humean_skeptic

Anchorman quotation? Knights of Columbus!!

You've been accepted by Harvard, UNC, MIT, Yale, Pitt, and Michigan? Slacker

This claim is just about as certainly true as 'All bachelors are unmarried'.

That is awesome. Congrats!!

Yeah, very happy to hear you heard some good news, Ian. You deserve it!

Not a bad idea with the whiteboards.

I definitely have an internalized flowchart composed of all of the most likely waitlist-outcome possibilities relative to all the evidence and information that I've gathered. But you actually wrote out your flowchart? Dang.

You're a machine! A Turing machine

From what I've read/heard/seen, applicants are generally pretty reasonable about declining an offer from a ranked-40th school when they have offers from three or four T20 schools, or declining an offer from a ranked-20th or even ranked-15th school when they have offers from T5 or T10 schools.

I'm currently on the wait list at U of Arizona; received the notification Feb 10th through email. Edit: Pretty desperate to get in off the wait list! Arizona is pretty much my #1 choice for grad school (barring a miracle in which I get into NYU).

I've tried to stay as busy as possible: reading philosophy, checking TGC, writing philosophy, checking TGC, exercising, checking TGC, eating/watching TV, checking TGC, more philosophy, checking TGC, and so on... So far, I've managed to actually slow down the passage of time quite considerably. Not sure if March will ever actually arrive at this point, even if there's a satisfactory solution to all of Zeno's Paradoxes.

Congrats, Hypatience. Pitt is an amazing department!!

I've already met my daily quota of up-votes, but this sounds like a great idea. I'd be happy to contribute some info.

He who must not be named?

I laughed out loud.

Agreed. Also, here's what I take to be a pretty reasonable way around all the GRE scores-related confusion: Departments could just all have sharply defined GRE cutoff scores, and make their cutoff scores public (posted on their web site). Example: To have your application to the PhD program at NYU even considered, you need a Verbal score in the 95th percentile or higher, and a Quant score in the 75th percentile or higher. Example 2: To have your application considered at Northwestern, you need a Verbal score in the 90th percentile or higher, and a Quant score in the 60th percentile or higher. Further, if an applicant makes that cutoff score, then the GRE scores are no longer figured into the evaluation of the quality of the application. That evaluation will come down to the writing sample, grades in major/MA, letters, and fit. Wouldn't this eliminate virtually all of the confusion to do with GRE scores?

I personally think that *all* the MIT rejections are fake

Congrats!

From MIT: "I am truly sorry to inform you that we are not able to offer you admission to the MIT philosophy Ph.D. program. This year, the number of exceptionally talented applicants for admission to our department greatly exceeds the number which can be accommodated and it has been necessary to refuse admission to many fine applicants." Now hold up a second...so MIT thinks I'm exceptionally talented? Oh snap.

Congrats nonetheless, Matt!

No worries. Extremely stressful time for everyone.

Good question. I too assumed it was the dominant view.

By then, NYU, Columbia, Pittsburgh, Cornell, etc will have given out their offers, not to mention the fact that I *might* have get in off the Arizona wait list by then (based on results from previous years).

Wondering if there's a way to speed up time so that March 5th comes tomorrow, while also remaining productive over the next two weeks. Suggestions?

Arizona has the same thing; the wait list is not linearly ordered. I think the order of who gets off the list depends on the AOI of those who turn down offers (and the AOI of the applicants on the wait list). There are six initial offers, and nine or ten applicants on the wait list. In previous years, they often use up everyone on their initial wait list, and use a much longer, 'extended' wait list made up of the applicants they didn't reject.