Stanford and Harvard

[Jeff Swindle]

Has anyone heard news from these two programs?

Last year Harvard called 21 people for final interviews with professors. Then two weeks later they accepted 10 of them. Has anyone been called this year? The interviews last year happened in early february and the acceptances were around Feb. 17th.

I noticed that Stanford acceptances for this year have been posted on the results page. There were only five, plus one person posted saying that not all the acceptances had been decided yet... Anyone know more about this? Perhaps they have gone through half the alphabet this past week, accepting five-seven people, and then will do the next half the following week?

[sciencegirl]

Nothing on the Harvard front. It seems that in some years they do interviews, in other years they do not. Given that there are enough strong applicants at least lurking where acceptances to Stanford, Princeton, Chicago, Madison and Berkeley have been recorded, it can be safely inferred that nothing on the board about Harvard means that nothing from Harvard has gone out yet. Perhaps next week we will hear about interviews - but maybe they will just announce acceptances and not do interviews.

In regards to Stanford, @jenjenjen, @socscholar and I are three of the board results, the rest seem to be lurking or feel sheepish/secretive about their admission. Did you apply and not get rejected/hear anything yet? This seems to be the case with at least one other person on the board. It seems that they have sent out their initial admissions and have planned their admit event. However, it also seems that they have a lot of money and are expanding the Sociology department. (If you google "The Stanford Challenge" you'll learn that the University just raised $6 billion dollars in the last 5 years in a campaign drive, and the money will be partially spent on new professors and graduate fellowships). While in the past, the Soc department has aimed for smaller cohorts between 8-10, this year they seem very determined to expand by 40-50% and get 14. So what is probably going to happen is that they are going to feel out the first group in their March admit event, and play a numbers game with an informal waitlist hoping to add until they get the number they want. They probably can't go over 14, but they don't want any less than that either... so it results in a complicated dance.

My perception of the program in my limited interaction with grads and their professors who have contacted me, seem to be that they are in a mindset of expanding the department. Also, I don't have numbers yet, but the structure of funding they have already guaranteed (5 years, at least 3 summers, yrs 1&5 full fellowship, 2/3/4 on RA/TA + additional funding opportunities for conferences/projects/symposiums) is pretty amazing.

Are you waiting on other programs? Or better question, is there a reason why just Stanford and Harvard for the title of the post?

Edited February 12, 2012 by sciencegirl

[Jeff Swindle]

@Expresso Shot Thanks for the good info on Stanford and Harvard. I presume Harvard will send out acceptances or POI phone requests on monday or tuesday next week. At least, that's my guess. I'm glad to hear that you are one of the applicants who has gotten into Stanford. Thanks for telling me the funding package. You're right - that's a perfect offer.

I have not heard from either of these programs yet. I wonder what are the last names of @jenjenjen, @socscholar, and yourself? Perhaps, and that's a big perhaps, they have just gone through the first half of the alphabet thus far...

There are a few other programs that I am still waiting to hear from, like Cornell, UNC, John Hopkins, Penn, etc., but Stanford or Harvard would easily beat out those schools for me. Hence, the questions...

Has Stanford told anyone that they have been waitlisted? I haven't seen anyone report that on the results board...

[melusine860]

@ Jeff - I don't get the impression that Stanford's system is alphabetical. My last name begins with a D and I have yet to hear anything. I'm (optimistically) hoping that those of us who haven't heard are second-stringers in the "maybe" pile? Time will tell...

[sciencegirl]

@melusine860... ok, so there are a few of you who still haven't heard from Stanford. Last week, Stanford both sent out acceptance and rejections.. so its probably safe to assume that your application is being held as one of the maybes in the middle if you haven't heard. I believe however, schools such as UNC have already sent out acceptances.. (did @socialgroovements get in there? a few people on the board got in I thought...) but these did not send out rejections... I think for those schools it might be harder to say where you stand. It's a hard task for these adcoms since if their goal is a certain number, and every year they lose a few students to the other top 10 schools, its a tricky balancing act.

[RefurbedScientist]

Yes UNC acceptances went out in January. There is an open house in a couple weeks. They may use the open house as a way of estimating the possible enrollment rate, so perhaps there is a viable waitlist, but this is pure speculation.

[Jeff Swindle]

Yes UNC acceptances went out in January. There is an open house in a couple weeks. They may use the open house as a way of estimating the possible enrollment rate, so perhaps there is a viable waitlist, but this is pure speculation.

Interesting. I will contact the dept secretary at UNC and find out.

[Karlito]

If you haven't hear from Yale, sorry but it is a rejection

[giacomo]

If you haven't hear from Yale, sorry but it is a rejection

We refuse to believe that, Karlito!

*goes back to refreshing email furiously*

Wait, did I apply to Yale?

[Karlito]

Because they had this new interview policy this year, and they interviewed everyone they were interested in. Unless you were interviewed (in which case you are either admitted or on the waitlist), it is most likely a rejection (Email the grad coordinator).

[Karlito]

Hey tomatoonwheat, thanks for your message. Yale did not work out unfortunately, but I got in another top 20 and I am on waitlist at a top 10, so yeah I consider myself fairly successful and lucky this year despite a greater number of rejections than acceptances How about you? Good luck to all, this process is so damn competitive

[newleaf]

Hello friends. My bff is a Stanford maybe-er in anthropology. She went to interview weekend, but was not contacted as an admit or a waitlist as other people have for anthropology. There seems to be waitlist/funding issues that are being decided by the social science/humanities division. Im sure it stings not to be part of the "golden children" who got the first admits, but don't fret, that few billion dollars the school raised is bound to trickle down to lowly graduate students in the social sciences.

