What is your method of madness??

[Oh the waiting game]

I just want to know that I am not the only one who checks email over 100 times a day(literally) waiting for a decision. I'm also on this site (mostly the results section), checking websites, calling departments and have become all too familiar with my department websites especially the FAQ sections. Anyone else out there ridiculously connected waiting to get results? What is the method to your madness?

Edited February 15, 2011 by Oh the waiting game

[Mrs. Grad]

I'm definitely the cray cray at this point. I have my husband's email account hooked up to my iphone. In fact, I knew about his acceptance to Penn State before he did.

Anyone, the iphone is handy because it beeps whenever an incoming email arrives.

[was1984]

I will just say this: I know more about most of my potential cities than most residents probably do.

[TaraDanielle]

When I'm at home or work, I always have my email up. When I'm anywhere else, my phone lets me know whenever I have an email. So I basically have a mini spazz attack 100 times a day. I don't obsessively check my mailbox because I'm never home during the day. If I get decisions via postal mail, I'll find out in the evening when I get home.

I check the websites too, but email is my main method of madness I think.

[mscongeniality1]

I just want to know that I am not the only one who checks email over 100 times a day(literally) waiting for a decision. I'm also on this site (mostly the results section), checking websites, calling departments and have become all too familiar with my department websites especially the FAQ sections. Anyone else out there ridiculously connected waiting to get results? What is the method to your madness?

In a word: yes.

I do all of these things. It drives me, my friends in my major, and my friends outside of my major up the wall.

[gradgirlwannabe]

I have Outlook set to send/receive as often as possible, and my email goes to my Blackberry for when I manage to pry myself from my computer. I haven't been obsessively checking websites, but gradcafe is my crack.

[diber]

I have Outlook set to send/receive as often as possible, and my email goes to my Blackberry for when I manage to pry myself from my computer. I haven't been obsessively checking websites, but gradcafe is my crack.

iPhone. email. every 10 mins. or less.

[Bonkers]

The usual routine, which occurs about 20 plus times a day: check email. refresh screen immediately. check result search on grad cafe. check email again.

[quierocorrer]

All your posts make me feel so much better.

This reassures me that I'm not permanently crazy, just grad school notification time crazy.

I've told myself I can no longer search Twitter and Google to find other people talking about the school!

This and my email are the only things I'm allowing myself.

Question for everyone: How soon is too soon to call a school?

If notifications were supposed to be sent out 4-6 weeks after the deadline, and that 6 weeks ended Friday, should I wait at least until this Friday before I call and ask when we will be notified?

I'm under the impression that both acceptances and rejections will be sent via email.

[UFGator]

Today is the 1 month mark since deadlines. I am going absolutely crazy. I have my gmail filtered to send me a text when anything with the word application comes to my inbox.

So far I have rage subscribed from:

Dell University (marketing spam essentially)

Alienware Marketing emails

1 and 1 internet

SEVERAL extra curricular list servs

music blogs

and a few others.

[FaithM]

I work from home, so I have my email and phone ready to go around the clock. I keep finding myself periodically checking my phone to see if it rang silently, or maybe it rang while I was in the bathroom, or pouring a glass of water so I didn't hear the ring.

The other day I was on the treadmill and I got a call while I was listening to my iPod, and I had a little panic attack--I didn't want to answer a possible call from a professor all out-of-breath and creepy sounding, so I let it go to voicemail. Flash foward five minutes: turns out it was a conference call that I had scheduled and completely forgotten about. Oops.

[thom1820]

Ugh, I feel so crazy, but it's good to know I'm not alone. I have an iphone, so I always know if I get an email. Doesn't stop me from refreshing it though, just in case. Beyond that, I have a ritual:

1. Come here to check results. Do a scan of all the new results. Then do a search just for "statistics" and read anything new/reread a lot of the old ones.

2. Check Florida State apply yourself site. After I check that, I log out and check their more detailed "status check" to see if they got my GRE scores yet or if they're started reviewing my transcripts.

3. Check UCSB site. Even though the "decision available" link is still grayed out, I go into the detailed page and reread "Application complete as of 2/10/11" because, you know, I'm crazy.

