Italophile

This is how I feel. I'm only waiting on one more school, it's my top school, and I should be hearing from them one way or another any day now...

Off-topic, but this thread title reminds me of Field of Dreams... "if you admit him, he will come..."

Luckily my best friend (and only friend also going through grad admissions right now) is applying to med schools, whereas I am applying for Ph.D.s in a nonscience field. We're happy for each other when we hear positive news, but it definitely helps that we're not competing against each other.

Unfortunately I only have a subsample of about... 3-4 applicants to my two top choices combined on the Results Survey over the last 3(!) years... But out of those two, it seems admissions occur in late February - early March. Maddening, and my heart stops everytime I see one of those schools in the results survey and it's ANY comparable program.

I'm pretty sure if I got a missed call from the area code in which my top choice resides, it would have to be them. Hopefully I'm not at work if (hopefully when!) I get that call!

There is nothing whatsoever about this resolution that LEGALLY binds an institution to do anything. The worst that could happen is that the institution gets a slap on the wrist, and if a repeat offender, gets removed from the list of signatories.

It means your application has been received, nothing more

I always say that when in doubt, why not call the department or the graduate admissions number and ask? If they want all postsecondary transcripts, you would absolutely need to include your law school ones regardless of how much time has passed. However, if they specify that they only want associate/baccalaureate level transcripts, then those are all you need, regardless of how much time has passed. If they do want your law school transcripts, that's no need to worry! They just want to make sure there are no weird red flags popping up in your academic history, like forging degrees and whatnot. Your coursework over the last 2 years will absolutely outweigh them.

From conversations with TAs and Professors at my undergrad, not only does it seem common, it seems expected that Ph.D.s in our field take 6-8 years, rather than 5-6 like others. Every time I've brought up this figure, the person I'm talking to looks horrified. But when you love what you want to study, doesn't 6-8 years sound like awesome?

For my top choice school, I would have no doubt I missed an important call if their area code showed up on my phone. As for my second choice school (Columbia, and I live in NYC), I would probably ignore it immediately and let it go to voicemail.

I got my first acceptance via email. It was especially satisfying because my job is eating away at my soul, and I happened to get my email literally as my shift ended. Hopefully my other programs are kind enough to alert me in the same manner, because I check my email probably once every few hours, whereas I check my status checkers once a day.

I'll immediately book a plane ticket to Europe. And stay there for as long as I can under a travel visa, which gives me three months...

^ That table is actually also available on ETS's website (concordance table) in PDF form. Another fun fact: While pretty much everyone knows that every 4 years is a leap year by the Gregorian calendar, this is NOT true of years divisible by 100, unless they are ALSO divisible by 400. I.e. 1700, 1800, 1900, 2100, 2200, etc. are NOT leap years; however 1600, 2000, and 2400 ARE leap years.

A high GPA certainly isn't sufficient for guaranteed acceptance...

It depends, since the distribution of verbal scores and quantitative scores aren't proportional to the old scale. http://www.ets.org/s/gre/pdf/concordance_information.pdf

I'm torn between a round-trip plane ticket to Europe (believe me, if Visas were any easier to get that would be a one-way) and buying a tablet.

That does seem upsetting, especially if they worded it as if you were about to get everything you wanted. Generic advice would usually dictate that you should at least be grateful for having gotten in, but I sometimes get the feeling that for Masters degrees, schools can always "open up" an extra spot if they're making full tuition off of it. It looks like you applied to plenty of other schools though! I'm sure you'll hear back some great things in the next couple of months. And a bit of advice that I always took to heart is that if you haven't gotten a couple of rejections at all, maybe you weren't aiming high enough anyway Keep your head up!

I'll be 23 next month. Only taking one year off of undergrad (assuming I get accepted), but that year has been well worth it to solidify that I'm headed in the right direction.

My guess is 2/4. Now technically, my two "reach" schools are actually better fits for me. If those two turn out to be my 2/4, I'll be ecstatic!

If I wasn't so enamored with romance languages and literature, I would have tried my best to become a chef or opera singer.

Luckily, every school I applied to has an incredibly responsive online status checker system. They've all updated everything I've sent in within 24 hours of the materials being available. Like a few of the above posters said, no need to freak out unless they specifically contact you saying they need something!