Frostfire

Hmm. Well, here's hoping. Also, congrats!

Ah, announcements. If you really want them, do yourself a favor and DON'T get the ones being shilled on campus. They're generally crappy and overpriced. Find yourself a local stationery store and order something there. They may not "match" the "official" school colors and whathaveyou, but they'll almost certainly be less expensive. And less tacky. And potentially more fun. But then, I spent a few years working in a stationery store and have retained the paper-snobbery disipite not working there in ... almost 6 years? Something like that.

Probably have a complete breakdown, assume I'm rejected, plan an extra semester to finish my thesis, and plan on reapplying. Not necessarily in that order. Note: I'm already in a couple stages of items one and two.

Oh dear gods, please don't ask such questions yet. It's one thing to figure you're facing rejection all around, but it's something else entirely to face the increasingly mathematical likelihood of it. The fact that one program I'm waiting to hear from hasn't replied to my email inquiry about decision timeline isn't very reassuring. The other only answered to kick the correspondence up the chain, so to speak. And that was on monday, with nothing since. So, yeah, I'm not feeling good about this. Basically, I'm hating my life and I want to set things on fire. How're the rest of you holding up?

Oh gods, how terrible! I take it you're already planning for applying next year? That's some serious stamina. I don't know if I'll be able to get back on that horse right away if I get a full round of rejections. Guess I'll find out soon enough.

I worry about this myself. It's been a terribly stressful process for me, and I feel like I'm getting nowhere fast. I'm getting my Master's now, and having no luck at all so far on the PhD. I can't really see myself going a different direction and getting a Master's in a related area just to take another shot at a PhD. I figure, realistically, I've got maybe one more shot at this. If that doesn't work, it's time to resign myself to Plan B for the long-term. And it's really kind of depressing right now.

Turning down a PhD in favor of a Master's IS potentially crazy. But at this point, only potentially. The fact that the Master's is funded makes it less crazy. At least since it's funded, you're not taking on unnecessary debt (I'm guessing). And sometimes a Master's can be a great thing to do, depending on the situation and the field. That said ... just because you do a Master's is no guarantee of getting into a PhD program in a few years. If they're really trying to recruit you, it may be worth at least a rethink. In the end though, it's really about more than just the program. It's about you and your ability to deal with the program. And if you're not happy with the program/area, it may be harder to do well and work the program to your advantage. So, maybe crazy, but it's about picking something you can live with and be happy about for however many years you're there. Definitely worth giving the PhD program another look, but ultimately you've got to pick what's most likely to bring you success.

I feel your pain on the wasted money sensation. With 6 schools to get transcripts from for each application, just applying to 6 programs topped out at nearly a thousand. It's deeply, deeply painful. And highly annoying. I don't know if I can stomach doing this again next season ... might have to take a full year away before getting back to this, if it doesn't work out this year. But maybe I'm just being pessimistic.

I feel your pain. Hopefully you'll find your way off the waitlist though. That's a glimmer of hope, at least.

I sent a brief email to 4 programs over the weekend. I've gotten ... hmm ... 1.5 answers. One program actually answered my email and one sent out / released official rejections. Still waiting to see if the other two get back to me. But it was worth doing, for me at least. It changed the process from "sit around on ass, wait for news" to something more palatable. Even if it's only "send an email, wait for news." But it depends on how you deal with stuff. If not getting a reply to your email is going to make you crazy, it may not be worth doing just yet. On the other hand, it may make you feel better, even if they don't answer you right away. Long story short? Do it if you'll feel better even without getting an instant reply.

Got a reply from the Joukowsky Institute. Not entirely unexpected. "While no formal acceptance or rejection letters have been issued yet, I do know that the Search Committee has been in touch with a short list of candidates at this point. Unfortunately, if you have not heard from them you are not on that list of finalists at the moment." So, still not officially putting us out of our misery, but there it is. Bleh. This whole thing sucks.

