Quit Playing Games (With My Heart) / Projected Rejections

[grandr]

Just now, kendalldinniene said:

Looking at last year Berkeley didn’t bother to send rejections out until like late March, I think.

Yeah, I actually go there rn for undergrad and I asked the grad. coordinator the other day and he said the committee is 'still making decisions' but with the number of people accepted, I doubt that that actually means anything. They don't usually have a big (if any) waitlist though so I wonder if part of it is an invisible waitlist? 

[dartdoc]

You know, if I ever become a professor, I am going to remember this pain and discomfort just waiting for the rejection and make sure that students hear from my school ASAP. But probably because I know what that is like, I might never make it to be a professor. Big sad.

[havemybloodchild]

25 minutes ago, dartdoc said:

You know, if I ever become a professor, I am going to remember this pain and discomfort just waiting for the rejection and make sure that students hear from my school ASAP. But probably because I know what that is like, I might never make it to be a professor. Big sad.

Same. I’ve been thinking about the reputation of folks with doctorates being pretentious and having no compassion and, after being through two cycles filled with rejection, I’m wondering how that’s possible if it’s not all just a cover up for the lasting insecurity caused by a million schools saying thank you, next to your dreams, haha.

[beardedlady]

Honestly, bummed af about silence from Brown.

[CaffeineCardigan]

I've accepted the shut out, but is anyone still at radio silence with Brandeis? I'm confused that they've sent rejections, acceptances, waitlist, and more rejections, and I've still heard nothing. Do they foist people off on their MA? 

[arbie]

On 2/22/2019 at 12:14 PM, jadeisokay said:

anyone heard from Pittsburgh?

I received notification I was waitlisted there on 2/5

[jillcicle]

28 minutes ago, kendalldinniene said:

Same. I’ve been thinking about the reputation of folks with doctorates being pretentious and having no compassion and, after being through two cycles filled with rejection, I’m wondering how that’s possible if it’s not all just a cover up for the lasting insecurity caused by a million schools saying thank you, next to your dreams, haha.

I do wonder if a lot of them are fronting that to avoid having others find out that they secretly struggled - like, if you show mercy, people might realize you're weak. And then you have the privileged ones who were able to actually cruise through with few rejections and lots of prestige and I think they are unable to take a serious look at the privilege and luck that combined for that to happen - instead, they convince themselves that it was earned through Hard Work and they don't have to address the inadequacies of the failing system or admit that they're benefiting from those. 

It is an interesting mix - just thinking about professors, it's been about 50/50 the ones who are like "it's just about Hard Work you have to Work Harder or you aren't Good Enough" and the ones who will openly talk about their own privilege and luck and failures. I wish it was possible to reference that with their admissions record etc.

[MetaphysicalDrama]

46 minutes ago, kendalldinniene said:

Same. I’ve been thinking about the reputation of folks with doctorates being pretentious and having no compassion and, after being through two cycles filled with rejection, I’m wondering how that’s possible if it’s not all just a cover up for the lasting insecurity caused by a million schools saying thank you, next to your dreams, haha.

The irony here is that most profs on admissions committees have not likely dealt with the frustration of rejection.  Their most difficult decision was deciding between UChicago and Berkeley.  I know this doesn't go for all tenured faculty, but if you believe the top-ten school dogma, then it's likely the case.  Actually, I'm not at all surprised that so many of the people picked by the top schools have multiple offers from other top schools: they are all looking for the same sort of applicant.  That doesn't diminish their well-deserved success, but it shows that those schools have a profile. 

[madandmoonly]

28 minutes ago, CaffeineCardigan said:

I've accepted the shut out, but is anyone still at radio silence with Brandeis? I'm confused that they've sent rejections, acceptances, waitlist, and more rejections, and I've still heard nothing. Do they foist people off on their MA? 

I don't think they refer people to the MA; not that I'm aware of? Perhaps it's an invisible waitlist sort of thing? Or just a terrible rejection system. Neither would surprise me! 

[CaffeineCardigan]

8 minutes ago, madandmoonly said:

I don't think they refer people to the MA; not that I'm aware of? Perhaps it's an invisible waitlist sort of thing? Or just a terrible rejection system. Neither would surprise me! 

Thanks! I suppose I should probably just call. 

