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Seems like a good time. Most PhD programs have sent the news. MA programs are really all that's left. So I imagine most people who were unlucky applicants are considering the next application cycle. (;

Yeah I talked to a lot of professors about language training. Most were agreeing that though fluency would be a A+ on the application. They really are looking at your experience and writing sample. If you have done a lot of work in Japanese primary sources and it is good, interesting research for the program based on those aforementioned sources, I feel like you are just as competitive as a fluent student.

Unfortunately, news came in yesterday. Not accepted, as assumed. UW-Madison isn't really known for staggering like I had hoped. They do a huge bust of acceptances and then take their sweet, sweet time giving out rejections. And I hope things work out for all of us in the end! (:

Focus: social and cultural history of modern Japan, focusing on issues of race and gender in the twentieth century. Advantage: Asian history as a whole is a small part of a departments, but it's a bit of budding interest for colleges and universities to hire an "Asian historian." My own undergraduate history program is currently on the hunt for two more to add to the faculty. Hopefully that speaks well to me getting a job, eventually. Disadvantage: 1) My advantage is also my disadvantage as most programs are small. That means there are less spots for those applying and thus competitive. One program I talked to said that because two years ago they accepted three students, for the next two years they would accept one student but only if that person really knocked their socks off.They really didn't intend on accepting anyone unless it was that way. 2) Languages, not only are they difficult, some programs can be annoyingly strict about language training. One program told me to not bother applying because I wasn't fluent in the language, though this was admittedly the program who said it was maybe going to accept one, so you can take that information with a grain of salt. Why?: Step-grandmother was Japanese and had lived through World War II. Nothing beats hearing about how she watched dogfights from her roof in Yokohama and worked in a student factory for the war effort. So I naturally became very interested in her life and childhood. Expanded from there.

I very much approve of this description. You get near the end, and there's a furious storm of kicks and tackles. Plus, the news gives you an extra little kick in the er, "balls" with all the troubles of money, loans, moving and planning for graduate school or even reapplying the next fall. I wish I could get a damn idea about finances with my offer. Then I could just say that I'm going to UCLA, unless offered better. At this point though, with no funding discussed, I'm just floating in uncertainty if I'm even going to graduate school. Though I can't really email the department until that official acceptance is handed to me, unofficial acceptances are just too... uncertain for me to start poking about funding in my mind.

Ah, I see it's time for me to collect my rejection letter. They waited so long to send out notification after the acceptances were released that anyone left over.. Well, rejection time it is. At least, I'm 1/4. (;

I really wanted to be placed in UW-Madison's program, but I'm near 100% certain I'm rejected. There was a load of acceptances about two weeks ago, and I just know I'm sort of waiting on the rejection notification. However, I'd like to get into Columbia's program. It's sort of competing for second place with UCLA. Both programs are great, but when I talked to my POI in the fall at Columbia, I found out they are not so . . . "giving" with the funding. I'm trying my best though not to fall too much for a specific program. I chose all these programs because I liked them a lot and could love being there. Give me an acceptance, and then I'll go about learning if I afford to live there and in the end the results would be worth it.

Wow, you have to decide about Columbia before March 5th? That's so early! I never applied to RSEA, but I definitely understand. Funding is a major part of the decision process. I know that I have to turn down my acceptance at UCLA, if I receive no funding. It's just too expensive and unfeasible in the job market to take on that kind of debt. What other programs did you apply on? Waiting for many more?

I am thinking about it, though I got no information regarding funding. ): I was hoping I would receive some information when the official news came, but since you got information, may I inquire some details? (: Was it in your email or did you ask the department further? Are you considering the offer seriously?

Hey everybody! I know a couple others applied to UCLA's East Asian Studies program. The news was emailed to me tonight. Make sure you check! No funding was mentioned, but I'm so excited right now that I have an option. Edit: Also, forgot to mention. I was told that my official email of acceptance will be coming shortly. It was a pre-official email acceptance.