4. Check LSU.

5. Check NC State (saved for last because it is the hardest to get into.)

6. Come back here to check "waiting it out", "the lobby", and the Math/Stats section.

7. Depending on how much time I have, look at Craigslist for Blacksburg apartments.

Thankfully, I stay on campus most of the day, so I don't have to check the mail much. But when I do get the mail, I bundle it all up without looking at it, out of superstition, waiting until it is on the kitchen table to see where it is from.

[dlb89]

First of all, glad we're all a bunch of crazies here.

I'm not going to say I check my e-mails while I brush my teeth, before I go to bed, in the middle of the night, and/or while eating dinner...but I'm not saying I don't either. The added tragedy is the fact that I work ON the computer. So I am literally checking my e-mails 15-16 hours per day. How's that for obsessive?!

[surprisecake]

I hate that the URL for the gmail inbox changes to "https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?shva=1#inbox" after I log in. My brain sees 'inbox' and '=1' and automatically makes it "Inbox=1 YAY YAY!"

NO, BRAIN, THERE'S NO NEW MAIL THERE, I TOLD YOU THE LAST TIME.

[Benzene]

Ugh, I feel so crazy, but it's good to know I'm not alone. I have an iphone, so I always know if I get an email. Doesn't stop me from refreshing it though, just in case. Beyond that, I have a ritual:

1. Come here to check results. Do a scan of all the new results. Then do a search just for "statistics" and read anything new/reread a lot of the old ones.

2. Check Florida State apply yourself site. After I check that, I log out and check their more detailed "status check" to see if they got my GRE scores yet or if they're started reviewing my transcripts.

3. Check UCSB site. Even though the "decision available" link is still grayed out, I go into the detailed page and reread "Application complete as of 2/10/11" because, you know, I'm crazy.

4. Check LSU.

5. Check NC State (saved for last because it is the hardest to get into.)

6. Come back here to check "waiting it out", "the lobby", and the Math/Stats section.

7. Depending on how much time I have, look at Craigslist for Blacksburg apartments.

Thankfully, I stay on campus most of the day, so I don't have to check the mail much. But when I do get the mail, I bundle it all up without looking at it, out of superstition, waiting until it is on the kitchen table to see where it is from.

I am really happy to see that I am not the only one checking websites for application updates before I've been told that there is one! I am not alone! <3

My email program checks every 3 minutes for new messages. Every time I see a new message, I spazz out. But it is always something from the current university I am at. I never realized how many emails I get from student leadership until now. The first thing I do when I wake up is check for new emails and voicemails, in case a school east of Cali called while I was sleeping. I had a mini-heart attack last week because I had a voicemail from a graduate studies department...turned out to just be my current school telling me I wasn't eligible for a grant I'd applied for.

I also refuse to answer numbers I don't know, and google them to see where they are from. Of course, it's always telemarketers or a bill I was late paying...

[Ignatius_J_Reilly]

The usual routine, which occurs about 20 plus times a day: check email. refresh screen immediately. check result search on grad cafe. check email again.

I think we're leading the same lives!

My typical weekday (since I work evenings then): Check e-mail, refresh, gradcafe results, gradcafe forum, check e-mail ... repeat endlessly til work. Then, during my break, use the computer in the staff room to repeat the process.

[UFGator]

I highly encourage plotting the acceptance dates for your schools based on the results database. It will help calm your nerves if you know you are way out of the "window" for when people normally start hearing back.

For example. Political Science Ph.D. results @ UF have an average admission notice of the 24th of february with a standard deviation of 7 days. So I am most likely to find out sometime between the 17th of February and the 3rd of March.

[Zouzax]

Ugh, I feel so crazy, but it's good to know I'm not alone. I have an iphone, so I always know if I get an email. Doesn't stop me from refreshing it though, just in case. Beyond that, I have a ritual:

1. Come here to check results. Do a scan of all the new results. Then do a search just for "statistics" and read anything new/reread a lot of the old ones.

2. Check Florida State apply yourself site. After I check that, I log out and check their more detailed "status check" to see if they got my GRE scores yet or if they're started reviewing my transcripts.

