What were you doing when you received your acceptance?

[e_randolph]

**BUMP**

 

While I'm doing my best to maintain sanity during the wait for my rejections, I've loved reading about other people's success.  Hopefully this will give the thread some exposure as 2019 acceptances start rolling in!

[Camillalxy]

This was two weeks ago. Order in which it happened:

1. I was having a bad headache the night before because I was afraid I wouldn't be accepted anywhere.

2. During my shower the next night, I talked to myself like "I can't lose XYZ program" and hoped that I could get an acceptance email as soon as I walked out of the bathroom.

3. I settled down in front of my laptop and was ready to do homework. The next second an email from POI from XYZ program titled "Congratulations" popped up.

The acceptance into my current undergrad institution was way more dramatic tho so I'll post about it here:

I was waitlisted by Georgia Tech and I went on a trip in May. One night I walked along a river and bought a flower paper lantern with a candle in the middle and I made a wish while I floated it on river. I thanked destiny for everything it had brought to my life and I wished I could enjoy every moment it would present to me. Next morning I woke up and found the acceptance email. I became a fatalist since then and for every wish I've made I'd say the same thing as at that night by the river.

P.S. reviewing my acceptance helps with my anxiety waiting for other decisions a lot!

Edited January 24, 2019 by Camillalxy

[whiskerplot]

I received my first decision/acceptance on my 21st birthday. My dad took me out to dinner and I got an email with my official acceptance letter right before the desserts showed up. It was a nice birthday surprise! 

[coffeeaddict2230]

sitting on the toilet while playing the mobile game and the email notice popped out;

doing some coding work with classmates and decided to check the system

[Adelaide9216]

I was at home in my bedroom lol  It was late at night. My supervisor emailed me shortly after to confirm that I was in! 

[transrelativity]

It was my long day at work. On TR I teach from 9:40am-2:30pm with no breaks, and then I'd gone directly to a union meeting that lasted until 5. I picked my wife up at the train station and drove home hungry, tired, and ready to collapse on the couch. On my way in I picked up the mail from the slot, and mixed in with the credit card offers and TIAA-CREF annual privacy notice was a very thin envelope from the school. I walked in dumbfounded, knowing it must be a rejection but shocked that it had come so early. I had to read the letter twice before I processed the acceptance!

I showed it to my wife, who was way more excited (I was still in shock). Then I called my parents, who are both grad alums of the same university

[madandmoonly]

I went to a coffee shop yesterday to read for a while. I had actually blocked Grad Cafe from my laptop the night before because I was checking it way too often and I was spiraling. I had also been answering the phone to telemarketers for about a week. I decided to finally give it all a rest, since there wasn't a chance I was going to hear before February anyway. Funnily enough, I guess my phone was on vibrate and I missed the call! I checked my voicemail and I had been admitted. I then left the coffee shop to go to campus to tell my (former) advisor, who's a really good friend of mine now. Overall a solid day.

[Ternwild]

F17, was talking to friends outside the Chemistry building when I got a buzz on my phone.  I checked it while they were in mid conversation.  I looked at it and said "Hey!  I got accepted to Purdue!"  They were like "Oh. Cool."  After a minute I replied with "Wait...where's Purdue?"

[ResilientDreams]

I had actually just arrived in the Cayman Islands and was bumping along in the back of the van to go to the hotel when I got my email about my first interview.

[Mickey26]

I was doing some cleaning (KonMari method hehe) as I felt the compulsion to clean that day. Had all my electronics turned off. And then had a gut feeling that my email was pinging. Booted up my laptop, and low and behold two emails from the school I was accepted to! I actually clicked on the 2nd email first which didn't read like an acceptance email--so I was confused for about 30 mins re-reading this same email before I realized I had totally missed email #1! Lo and behold, email #1 stated "Congratulations!..." I called my closest friends and just sobbed incomprehensibly into the phone ahaha 

[Teaching Faculty Wannabe]

It was almost midnight on a Friday and I was just chilling at my house (quite a social life I have!). I got an email from BU saying that I have been invited to visit for the Open House and I should receive a letter of submission soon. I was frozen and then started dancing and then freaking out and overthinking the visit because that's what I do best.

[Ternwild]

I keep reading these "Where were you when you got accepted" posts and all I keep thinking is I wish these sort of things would happen to me, but, ultimately, I know it won't.  I know I'm suppose to be uplifted and feel like "hey, that could happen to me!" but I don't...I've seen too much rejection.  So, I'm ambivalent.  I'm both happy that they got the opportunity to feel that feeling of absolute excitement and relief and sad knowing that I won't be able to.  Hope you all go on to being good academics.  Work hard for those of us that will never get the chance.  Wish I could be there with ya! 