Emailed four programs over the weekend. Nobody has replied to my emails yet, but I notice that one of the schools suddenly has their rejections showing up on the status check site. Coincidence? Maybe, but I DO find it more than a bit ironic.

"Why would you want to live in (Ithaca, Boston, Texas, etc.) anway?" Yeah. Cause that's helpful. *sigh*

I know! What the hell is with the misinformation on that front? Seriously, if you say you're going to email, then damn well email! Bastards!

No worries on the misread, it's the thought that counts. And thanks. One thing I've realized during this process is that, for me, getting the rejection out of the way is better than the waiting around. I am an obsessive/compulsive planner. Which, I have recently discovered, is really just code for "Seriously woman? You're a control freak!" Sitting around waiting on other people's decisions ... not really something I'm good at. The last month or so (well, really, the 3.5 weeks between rejection #1 and #2 *ahem*) have been cripplingly terrible. And I've realized that it's not, in fact, the fear of rejection. At least, not primarily that. No. It's the complete inability to make anything resembling a plan. Am I moving? I don't know. Am I going to grad school? I don't know. Do I need to look for a job? I don't know. Oh dear gods, give me something to go on already!!! Clearly, If I can't make plans, I absolutely cannot cope with life. Back in the days before the interwebs, it may not have been so cruel to send out interviews/acceptances before (or, seriously, LONG before) the rejections. I mean, it's not like high school where you've got dozens and dozens of people all applying to colleges, often overlapping, and hearing all their results at the same time. Most of the time, in my experience anyway, even if there ARE several people applying to graduate programs, they're usually applying to different ones. So without the internet, if you get skipped on the invite/accept party, it's not like you'd know. But we DO have the net. We DO have places like GradCafe, and the results survey. So we absolutely DO hear about the invites/acceptances that are going on. We know when shit is going on with a program and we're not hearing from them. So what's the point behind hoarding the rejections? It's not like they're doing anybody any damn favors. Anyone else feeling this, or is it just me? We now return you to your regularly scheduled insanity ....

Well, a rejection just showed up on the status check for UT Austin. They don't appear to have actually answered my email, but I guess it's an answer. Bleh.

Oh, fear not. Any information I get will be shared with all the glee of your typical high-school gossip!

Indeed. I take it as a sign of how slowly the admissions decisions are coming out. I've finally given in to the crazy and emailed the programs I'm still waiting to hear from. Hopefully I can at least get some sort of update on WHEN I should be hearing something. It's hard to plan for graduation and what to do next year if I don't even know what my options are. And as an obsessive/compulsive planner (aka, control freak, as I recently realized) it's the complete inability to come up with plans, as much as anything else, that's driving me to distraction. Here's hoping for some sort of news next week.

How about "I will get accepted, or I will smite someone," instead?

So true. So very, very, very true.

Sounds like you've got a good plan. As far as citations go, you might look into Zotero. It's an add on (or plug in, or some shit) for firefox (and maybe other browsers?) and it keeps your stuff online. We've been using it to go through our department library to catalogue and re-organize. And it has plug ins (or whatever) for word processors. I've got to do that for my personal library ...

Well, at least it's not just me. And I guess I see the point about having a back-up list, but I still don't really understand why they can't just be a bit more up front about things. Even a simple, "hey, you're on a wait-list," would be better than all this nothing. Agreed. Get it over with. Seriously.

Anybody heard anything from Johns Hopkins? At this point, it's the only program I've applied to with nothing in the results survey. Well, there's also the Joukowsky Institute, but I'm assuming silent rejection, since they apparently do interviews in March. Which is all highly discouraging, but a girl can hope. I guess. I really don't understand the reasoning behind sending out acceptances/interviews but leaving the rejections for forever.

Well, 3.5 weeks later and it's rejection #2. This one hurts more than the first. Probably because at this point 2 or 3 more of the applications I'm waiting on are "silent" rejections. Also, because sitting on the 1st rejection for nearly a month has been eating at me. This shit sucks. And it's probably time to start contacting programs to ask about when decisions should come in. Which is just horrifying at this point. Bleh.