3. Check UCSB site. Even though the "decision available" link is still grayed out, I go into the detailed page and reread "Application complete as of 2/10/11" because, you know, I'm crazy.

4. Check LSU.

5. Check NC State (saved for last because it is the hardest to get into.)

6. Come back here to check "waiting it out", "the lobby", and the Math/Stats section.

7. Depending on how much time I have, look at Craigslist for Blacksburg apartments.

Thankfully, I stay on campus most of the day, so I don't have to check the mail much. But when I do get the mail, I bundle it all up without looking at it, out of superstition, waiting until it is on the kitchen table to see where it is from.

ha this is great. if you would replace all your school names with those of the schools that I applied to, it would be the story of my life. My new thing is, in between checking everything insanely, I have been creating a Plan B that is taking up all of my free time and the little bit of brain energy I have left. I know I'm doing it just to distract myself from the real issue at hand. Oh, and did I mention I can't sleep anymore? (Its 1 AM.)

[FaithM]

I highly encourage plotting the acceptance dates for your schools based on the results database. It will help calm your nerves if you know you are way out of the "window" for when people normally start hearing back.

For example. Political Science Ph.D. results @ UF have an average admission notice of the 24th of february with a standard deviation of 7 days. So I am most likely to find out sometime between the 17th of February and the 3rd of March.

That's what I did, too, so I wasn't terribly shocked when Berkeley and Stanford rejected me two weeks after they made all their acceptance phone calls--bitter, but not shocked.

And then there's Davis. Acceptance phone calls for the English PhD program at Davis span the whole month of February--and sometimes into March. A friend of mine who's a second-year PhD student at Davis didn't get his phone call until the first week of March--five weeks after everyone else got their calls. So I'm torn between giving up on Davis and clutching to my little shriveled strand of hope that maybe I'm one of the stragglers at the bottom of the pile...

[Oh the waiting game]

My ridiculous obsession is checking my email, refreshing every 2 minutes because something may have just come, getting irritated that no one is emailing me, telling myself to stop obsessing and to find something else to do, going to my favorites folder and clicking on my email again! Either I think some new mail has come in or my mind automatically clicks the email button without thinking, either way i suppose I'm a little psycho!

Edited February 17, 2011 by Oh the waiting game

[lydibird]

My typical day:

1. Wake up
2. Check e-mail
3. Eat Breakfast
4. Classes
5. Check e-mail
6. Eat Lunch
7. Check e-mail
8. Check grad cafe results section
9. Check library science board on grad cafe
10. Check waiting board on grad cafe
11. Try to distract myself with class reading or planning SI sessions or lab work
12. FAIL at above
13. Check e-mail
14. Retry #12 with some success and productivity
15. Repeat 7-10
16. Go home
17. Eat Dinner
18. Repeat 7-10
19. Read/watch TV
20. Bed

Edited February 17, 2011 by lydibird

[Brandi88]

I pretty much obsess over my email from 9A-6P, checking my phone to see if I've been called for an interview, and checking my home mail for news. I also lurk the results forum to see if anything populates. I should hear back within the next few days for one school (AHHH!) but not until next month for most schools. I don't want to wait anymore! hah. I've also put on my calendar the days to expect responses/interviews. I feel like a nut. I can't wait until Apr 15 so I can stop feeling this way! haha.

[Zouzax]

I have the calendar as well!! But unfortunately, the schools are NOT keeping to the calendar this year lol. It's very stressful.

Lately Ive been going so crazy that I'm actually thinking of emailing my POIs, even though i know this is a bad idea. i cant take it anymore!! ahhh!!!

[CSC]

I recheck everything all day, everyday, and late into the night. Ive calculated and recalculated possible windows over and over again. Someone mentioned twitter, oh god, a new outlet... plus there are the blogs. Why hadnt I thought of this sooner? And just when I thought I reached the peak of obsession. I need to email this thread to those friends who keep telling me to relax. They just dont understand.

[epidemic]

Thanks to all posters above, I have evidence that I am normal.My husband thinks I've gone crazy, the way I check my mail and gradcafe obsessively. But then he is the one who wakes up at 5 am [i am an international student in Asia ] to check whether someone mailed in the night....;-)