El Jalisco is pretty popular also because of its margaritas deal. Buy 1, get 1 style. Thus, it can be a bit crazy with undergrads. Gordos is a pretty delicious Cuban restaurant, but be warned, there is bad service 8 out of 10 times. As for housing, please, for the sake of your safety, avoid Jackson bluff area. My three friends who have lived in that area have all been broken into and have had stuff stolen. It's a high theft neighborhood really. Fine in the daylight, just don't walk home alone at night. If you want to do basics of life and that's it, ie, school, food, sleep, then you can survive without a car. However, you have to be living somewhat near campus or on the bus route. I wouldn't recommend though. Tally is pretty spread out if you want to say, go to the mall, or go to Wal-mart as it is much further away, and as far as I know, not on the Seminole bus route. As for housing do not stay with "aptsintally" company. They own Seminole Grand, Polo Club, and a few other apartment housing companies. Horrible to their tenants. Things will break and never be fixed. Staff is useless. And they will stalk your apartment and invent reasons to try and fine you. I've had to go to the office with my lease several times regarding such matters. Also, if you still don't believe me, here's a nifty piece of recent news: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/10/22/floor-collapse-injures-55/1648911/. I dislike the company a lot since they purchased my apartment complex last year. It was a great place until they started making some really weird, demanding rules that made no sense. /: Anyways, housing that is about 10-15 minutes away is cheaper and less undergraduate flooded. Therefore, houses are chosen more often by graduates in my opinion than apartments.

Ouch. I looked at apartments "just to see" the living costs and started thinking of locations in that city that I would prefer to live in, in addition to reading the city forum. We torture ourselves . . . These next two weeks should be telling for two schools of mine. And I have a proficiency exam to take for another program next week. I hope I don't blank and forget everything I've ever learned about Japanese. Oh, and an interview too. At least there's something going on! Better than waiting and nothing happening. I wish most of my programs responded sooner than March. It's just so late. It's exhausting to have my dad pester me with what I'm doing next year when it varies from west coast, east coast, the north, or international. Basically anywhere but the south is open game. Hope we all get admission's decisions soon!

I've talked to a lot of professors who didn't give two shits about a GPA or GRE score. Most of the ones I talked to focus on three things: (1) quality of research writing and interests (does it fit their work? does they like your style? Etc), (2) language levels (how long? how fluent? how frequently do you draw upon primary sources in that language, or in other words, how much experience?) and (3) are you the type of person to withstand the punishment that the graduate program will put you through? (often decided based on by LORs, SOP) Not to say all programs regard the GRE and GPA that way. Some do take it seriously, but that your 3.7 isn't a deal breaker for a PhD admission. If you have strong LOR, SOP and a good fit, then a .1 difference isn't going to tear you away from a program. In fact, if a .1 difference makes any POI turn up their nose... well, it might not be the right program. But do tread carefully. An adviser (Dr. Y) once told me that sometimes the most petty of people can be the faculty, and they hold grudges. He had a story about how his predecessor (Dr. Z) who ran the archives part of his position managed to anger another faculty member (Dr. X). Something very petty, and even though the archives would be a great resource for Dr. X's students, he refused to acknowledge the archives and send students over. About ten years later, as soon as Dr. Z retired, Dr. Y became the new head of the archives. So Dr. X became super friendly again with the archives. Point of story: I really sympathize with your situation, because I had a shitty semester a while back and lowered my GPA to something I'm not proud of. But since the grade has already been changed and the department is cranky, do what you can to redeem those LORs and better that app! The GPA is already lowered, but you still have plenty of time to talk to your POIs and write your SOP. You should definitely focus on that. Good luck! Edit: Wait, I may have misread your information. If you are applying to enter this Fall 2014, then you haven't gotten through the application cycle and received all your decision notices! Definitely getting ahead of yourself. Just let the pieces for this season fall where they may, and you can come up with a plan after the decision notices have all been released.

Wow. He sounds like a very unpredictable advisor. I have a professor at my school's department of history who has a very, very similar style of attack. He likes to be incredibly vague in his requests. Gets things and loves them. A week later hates them and wants something completely different. I'm very sorry. The good news is that the difference in grade, though frustrating, isn't huge, and you can fight for publication, because you know and several other professors have told you that the quality of the paper is there. Publication I think is a great win, if you can get it.

Yay! There are so few of us. We must unite in our small numbers.