[eevee]

My first acceptance came while I was at the interview weekend for another school ... definitely lifted a weight off my shoulders!

As for the acceptance to the program I ended up at -- it came pretty late in the process at a point where I was pretty sure I wasn't getting in, and I had just about decided to go to my second-choice program (as in I had talked to my parents and advisor about it, was starting to get in touch with current students and PIs, etc). So I was just having a normal day in lab when I got an automated portal decision from UCLA. I assumed it was a rejection so I just clicked into it on my phone while I was doing some image processing stuff and then literally SCREAMED when it was good news!! 

[crackademik]

I was reading a paper on PFOS at work and I decided to refresh my email for the 1000x that day, and VOILA, there was the offer. I just about peed myself and cried in excitement. I was almost 100% confident I was going to get shutout this year after being told by a friend on an admissions committee that my SOP was trash. 

[brightorangesocks]

Just happened to check the web portal for each of my schools this afternoon, and got my first official acceptance!!!  *happy dance*

[transrelativity]

I checked the web portal after seeing that someone else had a decision from one of my schools. I found an acceptance, but of course no details. I was in the midst of writing a post about it on another GradCafe thread when an email popped up with the funding offer!

[JGSoc]

Last week I was in bed mid-way through a Netflix binge when I saw my phone light up. I was getting a call from an out-of-state number I had never seen before. Recently I've been getting an insane amount of spam calls, so my first thought was just to ignore it. Yet I was curious to see what new trick they would try playing on me this time, so I answered with a very confrontational "Hello." The person on the end asked if this was [insert my name here] and I didn't respond, still not trusting that this was anything other than a spam call. Instead asking who was calling, I was very surprised to learn it was a professor telling me I'd been accepted into their program. My tone immediately transformed from snarkiness to gratitude and I'm now very glad I picked up that phone.

[N0rd]

I was sitting at work when I got an email alert for both of my emails (personal and academic). I expanded the push notification and saw the word "Congratulations!" At the beginning of the email! I raced to my computer to read the full acceptance letter on a bigger screen and only processed about every 3rd or 4th word as I went through the letter. Fully funded, I was ecstatic! Immediately after texting my family and emailing my undergrad advisor I got another email from them that said they had made a mistake in my acceptance letter and they had just attached the correct one. My heart sunk thinking they had mistakenly offered me full funding or something else equally devastating, only to realize they had unnecessarily repeated a word, which I hadn't even noticed on the first read through.

[bonesandbakes]

I had been checking my email every 30 seconds all day waiting for notification from a different school, and decided to distract myself by making english muffins. Finished cooking those and checked my phone, and boom! First official acceptance. A watched pot never boils, I guess.  

[brighteyes]

I was sitting in my lab, working on something in R for a project we are presenting at WPA in April. I had my email open as well, it pinged and I switched over and saw an informal offer and congratulations from my POI at my second choice school. My current undergraduate professor and my lab group use #slack to message each other, and I sent my mentor a message in all caps, "ARE YOU UPSTAIRS?!" because her office is one floor above our lab. She messaged me back and said she was, and I ran upstairs. I peeked around the corner into her office and whispered "I got into Nebraska" and she yelled and ran and gave me a big hug and started tearing up. I'm her first student to get into a PhD program. This was definitely a moment I will remember forever. ❤️ 

[bonesandbakes]

35 minutes ago, brighteyes said:

I was sitting in my lab, working on something in R for a project we are presenting at WPA in April. I had my email open as well, it pinged and I switched over and saw an informal offer and congratulations from my POI at my second choice school. My current undergraduate professor and my lab group use #slack to message each other, and I sent my mentor a message in all caps, "ARE YOU UPSTAIRS?!" because her office is one floor above our lab. She messaged me back and said she was, and I ran upstairs. I peeked around the corner into her office and whispered "I got into Nebraska" and she yelled and ran and gave me a big hug and started tearing up. I'm her first student to get into a PhD program. This was definitely a moment I will remember forever. ❤️ 

Congrats! I'm just finishing up my undergrad at UNL, message me if you have any questions! 

[pyramidstuds]

16 hours ago, CN0rd said:

I was sitting at work when I got an email alert for both of my emails (personal and academic). I expanded the push notification and saw the word "Congratulations!" At the beginning of the email! I raced to my computer to read the full acceptance letter on a bigger screen and only processed about every 3rd or 4th word as I went through the letter. Fully funded, I was ecstatic! Immediately after texting my family and emailing my undergrad advisor I got another email from them that said they had made a mistake in my acceptance letter and they had just attached the correct one. My heart sunk thinking they had mistakenly offered me full funding or something else equally devastating, only to realize they had unnecessarily repeated a word, which I hadn't even noticed on the first read through.

