habit I will have to abandon. Llama - I've tried (a version of) speed reading... it can work fine for me in fiction, but usually it just doesn't work out for me in the denser, academic stuff. Maybe my brain just doesn't move fast enough. And of course, when I'm reading fiction, I'm usually trying to relax and enjoy myself rather than attempting to finish it as quickly as possible. So my point being that it hasn't really helped me much in the past. Your results may vary.

If I'm in Boston next year (as currently looks likely) I've already decided to become a Red Sox fan... not the Patriots though. Never the Patriots. At least not until Brady/Belichick retire. I'm from a part of the country not exactly famed for its professional sports teams (Ohio) so it would be great to actually see some championships.

Finally got the rejection email from ND this morning. To be honest, I had almost forgotten I had applied there. My first reaction was "Why are Notre Dame emailing me?" Particularly weird for a school that gave out interviews (and thus presumably knew who they were rejecting outright) to wait this long. Hope everyone has a great day.

Talk about being too focused! I'd also encourage you to cast a wide net in terms of contacts. I've found at least two faculty members in potential programs for me that have interests coinciding with mine that appear nowhere on their websites. I spent about a whole summer obsessing over faculty website profiles (which, when you come down to it, are really like a one-sided, very pathetic version of a dating website) and you can only benefit so much from that. I remember the frustration of narrowing down the list of schools. I hated that - especially when I crossed one off in a location I would have enjoyed. My method was to do one school per day, skimming through journal articles, dissertation abstracts, books/book reviews and of course faculty profiles. All of the information available. And taking detailed notes for when I begin to doubt myself later about whether x University might make a good fit after all... It's tedious, but if you really want to have an advisor who will be able to support your specific interests, then it can't hurt. Good luck.

Just for fun, I made a quick bracket in which I picked the winners based on which school I would rather attend. After tonight, it's in the 61st percentile on espn and is doing significantly better than my "real" bracket.

Thanks - and sorry about your Seminoles, oseirus. I remain slightly concerned about the awkwardness of not being admitted but still wanting to look around - but I sent a very polite, tentative feeler out to the DGS, so we'll see

If you'd asked me a month ago, I'd have said yes, but now I'm leaning another direction. So you're right, I do want to get as much information as possible.

Hope everyone had a great St. Patrick's Day weekend. Here's a situation... One of the universities that's wait listed me has made it clear that there's a very strong chance of admission. I touched base with the DGS this week, and was again informed that an offer is "likely" but wasn't definitive - suggesting that I might need to wait for a few more weeks. That's fine - I don't really mind waiting. However, my current roommate is driving to the same campus next weekend to visit their law school. I'd like to tag along, but I don't know if it would really be productive to go since a) there is absolutely no promise that I will be admitted (or if admitted, given funding) and I'm not sure what the school/advisor would think of this. I guess I'm not really looking for advice. Wait lists are just awkward. If I'm accepted at the last minute somewhere, which seems entirely possible, I may not have time to make an informed decision. Oh well, at least I have a couple of great options already.

I feel like I'm edging ever-closer to a decision. In fact, I've been telling people that I'm "probably" going to be going to x university, to sort of test out the idea of it (if that makes sense). So far so good. If it wasn't for damned wait lists, I think I could wrap this up in the next week.