Someone got accepted on the 7th and then another on the 9th, with both saying they received the news through the website. I've checked multiple times, and my online application has the "pending" status as well. Frustrating, no? By next week we should know though. UW-Madison is pretty reliable about getting all the info out in two weeks, according to the records on the results page. Generally notices end within two weeks after the first notices are sent out. I think the online applications are just being updated every day in small batches. An order is based on what was submitted first or whatever order the stack the papers with the acceptance/rejection notifications are in. Just a guess. I thought for sure the news would be given to me this week. I'd love to know who got into UW-Madison who said they studied East Asian history. I think there are only about three of us on this forum, unless there are some quiet lurkers to the forums, and I'd love to just chat about your field. I rarely get to talk to anyone in my area of history.

I'm pretty convinced that at this point it's all reading tea leaves and interpreting omens. I found out that the online status checker for UW-Madison gets updated once a day at 7 AM, and my mail arrives around 3 PM. So I am resolving that I will check my online status once in the morning and then my mail in the afternoon. Then I will continue my day, resolving to check again the next day. These obsessive, triple checking of the status of an application, including applications that I have looked up several times that I know won't have information released until March, is entirely a waste of my time. The apps are out of my hands, so yeah. I'm going to do my best and buckle down, grabbing onto coursework or research or relevant distraction for the time being. (:

Because everyone else seems to be getting their UW-Madison admissions decisions, I check my mail box, every single day. Receiving junk mail has never been so annoying before: You see mail; hope lifts; checks mail; it's junk. I'm just so confused that if UW-Madison has made its admission decisions already, why is the website not updated? Anyways, today was a pretty active day for most people. Congrats to everyone who got an acceptance!

Nope. Not alone. I'm applying straight out an undergraduate program, and I was really intimidated by the program. I talked to a lot of PhD track programs. Most said I needed to become fluent in Japanese to become really competitive or do an MA. So I am applying to MA programs as well. However, the POI at Madison talked to me for a near hour about the program, her research, my research, and basically said I should go ahead and apply, despite my lack of fluency. So it ended up being the only PhD program I applied to. I feel completely inadequate in comparison to the program, but I love the faculty there. >.<

I'm glad I'm not alone! I just keep seeing these people getting responses, and I'm just checking and checking. /: I don't know if I dare to hope that I'm in the "second-round draft picks." I think my lack of fluency in Japanese is a major deciding factor in my application for the program. Most programs discouraged me from applying because I had only studied Japanese for three years, and my POI at Madison was actually pretty happy with my three years of study. Plus, I got really annoyed at myself when I realized my SOP for the UW-Madison app had an annoying spelling mistake... in the first paragraph. Of course, it's only a tiny error, but hey, hopefully the next week or so is more revealing regarding our status. I feel your frustration. I hope it gets settled soon. I had to apply to two programs that were international. Both did mail applications (thus mail in letters of rec), though one had the strangest requirements/rules for the letters of recommendation that I have ever seen. I felt so bad giving my LORs a paragraph explaining the exact formatting the program wanted.

Goodness. Every day I check into the results page and check out the UW-Madison information. My SO keeps asking if news has been posted yet, regarding my application, ever since I mentioned the results were rolling out. He's probably my biggest cheerleader. I think there is five now accepted to Madison. No rejections posted, so I thought to look at last year's information. I think Madison likes to mail out its acceptances first, and then a few days later the rejections are posted. Is that the general strategy for the program? Or am I trying to read tea leaves here? So yeah, how are the rest of the UW-Madison applicants feeling?

Six?! Wow, that just seems to be a bit much. I imagined that there would be the POI and maybe 1-2 others but never a full six. I'd be a mess of anxiety the days before I'd do an interview like that, but the best way to go about the interview is to remain calm and be as relaxed as possible. Remember they picked you for the interview, so they must already like you. Good luck!

I thought I wouldn't hear from Wisconsin until second or third week of February! I hope it has been sent out though, as scary as it sounds, because the waiting is torture. But good luck to you too! It is a great program.

Nope, I'd be out of state. I applied because one of my main recommendation letters (thesis adviser) went out of his way to talk to an instructor there about me, via email. And he was very adamant about me applying. It really is an amazing program. I understand why I wasn't accepted. Funding has got to be incredibly limited anyways.

I think my favorite white wine will be involved in either case. Rejection means I'll wallow in the bottle a bit and at least enjoy what I'm drinking, as I plan my next year of applications. Acceptance means fuck yeah, I'm calling my boyfriend to share the joy of acceptance and wine. Also, I swear I'm not an alcoholic. It's just my favorite wine, and I rarely buy it.