[mandelbulb]

29 minutes ago, MetaphysicalDrama said:

The irony here is that most profs on admissions committees have not likely dealt with the frustration of rejection.  Their most difficult decision was deciding between UChicago and Berkeley.  I know this doesn't go for all tenured faculty, but if you believe the top-ten school dogma, then it's likely the case.  Actually, I'm not at all surprised that so many of the people picked by the top schools have multiple offers from other top schools: they are all looking for the same sort of applicant.  That doesn't diminish their well-deserved success, but it shows that those schools have a profile. 

i just want to chime in here to remind everyone that grad school admissions is only one way to get a rejection. for instance:

On 2/22/2019 at 5:28 PM, emprof said:

 This is one of the things about the academic life cycle: it's never over. You wait to get into grad school, you wait to pass your QEs, you wait to "advance to candidacy," you wait to pass a prospectus, you wait to get a fellowship, you wait to publish your first article, you wait to get a job interview, you wait to get a campus visit, you wait to get a job, you wait to get a book contract, you wait for the book to come out, you wait for book reviews, you wait to get tenure, you wait to get a fellowship, you wait for your graduate student to get hired, you wait to get a second book, you wait to get promoted ...

a prof on an admissions committee could've been rejected at any of these points. i don't know if making a sweeping accusation that they've never experienced rejection will make the sting of our rejection any less, but there's no reason to vilify people you've never met. for all we know, admissions committees have little control over when rejections are sent. some the rejections i've received during this process have come from the graduate schools, not the departments. there could be several layers of bureaucratic bullshit we're not seeing. 

 

 

Edited February 25, 2019 by mandelbulb

[jillcicle]

1 hour ago, mandelbulb said:

i don't know if making a sweeping accusation that they've never experienced rejection will make the sting of our rejection any less, but there's no reason to vilify people you've never met. for all we know, admissions committees have little control over when rejections are sent. some the rejections i've received during this process have come from the graduate schools, not the departments. there could be several layers of bureaucratic bullshit we're not seeing. 

Oh, I'm 100% sure there are those layers. Everyone scrambles like mad during admissions time and the people on the other end are all only human. I was thinking more about those who earn the reputation of "folks with doctorates being pretentious and having no compassion," rather than the ad-coms and those in charge of issuing rejections. Those two groups don't always overlap. (I wish I could say the compassion thing was just a stereotype - though it is often wielded very unfairly against PhDs at large, I have unfortunately met professors who live up to this stereotype and enable its perpetuation.)

Something else to keep in mind when thinking about the professors and the admissions process is how much extra labor this involves for them - I'm sure there are plenty of exhausted folks out there who wish they could personally reach out to each applicant who isn't admitted but they're already overworked in many ways even when it isn't admissions season. (Now, could the form letters sometimes sound nicer and the ad com process and timeline be more transparent anyway? Yes, please.) They're at the mercy of the same system as we are, even if it feels like they've "made it" - but this is yet another reason why we should all vow to push back against that system. 

Edited February 25, 2019 by jillcicle

[Englishandteamakesahappyme]

1 hour ago, CaffeineCardigan said:

I've accepted the shut out, but is anyone still at radio silence with Brandeis? I'm confused that they've sent rejections, acceptances, waitlist, and more rejections, and I've still heard nothing. Do they foist people off on their MA? 

I’m still waiting for a Brandeis decision. In my view, if you haven’t heard, you are still in the running until you’ve heard otherwise from the program! We can be hopeful. Best of luck!

[Englishandteamakesahappyme]

So one of the two faculty I mention in my Brandeis SoP is on sabbatical. Does this mean they could be waiting for him to review my app or am I being too hopeful? Anyone have experience with this situation?

[Musmatatus]

3 minutes ago, Englishandteamakesahappyme said:

So one of the two faculty I mention in my Brandeis SoP is on sabbatical. Does this mean they could be waiting for him to review my app or am I being too hopeful? Anyone have experience with this situation?

I knew one of the faculty I mentioned in my SoP at a place I got admitted; when I emailed them to tell them I got in, they mentioned they hadn't heard about it and were glad I reached out. So, I don't know that this would be the case. 

But, Brandeis might operate differently! 

