piccgeek

Hello all. This process is full of so many crazy twists and turns, usually involving minor panic attacks. I want to share a story about a happy panic attack! So this weekend my fiance bought me plane tickets for me to visit him at MIT (where he is a PhD student in compsci and I'm applying for science writing) for Valentine's Day (a week late because apparently it's more expensive to fly at real Valentine's Day...go figure). While I was packing Thursday evening I checked my email one last time. I had an email from the science writing program director. I thought "oh no, I'm going to be rejected right before going out there? That's sad." The email was asking me if I would be available for a phone interview in the next couple of days. 1. I had seriously given up on the possibility of being accepted into this program. 2. I was certain I wasn't going to hear anything, good or bad or neutral, for at least another two weeks 3. By crazy random happenstance, I can do the interview in person. I practically started hyperventilating. I could hardly write the response email my hands were shaking so much. Best panic attack ever. Whether I ultimately get accepted or not, at least now I feel like my effort is validated. Plus this is an awesome example of my stars aligning for once!!

Please stay calm? Sounds like the 911 operators...or maybe I'm just getting paranoid. Also, 1500 applicants!!?! Holy smokes. It takes me a week to read through 20 student papers of 3 double-spaced pages each, I can't imagine reading 1500 SOPs...

nah, there are lots of master's applicants and lots of people applying to programs other than humanities and sciences. what's up on the results search is all a matter of the flux of results...a lot of MA/MS programs hear back later because there are a lot more applicants to those programs, so they take longer to search through!

welcome to the club!

I applied to seven programs in English last year, some PhDs and some MAs, and heard back from pretty much all of them, both acceptances and rejections, in the second and third weeks of March.

That sucks! Good luck keeping your sanity as everything goes down...hopefully you'll get your first notice through email and that would still make you the first to know! I am basically in the same boat as everyone else. I know no one has been accepted OR rejected from my program yet, and still in about the last two or three weeks I have gone from a fair amount of optimism to being pretty much sure I'm going to get rejected. Ah well, so it goes! Just gotta ride the emotional waves I suppose.

In the same week I got a yes-we-are-processing-your-app email with a generic subject line from both the program I'm applying to AND the big summer job I've applied for. I was so nervous both times as I opened the email, and so frustrated when I read it (especially since it happened TWICE!), but still better than a rejection, eh?

My mentor grew up in the not-friendly part of the Bronx (if there is a friendly part), but went to a very expensive preppy high school because he and seven other average joes were bussed in to be on their football team. His senior year at that high school he was the lead in West Side Story, and all his football buddies showed up to the last performance and hooted and yelled when he was kissing Maria. HE dropped out of undergrad to work in a series of industrial jobs and then decided to have a go at the insurance agency, so he picked a state school in NYC out of the phone book, applied, was accepted, attended, and graduated despite nearly being thrown out for setting a chem lab on fire. A couple years later when he and his then-wife moved to Boston for her job, he decided to apply to Harvard's American Studies program "to see if they'd let me in." They did. He's now a respectable Melville scholar according to his CV, has won all kinds of prestigious awards for scholarship and even more for teaching, but we know him as the guy who shows up to teach in Steelers jerseys and swears enough in a fifty minute lecture on Twain to impress the undergrad frat boys. In short, he's amazing.

It would be easier to negotiate (but still probably awkward and maybe gauche) if you've been in contact with a potential adviser there...especially in a LOT of contact, as in, that person would not be surprised or confused to see an email from how sitting in her/his inbox. Otherwise...I'd say play it polite rather than pushy. It's painful to pass up such an opportunity to show your face and make an impression, but you don't want to make any kind of negative impression. Of course, if you run into a prof and you can get to chatting and the person asks what you're doing and you can say "oh, well, right now I'm applying to PhD programs..." and hope they follow up with "Oh really? Where?" then you are totally in the green, I would think.

My first rejection letter last round, I cried and yelled at my boyfriend for a while, and being a good friend he put up with it calmly and took me out for ice cream as soon as I was fit to be in public. Friends/SOs + food and or alcohol = coping. Of course it still sucked, but I felt a lot better after an indulgent emotional sobfest, and it was easier to move on after that. (of course, I'm the type that can never bottle ANYTHING, so I feel like people like that can't help but allow themselves an indulgent sobfest...)

Hey, what is the waiting period for if not for unchecked fantasizing?? We've got to do SOMETHING while we wait for decisions! I am, of course, guilty as well...I already have a plan A and a plan B for living situations, and I've discussed endless different potential financial situations with my fiance...it's actually pretty weird now that I think about it that laying out a (potential) budget should be such a guilty pleasure...hmmmmmm......