[sciencegirl]

Stanford made a bunch of offers early in Feb. already - no interviews were done and funding was incredibly generous to all those admitted already.

[Karlito]

How much was offered exactly?

[splitends]

@Karlito: Stanford funding seems pretty generous, though I was a little confused on some of the details (it promises five years of funding, but only lists actual numbers for Year 1-- not sure that it guarantees it will stay that high the whole time): ~$24K for the academic year, ~$6.5 summer RAship, and several misc. funds ($3K for travelling, some more for computers, etc).

I'm always a little hesitant to talk about funding specifics-- are funding packages typically uniform for all prospective students? And has anyone else run into that ambiguity about multi-year funding?

[Karlito]

Splitends - you got into Stanford too? Well I can just say congratulations, once again! You are this season's killer. You take soc123's title from last year. Thanks for your info about the funding. Stanford is pretty (incredibly would be the right word) generous with you guys. Any idea of where you will end up going?

[splitends]

Yeah, I got pretty ridiculously lucky this year. I really don't know where I will end up, though I think on some level I'm narrowing in on a few schools. I'm going to do a lot of visiting over the next month, which will hopefully make things more clear...

[sciencegirl]

@splitends... re: Stanford.. a few of us admits there compared and we all have the exact same thing, including some weird additional $2000 miscellaneous fund for year 1 and 2.. the ambiguity for the other years might be because I believe your salaries as a TA/RA are based on what the school sets.. (its online somewhere actually) the amounts given in our letter is the minimum, so there is a chance they could rise (or in a bizarre twist of deflation maybe even fall, but I don't think that's ever happened) based on the number the school sets for their graduate employees. Also, I think that funding in years 5,6,7 (if needed) are often done through a multitude of Stanford's internal fellowships - many of which are $34,000+, which is why apparently, the spelling out of everything seems to not be of too much concern for students there.

I'm also split between some programs at the moment, but the funding at Stanford is a huge draw - though some other programs I'm looking at are a better fit. Money is sadly a real issue...

[socscholar]

I don't know though, Stanford's package is numerically pretty enticing, but the cost of living in the area is absurd. Comparatively, it is about the same as many other offers.

[splitends]

Thanks for the info! How did you get in contact with other prospectives? Or did you just already know each other? Nearly everyone I've talked to from my prospective schools I met or inadvertently ran into through this site...

[splitends]

You know, it might be because I've lived in CA my whole life and just don't realize how inexpensive things are everywhere else, but I don't think the south bay is all that bad. Just visiting the area, it certainly seems cheaper than major U.S. cities like San Francisco and New York. I really think it's just housing that makes it look so unreasonable to live there. If you can live in subsidized university housing (I haven't really looked at the options yet, but I assume it's cheaper than just trying to buy a place in Palo Alto) I don't think you're going to be particularly hurt by the "high cost of living" in the area...

[socscholar]

Good point @splitends. I guess I keep focusing on how much my stipend would be eaten up by fixed costs. In the Midwest and the South at the places I'm looking at, rent is about 500-700 per month, while near Stanford its more like 800-1100 (to have my own room in a shared apt/house). But I guess if everything else isn't too expensive, this may not be too big of a deal?

[sciencegirl]

@socscholar.. I had this convo earlier with someone about this, but did you look at on-campus housing options? They guarantee it your first year, and you can get your own room for between $700-1100. I am going to be honest, I tried to rationalize everything before about why the Stanford area is expensive with some friends and they made me realize that it's not like I'm buying a house in Palo Alto and raising kids there (you might be though so maybe we are in different situations). My graduate school friends said that the online calculators of cost of living are not good measure of graduate life. The key things are housing (on campus options listed above), cost of groceries, books, conference travel, research, transportation ($300 a month in my estimates for a car if I can't stand biking), and an occasional celebratory meal out. Movies are free through on-campus screenings of cool new documentaries.

I dug this up actually for someone else... but from what I gather, as long as you enter the Stanford housing lottery as a first year by May before summer/when you start, you are guaranteed a place, and that they try to give you an option that is not in the $1200+ range: http://www.stanford.edu/dept/rde/cgi-bin/drupal/housing/charts/graduate-residence-chart

Most apartments seem to be between $670-940 in cost per month.

This is of course if you are single/not married without kids.. if you have a family, then things might definitely be pricier.

I agree with @splitends here... I don't see Palo Alto as an expensive place compared to NYC or SF or even parts of LA even, when you figure living on campus at those rates. I'm super surprised that Stanford gets flack for being in a high cost living area when we don't hear much about Columbia or NYU (and honestly, if I have to wait in another 30 minute line in the Trader Joes in Union Square just to get cheap wine on a Friday night I will go bonkers).

[sciencegirl]

Ooops, you did outpost me @socscholar! Sorry I didn't read your message before posting! I am actually looking at the $1100 studio in EV as an option if I go to Stanford... and when compared to the cost of a studio in NYC, about half the cost. Crazy the difference in cost of living across the US...

[splitends]

Honestly, though, I'm not 100% that I'm right about that-- I don't have a great frame of reference, other than thinking that the food there isn't as bad as SF and NY.

Really, I'm just a huge California chauvinist. I'd rather be homeless and spending all day in the sunshine eating locally grown produce year round than living someplace swanky that's under snow half the year...