New England Nat

Poor Professor Radding, I spoke to her a year or so ago and the budget cuts were looming than. It sounds like it's gotten much worse.

In this case it means that OSU offers funding to graduate students in two sets. Those they nominate for fellowships and those that they offer TAships. It doesn't mean they want the fellowship people more so much as their may be specific subfields where there is set aside money available. Say there is a hypothetical set of money endowed for people studying 17th century pirates, and you have applied to work on Somali Indian Ocean pirates in the 1920s. They may still like you as much as the first guy but they have to fund you through a TAship.

I can tell you with absolute certainty of inside information that OSU is doing it in at least 2 waves.

OSU is not done folks. The first batch there are people nominated for fellowships, there will be another batch of people they're going to offer funding through TAships.

OSU has not finished their admits folks. They do it in waves based on university funding structures.

My first rejection, from a school I really wanted to go to, came at 10AM one morning and it totally devastated me. And 2 hours later, while I was at a total low, is when my Princeton acceptance came. Ups and downs are the nature of the thing.

It'll be only a handful of schools that inform next week. I'm sorry folks but you are in for a while of worry.

God bless you for seventeen. I managed eight my year and when it came down to Stanford at the end I just couldn't make myself fill it out (or spend the app fee).

oh, I completely understand the sentiment, I'm just trying to encourage you not to think of this as a personal rejection. It's not healthy that our profession encourages us to identify so much with our work. Sometimes no matter how good you are it's outside of your control. I didn't get into one school because they were certain I'd get in somewhere better... which did happen.. but if I'd been stuck out that year I'd have been very annoyed. I'm also a weird combination of different kinds of historian and that either impresses people or makes them think I'm delusional.

In the long run it's better for you. Imagine what the job market would be like if every professor who wanted to train students would get as many as they wanted.

I wouldn't say it's in the hands of bureaucrats as a decision making stage. To some degree it's at the mercy of numbers. How many students in what fields does a particular department want to or have the resources to take. A professor might want you, but if there are seven Americanists in a department and they only have room for six, someone's not going to get what they want.

While you are at it making new threads... When the time comes for some of you to talk about the decisions you have to make in the coming months... you should do that in another thread so as not to drag that out in front of people still waiting for an acceptance.

They did interviews last year. I'm pretty sure you can assume if you haven't been contacted for an interview you can write them off.

Zephyr, you are probably right, but it should ease as it gets into Feb and there are a lot more results being posted. People are still nervous.

Eh, it could mean anything without being fake. Remember that's an international student and that strangeness you perceive may be just an issue of language.

Yes, it's not uncommon for professors in small fields where there isn't a departmental interview to contact candidates directly.

I wouldn't count on it being a fake post. The fakes are usually acceptances not interviews. Very good likelihood that this is an individual professor doing his or her thing. I'm not an Africanist but I have a number of friends who are, given the size of the field, it can be very personal.

Most good programs will handle that as well, either by hotel room or by putting you up with other graduate students.

Yeah, if this was entirely your advisers idea than you are appearing to address the concern and not looking over eager. YMMV though.

I'd email the POI with something to the effect of, "Professor X spoke to me and encouraged me to contact you about my interest..." And than give two or three paragraphs about your interest in that specific program.

It's frequently done in masters programs, but most PhD programs that offer funding generally forbid outside work.

Yeah, last day written course work can be due before exams.

It's no reason not to take the very package they would give you. It's bizarre and antiquated but really it's only hard on grad students in the first year. By the second year the extra time off after papers are due in January is good for studying for your comps. For those who don't know, Princeton still operates on an old fashioned semester system where you start at the end of September, have a 12 week semester, where fall doesn't end until January. So students come back in January to write papers before something called "Deans Date" which is when the all undergrad papers have to be due before a dead period and exams. Deans Date doesn't officially apply to grad students but many professors use it as a day papers are due anyway. Since there is no such thing as an exam in a grad class the semester is effectively over for grad students at that point. For second years taking their general exams in May, the graduate school mandates an extended deadline for their papers in the spring. I went from a masters program where you were frantically finishing papers until about Dec 18, and than went home for Christmas. So it was weird to adjust to but eh, I'd hesitate to call it "rough" for a grad student. I'd hate it with a passion if I were an undergrad.

The second post was posted a day after the second, with both saying they'd gotten the acceptance on Friday. You probably just looked between the time the first and the second were posted.

It's about the right time for the early programs to start admitting, there are two of them, and there is a note on both that they haven't heard about funding. The fake posts usually reference bigger name programs, come without other posts from the school, and usually include lots of enthusiasm but no detail. The way to early Michigan post is classic suspicious result for grad café. For those of you waiting on Princeton I'll repeat what I've said before. First 10 days in Feb has been my department's mode the last everal years. Earlier is possible but still unlikely as this few weeks in January we're running a ton of job candidates through and the end of our fall semester isn't until the week after next.