2018-2019 Application Thread

[quesadilla]

4 hours ago, TheBunny said:

Does anyone get their rejection letter from Harvard? I had a dream about it last night but my mailbox is empty

I had a dream last night I was accepted to Harvard which means my brain is cruel to me

[polecondev]

13 hours ago, GiornoGiovanna said:

Does anyone know what's happening at Chicago Harris... 

I just got an an informal email from a faculty member at Harris on their PhD program

 

He mentioned offficial offer letters will be arriving by email this evening

Edited March 1, 2019 by polecondev

[eggsalad14]

3 minutes ago, quesadilla said:

I had a dream last night I was accepted to Harvard which means my brain is cruel to me

Same ugh, it included like a named fellowship and everything

[Chronicoverthinker]

42 minutes ago, Corsette said:

Are you going to do the CIR visit day? 

Yep, definitely!

[Corsette]

7 minutes ago, Chronicoverthinker said:

Yep, definitely!

Cool! I’m in Chicago anyway for MPSA, so it’s just an extra day.

[irgradcafe]

On 2/28/2019 at 6:19 PM, sandmoon said:

Congrats -- it must be really hard to pull this off as an international applicant! Just curious, did your letter writer get his PhD from the U.S.? I'm affiliated with a top university outside of North America, and although I'm sure the students there are bright and capable, their training seems different from the kind we get in the U.S. and the professors there aren't familiar with U.S. academia (in terms of research methodology and in terms of personal connections).

Yes, all my letter writers did their PhD in the U.S.. I did my undergrad at an Asian university which fortunately has enough professors from the States to provide the kind of training that U.S. universities are accustomed to (which is really quantitative training). It's almost a fact that people on U.S. PhD committees know very little about foreign universities, despite the large number of international applicants. That's why having letter writers who can testify your performance using vocabularies that Americans understand is so important.

[GiornoGiovanna]

25 minutes ago, polecondev said:

I just got an an informal email from a faculty member at Harris on their PhD program

 

He mentioned offficial offer letters will be arriving by email this evening

congratz! 

[irgradcafe]

On 2/28/2019 at 6:28 PM, martinn said:

Where are you most likely headed if I might ask?

I am juggling between Cornell, Wisconsin-Madison, and Emory - and most likely going to Cornell. It's interesting because I find that the U.S. News ranking ranks Madison higher than Cornell. Every prof I talked to says Cornell is better though.

[TheBunny]

46 minutes ago, quesadilla said:

I had a dream last night I was accepted to Harvard which means my brain is cruel to me

I had one like that, as well. I was sitting in a classroom at Harvard and listening to a class on Marx, Weber, etc. But, I am 99.9% sure that I got rejected

[polecondev]

17 minutes ago, GiornoGiovanna said:

congratz! 

Thank you, best of luck to you!!

[SuperSmash]

In at Notre Dame's IR PhD Program but also got into Chicago's CIR with half tuition. Both are amazingly great fits, but Chicago would mean I'm taking on a good probably 50k worth of debt. What should I do?????

[PoliSciPHDorBust]

I'm guessing if I haven't received an offer from chicago yet that's a rejection at this point, right?  

[quesadilla]

2 hours ago, SuperSmash said:

In at Notre Dame's IR PhD Program but also got into Chicago's CIR with half tuition. Both are amazingly great fits, but Chicago would mean I'm taking on a good probably 50k worth of debt. What should I do?????

By all accounts I’ve heard don’t take on the any debt unless you’re independently wealthy. But that doesn’t mean you won’t be able to find fellowships or TA positions to cover gaps in funding. And if you’re going to ND visit days I’ll see you there!

[Pillcopata]

3 hours ago, eggsalad14 said:

Same ugh, it included like a named fellowship and everything

Was Harvard GSAS' acceptance roll-out unusual this year, or is this typical for a program of its size? Only a handful of people posted acceptances...

[trinityshot]

Harvard portal just updated for me, just so y'all know

[eggsalad14]

16 minutes ago, Pillcopata said:

Was Harvard GSAS' acceptance roll-out unusual this year, or is this typical for a program of its size? Only a handful of people posted acceptances...

Harvard is a big program, but that's largely because it has a really good yield rate and not necessarily large accept rate (like, no one's going to say no to Harvard except for maybe Stanford or Princeton or the other CHYMPS if those are more geographically convenient or are stronger at what one wants to study). I've read about 24 admitted one year. 

That being said, there's like 4 accepts and one waitlist on the survey page which seems low but isn't outside the realm of possibility. I've previously seen about 1/3 of acceptances from similar elite schools (so I'd maybe expect to see closer  to 8(please ignore this stupid emoji, I can't get rid of it on mobile)) ?with known acceptance numbers get posted on the survey page, but 4 and 8 are such small numbers that I'm not going to really try to make any inferences other than it's very feasible this is all we're going to hear from Harvard. Some years we've seen a lot more, some years we've seen around the same number of acceptances on the result page. 

What I will say is based on last year's data, I'm surprised we haven't gotten our rejection letters yet. I just checked the portal, also nothing there. 

Edited March 1, 2019 by eggsalad14

[trinityshot]

5 minutes ago, eggsalad14 said:

Harvard is a big program, but that's largely because it has a really good yield rate and not necessarily large accept rate (like, no one's going to say no to Harvard except for maybe Stanford or Princeton or the other CHYMPS if those are more geographically convenient or are stronger at what one wants to study). I've read about 24 admitted one year. 

That being said, there's like 4 accepts and one waitlist on the survey page which seems low but isn't outside the realm of possibility. I've previously seen about 1/3 of acceptances from similar elite schools (so I'd maybe expect to see closer  to 8(please ignore this stupid emoji, I can't get rid of it on mobile)) ?with known acceptance numbers get posted on the survey page, but 4 and 8 are such small numbers that I'm not going to really try to make any inferences other than it's very feasible this is all we're going to hear from Harvard. Some years we've seen a lot more, some years we've seen around the same number of acceptances on the result page. 

What I will say is based on last year's data, I'm surprised we haven't gotten our rejection letters yet. I just checked the portal, also nothing there. 

I should've mentioned this sooner but the letter said they admitted 25 of almost 500 applicants

[schuaust]

2 hours ago, SuperSmash said:

In at Notre Dame's IR PhD Program but also got into Chicago's CIR with half tuition. Both are amazingly great fits, but Chicago would mean I'm taking on a good probably 50k worth of debt. What should I do?????

Notre Dame is a good program, you'd have no guarantee of a better offer after CIR. That being said, a better offer would still be possible, so it's really up to you. 

[schuaust]

Is anyone else still waiting to hear from Northwestern? Emailed people again, but no luck. 

[upsy]

Harvard emailed me about the portal update. It went to promos in gmail, so others might be missing it.

[eggsalad14]

2 minutes ago, trinityshot said:

I should've mentioned this sooner but the letter said they admitted 25 of almost 500 applicants

Nice. That's pretty consistent with what I'd expect. I like numbers like that a lot better than some of these "hundreds of qualified candidates from over 40 countries" stuff. 

[TheBunny]

I still did not receive anything from Harvard...

[Theory007]

Any thoughts on UVA vs. UNC for theory?

[brownie_z]

1 hour ago, TheBunny said:

I still did not receive anything from Harvard...

Ah I feel ya... i just need closure!

[wara]

43 minutes ago, Theory007 said:

Any thoughts on UVA vs. UNC for theory?

I think it probably boils down to what your research interests are and who you think you might be working under as your POI.