[Englishandteamakesahappyme]

@sugilite Thanks. Perhaps it would depend if this particular professor is usually on the adcomm. ?‍♂️ 

[MetaphysicalDrama]

3 hours ago, mandelbulb said:

 

a prof on an admissions committee could've been rejected at any of these points. i don't know if making a sweeping accusation that they've never experienced rejection will make the sting of our rejection any less, but there's no reason to vilify people you've never met. for all we know, admissions committees have little control over when rejections are sent. some the rejections i've received during this process have come from the graduate schools, not the departments. there could be several layers of bureaucratic bullshit we're not seeing. 

 

 

Perhaps I should qualify what I meant and say that professors sitting on admissions committees haven't likely experienced the rejection of their doctoral applications.  It wasn't so much my intention to vilify anyone in particular as much as it was to comment on how the institutions and committees work.  I guess it's also worth pointing out how undesirable this kind of committee work is.  I'm sure there is some DGS out there who can't wait until proctoring comprehensive exams is in the future.  While I'm sure some profs sitting on committees may very well have been rejected by their top-choice school, there has been a running joke for a long time that the campus visit days for doctoral students is a tour of the same people making a stops at Berkeley, Chicago, Columbia, and etc. 

That's actually a concerning state of affairs.  If you believe the top-ten dogma about the tenure track job market, then think about how much control those schools have over the study of literature, philosophy, or whatever field of humanities that is feeling the effects of a shrinking job market.  While a UChicago or Penn makes the decisions on doctoral apps at their institution, separating worthy projects from those which are not, they also get to send those same students to a number of universities and install those same values there.

I know this gets us on to questions way too big for this forum, but at some point the systematic failures within academia need to be dealt with. I think that less than 2% of Americans hold a PhD (I imagine the number is even smaller for those in the humanities), but there aren't jobs for them?  This is not a huge swath of the population.  Furthermore, it looks to me that the effort has been less so about finding suitable work for PhDs and more about limiting access to the PhD.  The result of that is the termination of degree programs and expert-level study of the humanities.  The other can of worms this discussion opens up is adjuncting and how universities have abused that power, and that quickly leads to finance issues that are really a matter of government.  Hell, one could argue that the main reason why funding is such a problem for humanities PhDs is because the cost of tuition in higher education has skyrocketed to such unbelievable heights, but I digress. 

I'm grateful for the work professors do on admissions committees and the throughout the university.  I hope they keep doing it.  I see immense value in what they do; that's why I've applied to doctoral programs to study with them. 

Edited February 25, 2019 by MetaphysicalDrama

[Deleted Because Useless]

4 hours ago, MetaphysicalDrama said:

Their most difficult decision was deciding between UChicago and Berkeley.  I know this doesn't go for all tenured faculty, but if you believe the top-ten school dogma, then it's likely the case. 

Me: Professor, how were the rankings back in your day? (me looking through the 20-40 range)

Professor: To be honest, I only applied to the top 10 schools and ended up having to decide between UChicago and Berkeley.

True story xD

[havemybloodchild]

39 minutes ago, MetaphysicalDrama said:

Perhaps I should qualify what I meant and say that professors sitting on admissions committees haven't likely experienced the rejection of their doctoral applications.  It wasn't so much my intention to vilify anyone in particular as much as it was to comment on how the institutions and committees work.  I guess it's also worth pointing out how undesirable this kind of committee work is.  I'm sure there is some DGS out there who can't wait until proctoring comprehensive exams is in the future.  While I'm sure some profs sitting on committees may very well have been rejected by their top-choice school, there has been a running joke for a long time that the campus visit days for doctoral students is a tour of the same people making a stops at Berkeley, Chicago, Columbia, and etc. 

That's actually a concerning state of affairs.  If you believe the top-ten dogma about the tenure track job market, then think about how much control those schools have over the study of literature, philosophy, or whatever field of humanities that is feeling the effects of a shrinking job market.  While a UChicago or Penn makes the decisions on doctoral apps at their institution, separating worthy projects from those which are not, they also get to send those same students to a number of universities and install those same values there.

