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2020 Acceptance Thread


Schrödinger's_Doge

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Just now, Descartes blanche said:

If you see postings on the results list for both waitlists and acceptances from a particular school that you've yet to hear from, is it reasonable to assume that you've been rejected?

There's always the possibility that you're on a hidden waitlist. Or I guess a situation could turn out like this:

There are, say, 6 spots at the program, and 4 have been filled. There are also 10 applicants who were strong enough to make the waitlist. Of those 10, 3 may be in contention for the remaining two spots. So 7 students get on the waitlist and 4 get acceptances, and the rest will be rejected. But there are 3 more students from the 10 who weren't immediately accepted who may be in limbo, and in this case two will get acceptances while one will get waitlisted. In this case not hearing back wouldn't be a bad sign - it could mean that you're still under consideration for an acceptance.

Granted, this last possibility is pretty remote. Probably you are rejected in a case like this. I'm in the same boat, btw, with Berkeley - at least four people were accepted, and at least one waitlisted, but I haven't heard anything.

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10 minutes ago, Coconuts&Chloroform said:

There's always the possibility that you're on a hidden waitlist. Or I guess a situation could turn out like this:

There are, say, 6 spots at the program, and 4 have been filled. There are also 10 applicants who were strong enough to make the waitlist. Of those 10, 3 may be in contention for the remaining two spots. So 7 students get on the waitlist and 4 get acceptances, and the rest will be rejected. But there are 3 more students from the 10 who weren't immediately accepted who may be in limbo, and in this case two will get acceptances while one will get waitlisted. In this case not hearing back wouldn't be a bad sign - it could mean that you're still under consideration for an acceptance.

Granted, this last possibility is pretty remote. Probably you are rejected in a case like this. I'm in the same boat, btw, with Berkeley - at least four people were accepted, and at least one waitlisted, but I haven't heard anything.

Thanks. That's what I figured. So when people talk about two rounds of acceptances, are they just referring to these remote situations you mention or do some schools deliberately send out two rounds of acceptances? 

  

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9 minutes ago, Coconuts&Chloroform said:

Who knows?

For sure...Well I hope you're on that elusive second round. 

I'm not taking this season too seriously. I had a last minute GRE with unimpressive results so I decided to just put a few out there and try again next season. So far I'm thinking that was a good idea.  

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1 hour ago, Descartes blanche said:

So when people talk about two rounds of acceptances, are they just referring to these remote situations you mention or do some schools deliberately send out two rounds of acceptances? 

There's a few things at play here. There's lots of variation, but here's a few general examples I've seen:

The 'typical' two rounds go like this 1. early acceptances because they're offering or nominating these students for a fellowship. These are the exceptional students they really want to attract to their program. Then 2. the other acceptances, later.

Alternatively, some programs may do it like this: 1. some programs send acceptances out just once to a large group, betting that a percentage of them will decline, and they'll end up with the right sized cohort. So if they typically have a cohort size of 10 and they have a typical acceptance of 50%, they'll admit 20 to the program. These programs may have waitlists, but only for the rare case that their cohort size ends up unusually small. Or 2. they admit in phases until they get the desired cohort size; say, admit 10 expecting a class of 6, but then only 4 accept, they'll reach out to the next two on the waitlist until they get their desired size.

Some schools will also have a hidden waitlist. That is, they plan to admit, say, 8, so they extend to their top 8, then they move on to their waitlist, then they'll move on to their hidden waitlist (least desired, but they're budding or may have some promise they can develop). It seemingly rarely gets to the hidden waitlist. How do you know you're on such a waitlist? You don't, but you may infer you're on it if you haven't heard anything from the program while acceptances/waitlists/rejections have been reported.

You may, however, still have some hope if you're waitlisted or even rejected and it's April 15th. I've seen several cases where these students are offered spots/funding after April 15th because some other admits didn't get back to them in time, and the program has a set number they want in their cohort (or need in their cohort to keep their level of funding). But, if it were me, if I started collecting a lot of rejections or waitlists, I'd ad hoc apply for some funded MA programs as a backup.

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8 hours ago, PoliticalTheory13 said:

What spreadsheet?

Here's the link (note that there are different tabs to toggle between different pages—the link I'm attaching here should land you on the "predictions" page): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yb_yciijFGEp5roVKYJ40U4eiREo3ZQTeSQkEjGMSsg/edit#gid=339976266

I just noticed that you're into political theory (whereas this link is for a philosophy PhD predictions page)—just fyi. (I'm not sure if political theory has an analogous spreadsheet.)

Edited by energeia11235
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In at UNC—got a call yesterday. Visit weekend is March 22-24. Email with funding details, visit weekend details, etc. to follow (next week, if I recall correctly). That's all the info I have. (Someone on the results list wanted to know AOIs of those admitted to UNC—PM me if you're interested.)

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