Lycidas

Accepted at BU! This now means that over half my acceptances have come on a weekend. And here I thought I could relax and not check my phone obsessively on Saturdays and Sundays...

To add to what others have said already, practically nobody is fully "prepared" for graduate studies, especially at the doctoral level, when they first enter. There's almost always (from what I'm told) a short period of "whoa, this is a lot of work and everyone's really smart," which can occasionally be followed by "am I right for this?" But that's natural, and it passes, and things settle down a bit. If you're capable of constructing an application that can get you accepted, you're most likely capable of doing the work once you're there. It's just a matter of making the adjustment

Huge congrats WT! I still think there's a phd acceptance in your future, but this looks like a great option for you, and hopefully some funding comes through for you soon!

Thanks everyone for all the kind thoughts, and huge congratulations to all the Yale admits! Unræd and Hreaðemus, you're going to have some tough decisions to make over the next couple of months! (although that's a great problem to have, of course)

It was in fact Judith Haber, and she was extremely charming and funny throughout the call. I read her work way back when I first got interested in early modern studies, so talking to her on the phone was a bit surreal, but very fun

In at Tufts! Got a nice phone call from the DGS

Anything by The National is typically my go-to music for a stressed out period, but surprisingly I've found myself listening to nothing but Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited for the past three weeks. I think the abstractness of Dylan's lyrics on the album mirrors the abstractness of the graduate application process quite well, actually

but it contains some useful information for anyone thinking about late deadline programs Edit: After actually looking through that thread, it's really not all that helpful. I should probably read threads before I post links to them, and way before I say they contain "useful information." This is just reckless posting on my part, sorry folks

Absolutely, and that’s why it can’t be said often enough on here (as it’s been said already several times on this very page) that admissions and denials are very rarely to be taken as reflections of an applicant’s true abilities relative to others. All we can do as applicants is try to give a committee the fewest number of “milder winter” options that we can, but even that’s a very limited form of control—nothing (besides maybe some really great blackmail material) can make someone a guaranteed admit.

I think it’s generally underrated how, in an applicant pool as competitive as top-50 English PhD pools are, almost anything can be used as a tiebreaker. Yes, sometimes that’s “fit,” but when 600-1,000 people apply to a school, the odds of at least 2 or 3 of them having great fit, excellent SOPs, and polished writing samples is relatively high. If something is needed to break that tie, it can sometimes be GRE scores, perceived prestige of undergraduate institution, or some other metric that isn’t all that indicative of an applicant’s actual ability. Add in the fact that many high prestige graduate programs still demand the subject test, and you’ve made things even more convoluted.

Congrats to the Brown admits!

Looks like the week is off to a tremendous start! Congratulations to all the acceptees (is that a word? did I make that up in a fit of GradCafe excitement?) and here's to many more acceptances before the week is over! (and, apparently, on the weekends too!)

Huge congrats to the Riverside, NYU and A&M admits!

Ran out of upvotes but thank you so much everyone! Really excited to see even more good news roll in for all of us over the next few weeks!

Accepted at Columbia!!!!!!!! So unbelievably excited right now, didn't expect news on a Saturday at all!

I applied to Northeastern, and I too thought they would notify earlier. I mean, even if they notified over the weekend, they'd still be leaving only 3 weeks until their visit weekend. Not a ton of time for people, considering how busy this time of year is

To be honest, it wasn't entirely clear. Something was said along the lines of "this is a newer thing we're doing at Columbia, talking to candidates before we go to the final review stage." Whether that means all the candidates or a portion of the candidates, I have no idea. Also, congrats to the NYU acceptance up on the results board! I'm guessing it's a poster here, because (and this reveals, sadly, how much time I spend on the results board) I know I've seen those GPA/GRE stats before!

"Interview" ended up being an a bit of an inaccurate term. We just had a conversation about my research, my writing sample, and Columbia's program in general; there wasn't much of an interrogative tone to it. I was told that final deliberations began today and would "end when they end," but likely no later than middle of next week. Final decisions are made by more or less the entire committee––members from different subfields "advocate" for their choices, but there isn't enough room for everyone, so it has to be whittled down to about 16 for the whole department.

Thanks everyone! My pernicious plan to infiltrate and conquer the Boston suburbs seems to be falling into place...(laughs manically)

Judging by the results board, Amherst seems to be rolling out their notifications in little bits and pieces. I thought I was a likely rejection when I saw the first acceptances go by almost a week ago, so I wouldn't give up hope on Amherst unless you get an official rejection letter

In at UMass Amherst! Apparently acceptances can come at any time of day, even after midnight!

Count me in among lovers of The Monk! Amazing that Lewis wrote it before he turned 20. And here I am thinking applying to graduate schools is an accomplishment...

Yes, it sounds pretty informal, a phone conversation to discuss my application and the program in general. I have no idea if they do this for everyone, so I wouldn't get too down yet. Too early to tell!

Just got an email to schedule a phone interview with Columbia! Email asked for a chat in anticipation of "final admissions deliberations on Friday" Edit: missed the acceptance posts for Davis and Chicago: so much congrats eveyone!!!!

I wouldn't be too worried. Even though it seems like there's been a lot of notifying already, in reality the heavy notification season is just beginning. February will likely be a crazy month for everyone on this board.