I know this gets us on to questions way too big for this forum, but at some point the systematic failures within academia need to be dealt with. I think that less than 2% of Americans hold a PhD (I imagine the number is even smaller for those in the humanities), but there aren't jobs for them?  This is not a huge swath of the population.  Furthermore, it looks to me that the effort has been less so about finding suitable work for PhDs and more about limiting access to the PhD.  The result of that is the termination of degree programs and expert-level study of the humanities.  The other can of worms this discussion opens up is adjuncting and how universities have abused that power, and that quickly leads to finance issues that are really a matter of government.  Hell, one could argue that the main reason why funding is such a problem for humanities PhDs is because the cost of tuition in higher education has skyrocketed to such unbelievable heights, but I digress. 

I'm grateful for the work professors do on admissions committees and the throughout the university.  I hope they keep doing it.  I see immense value in what they do; that's why I've applied to doctoral programs to study with them. 

As someone who worked in student government and mainly on issues of funding and affordability, and access for marginalized students, within the state of Oregon (which MASSIVELY underfunds all its pubic education) I have so much to say about this...but I’ll refrain.  It’s so frustrating. 

Long story short: YEP

[Warelin]

21 hours ago, Hopeful and Not said:

Me: Professor, how were the rankings back in your day? (me looking through the 20-40 range)

Professor: To be honest, I only applied to the top 10 schools and ended up having to decide between UChicago and Berkeley.

True story xD

There were considerably fewer applicants many years ago. A lot of the "top" programs have a long history and admitted bigger cohorts than they currently do. Part of this is some of the reason why it appears that certain professors graduated from the same schools. One of my professors told me that he only applied to 3 schools and was admitted to all of them.

While they may not have faced rejection to as many schools as current applicants are applying to, I do believe a lot of them do fear what will happen to the profession as a whole.

[jillcicle]

1 hour ago, MetaphysicalDrama said:

I know this gets us on to questions way too big for this forum, but at some point the systematic failures within academia need to be dealt with. I think that less than 2% of Americans hold a PhD (I imagine the number is even smaller for those in the humanities), but there aren't jobs for them?  This is not a huge swath of the population.  Furthermore, it looks to me that the effort has been less so about finding suitable work for PhDs and more about limiting access to the PhD.  The result of that is the termination of degree programs and expert-level study of the humanities.  The other can of worms this discussion opens up is adjuncting and how universities have abused that power, and that quickly leads to finance issues that are really a matter of government.  Hell, one could argue that the main reason why funding is such a problem for humanities PhDs is because the cost of tuition in higher education has skyrocketed to such unbelievable heights, but I digress. 

Totally with you - there was a great article from Trevor Griffey for LAWCHA about some of this called The Decline of Faculty Tenure if anyone's interested.

[emprof]

23 hours ago, jillcicle said:

Something else to keep in mind when thinking about the professors and the admissions process is how much extra labor this involves for them - I'm sure there are plenty of exhausted folks out there who wish they could personally reach out to each applicant who isn't admitted but they're already overworked in many ways even when it isn't admissions season. (Now, could the form letters sometimes sound nicer and the ad com process and timeline be more transparent anyway? Yes, please.) They're at the mercy of the same system as we are, even if it feels like they've "made it" - but this is yet another reason why we should all vow to push back against that system. 

Thanks for this generous interpretation, which I can endorse! Each admissions season, I read about 200 applications of roughly 60 pages each--while teaching, writing, and completing departmental searches for any new hires (which would usually entail 3-4 files of several hundred pages each). There's just no way to offer meaningful and personalized feedback to each application that doesn't make the final cut. (And the pangs of conscience about that are part of why I'm on these forums, in hopes that I can humanize the process a little bit in another way.)

@MetaphysicalDrama I definitely appreciate the systematic and infrastructural issues you raise. And you're of course right that it is a position of privilege to be sitting on an admissions committee with the reassurance of tenure, and not one that anyone I know takes for granted. For what it's worth, I don't think that there is any pleasure in "gatekeeping" on admissions committees; it's not a particularly coveted committee assignment, because it's a lot of work, and it's demoralizing. We know that we are disappointing a large number of very talented people by rejecting them, and we know that we are possibly doing a disservice to those we admit, because we cannot guarantee that we will be able to secure them jobs, even if they do everything right. No humanities professor I know--and I know a lot of them--is excited about the fact that there aren't enough jobs for Ph.D.s. But humanities enrollments in undergraduate classes have plummeted to half what they were a decade ago. Universities can't hire computer science professors fast enough to staff their courses, but humanities courses at my institution are regularly canceled for under-enrollment. Under those conditions, it's hard to make a case to a central administration that we need to hire more faculty. The crisis I perceive is the one between those of us dedicated to humanistic learning and those who insist, increasingly, that liberal arts educations be transformed into vocational training--as I'm afraid American culture has increasingly done. 

