New England Nat

Decisions from Princeton wont be sent snail mail. Official paperwork will eventually but you'll get notice electronically.

I can tell you Princeton was open today. It was the first day of classes for spring so they probably didn't want to mess that up.

I'm just really glad NYU seems to have changed procedures. It makes me feel like someone is thinking about this process instead of just doing what has always been done in their department.

If they've ended that crazy cattle call good for them! It was real torture for the applicants and wasteful of resources. Congratulations!

In the past, no. That's one reason the process was so weird. They would invite people to campus who they hadn't admitted, interview them there, and than they would admit a slate of people, some who had gone to the weekend, and some who hadn't. And they informed very late.

In past years they've also had a bunch of people not yet admitted travel to NYU for 2 days of cattle call interviews. It's the most infamous process in all of history grad school admitting. If they've done away with it good ridden, I'm just skeptical.

This time i'm very skeptical of the NYU result. Without the mad interview process they've done the last several years?

I'll put in that in history of science and history of medicine the people who hold history PhDs and science degrees often produce different work than historians of science trained as historians of science. Not always worse, but not always better either. It carries a taint of an age when scientists when they became older and less productive in the lab would go off to write about the history of their field. Disagreements over the taint of amateurism is one reason there are two history of medicine societies, one for PhD historians and one for MD historians. The MD/PhDs usually align themselves with the PhD historians, but there is always a question of what point of view you take.

You should be careful about over estimating grad cafe's influence in the pool. We make 35ish officers a year and less than 25% show up on the results board and even less in the forums.

Some professors will talk about an individual application, but only vaguely and without much detail. We have no role in the adcom, but a big role in reaching out to admitted students. This is compensated by the department by giving us beer while we're being social with the perspective students.

Seconding what czesc said. A lot of this is opaque. I know there is a temptation to try and get all the information possible at this stage in the process but really there is nothing you can do at this point with that kind of information.

My read of that thread is that it is more representative of the culture of PoliSci departments. But as always don't say unprofessional things online, undercover of anonymity or not.

It's not uncommon in some departments. I have one friend who as a grad student stopped giving advise here because someone in his/her department felt like they were spending too much time here. But I wouldn't assume that all the adcoms are poking around here. They have enough work to do reading your applications to go looking for trouble. Like all professional forums I wouldn't say anything here that you wouldn't put your name on publically. I operate under the assumption that I'm pretty identifiable if you picked up clues I've dropped in different contexts.

Yeah, people are posting to the results board when they are giddy and excited. There will be plenty of typos.

I can't speak for in general. The question was about Princeton. Emails, phone calls, snail mail, emails directing you to check a website. All possible. Some departments are more disciplined than others about PoI reaching out before official decisions. Within half an hour of my acceptance letter coming I had three emails from professors, so presumably they were told when the email would go out. But I have friends who were told by PoI directly and were waiting for official word. One thing you should all be aware of is a social psych concept called "footholding". Once you get your first acceptance, you start thinking about it as real, and you start making plans, so much so that you start measuring other programs against the ideal that you get in your head about the first one. The departments know this, that's why every year the first wave of applications seems to start coming a few days earlier and earlier. You need to seriously evaluate later offers with this in mind. I didn't end up going to my first choice, not because I didn't get in, but because Princeton had a month to sell themselves to me while the other program still hadn't made decisions. I didn't make the wrong decision, but I do sometimes wonder if I shouldn't have let the other guys have longer to try and sell themselves to me. I was also dealing with some serious "of course you'll go there" pressure from my masters program profs.

I'd expect an email. That's how it's traditionally done here. From a department someone followed by professors.

I wouldn't read anything into the application deadlines.

Her. And I'm not playing who works harder games. I was pointing out that people who are applying to graduate school, along with the poor job market, should also know that they're likely going to be working very long hours and not get credit for it by their friends and family. I had a fight with a friend of mine the other week because no, I couldn't go out one weekend to a science fiction con, because I was going to be teaching and grading that week.

I'd say there is no way to know. He or she has given you all the information that is in his power. But they're also aware that you are applying to other places that may admit you with better funding packages. I know a lot of academics who would feel the moral obligation to tell a student to take such a package. I remember calling a place to withdraw my application after I got into somewhere higher on my list and they told me if I had turned down the ivy to go to that place they would have questioned my sanity. YMMV. BTW, since it hasn't come up before. As acceptances come in, if you get into someplace that you would definitely go to over places where you haven't heard yet gotten a decision, you should withdraw the other application. Many programs with tight budgets can only afford to offer so many acceptances and once the offer is made can not make another if you don't come. They just loose the slot. That is to say that if you applied to 8 schools and you get into your 3rd ranked school, you should withdraw at least your 6th, 7th, and 8th ranked applications.

It's an incredible place to be. It's not that I couldn't have met you, just that I don't think I did.

I don't think so. I don't recall meeting anyone from your subfield this year. I'm an Americanist.

Princeton is not going to release in the next week, and the week after is the first week of the semester here. Last few years we've sent out results in the first 10 days in Feb, in the 7-10th range. I see no reason this will change.

I will defend my use of "office ladies". It's a category in part because service jobs at universities are almost always done by women and to pretend otherwise is it's own form of othering. In fact I thought about that word as I was writing the sentence and decided to use it anyway because I did think that it would cause a little thought about who those administrative staff are. And for the record, I've worked for or been a student in 7 academic departments at institutions from across the prestige spectrum. The ratio of female to male administrative staff was 40:1. Perhaps it's because I have a certain acculturation in the American south I certainly don't think it implies someone does more or less work. In that context, the word usage in fact implies quite a strong figure. In my world, annoying administrative staff is right up there with career suicide. I might suggest that this word, much like the usage of "ma'am" or "miss" is highly regional. In fact in this case the academics have flexible hours, and yes, it's important for you to know if you are going into the field academics often work a lot more hours than a traditional 9-5, 5 day a week job.

There will be exceptions but nearly all of this will happen business days. You have to remember even if the email says it's coming from the DGS, it's likely being sent finally by a department admin person. Academics may work 7 days a week, but the office ladies most certainly don't.

I think she would be sad that I didn't become a Latin Americanist, except I became an environmental historian, so she got something out of me as an undergrad.