café con leche

I'm still waiting to hear about all of my funding as well. I'm going there this weekend, so I'm hoping to find out when they plan to approve budgets and whatnot.

Just wondering if anyone accepted at Pitt has decided to accept yet. I'll be accepting as soon as my official funding papers come through!

I never would have thought I'd be in this forum at this point last year, but I am. I only applied to one MA program last year, thinking that my qualifications were sufficient. I had practically no time invested in the application and no one reviewed any of the elements (cannot even believe how naive that seems looking back) so it doesn't surprise me now. I've applied to 6 programs this year, MA and PhD, ideal and backup. I feel much better this year, especially since I had a native Spanish-speaker review all my papers, contact with POI's, and advice from forums and the web on how to improve the SOP. Even with the maximum effort, though, I have already begun to worry. Last year I checked my mail 3 times per day, just to be sure, and I feel that anxiety coming up again. I'm trying to stay busy, but it's good to know that so many others are feeling the same way when I'm having a momentary lapse in self confidence (which will probably be more and more frequent as the next couple of months progress). Good luck to all!!!

I had issues with a different school when their departmental administrative assistant couldn't 'find' my scores in the system. I called the graduate admissions office after a long, almost-tearful talk with the GRE call center (I had checked with the school every week for four weeks and then 2 days before the deadline they told me they didn't know where they were). It turned out that the admin. assistant had typed something in incorrectly. Check with other offices if there's any doubt!

I do that too, and last year I started checking my mail 3 times a day...just in case it was late (whatever excuse I could manage). Just so you know - some schools don't ever update the status. I had a rejection last year that still shows up as 'pending- check with department for more information.' I'm sure some departments/universities are different, but they will let you know when they have made a decision. I'm jumpy when my phone gets emails too. At least right now I get little noises from recommendation submissions. I take what I can get!

I, too, am now broke because of the fees. I started out thinking I would do one at a time and be fine financially, but when one of my professors told me she needed to send all her letters at once (and earlier than I had intended!) I had to push not only to get applications done faster, but also pay for quite a few at once. I am amazed that the fees vary as much as they do. Mine ranged quite a bit, and prestige was not necessarily expensive (at least for now...obviously a different story for tuition!)

I only applied to one grad school last year, and since I was student teaching at the same time (meaning little time to dedicate to the application), surprise, surprise, I was rejected. This year I came at the application season from a very different angle, making more connections, going on visits, organizing a la OCD, getting revisions (and then a few more revisions), etc... I finished my fifth and final (for now) application yesterday and I'm already beginning to relive the anxiety of the waiting process from last year (times 5!) For now, I'm glad to have the holiday season and work to keep me busy, but I know the next few months are going to be as painfully long as last time. I, like many of you, go back and forth between confidence and self-doubt, usually multiple times each day. Sigh...hope you are all feeling good about the mere accomplishment of applying in the first place! (not that I take my own advice!)