Umm, that is TERRIFYING.

[pyramidstuds]

I can't overstate enough the incessant feeling of dread and despondence that had been following me like a dark cloud during this waiting process. After getting a first rejection and an implied rejection (from a top pick), on the same day, I resigned myself to knowing I'd be unanimously rejected this cycle. If a top match rejected me, I didn't stand a chance elsewhere. Since that day, I'd been unreasonably depressed and moody. It was still January, but I just wanted to get it all over with, and felt irritated that other impending rejections weren't arriving yet. On top of this, my job had been beating me down all month. I work at a non-profit for a cause I'm very passionate about, which means I am burdened with compassion fatigue. It's been a lot.

Spoiler alert: my top choice (which you can see in my signature I'll be attending, despite other decisions still pending) is UNC. I absolutely did not feel confident about the match but wanted to get in so bad. I'd looked at the admissions stats, etc. and knew I had no chance.

Monday, January 28 is the day I got the decision. I'm off work Sunday-Monday, and I'm in school full-time for my master's right now, too, so my days off are my days on for writing my thesis. I'll do 12 hour days writing non-stop. (Side note, maybe this is why I am so burned out and anxious, hmm)

I'd woken up like any normal Monday, started coffee, gotten my laptop ready, stuck a bagel in the toaster. Strangely, I remember that despite how I'd been feeling so down about likely rejections, at this point, as of this morning, I had kinda moved on? Like, I'd made peace with rejection. I think this is a coping strategy I subconsciously employed. Maybe this is one of those "stages of grief?" I felt strangely calm and had renewed focus on my thesis project. If I wasn't getting accepted to a PhD program, I had to at least make sure to have a kick-ass thesis paper--"this is still an achievable goal," I thought.

As I'm settling in to write all day, I checked my email on my phone to find this subject: "UNC Anthropology Decision."

All that BS I just said, about my mental state, where I'd "moved on" and "made peace?" Yeah, that all immediately evacuated my body. I cared a LOT, actually. My heart dropped, it was such a neutral subject line, the body of the email said nothing, just "Please find your attached decision letter regarding your application."

I took a breath and opened the attachment. "It is with great pleasure that I write to confirm..."

I think maybe that's when I started sobbing? Who is to say, but at some point, I was HEAVING with sobs, I went and hugged my dogs and thanked them each individually (I have three who are the lights of my life), I then called my boyfriend who was at work and answered--I scared the hell out of him (I never cry and I called him sobbing). Before I told my friends and immediate family (I actually only told like 5 people I was applying to PhDs at all, lest I be rejected everywhere and embarrassed) I read the letter 15 times to make sure it was real. I also (after reading horror stories on this forum) confirmed it was indeed my name on the letter.

I didn't get much done on my thesis that day, my brain was buzzing. I also was so sure that the decision would be revoked or something that I refreshed my email constantly. Once 12 hours had gone by, I thought maybe I was safe. But really, it wasn't until I got additional emails from the department that I fully realized I had actually been accepted (and not by mistake).

Edited February 9, 2019 by pyramidstuds

[MPA_App]

My top choice this year is the LBJ School at the University of Texas in Austin. I've been waiting to hear back and checking my phone and email incessantly. Yesterday around 2pm ET I Slacked one of my coworkers that I just had to get over the fact that I wasn't going to hear back today or over the weekend obviously and just needed to find more things to do to fill my time so I stopped compulsively refreshing the page.

I had just put an offer on a pair of boots on Poshmark (highly specific, I know), and when my phone buzzed I assumed it was a notification letting me know the offer was accepted. Instead I saw "The LBJ at University of Austin Admission Decision" and saw the preview of the body of the email that started, "Dear Amanda, we are delighted..." 

Any chill that I thought I had IMMEDIATELY left my body, I started laughing and crying at the same time as I read the email, then read it again, then double checked to make sure they didn't accidentally send it to me instead of someone else. I then called my mom and screamed "I GOT IN!" and she screamed back.

I've been recommended for admission, so I do still need to wait on the official OK from the Graduate Internal Admissions Center, which is really stressing me out because I"m terrified that they will rescind the offer, but I already RSVPed to accepted students day and indicated on their form that I intend to accept the offer of admissions and start in the fall.

[Karlin]

I was watching Clockwork Orange when I received offer from UMich

Didn't expect the admission at all!