Finally, every academic I know (myself included) has experienced a lot of rejection, and had many long, dark nights of the soul. Living a life of the mind, and caring intensely about your work,  mean that every rejection feels deeply personal. Among just the tenured faculty I'm close to in my department, two were initially denied tenure, two nearly left the profession having crises of faith finishing the first book manuscript, one failed his qualifying exams in graduate school, and all are rejected annually for fellowships and grants. All of us, too, were rejected from at least one graduate program we applied to. Fall down seven times; stand up eight. 

[emprof]

3 hours ago, emprof said:

Universities can't hire computer science professors fast enough to staff their courses, but humanities courses at my institution are regularly canceled for under-enrollment.

 

For a less anecdotal version of the so-called "humanities plunge," here's The Atlantic's take from last April. Nothing you don't already know, I'm sure, but a concrete reason why there aren't enough jobs for humanities Ph.D.s. In my department and in the those of friends and colleagues at other institutions, we regularly revisit the size of our cohorts in view of the bleak data. I know some institutions with huge undergraduate populations admit graduate students because they need them as a source of cheap labor to staff composition courses. That's not the case at my institution (though it was the case where I did my graduate training). So is it ethical for us to admit more students than we know we can place in (good--i.e., fulfilling, financially sustainable, and using the degree) jobs? I'm not sure of the answer. I'm not sure what percentage of us (and by "us" I mean "all of us who sought or are seeking a humanities Ph.D.) would/will be happy to have spent 6-ish years working on the degree if the job at the end of the line is one that we could have secured 5 years earlier with a MA. But I would genuinely welcome your thoughts about this ethical question, which is one that we are continuously grappling with.

[MetaphysicalDrama]

15 hours ago, emprof said:

For a less anecdotal version of the so-called "humanities plunge," here's The Atlantic's take from last April. Nothing you don't already know, I'm sure, but a concrete reason why there aren't enough jobs for humanities Ph.D.s. In my department and in the those of friends and colleagues at other institutions, we regularly revisit the size of our cohorts in view of the bleak data. I know some institutions with huge undergraduate populations admit graduate students because they need them as a source of cheap labor to staff composition courses. That's not the case at my institution (though it was the case where I did my graduate training). So is it ethical for us to admit more students than we know we can place in (good--i.e., fulfilling, financially sustainable, and using the degree) jobs? I'm not sure of the answer. I'm not sure what percentage of us (and by "us" I mean "all of us who sought or are seeking a humanities Ph.D.) would/will be happy to have spent 6-ish years working on the degree if the job at the end of the line is one that we could have secured 5 years earlier with a MA. But I would genuinely welcome your thoughts about this ethical question, which is one that we are continuously grappling with.

Thank you for sharing that informative article.  Yes, it is amazing how well-known it is among humanities majors that what a person majors in often produces a negligible difference in employment prospects and lifetime earnings.  It's kind of infuriating to watch that.  While nothing new, I also think that common core restrictions in ENGL 1301 is harming the major.  Learning "the essay" and diagramming sentences like they do in high school doesn't exactly set up the English major as an exciting way to explore questions about the meaning of life.  As much as I wish the MLA could wrestle back the control of ENGL 1301 from the Four Cs, I realize that's primarily a political problem, one also tied to proselyting about identity politics, and it will be interesting to see how fallout from the Trump election has an effect on that dynamic of humanities departments.    

It also kind of amazes me that attrition rates in fields like engineering and computer science versus the humanities are not more frequently circulated.  I'm not trying to say that its easy to get through an English degree (it's definitely not the easiest major one can find), but there are a lot of STEM degrees that are absolutely brutal.  If students are selecting a major with a concern for their professional future, then that is something they and their families ought to consider. 

[Deleted Because Useless]

Im wondering if people heard anything from NYU, USC, BU, and WashU aside from the acceptances and (edit) waitlists that have gone out in the first wave. I have seen some rejections and additional waitlists from a few of these schools but no news from them. Argh.

Edited February 28, 2019 by Hopeful and Not