"Already Gone" by Kelly Clarkson...because I'll be leaving my current program!

teeheeheeeeeee. This reminded me of my current freshmen students...I wouldn't be at all surprised if their rec letters looked like this.

me too. I'm white and I understand being frustrated with AA, but the fact of the matter is that every day I DO take advantage of privileges I didn't earn and that most of the time I'm not even aware that I have. As Pamphilia said earlier, in a perfect world AA would be silly, but of course the world's not perfect. It's not just that our grandparents grew up with Jim Crow (I know my grandparents flipped out when my cousin went to the prom with an African American..."we're not racist, we just don't see why she can't go with a nice white boy" etc. etc. etc.), but racism is STILL happening, and not just the violent, hating kind of racism. I went to UG in the middle of Indiana, one of the whitest and most conservative states around, and I remember in a class on literature and diversity more than half the students admitted there were ONLY white kids at their high schools. I know this is grad school, and theoretically we're all open-minded colorblind scholars...but that's just a "theoretically." How many acts of racism are unconscious, not driven by any particular hatred but just a habit? How many of the adcom people are my grandparents' age? I'm just saying...I don't feel like Affirmative Action is "robbing" me or making my applications be "passed over" for "less-qualified" students just because I'm white. I do think perhaps I'm just as qualified as someone who did get in because of AA, and really, isn't that the same as my being as qualified as someone who did get in because of having an uncle who knows the department chair, or some one who was in the same fraternity as their desired future adviser, or any of the other myriad of ridiculous reasons that go into choosing a cohort? Usually with AA, the point is that all other things being pretty much equal (and look around at all the amazing talented people on this forum! Don't we always say that just because you get rejected doesn't mean you weren't qualified, or even that you were less qualified, than the lucky accepted 4%?), the adcom (or employer) is willing to use their interest in furthering diversity as a way to choose between one qualified applicant and another. At some point there are 25 perfect candidates and 10 spots to fill, and they've gotta pick somehow.

I'm not Asian, but I'm not gonna lie, my first response to this post was "that is AWESOME." Props to the brilliant Asian ladies!

This is depressing. It's harder to "cheat" as such in English...plagiarized papers aren't that hard to catch, and it's not like we have homework problem sets or anything. Still, I know a guy who didn't read the novel he was writing his final paper on--his wife (an English student at another school) read it for him and marked the significant passages (knowing his theoretical approach) so he could quote them. *facepalm*

Me too! I mean, I wrote one several hours ago, and then left since the forum was down, and now I'm back and realizing that everyone has pretty said everything I said so...yeah. To summarize...I basically reiterated and agreed with Pamphilia, and then added some stuff about Affirmative Action that I'm only kind of sure are true, so, in retrospect, it's maybe for the best that the forum kept me from posting. Still, sad face.

Everyone listed has been very helpful and supportive! I appreciate you guys so much, you keep me sane in the dark hours of waiting. Merci beaucoup!

I am pretty much certain I'm not going to get in--certain enough to have signed a lease for next year where I am now instead of where I would be, and that I am composing my syllabus etc. for next semester's work. However, my situation is really different--I only applied to one program, and I'm currently smack dab in the middle of a funded MA, so...yeah. I was never expecting to get in through the whole process--my potential program is very small and exclusive. I felt like I had to TRY, but this whole process has been to soothe my "what ifs" than anything else. I would spend all next year wondering what would have happened if I had applied, and now that I've done all I can do for chasing this particular dream, I'm trying to focus on the track I'm currently in. And it's mostly working now, because I have hundreds and hundreds of pages of reading and freshman comp papers waiting for grading...keeping busy is good! Anyway, point is, I'm pessimistic--but unlike last round I don't feel like my whole life and self is on the line, so the pessimism isn't making me CRAZY like it did before.

I'm with fuzzylogician. In English schmancy schools definitely have power, but I think having a rockstar adviser in your particular field/genre/etc. is (at least slightly) more important than the school/department pedigree overall. Publishing in top-rate journals is also really important. I think it all comes back to fit (oh, that magical, mystical word)--if you know what, exactly, you want to study and seek out the top scholars, rather than the top overall schools, that is the best scenario. Academia's a small world--everyone knows everyone, and everyone knows who the rockstars are!

Ding ding ding!! In the small world of academe, having made a connection with profs from another school will almost undoubtedly be useful and beneficial to your research. Scholarship is, in large part, a discussion among colleagues, and so actually knowing some of the people you're "talking with" is a good thing. As everyone else has said, pretty much all the profs will understand your situation and bear no grudges. There's also the happy feeling that when you politely decline the offer, you are probably (probably) going to make a wait-listed individual somewhere very happy!

YES. Not for class reasons. My papers are still top notch, and my grades are sparkling. It's...everything else. Hence, as you might notice from my sig, I am applying for a not-so-academic program in the hopes of leaving my current situation. My profs (the ones who are in the know about my current app) are stumped...the department loves me, my work is good, I'm enthusiastic in class, I read everything they assign and more, I get everything done. I find it hard to explain to them that I'm sill not happy. "Lost" is definitely how I feel. You are not alone.

Purdue is my UG and current school for MA, so that would be Jill Quirk and yeah....she's amazing and she basically keeps the English department alive. When she retires the whole program is doomed.

Best. idea. ever.

I had something just like this happen, but with an LOR instead of transcripts (I have to say that my UG has the best transcript system ever. It's free, online, painless, and in the 8 schools I've applied to over the last 2 years they've never failed me. So, you know...that's something) and in last year's round I was scrambling two full weeks after the submission due dates dealing with Kaplan crap. You are absolutely right about staying diligent and being proactive--if I hadn't been emailing the admin assistants I would have been totally screwed both years. Last year when I was applying to my UG for the MA, I actually had to go see the admin asst in person a couple times to get all the GRE stuff straightened out! The thing is, even though we've payed them to process our applications, it's our futures on the line, so we need to be ever vigilant (aaaaaand now I feel like MadEye Moody...)