jaw17

Whohooo!!! Forget Harvard - I was just accepted into Wharton's PhD Program in Health Care Management and Economics! UPDATE: Good thing, too, b/c Harvard just officially turned me down.

I wouldn't worry about there being special significance behind asking your name - I mean, whenever I answer my phone I want to know who I'm talking to simply as a common courtesy. I frankly find it odd - good, but odd - that the program coordinators don't usually bother.

I think it's a nice gesture, but advice on how to best approach it vary tremendously. At a minimum, it can't hurt to email the program administrator (who presumably arranged the whole thing); if you met with just a few profs for extended periods of time, you should do the same. In my case, I met with 6 profs for 20-30 minutes each, about 8 students over dinner/breakfast/lunch, and the associate director of the health policy/economics PhD program. I didn't think it was feasible or appropriate to send out 14 different notes, so instead I sent one short email to the AD and noted that my travel receipts were in the mail. I then also included a much longer, handwritten thank you card along with said receipts (I got the impression that she was the type of person who would appreciate that kind of gesture), which referenced each of the different conversations. The full, slightly sanitized text is below, if that helps.

Thanks, that's really helpful! At this point, husband is leaning pretty strongly towards Princeton based on their overall ranking combined with a great Eurasia prof, but I wanted to check whether he needed to be paying more attention to the relative strength of the Persian side. Great to hear that they're considered right up there on the Middle East front, too. (And yes, at this point I have lost any remaining sanity and patience and so am living completely vicariously through him while I tear my hair out waiting for my own responses.)

Of course, that goes (I think!) without saying. The tricky thing in this case is that Central Asia spans a few different regional fields - both in terms of studying and ultimately placement - and so I was wondering if there was a specific way to gauge the external perceptions. Not that important, though...

Does anyone know of good (or halfway decent) ranking systems besides U.S. News, ideally honing in on specific regional fields? E.g. Is there any semi-objective measure of a department's strength in, say, Middle Eastern or Russian history other than word of mouth?

Any thoughts on where in Philly would make the most sense for us to live if I'm going to UPenn and husband is commuting to Princeton? Google tells me that I should probably focus on Old City/Northern Liberties to take advantage of: 1) easy access to I-95 (for husband); 2) stops on the SEPTA Market-Frankford line (for me); 3) nearby rock climbing gym; and 4) Orianna dog park - but are there pros/cons that I'm not aware of? Advice very, very welcome.

Re: MA programs - in addition to identifying ones with late deadlines, it can't hurt to contact other departments and ask if they ever consider late applications as well. I suspect that they've all been so busy sorting through the pile of PhD apps that they haven't even started on the MA ones...

I think that the benefits of going to school in DC are two-fold: 1) you're more likely to make direct career connections through the program, as many of the profs and guest lecturers are (or were) actively engaged in policy-making - for example, one of my friends at Georgetown ending up working as an RA for George Tenet; and 2) many students take advantage of the location to intern part-time during the academic year in addition to summers. Those are both valuable, but the extent and direct relevance will undoubtedly vary by person/program.

I wonder if the professors have any idea how negatively the program administrator's attitude reflects on the department as a whole? I know that at least one of them seemed very exasperated, embarrassed and apologetic when he learned that they had misplaced one of husband's LORs for the second time. I'm tempted to email all of them an anonymous link to this site. Just imagine how much more highly they'd be ranked - in terms of yield alone! - if they got rid of that one woman.

I've definitely been quoting Tom Petty a lot recently. Looks like someone finally did hear back from Harvard and posted their rejection over on the results board. Maybe I won't rush to get the mail today after all...

For what it's worth, I don't think husband would have gotten in anywhere if he'd applied directly to PhD programs before undertaking his MA degree. Granted, that's probably particularly true for him, since he wasn't a history major in undergrad, but I suspect many of the benefits (evidence of successful grad-level coursework, LORs, writing samples, more language classes, etc.) would carry over regardless. I think these really came into play given his incredibly small and somewhat "homeless" subfield - beat modern Central Asia!- where there was added pressure to be a strong all-around candidate in the absence of an obviously perfect fit with any one professor.

Husband's also now on the UMich wait list. Out of curiosity, when is the admitted student weekend, and do waitlisted applicants ever/usually attend those?

Husband also just got the Princeton acceptance email (from the graduate administrator, with a formal letter attached). And my god, that's a lot of money... Still doing the happy dance

Oh. My. God. UPenn is freaking incompetent. About 2 weeks ago they emailed husband asking him to have his recommender resend a "missing" LOR to their Soviet prof, who confirmed that he received it and added it to the file. Now this morning, he received ANOTHER email from their program administrator saying that the LOR was still missing, and that they needed it for the committee to review ASAP. When he called to explain that the UPenn prof already has it, she made it clear that it was his problem to deal with. Totally incompetent, rude and unhelpful. And so now he's off chasing down the profs again. Blech. And yet I'm still desperately hoping that they accept him...

I second the calls for more details on the Columbia admit (plus request that the poster put it up over on the results board so that the rest of the world can share the burden on our anxiety). More generally, does this mean that now silence is more or less indicative of rejection at Harvard, Columbia, Princeton, NYU and UMich? Crap, that means that most of our eggs are now in the UPenn basket if I have any hope of going to school on the same coast as him... I wish that they would just call and put us out of our misery.

Yes, it's always a good idea to let sleeping dogs lie :wink: For all the health folks - still no word from Harvard Health Policy? I've been a bad applicant and have been calling the program all week, but it keeps going straight to voicemail. If God is trying to teach me a lesson in patience, he's failing miserably.

Ack! Who is the Princeton admit?!? I had just about convinced myself that husband would be accepted there...allowing me to go to UPenn (if they'll have me).

Husband was just notified that he's on the wait list at Stanford (no indication of how high up). Any guesses on how often that results in a subsequent admission?

Does anyone know whether this will have any effect on the admissions process (e.g. slowing down their ability to process and send letters)? I'm not so much worried about the security leak as the delays that could be incurred if they're taking servers offline. Selfish, I know...

I know someone who got a call last night accepting her to Stern's strategy program.

The Harvard news would seem to be consistent with what little I know - although their program administrator still isn't answering her phone. Did anyone here have interviews there? RE: Paying for visits - Wharton's interview weekend pretty much doubled as their admit weekend (with the main difference being the remaining uncertainty!), and they paid. So what is everyone's focus area - we've got a few people who are obviously in either the policy or epidemiology camps, but within that is everyone internationally-oriented like angrawa and me?

I second the general enthusiasm about having a board of our very own - up until now, I was forced to channel my anxiety by neurotically stalking the history boards (my husband's discipline) instead. Which was admittedly rather pathetic, to put it mildly...Now I can legitimately wallow in my own suspense!

Congrats to everyone who's been seeing the acceptances starting to roll in. For those who haven't, what is your policy on calling to end the suspense at places where others have already heard back?

No idea - sorry! I had just been exchanging emails with a work-related contact who mentioned her acceptance, but I don't know any more details. Also, I forgot to mention that I had called the Harvard Health Policy program administrator a few weeks ago to ask whether they did interviews, and she nicely-but-cryptically suggested that I call back on 2/15 when she "should have more information" about the process and timeline. I of course took that to mean that they'd have decisions, but my (several) calls on Friday just went straight to voicemail. I ended up dropping her an email instead - no response yet - and so hesitate to try again today...but if anyone else happens to call, I'd be very interested in the outcome.