practical cat

Yup.

Up. Vote. I'm going to go away and be productive now, thanks. (Maybe.)

You constant accusations of defensiveness (read: ad hominem attacks) aside, I'm expressing the reality of the situation because what you're saying is just factually untrue in most situations (mine, two espressos, bfat, anyone else on a dynamic wait list) and reads as a pointed attempt at making others feel bad about their situations. I'm not defensive, I'm merely expressing an alternative opinion. But we've been down this road before, haven't we? Also, someone on Poli Sci posted this and it's kind of interesting. WAY more optimistic than anything I would say or have said (I think I have been very upfront about my assumption that I'll be reapplying next year) but interesting: http://www.uni.edu/~gotera/gradapp/results.htm

Because I don't define myself through this, I have very little concern over whether or not I am the first choice or the seventh choice because, as planesandtrains has expressed, there are just so few real life hindrances to getting in off the wait list. And because the numbers are so ridiculous at the top places, the difference between first and seventh is really so, so small and actually insignificant, despite what you keep insisting. To reiterate what planesandtrains said, funding is NOT a different story and no one actually cares (minus, I guess, you and people who need to care to feel better about themselves). And some wait lists are more dynamic than others. Oh, and comparing the attitudes of adcomms and prospective students is not at all different in explaining how one shouldn't take being second (or seventh) choice as some big affront or as identical to rejection. Once again, I have had nothing but wonderful experiences in conversation with people from my wait list institutions and they all have expressed genuine willingness to have me attend, to answer any questions I may have, and to help me decide on them should I get the chance. Some wait lists totally do get forgotten in the admitted students shuffle but even that doesn't mean you're functionally rejected, just that they're not great at handling wait lists (it could mean they don't care or that their wait list is less dynamic, sure, but not necessarily).

There's a difference between not being first choice and not being wanted. For example, I want to go to School X the most but if School Y or School Z is the only one to accept me, I wouldn't even hesitate to go there because I really, really want to go to those places as well, just slightly less and I do have a limit on the number of schools I can attend. I didn't want to go to Stanford (despite it being a phenomenal school) so I didn't apply. In this case, School X is the accepted applicant, Schools Y and Z are the wait list, and Stanford is the one with the rejection. Three I do want to differing degrees, one I don't/didn't. You're mistaking "a wait list doesn't mean they don't want you" for "a wait list obviously means you're their first choice" which is ridiculous and not at all what I said.

I have had some very open, communicative, and helpful email communications already so I wouldn't say that's a typical pattern for the wait list in general. I also wouldn't say that a wait list means they don't want you, though more open communication usually feels/seems better in either scenario. I still wouldn't place too much emphasis on that -- I don't think it actually says anything tangible.

Quoted because this really should be said twice.

Seriously? I never proposed any sort of cause/effect relationship and it is actually possible to respect someone's humanity while firing them. I DON'T have any problems with this thread but I do have a problem with being rude to other people just for the fun of it.

Being good to other people (what you're dismissing as political correctness) is generally the result of deep, critical thinking. There is no situation in which critical thinking and decency are incompatible.

This. So much of this. You cannot beat up on yourself for not being chosen out of a pool of hundreds of candidates, many of whom are qualified and competitive applicants. The sheer probability (not accounting for institutional politics) is outrageously low. If you genuinely believe that your application package sucks (not you as a person, this has nothing to do with you as a person), you have many months to make it unsuck. You actually may have to rethink what being a competitive applicant entails (and a lot of that would be rethinking strategy, as swagato outlined) but you can do it. There's no shame in rejection and, honestly, there's no shame in feeling down. Just don't let that consume you, you know?

My tiniest female professors have been some of my scariest, FOR SURE. But putting on fierceness has absolutely got to be a coping strategy because shortness absolutely 100% has an impact on perceived intelligence and competence. Those of us who are short (and I'm 4'11") will probably need to consider classroom presentation more than those who are not. And we may have fewer options open to us for the kind of teacher we could be -- I don't actually want to be the scary/intimidating one but I have never seen a short person be the nice one and get the same respect (which then translates to lower perceptions of teaching quality).

OK, now that I'm on a real person computer, I can actually respond to this question. I have been basically thanking them for the good news and expressing my continued interest in the program. All of my response emails so far have been very short. As yet I haven't really asked any questions as I'm sort of waiting to be sure about my Buffalo rejection before actively trying to come up with a plan for possible acceptance. I think, though, that it's totally valid to respond with questions especially in cases where the person emailing (usually the committee chair in my case, not the DGS) explicitly states that. I would consider first, though, the types of questions that person might be best suited to answer and whether or not they'd be better directed elsewhere. ETA: None of this is to say that I have found the process easy at all and it has even gotten more difficult with each passing wait list notification. Writing back to Brandeis yesterday was painful and it took me about an hour to write a couple sentences. Also, not sure how this could possibly hurt:

I'm really struggling with posting right now, don't mind this.

Wanting so hard to be able to up-vote this. I keep saying that the wait-list is like the Miss Congeniality of the admissions game.

Huh. This is cool. All I know of the field is from a legal scholar so I really only know about fatness and rights (bleak, unsettling stuff that). Thanks for this.

And I'm once again even on wait-lists/rejections. Always the bridesmaid, you guys. (I've been secretly hoping for a 50% wait-lists response outcome but, ha, I'd have to get them from both Buffalo and Harvard and that's actually just not going to happen.)

I don't think the level of understanding is quite as pervasive as you think. Nonetheless, we're still all asked to read the Invisible Knapsack piece despite how we all already know about privilege or whatever (also despite how weird and problematic that piece is). It's a major part of knowing the field.

I think a lot of what we take to be "common knowledge" is made such through the work of people who study identity.

Or Ryan Gosling. "Hey girl, you may be rejected from UF but you're totally accepted into my heart."

Not to mention, I don't think I want to be in academics anymore if the potential future job description involves calling people to tell them they're rejected...

Exactly. I keep saying I have two cycles in me and I'm out. There are plenty of other careers out there that I could obsessively devote my life to, this is just the first choice one.

I'm now at two of those emails. It may be that they've yet to process my rejection -- my application status only just changed today from "Not Reviewed" to "Not Reviewed - 02/26/2013" so hopefully that's finally in the mail and I can put an end to the Month of Caring About Buffalo Way Too Much. That's a really good, probably-accurate outlook. I think you'll be much happier at UNC anyway.

I would like to know this as well. I'm compiling a set of questions for the DGS as I don't want to get caught uninformed about my choice should one arise (especially if it should arise on April 15) but I'm not even sure how fruitful contacting other faculty would be at this point.

Did anyone else get the really heartless email from Buffalo? The "Join us with Fellow UB Prospective Students on Facebook!"? I get that I haven't been rejected yet but still. Leave me to wallow in it, Buffalo recruiters.

Lots of schools do wait lists more than a week after acceptances (I got one three weeks after) but Berkeley has already done wait lists. There's an even lesser chance it is anything other than a rejection.